I can bet that the current episodic seizure will be no different.

Despite the government's boast of a clean city, it's quite obvious to anybody who has spent time looking at real behaviour, that Singaporeans litter all the time. There are cigarette butts and tissue paper everywhere. We push household rubbish out to the common corridors and lift landings.

Earlier this month, I was walking towards a building with 2 levels of shops, on the ground floor and the floor above, with the upper shops fronting a common balcony-walkway.

By chance I noticed a group of people walking on the balcony, just a second before one of the men finished his cigarette, flicking what remained of it over the parapet. He didn't look before he tossed it out.

The still-lit cigarette landed on the head of a 5- or 6-year-old girl with frizzy, bulked-up hair, so rather than bounce off, the cigarette nestled into it. She didn't seem to have noticed it at first -– and her lack of reaction led me to think the cigarette landed safely away from her -- but when her hair was on fire, she and her mother most certainly did.

By that time, the men on the balcony had disappeared. To this day, they are probably oblivious to what they had done.

In that building was a stationery shop. As I pulled open the glass door with my right hand to enter, a woman cut into my path from my left to step in before me. I had to hold the door open for her. However, instead of moving into the shop, she stopped at the doorway to remind the shop assistant of something. The shop assistant was some 3 metres away, and so the woman could well have, indeed should have, moved closer in, in order that that she wouldn't need to speak as loudly as she did. But speak loudly she did, from the doorway, while blocked by her, I had to keep holding the door open, waiting for her to finish. When she was done, she turned around and scraped past me on her way out, as if I didn't exist.

Inside, I asked the shop assistant, "Do you have Blu Tack?"

"Ya," she said, without looking up from scribbling something.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"Over there," she said with a perfunctory wave of her hand. "Don't bother me," she must have wanted to say.

I let her push me away. I dutifully went over to the corner that I figured she had indicated, but of course, couldn't see any Blu Tack there.

"Look systematically," I told myself, but as I travelled my eye along the messy shelves, I became vaguely aware of another shop assistant watching me from behind. She made no offer to help; she was making sure that I was not shoplifting.

No Singaporean reading this would consider my experience anything but typical.

* * * * *

On 20 November 2006, the Straits Times reported that they had conducted a "poll of 110 Singaporeans aged 14 to 74" which "revealed surprising attitudes" on the subject of littering. Quite frankly, I for one wasn't surprised.

A majority of the people polled said they did not feel any need to pick up after themselves, with 21 shamelessly admitting it might be 'too inconvenient' or that they were just 'too lazy'.

Another 19 expected someone else to pick up after them; others blamed a lack of rubbish bins.

-- Straits Times, 20 Nov 2006,
Littering is no big deal, say many

The newspaper quoted 14-year-old student Rayzacky Rahman Mostafa: "If I leave small things like tissue on the table, I don't consider it littering because cleaners will clear it anyway."

And 13-year-old Hairi Alias: "I litter because there are not many rubbish bins around. Besides, the cleaners pick up the trash most of the time. I do not think it is all right to litter, but sometimes I am just too tired and lazy."

Girls too. Said Nicole Ong, 17, a student from Ngee Ann Polytechnic: "I care very little about the environment, I never think of it. I am aware that what I do affects the environment, but I don't think of it when I litter."

Do adults know any better? No. The Straits Times also had a quote from Yap Ah Poh, a fruit vendor in his 40s: "Sometimes, I accidentally throw litter on the ground. I can be lazy like that but I think the fines work, or else we would be a 'litter nation'."

Year in year out, no one can think of any solution except more exhortation. We've even stopped calling upon the government to enforce the littering laws, because we all know that is not going to happen.

The same with poor customer service. We're still stuck on the mindset of running Courtesy campaigns, which is really little more than exhortation with a dash of public-service advertisements.

It's not that we never see good service in Singapore. At some establishments, like the 5-star hotels, from what I've noticed, I think Singapore staff are comparable to many other countries.

At the electronics store known as Best a few months ago, I wanted to buy a particular model of camera, but they had just run out of stock. The salesman however, asked me to wait while he telephoned other branches of the Best chain to locate one for me. He spent some 20 minutes doing that (because at each outlet, they had to check the inventory), even though, at the end of the day, I don't think any sales commission would be creditted to him, since I'd be buying it from another branch. I thanked him, but regretfully didn't think to note his name.

However, I sometimes wonder whether, once outside their structured environments, where no management has taught them how to anticipate and provide for clients' needs, where in fact there is no hierarchy of service provider and client, the same Singaporeans will litter, spit, brush past people and rush in through train doors.

 
* * * * *

It doesn't need much insight to see that littering, antisocial behaviour and poor service standards have related causes: people don't care enough about other people and the environment around them. There's a distinct lack of empathy for others or concern for common property and spaces.

The times when we see Singaporeans giving a good account of themselves, it's mostly when they're doing their job, which is the result of training and management insistence, as well as due to their self-interest. Once we lift these factors the real ugliness is revealed.

Likewise, when enforcement action is taken to demand respect for our numerous laws, people behave, but other times, they slip back into their old ways. For example, we've extended our smoking ban to food centres (except small designated areas) and bus-stops, but not a day passes when I do not see someone flouting it. They don't even try to hide what they are doing anymore. Like me, they probably have not seen any enforcement action either.

And still we exhort, and think that exhortation is enough.

Clearly this problem is very deep-rooted, and no one, not me certainly, really knows its roots and its solutions. But after 40 years of fruitless campaigns, what is most striking is that no serious attempt is made to enquire more deeply. We'll never solve the problem unless we know why things are the way they are. An in-depth sociological study is obviously needed, yet it seems to me that we're almost afraid to ask.

What demons lurk within Singapore that produces such ugly citizens?

Let me speculate with three:

1. We have internalised a feeling that it is beneath our dignity to pick up after ourselves, or be of service to others. And why would that be? Possibly, the average Singaporean is subconsciously reacting to the daily slights he gets from the elitist, snobbish upper strata of Singapore society, making it necessary for him to maintain a certain (false) pride. If the rulers treat me like dirt, then at least I should be able to treat the sanitation workers like dirt too. I have a right to litter!

2. Perhaps the emphasis on being competitive, coupled with constant reminders of scarce resources and external threat has produced a kind of citizen that prioritises a selfish looking out for himself, over caring for others. Is the competitive spirit, so necessary (it is said) for economic survival incompatible with a more gracious society? If we had to choose, which would we choose?

3. Why do people have no sense of ownership either of the common space, or of the society in which we live -- which sense of ownership engenders courtesy and consideration for others in the same community?

The idea that ownership leads naturally to a person taking care of an object, space or process was something that drove the Housing and Development Board's (HDB's) flat-ownership scheme. The government believed, as far back as the early 1960s, that rental flats would quickly degenerate into slums, and thus, most homes today in Singapore are privately owned, even though they were built by HDB, a public agency.

One would have to be blind not to see that the idea has been proven. Singaporeans do take good care of their flats. But they dump rubbish a mere 5 metres outside their front door, indicating clearly that they have no sense of ownership beyond the latter.

Perhaps a polity that includes a strong government that likes to use laws and penalties to give direction to people invariably disconnects the citizen from his community. It is a known fact that the more the citizen finds himself having to direct his attention to the government's demands, the more his lateral relationships with fellow citizens wither. A sense of community cannot thrive when the government tends to monopolise all initiative. It may be that increasingly Singaporeans have come to see Singapore as the property of the government, not their shared inheritance.

Together with the feeling that the government is not theirs anyway -– there is the well-knwon pessimism about ever being able to influence or even engage meaningfully with it -– the average Singaporean ends up with no sense of ownership over "the government's property", and no concern about other people. We are all automatons anyway. 

In other words, are littering and rudeness symptoms of how our politics has shaped our society? Would sociological research to uncover the causes for our behaviour end up asking too many "sensitive" questions?

Well, well, maybe we should play safe and stick to exhortation for the next 40 years.

© Yawning Bread