Going for Gold

I was watching the Athens table-tennis semi-finals match yesterday - featuring of course our 'own' Li Jiawei.

I was watching intently not because I was patriotic and hoped for her to win but because I was fervently patriotic by being anti-patriotic. I wanted us to lose ... and so we did. And when she lost, I smiled quietly to myself.

Am I being traitorous? Perhaps ... Am I being anti-nationalisitc? Perhaps ... Am I being deeply concerned of the values we uphold as a nation and people? Certainly.

Like all things the government does, and problems she faces, money and economic power seem to be the solution. We address the lack of 'talent' in our society by 'importing' talent - like pigs at a slaughterhouse, like economic entities devoid of soul and purpose. We address the diminishing fertility and baby woes by providing monetary incentives. We develop a name in the sporting arena by importing foreign sportsmen - tantalising them with hopes of citizenship, and a million dollars for a Gold at the Athens olympics. I'm not sure what other Singaporeans felt but I felt a deep sense of shame when watching the opening of the Olympics. The commentator made mention how we would award a million dollars for a gold medal, half a million for a silver, and $200,000 for a bronze.

Ironically, as any old wisdom would tell you, money can't buy everything. It can't buy happiness but it can buy success. In our case, it couldn't even buy that. None of these talented imported 'talents' made it anywhere near the finals with perhaps the exception of Li Jiawei. Even Ronald Susillo fell out early in the games. Our swim team - the few 'home-grown' sports talents - did not even qualify. When will the government learn that money isn't the solution to every problem. LKY and his descendants have managed the country well addressing the tangible problems of 'hardware' but it seems to be incompetent and unable to deal with the intangibles - the heart and soul of the people.

I am convinced we suffer from a national sense of insecurity - inferiority complex. Being a minute nation which has overly-developed too quickly too soon, we constantly need to prove our worth on the global playing field. But need we always be proving to ourselves and others that we can be a nation worth recognition? Need we always be 'the best' in everything? Is this the ethic we choose to inculcate in our young?

I see this materialistic excessively pragmatic ethic in microcosm everyday. We demand our students to be excellent sportsmen, intelligent scholars, eloquent speakers, polite and socially well-bred individuals who also possess artitistic sensibilities. But can we be so many things? Are we seeking to create Nietzsche's 'ubermensch'? But even the 'ubermensch' wasn't everything.

I was, and am, a product of this social engineering. I am now part of the system that continues this process, frighteningly, with greater precision and refinement. Have not history and literature shown us enough the consequence of living such lives? Is Orwell's '1984' or Huxley's 'Brave New World' not warning enough? When then will we learn or are we destined never to?