| by comrade commissar | Jeiel Aranal | @ Tuesday, July 13, 2004, 9:18:00 PM | permalink |
|
When p3k invited me to write in his blog, I guess he invited me for the perspective of the "global citizen" as he called it in his post. I do wonder though, what the crap is a global citizen?.
I guess an introduction to myself might be in order, for people who read this and do not know me personally. I'm Jeiel, a Filipino who lived in Singapore. Now, after living most of my life in Singapore, I've moved back to Philippines. How's that for a global citizen? But hey, how should I know, I don't even know what global citizen is supposed to mean. If I could hazard a guess, I'd say being a global citizen means being concerned about the world at large. You don't just care about your country, your little space in the world. You care about issues happening at the other side of the world. Moving here though, it does make me feel more like I've become closer to being a global citizen. Here in the Philippines, you're reminded constantly of the poor, of the less fortunate. You could be riding a jeepney or driving around in the latest Mercedes (or more probably, being driven around), but you'll still be reminded. In the streets, the street children are the reminder. They'd approach vehicles, begging for money or selling wreaths of flowers. Even in the business district, people would hawk goods, cigarettes, newspapers, fake nokia accessories on the streets at the stoplights. In Singapore, you don't see these kinds of things often, if at all. In Singapore, people not doing the welfare work are insulated from the poor. People can't really see the reality of life for the poor people. Awareness, I feel, is at least the first small step to actually doing something about it. But then again, looking at my own self, I don't really do much to help the poor. I think the Singapore government thrrows the phrase "Global Citizen" around too loosely. When it speaks of the global citizen, it speaks of someone equipped to work/live in an increasingly connected world. To the Singapore government, they see the global citizen as an asset to make money for them. They equip their citizens to speak Chinese like mainlanders (although some people think they've gone about it wrongly) but yet, I don't see them encouraging people to take part in world welfare in a global scale. And when we do see Singapore taking part, it's to curry favour with America. I believe that to really become a global citizen, don't just subscribe to the narrow, materialist thinking. In the end, it's just money. As the world grows increasingly connected, think about "The Big Stuff". The big picture. This may sound cheesy, but we should strive to make the world a better place. -Comrade ZeroByte, Minister of Raving and Ranting, out |
PS: If you're commenting Anonymously please sign off with your name/nick. Thanks.
nice.. there were a couple of points made in your post which i didn't observe before in SG which i still agreed with. i think being only singaporean for all my 19 yrs life makes me myopic & unaware of some aspects of SG culture (coz i'm so used to SG life!) it takes an outside perspective to really point out all our inadequacies. :)
- by comrade 
Thomas @ times 1:10 AM, July 14, 2004
[delete? click on the dustbin.]
[+] Post a Comment
...
