Change is the transformation from something to another thing. It is to become different, pass gradually into something else.
Since the time men started roam the earth, we underwent lots of changes to who we are today. With different nationalities language, tribes and religions we all still come from the same roots and origins, from the monkey family.
Fast forward to present, and staying local in Singapore, this nation has underwent so much changes that the kampong days are long gone, even the friendly neighbourhood atmosphere is already gone, no longer do neighbours know one another among the community. When I was young around 1980s to 1990s, the community bonding and unity was slowly fading away as I grow up while Singapore keeps changing and improving.
Lives 1990s was definitely way much better than 1950s that period, but looking at the present bonding of Singaporeans among different races, Singapore in fact has gone worse. Back than, even my grandma knows Malay and now those local Singaporean Chinese who knows Malay language is the minority with Malaysian Chinese taking away our advantage in language proficiency.
In the past, everybody knows a bit of other language here and there, even Indians know Chinese, but that’s is the super minority.
These days, with the housing development planning, the layout of the houses are pleasant taking into considerations for limited land, but gone are our privacy, with doors shut, the friendly neighbours atmosphere is long gone.
People who used to be able to work until fifty years old and retire for a blissful family, is already gone without a trace, the possibility of it is gone permanently. No longer can we grow up looking forward to retirement, in fact we will work till the date we die, that’s how the way we are growing, and this problem is not subjected to only Singapore but all over the world. Any capitalist country will face this issue.
Just that Singapore with limited resources is showing the negative effects of capitalism society faster than our neighbouring countries because they still have land, religion and culture to fall back on thus they will not face this problem so fast but gradually, they are feeling it.
Taiwan is also losing its tribe practice and people are going to cities for a living, like wise for India and other countries. But somehow thanks to its strong unity and government space for religion practice, they are still going strong with their Chinese culture and proud of it, unlike Singapore, even for our own four different religions, we also have the public holidays reduced, no longer greatly celebrating it but it has downsized so much that it becomes more like a yearly commercial event rather than festive celebrations doing only a yearly routine with no heart put into it. It’s a festival without the soul, bonding and unity in it. How I envy countries with such rich festival celebrations.
Singapore although has lost the festival bonding among people, but it has gain something else in return to compensate for its culture losses which is financial industry and is often said that Singapore is the window to China, nonetheless that comes with a great price of sacrifice.
Hard work, always increasing work load, only more and no less, work load increase is way much faster than the speed whereby our pay increases, thus we are getting poorer and poorer. Just look at the working age and ask yourself if you can even retire and enjoy a blissful family, never ever if you follow the majority. It’s just the facts.
Should we want to reverse the effects, we should pick up entrepreneurship, in particular allowing ourselves more time to spend with family, encouraging a family and work-life balance, so as to have more births per family, thus tax will not increase. Financial insiders or those who at least study bits of history will know why birth rates has links to tax.
What we deserve, we got to earn it, and to do it, we have to find our way. Singapore is growing and improving, but not the people, majority of the people are still staying in a poor mindset thus making Singapore government job of running the country increasing harder having to cope with the silver tsunami many years ahead which is slowly revealing the tip of the ice berg already. We are just another country one step slower than Japan only.
We earn what we keep, and we got to defend our homeland from foreigners, lower our demands for foreign talents, in order to do that, we have to increase our own competitive advantage so as to reduce our reliance on them.
The easiest way to do so is to do our own business, and offer employments to fellow Singaporeans by helping Singaporeans earn their own keep. Entrepreneurship is the only way to go about, don’t look at it as purely business, you can go into entertainment, science, invention, financial related or even sales and service, it is not restricted to only business. Explore different ideas and stomp the front. Be a leader, take charge of your own life.
BE in control and stay in control.
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