an acidic future

An Acidic Future

I am saddened to reside in a country where we parade ourselves globally as a renaissance city of vibrant excesses and yet unabashedly undermine its very essence by subduing all manners of ill-percieved dissension within the citizenry. Our country is a gorgeous city of verdant finery; a haven amongst havens where waters run clean and the city sleeps in relative peace, and yet the government seems fearful of any iota of political individuality budding amongst its quiet people and seeks to root them out at the quickest convenience. What can be so wrong with the proliferation of new ideas and differing opinions? Is the government so fundamentally flawed that it cannot stand against the tides of would-be criticisms?

Having been born into an era where freedom of speech is relegated/confined to an idyllic corner in an out-of-the-way park where stray cats fornicate, most singaporeans learn by the age of 16 that the best policy by which to govern a safe and tepid life is to entertain no policies at all. Indeed, the bovine populace understands the methodology, both inconspicuously and unconsciously - oft discarding ideologies of a different, if not better singapore for an easier path of apathatic disengagement. It is a much simpler task to keep silent and remain inconspicuous amongst millions of other voiceless drones, than to place yourself in the limelight and risk the attention of dangerous people. It is an indoctrination of the highest degree, a subliminal framework by which the ordinary citizen strives to remain within; content as they are with the landscape of their horizon.

A blog is a personal space by which we extend ourselves into the cybernetic realm, where national barriers are broken and inculcated facades dissolved. It is a medium through which we redefine ourselves, and consequently the world around us. It is an unassailable freedom: to speak our minds and think our thoughts, and should be kept so long as liberty is valued and upheld by a democracy-loving governing body.

Thus, it becomes intrinsically paradoxic to the mind, that an institute of state would threaten to exact legal actions against a citizen for publishing thoughts and statements born from a critical angle, made with regards to the machinations of an institution that has now proven itself less than admirable. If indeed the comments were blatantly or suggestively offensive to the institution in mention, then perhaps it would be prudent to conduct a debate of sorts where the oft-cited "defammatory remarks" are rebutted in a gentlemenly and gracious manner. At the very least, it would have been respectable and difficult to fault.

It seems to me however, that if one cannot hope to win by deconstructing your opponent's mantle through the auspices of one's abilities, then one can only prevail through the muscles of judiciary bullying and honestly, nobody respects a bully.

Or at least, I don't.