Are Singaporean men weak?
By Blogger Mr Pencil
Sep 5, 2005

Is the average Singaporean (Sgp) man a weakling? A smart, but low confidence, low self image guy who prefers to either be with himself alone, or to wash his low self with lots of superficial friendships and relationships here and there, so as not to faced up to the low self image problem?
Why would I say that Sgp men are weak?

Smart, but afraid to show
True, I understand that most of the average, man-in-street, Singaporean men has good to impressive intelligence and education level. The average Sgp man is smart, adaptive, and really hardworking. When called upon to do a job, or to perform an almost impossible task, the Sgp man normally is, careful at the initial phase, test the water here and there, and then test once or twice to test his concepts, before putting his foot into the task and exploring, and adjusting for the best pace to take in and run the race. Once in the race, the Sgp man will be the most hardworking of the lot, working rain or shine, and even when he is sick.
Unfortunately, given all this impressive qualities, the Sgp man has a weakness. He doesn't really feel comfortable to articlate his qualities, his findings, in public. Yes, he may be good at showing and proofing it to his frens and immediate superiors, and even a whole boardroom of skeptic executives, but not to a world wide audience. He lack the charisma, the politics needed in charming the world, the strength to go on when his team members, or fellow support group, or even his boss, decide to pull out and leave halfway (which happens quite a number of time). Faced with his counterpart from the US, China, India, the sgp man will lose out in this round (That's why you don't really see inventions and new breakthrough coming from sgp, but hey most of the concepts that took the world by storm were already thought of by many Singaporeans.).

The beaten down underdog

This has got really to do with our culture here in Sgp. The average, man in the street, Sgp man is beaten down by the demands and authority, that weighs so heavily on him.

Right from the start of his life, the Sgp boy is impressed with the I-expect-you-to-do-as-you-are-told expectation. This way of operating in life, the fixed path that the Sgp boy should go, designed by some others right from the start, who might not necessary be the best intentions for him. The teacher is right, even though the Sgp boy got wrongly punished; the parent is right and is never to be blamed; the society's perception of him and what is expected of him, and what is not expected of him, as a school student, must always be taken into account; the inflexible boss is right and should never be said 'no' to. The society's perception of him as an employee is crucial, and its expectation and red tapes should never be broken.

With all these weighing down on the poor guy, how can the Sgp man think of lifting his head up in life? It is like prison to the Sgp man, it restrict his actions, then limits his thoughts, and burden his life. The frustrations of not able to tell the emperor (in this case, refers to these needless burdens) off, not possible to shake off the stupidity of having to live life in a preset path, at a preset pace, that was presribed for him. But rather, for the sake of survival, and to stay in line with society's narrow viewpoint, to continuously apraise the emperor (feed more fuel to these needless burdens), even though the emperor is really not wearing any clothes.

Not Aggressive to live life or to live against other people

The typical Sgp man is afraid of living a life for himself, or living it up to his satisfaction. It is the if-you-are-happy-then-you-are-not-serious-enough attitude that is embedded onto him in the early years of his life, by in general, the society around him.

The society seems to dwell on this silly, narrow viewpoint, that associate personal enjoyment, satisfaction, or ven just to lead a happy life, with not being serious about life. A person that is happy everyday, will be viewed with suspicion and skepticism.

The average skeptic will say : "... perhaps he is not working hard enough? Playing a fool... can't be trusted with real serious work... immature... childishness... no responsibility... not willing to suffer like us who are alway so perturbed, so stressed out, so negative."

Most Sgp man that I know of, will have, on at least a few occassions, faced up to such skeptism, rudely and inappropriately slapped onto their backs. To be labelled is one thing, but to be rejected and cast out by the society through sterotyping, using the typicall narrow field scope, is really disheartening

Hmmm... a long post, I didn't realise there can be so many points to ramble about Whatever it is, this is a new generation, a new era. Lead forth by people, who dare to dram, dare to venture, and dare to live (yes, I have also seen the change beginning to kick in). I hope One Day, this yoke on the Sgp Man shall be broken, and he can have the confident to spread his wings and soar high and far in life.

http://summerraindrops.blogspot.com/2005/08/are-singaporean-men-weak.html