Just like how pride and belonging are common emotions associated with Singapore, as a 22-year-old Singaporean, I’ll bet that many of my age feel a sense of fear and anxiety towards the future too.
The world has never been so globalised, so fast-paced. We’ve never lived in an epoch where the world can very literally change overnight. A parcel reaches my doorstep, but it has crossed oceans to be here. We forget to trace it to the pair of hands that assembled it, piece by piece.
Change can also be a slow, creeping thing, where we will put it off and forget about it until it is too late, like climate change or rising prices. I think most people my age worry about not being able to afford a roof over their heads in the future, much less a car.
Remember the 1982 film Blade Runner? The one with Harrison Ford, not Ryan Gosling. It’s a world of hubris — where corporate towers scrape the clouds, like the sky itself seems to stand in the way of human ambition to reach the moon as if the vastness of space can be eclipsed by moral ingenuity.
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A sense of foreboding, paranoia and dehumanisation pervades the film. Everyone is watching. The sacred is eclipsed by the profane, which has seemed to develop into its own religion. Capitalism reigns with an iron fist, and corporations have taken over the role of governments.
Is this the future we are heading to?
The concept of identity has never been so multifarious, and the world is quite literally your oyster now. So, in an age where culture and identity are perceived to be “diluted” by globalisation, what defines the Singaporean identity?
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Well, it’s always been a Ship of Theseus of sorts, right? Before there was a metropolis, there were mudflats. Before a gleaming financial centre, it was a manufacturing hub, and before that, a mere sleepy fishing village.
We’ve always been drawing blueprints on our weary shores. When they get washed away, we carve new ones into the sands. Is Singapore still a place for new dreams? Will it withstand the sands of time?
I would like to think so. After all, we’ve always been the same people we always were.
A motivated bunch, spurred on by fiery passion. A bunch who know how to look beyond our shores for ideas, but have our hearts deeply entrenched in the city’s values.
Too often, we think of the young as a soft-hearted, ungrateful lot who have everything handed to them on a silver platter but still don’t know how to appreciate it. In their defence, I think the world has gotten a lot scarier and confusing. We’ve got a lot of growing up to do in not a lot of time, whether we like it or not.
And how would the Singaporean identity evolve when the kids of today become the leaders of tomorrow?
I think, despite rapid globalisation, the flexibility of the Singaporean identity has positioned us to be able to take advantage of the winds of change, whilst still being grounded in values. I don’t think we’ll lose sight of the people we were, or the good people our parents and grandparents wanted us to become.
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After all, we’re a tapestry of all the lives we’ve ever lived. As we find our footing in the new world, I think the five stars and crescent moon will always be there to guide us home.
As I type this out whilst looking outside the bus window, at the innocent kids playing at the playground, I think of all the other lives they’ve yet to live.
The fear shrinks back in.
