The Legal Janitor

The road to hell is paved with them.

June 9 1959, The Singapore Standard via Singapore Rebel

“There has been a steady decline in the moral standards of society, particularly in the post-war decade, during which the degeneration has been very great,” he said.

He pointed out that Singapore’s young boys and girls “rock n’ rolled” in the streets while its young wasted their time playing billiards and listening to sexy songs; striptease shows were performed freely and publicly.

“The continued development of such a situation will eventually lead to the total bankruptcy of the moral standards of our society,” he said.

Mr. Ong said that the PAP told the people before it came into power that it would eliminate all the factors which contributed to the decline of moral standards of society and which stood in the way of the creation of both healthy social standards and of a healthy culture.

Straits Times, June 12 1959 (page 9) via Singapore Rebel

Besides juke boxes, against which the Government is expected to take action, pin-tables are also likely to come in for similar action.

These are found in coffee shops and amusement parks. In some places they are the haunts of hooligans and gangsters.

I’m amazed at how much of a leap of logic is required to formulate a thought process such as ‘rock and roll == moral bankruptcy’ or ‘pinball machines == hooligans’, and yet, the supposedly most intelligent men of our nation in those days managed to make that leap. Obviously communitarian central-planning and policy-making is rather dangerous, given that no human being is infallible, and it seems those attracted to ‘public service’ appear more fallible than most.

The ‘creation of both healthy social standards and of a healthy culture’ is scarily reminiscient of Mao Zedong’s exhortations to the Red Guard as he launched the Cultural Revolution. If there is anything we can learn from history, is that human nature is immutable, and cannot be changed by some grand plan conjured up by people who clearly overestimate their own abilities.

“I went for high culture, and forgot pop culture. That is where the money is.”
- MM Lee Kuan Yew, Apr 17, 2005

Nothing in life comes free, tradeoffs have to be considered and choices have to be made. The price of ‘healthy social standards’ and ‘healthy culture’ is a national culture averse to risk-taking, averse to the new, the unfamiliar, the different, anything that is not mainstream. Many of America’s current innovators were hippies in the 70s… heck, even Bill Clinton ‘didn’t inhale’. Steve Jobs would’ve been condemned as a useless bum and Bill Gates derided as a siao gin-na for quitting Harvard.

Had the price we paid been too high? Is it too late to remedy the situation? When jobs are lost to low-cost countries, and no new ones are created by multinationals; when Singaporeans can only flail about like headless chickens, unable to help themselves due to their cultural emasculation, and that the only thing they can do is resort to their faith, ‘Gahmen will help us’, is there any way left to climb out of this hole that we dug for ourselves?

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