Urinating in the streets symptomatic of complete social breakdown
This talk about Singapore’s draconian criminal justice, with such harsh penalties for such minor crimes – deterring minor crimes will make major crimes even less likely; there will be no testing of the limits of prosecutorial discretion – I have to say it’s deterring some individuals from committing minor crimes. I’m not going to say I’m a newly-anointed party animal, but with my new Singaporean friends, I’ve stayed out late drinking a lot of beer, and I’ve been really tempted to urinate in public. In the States I would. I urinated in public in pretty much every European, North American, Indian, and Ethiopian city I’ve ever been to. It’s sort of a tradition. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. But here in Singapore, I’m too worried about being punished by public caning; not to mention, I don’t have time for court. (I’m not scared of being caned; I just don’t want to have to mess around with the hassle.)
I don’t know for sure if urinating in public is the norm in China. It is in India. And India and China are where a large proportion of Singapore’s foreign workers hail. We could say these people tend to be a little rougher in manner than the bourgeois, domesticated Singaporeans that also inhabit this island. And because it’s normal in their native countries, you’d expect them to carry on similarly in Singapore. They do continue with some of their homeland practices, like pushing and shoving when entering public transportation for no reason other than that’s how they’re used to doing it back home.
Well, I saw a man urinating on a sidewalk tonight. He could’ve been a Malay. He may have had a stumble to his walk too, so maybe he was experiencing what I’ve been experiencing – drinking makes you pee. He also made no attempt to make it looks like he wasn’t peeing. He was on the sidewalk of a 6-lane road, casually standing there, in a wide open expanse of sidewalk, no nearby buildings to block anyone’s view, watering the lawn, looking like a man actually watering a lawn – picture the stance of a suburban American father holding a garden hose.
Singapore’s father, Lee Kwan Yew (a very, very important name here in Singapore) had this to say in defense of the strong social policies he has implemented in Singapore: “There’s already a backlash in America against failed social policies that have resulted in people urinating in public, in aggressive begging in the streets, in social breakdown.” He’s a very strong advocate of Asian cultures as being unique to Western, and that some policies that work in the West won’t work for Asia, so Singapore is justified in having policies such as strict criminal penalties for crimes minor to Western eyes. Seconds before, he had said this about the deterioration of the US as a societal model in the past 25 years: “I would hazard a guess that it has a lot to do with the erosion of the moral underpinnings of a society and the diminution of personal responsibility. The liberal, intellectual tradition that developed after World War II claimed that human beings had arrived at this perfect state where everybody would be better off if they were allowed to do their own thing and flourish. It has not worked out, and I doubt if it will.” (To read the interview with Lee - and it is good but maybe challenging in that some background information will help you to understand it better - click here; Lee is Tiger and he doesn’t mess around, letting it be known that Singapore will do what it wants because it’s Asian and not Western.)
I’m not sure that urinating in the streets can so easily be called a symptom of social breakdown. I think it’s just convenient, and I grew up doing it. It’s a value of mine.
I don’t know for sure if urinating in public is the norm in China. It is in India. And India and China are where a large proportion of Singapore’s foreign workers hail. We could say these people tend to be a little rougher in manner than the bourgeois, domesticated Singaporeans that also inhabit this island. And because it’s normal in their native countries, you’d expect them to carry on similarly in Singapore. They do continue with some of their homeland practices, like pushing and shoving when entering public transportation for no reason other than that’s how they’re used to doing it back home.
Well, I saw a man urinating on a sidewalk tonight. He could’ve been a Malay. He may have had a stumble to his walk too, so maybe he was experiencing what I’ve been experiencing – drinking makes you pee. He also made no attempt to make it looks like he wasn’t peeing. He was on the sidewalk of a 6-lane road, casually standing there, in a wide open expanse of sidewalk, no nearby buildings to block anyone’s view, watering the lawn, looking like a man actually watering a lawn – picture the stance of a suburban American father holding a garden hose.
Singapore’s father, Lee Kwan Yew (a very, very important name here in Singapore) had this to say in defense of the strong social policies he has implemented in Singapore: “There’s already a backlash in America against failed social policies that have resulted in people urinating in public, in aggressive begging in the streets, in social breakdown.” He’s a very strong advocate of Asian cultures as being unique to Western, and that some policies that work in the West won’t work for Asia, so Singapore is justified in having policies such as strict criminal penalties for crimes minor to Western eyes. Seconds before, he had said this about the deterioration of the US as a societal model in the past 25 years: “I would hazard a guess that it has a lot to do with the erosion of the moral underpinnings of a society and the diminution of personal responsibility. The liberal, intellectual tradition that developed after World War II claimed that human beings had arrived at this perfect state where everybody would be better off if they were allowed to do their own thing and flourish. It has not worked out, and I doubt if it will.” (To read the interview with Lee - and it is good but maybe challenging in that some background information will help you to understand it better - click here; Lee is Tiger and he doesn’t mess around, letting it be known that Singapore will do what it wants because it’s Asian and not Western.)
I’m not sure that urinating in the streets can so easily be called a symptom of social breakdown. I think it’s just convenient, and I grew up doing it. It’s a value of mine.
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