Exam time is one of extremes – extreme mugging, extreme stress, extreme boredom – and with most such times there’s such an intense craving for balance. Like when you listen to instrumentals because you’re sick of hearing people talk. Or in my case, I just wanted to read fiction because I was sick of writing nonfiction. That’s what I think anyway, and that’s pretty much all I have to say about Exams.
Anyway, after one of the exams I went to Macs for lunch. Nothing special – lunch hour, lunch crowd, McValue lunch. There was almost no seats left, so I counted myself lucky when I spotted one. Well, there was another man seated at the other side of the long table but I asked if I could sit down and he said yes. I thought it was strange that nobody else was grabbing the rest of the seats along the table. Then I realized one of the staff was standing beside the man feeding him. It was like a veil being ripped away, and suddenly everything became glaringly obvious – the spasms, the hunched back, the off-white shirt that slipped off one shoulder – he was probably a man with cerebral palsy, or some similar disability. Either way, I felt very self-conscious; another group sat down beside me for a while, but walked away not long after to another table. I still wonder if I would’ve done the same if I hadn’t already started eating when I “saw” him.
It made me wonder again about the problem of charity and humanity – and how those two are only similar, but not equal, things. It reminded me about how we go about doing charity without any humanity at all and about more recent stories of so-called “Raffles Diploma slu(g)s” (it’s censored). More specifically, the diploma for Community and Citizenship. Taken on its own, it’s a very good thing – if a student is already involved in community and citizenship, he/she would easily fulfill the criteria anyway. Unfortunately (unsurprisingly?), it becomes a paper chase when students see it as the be-all and end-all, the main point of service, instead of something meant to recognize what they should be doing even without the Raffles Diploma in mind anyway. It takes a remarkable act of doublethink to write a personal statement about one’s interest and personal growth in a project that was started for the sake of the diploma.
It reminds me a little bit about the Young Scientist badges we used to collect in Primary School. To this day, I still don't aim to be an entomologist, but I liked collecting bugs in the meantime.
Now, perhaps it wouldn’t be that bad if the project was meaningful and effective. Working with Year 3 RESL groups this year, a number didn’t sign up for RESL in the first place, but those guys turned out to be the most involved afterwards. They found meaning in what they did. We can’t say everybody who’s aiming for Raffles Diploma is cynically exploiting the system; we can’t say people putting in time and effort to help others is a bad thing either. Furthermore, why reject an olive branch when you can just put in the effort to achieve it? In fact, if a person goes in for the sake of Raffles Diploma but finds meaning in service in the midst of working towards it, that’s wonderful.
“It’s a good idea… it will be a fledgling programme that’s ultimately a social experiment, so it will need to have proper performance indicators. And you need to ensure that the majority benefits from it.” – From CNA
But one of the risks of an experiment is that, again, service is not seen as an end by itself – it is just a challenge you have to overcome to attain a more material sort of reward. More importantly, beneficiaries – the less fortunate, the disabled, the needy – of such service project become seen as less than what they are, and are instead as part of this challenge.
And an important part of humanity, is simply seeing others as fellow human beings – nothing more, nothing less. An extreme case of what happens when you don’t have humanity should be pretty familiar to all of us.
It is not the Raffles Diploma that causes these kinds of things. It’s the mentality that leads people to abuse it that does. Again, it’s an extreme case, but it’s a pretty good example of what happens. We all know what it is – kiasuism, individualism, selfishness – and it leads to a lack of humanity.
In a time when “friends” number in the hundreds or Facebook just a click away and you can wave off charity by donating some cash online, it’s little wonder we are starved of humanity. I don’t think the MacDonalds’ incident or Raffles Diploma are really good examples to bring out this point, but it’s the closest to home. A person’s intent may not seem all that important as long as people benefit, but it’s true that intent does trickle down to one’s actions one way or another, and I think that makes a big difference.
*****
Well, I’m not sick of writing non-fiction anymore, but I appreciate the free time to read anyway.
Don’t you think that there is a hope that even if people didn’t start out doing community service because they wanted to give back but because they wanted to look good, there is always this tiny bit of hope that they will be converted in the process? Nobody will ever be able to effectively qualify or quantify how well this is going to work, but it is better than nothing. Perhaps we actually need paradoxical systems like this that make us think even more about what we are doing, without this reverse process, we might not have actually even given much thought to community service. If community service had not been reduced to a paper chase through this system, would it have been as much of an issue as it is now? Would people feel so passionately about it? Just a thought.
Definitely, most of us would have been exposed to service in the first place only through such a system and most don’t turn out turning it into a paper chase anyway. It would be wrong to condemn anyone like that so easily.. I wrote this post as part of the thinking process, to bring out this issue.
I think the main problem is not so much “the system” by itself – but who it rewards. It rewards both of those who would be serious or have been converted, as well as those who are only gaming the system. A small percentage, probably, but it teaches them that service can be seen as a means to an end and they will be rewarded for it. And the less people who think that way, the better.
Incidentally, it’s quite confusing about the role of CIP. Is it meant to educate students about the spirit of service, or the more practical matter of just benefiting society? Like a flag day is barely educational but still useful, while a longer period of actually working with the beneficiaries with mentorship is much more costly, but beneficial. Looking at how CIP hours are being given, it does seem to tend towards the former.
From that point on, it will be super hard to control how students use this system. It’s going to take many more decades of trial and error in a society changing faster than we can react. Once we can’t control the system, when we can’t control how other people use it, when we can’t control the rewards, the only thing that we can control is how we react to it. Cheesy I know, but every difference starts from yourself. How much we want to learn depends on how much we intend to absorb.
You can learn a lot from 3 hours of flag day too as long as you are willing to see that there are things to be learnt. Flag day similarly exposes us to a harsh reality that people cannot even spare a few cents to donate to the less fortunate yet (if you are lucky enough to have had such an experience) you will also learn to be warmed by the people who donate anything more than a few dollars. Flag day once taught me a more important lesson. So what if I’m standing there and helping people collect money? I have to know why I’m doing it, who I’m doing it for, I have to be aware of my cause before I am even qualified to fight for it.
This is fairly idealistic I realise, too change ourselves then change those around us, and can only be done after a certain level of maturity. But that is the minimum I can do. Anyway, whatever it is, thanks for the post and the RD… is a necessary evil.
Thought experiment: you are stricken with an early stage of cancer, and you know that you can be cured given the cancer’s early stage. However, the treatment is very expensive (say $200,000) but if you don’t go for the treatment, you will die. Knowing full well the principles of utilitarianism, what would you do? Would you go for the treatment or not?
Hmm I would go for the treatment, though what would be the flip side of it?
Very simply, according to the principles of utilitarianism, it would be far more helpful to the world if you let yourself die and used the $200,000 to help people, like those in Somalia, Kenya, Cambodia, etc. who are starving and will require much less money to survive. This is yet another problem of so-called “humanity”: most, if given a choice, would rather save themselves than help tonnes of other people. Sure, you may still do good after that, but the very fact that you helped yourself first shows that you are selfish, especially since many other people need it much more than you. “Is true humanity even possible?” is the question I get when doing the thought experiment. You seemed inclined to believe that people should save themselves, or that you would, at the very least.
I see… Although I wouldn’t subscribe to utilitarianism because of its treatment of love. In its most basic form, it means to value those you consider yourself close to above others – like how a parent would love his/her child and value the child more than other children. And then there’s love for yourself – not selfishness, but love. So that’s how I would cast the decision to save oneself.
Then again, the highest form of love would be to love anyone and everyone, regardless of relation – loving kindness. But love has to start from somewhere, and utilitarianism seems born out of just an economic weighing of happiness, not love. Which would be why I wouldn’t subscribe to it in terms of morality.