{"id":4499,"date":"2012-02-26T21:48:07","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T21:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=4499"},"modified":"2017-07-02T13:40:17","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T13:40:17","slug":"singaporeans-can-be-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/singaporeans-can-be-awesome\/","title":{"rendered":"How do we get Singaporeans to look out for each other?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For quite a long time, I’ve been meaning to blog about how I’ve noticed that Singaporeans are starting to stick to the left on escalators in MRT stations. Once I was going to Sembawang Camp and I had to take the Circle Line- and there’s this really tiny little escalator somewhere in Bishan MRT, with hardly any breathing room. People would be crushed to death if a stampede ever broke out- and everybody filled up the left side of the escalator, perfectly! It was so beautiful to witness. You just wanna high-five everybody.<\/p>\n

And then a couple of days ago, I saw this on Facebook:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How awesome is that?<\/strong> Singaporeans queuing for the train in a calm, orderly manner instead of swarming the doors like a fanatic mob. Context- apparently this is happening in Raffles Place MRT during the morning peak hour, and it also happens regularly at Ang Mo Kio, at the same time.<\/p>\n

This co-operation emerged without any external intervention. I mean, there have been public announcements and campaigns to tell people to be polite and courteous, but they’ve never really been particularly effective, have they? So what’s different now?<\/p>\n

It was never effective before because most people never saw any point in co-operating- nobody else appeared to appreciate it, nobody thanked them for their acts of kindness. There wasn’t even really a psychological, internal reward- you don’t even feel like you’re doing anything nice, because the recipients of your good will neither notice nor appreciate it. (If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody witnesses it…) It’s like being snubbed every time you offer to co-operate. Eventually, you learn to avoid being a sucker, and look out for yourself in what seems to be a vast sea of selfishness. It’s completely rational.<\/p>\n

So why are people behaving differently all of a sudden? I turn to Robert Axelrod’s\u00a0Evolution of Co-operation<\/a>, for the answers, and I think I find them. These people, presumably, are taking the same train at the same time every day. After a while, perhaps, they begin to recognize each other, and they begin to appreciate each other’s calm and restraint- and they reciprocate. Where did this self-restraint come from? It could have emerged spontaneously- read the “Trench Warfare” section in the link above to understand why.<\/p>\n

The most interesting thing about this for me is the idea that such behaviour doesn’t require any sort of large-scale consensus. We don’t need any grand gestures or sweeping reform. All we need is a few individuals who’re committed to co-operating with one another. <\/strong>That’s not very much. That’s manageable.\u00a0And behaviour is contagious. Most people are guarded, selfish and cold right now because they perceive everyone else to be guarded, selfish and cold. If a few of us- and I believe the wonderful people in the picture above are a testament to this idea- stand together and co-operate, then we will infect everyone else with the virus. Most people just want to fit in, and most people simply mimic the behaviour of everyone else around them.<\/p>\n

If there’s a huge pile of rubbish at the roadside, we don’t feel the need to use the garbage can- because it wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. (Individually, it wouldn’t. Collectively, it would.) \u00a0But if the city is pristine, we feel a twinge of guilt if we dirty the place. Clean places get kept clean, dirty places get even dirtier. (Broken Window Theory<\/a>.)\u00a0It’s hard to imagine somebody taking a long walk to a distant garbage can to throw away a piece of trash when the streets are overflowing with litter. \u00a0<\/strong>And that, in essence, is the same reason why Singaporeans have been so cold for so long- because we think everybody else is the same way. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy- call a man a thief and he will steal, treat each other like we’re selfish, and we will certainly become so.<\/p>\n

It’s incredibly heartening to realise that most people aren’t actually assholes- they’re simply behaving the way they do because they believe that they’re<\/em> surrounded by assholes. Most people are decent folk who really just want to be a part of a wonderful, caring community. (I don’t have any scientific evidence for this, but I believe it with intense fervour. Call me a zealot if you like. Self-fulfilling prophecies are very real things in this world, and I’m personally choosing to bet on the outcome that I want to see.)<\/p>\n

I think the folk at Raffles Place and Ang Mo Kio have revealed the way forward- all we need is a few committed individuals to decide that we’re going to resist the chaos, that we’re going to stand firm and co-operate with one another. (It could happen by chance- but why leave it to chance?) It might seem like an uphill battle at first- but remember, most people just want to fit in- and once enough of us stand together to do the ‘right’ thing- (in this case, what’s best for everybody), then most others should simply mimic us- which is what they’re already doing. The change will be a lot more sudden and drastic than we might imagine.<\/p>\n

TL:DR;<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe that it’s possible for us to spread the culture of co-operation and reciprocity like a virus. All we need is for a few of us to commit to starting the trend, and everyone else should follow suit eventually.<\/p>\n

It’s already happening in Raffles Place and Ang Mo Kio. Let’s commit to spreading it to the rest of Singapore, and the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For quite a long time, I’ve been meaning to blog about how I’ve noticed that Singaporeans are starting to stick to the left on escalators in MRT stations. Once I was going to Sembawang Camp and I had to take the Circle Line- and there’s this really tiny little escalator somewhere in Bishan MRT, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sg-mentality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6cErj-1az","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9152,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4499\/revisions\/9152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}