our materialistic lifestyle could be the main reason for the rise in our temper.

Tempers up in law-and-order city
Stable Singapore witnesses a spate of public violence that could belie a sense of restlessness.
By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
Jun 9, 2007

KNOWN for its strict law and order, Singapore has surprising witnessed a spate of unprovoked “rage” violence that could belie a sense of restlessness among its youth.

It is generally low-level, nothing compared to the violence of Western “gun” cities, but highly unusual for a stable city where the cane is liberally used.

It is too early to describe it as a trend or that it will make Singapore violent-prone.

But this underlying streak of violence and ill behaviour among better-educated Singaporeans who had grown up in an affluent environment is surprising.

People seem to flare up over such things as road overtaking, car parking, over a “lazy” maid or for merely brushing against another person.

Some of these assaults were unprovoked and directed at senior citizens, a blow to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s Asian values of respect for the elderly.

It prompted this youthful comment recently. “I’m a teenager and I can say that tempers and attitudes among youngsters are getting worse. This is due to the increasing stress and ever-rising expectations from the public and our elders.”

Older adults are, of course, just as quick-tempered.

Over two days last week, the newspapers carried the following items:

* DURING a recent quarrel captured on video and watched by many, a young man attacked an older man, stomping on him as he lay on the ground;

* SINGAPORE’S largest bus operator says there’s been an increase in violent incidents on its buses – 37 cases over five months, 15 involving passengers assaulting its staff;

* TWO men came to blows over a business-and-money row, resulting in one of them needing treatment in hospital;

* A DOCTOR was assaulted in his clinic when he asked a patient who had asked for Erimin 5 tablets (a controlled substance) about his drug history;

* A HUMAN Resource assistant was charged with burning her maid’s arm with a hot iron and hitting her with a wooden pole;

* A YOUNG man wrote in a chat-site that he “felt good after a fight” during one “hot evening without the slightest breeze”. His victim had reacted angrily when told to stub out his cigarette in a no-smoking zone; and

* A STUDENT from a top junior college had assaulted an elderly bus driver when he detained his girlfriend for using an invalid bus card. His father later knelt in front of the victim, begging him to forgive his son.

Why are tempers getting shorter?

The answers are mixed. Some attribute it to the “arrogance” of Singaporeans who are over-protective of their crowded turf. Others blame it on poor parenting or pressures of life.

Singaporeans live in a “pressure cooker” from competitive school to office or business in a society that rates economic growth and accumulation of wealth over social etiquette.

Lee has succeeded in creating a minor economic miracle, but fared less well when it comes to developing social graces.

He admits that the First World ultramodern city-state he built still lacks the “graces of a civilised society”.

Some believe that the rudeness and violence could reflect a widening class division between rich and poor, where some elites look upon the latter as failures.

While the offenders hail from a wide sphere, the majority are middle- or lower-income people.

The wealth gap has spawned a small breed of people who feel left out of the prosperity. They have developed a sense of envy and resentment against what they consider as the “greedy elitist class”.

It has been a problem over the years, and has worsened recently as the economic gap widened.

I have heard of new expensive cars parked in Housing Board spaces near lower-income blocks being scratched, a possible manifestation of class resentment.

A different view is that the violence has nothing to do with politics but bad genes.

In a recent case, four young teens who took a cab bolted in different directions without paying. Two were caught. In another, a passenger not only refused to pay his fare, but also bashed up the driver.

Contrary to the image, the police are not always the tough nut they are portrayed to be, at least in cases of public assault in which no weapon is used or where no one is grievously hurt.

This surfaced recently when irate Singaporeans who were beaten up were told by the police to file a civil complaint.

In one incident, motorcycle thugs set upon and beat up a young doctor while he was eating at a coffee shop.

At the hospital he was given a medical-report form and a referral letter to lodge a complaint with a magistrate. This is considered by some as a shortfall that could encourage public violence.

Overall, the level of violence is still comparatively low. The government has tried to instill good behaviour by courtesy campaigns and a ban on violent films that could affect youths.

But what it cannot change is the basic fabric, described this way: “People are always in a rush, with deadlines to meet, bosses to please and long hours to slog though.”

Obviously for some, it just boils over to the detriment of others.

Is it a big deal in a city of 4,500,000 people?

2.At least we dunt has serious gangsters here.

Originally posted by lionnoisy:

Is it a big deal in a city of 4,500,000 people?

2.At least we dunt has serious gangsters here.

At least in a neutral opinion, some of the perpetrators were caught.
Remember the four NSF kena caught for beating a doctor in a cinema

after he told them off for using their HP during the show?
They were sentenced to jail n kena rotan.

It won’t end..

We live in an overcrowded "City" of more than 4 millions people. Next time will be 6 millions. Walking around the street is like grasping for air. How to cool down?

Originally posted by Meilin86:

We live in an overcrowded "City" of more than 4 millions people. Next time will be 6 millions. Walking around the street is like grasping for air. How to cool down?

This I agree..... we are beein squeese...... Stress and all....

Never seen anyone smile as they walked on the street. The 4 million smiles campaign seem like not effective.

No money, less pay, price increase. Rich are richer-The high net worth. The poor are poor-Su Qi Er, the beggar. How to smile?

We must set up Beggar Sect, and find back our chief, Hong Qi Gong.

Let's gather the member.

think Japan

Originally posted by lotus999:

The wealth gap has spawned a small breed of people who feel left out of the prosperity. They have developed a sense of envy and resentment against what they consider as the “greedy elitist class”.

small meh?

Originally posted by Meilin86:

Never seen anyone smile as they walked on the street. The 4 million smiles campaign seem like not effective.

haha, whenever i take a bus after work along jalan besar, there'll be trishaw riders riding past with tourists on board. these tourists usually will wave at the bystanders, but from what i observed, till now, i haven't seen anyone bothered waving back, smiling or even look at them. everyone just kept looking at the back of the road for their buses.

Originally posted by alwaysdisturbed:

haha, whenever i take a bus after work along jalan besar, there'll be trishaw riders riding past with tourists on board. these tourists usually will wave at the bystanders, but from what i observed, till now, i haven't seen anyone bothered waving back, smiling or even look at them. everyone just kept looking at the back of the road for their buses.

Problem is, our Ivory Tower Dwelling government does not see all these coz they don't come down and walk the streets they pave..... they all assume everything is all rosy and dandy while patting themselves on their own backs...

I remember watching this documentary about battery chickens .... one of the reasons farmed chickens have their beaks trimmed is to prevent them from injuring each other ...

they discovered that if you squeeze too many chickens into too small a confined space, like a cage ... their personality changes .....

the chickens become super aggressive, agitated, stressed out ... and will often peck each other to death in fights ....

draw your own conclusions .....

(of course, to maximize profits, farmers too the easy way out of simply clipping the chickens' beaks off ........... economics as we all know .... trumps everything)

The Heat in this country can kill a person let alone increase our temper. Plus over-crowding, woo… people are fighting for space and recognition.

well singaporeans aren't really courteous and polite people in da first place, for the vast majoity. i'm not surprised.

Originally posted by ShutterBug:

Problem is, our Ivory Tower Dwelling government does not see all these coz they don't come down and walk the streets they pave..... they all assume everything is all rosy and dandy while patting themselves on their own backs...

In future our society will be stratified, into three layers, the top, the middle, and the bottom.
The top will run the place as if they own them, and will do anything to keep the status quo.
The middle will be managing the place, grateful and greedy for the luxuries they get.
The bottom, will be the dispensable workers that support the upper strata for survival.

Science fiction draws its ideas from reality.

Originally posted by mancha:

In future our society will be stratified, into three layers, the top, the middle, and the bottom.
The top will run the place as if they own them, and will do anything to keep the status quo.
The middle will be managing the place, grateful and greedy for the luxuries they get.
The bottom, will be the dispensable workers that support the upper strata for survival.

Science fiction draws its ideas from reality.

you've been reading huxley eh ? ...

Some years ago, there was a TV documentary that showed the aggression of mice living in a packed condition under one controlled environment, and a more accomodating and friendlier mice living with less than 10% of the packed lot in the same space condition.

When even one of the packed lot was transferred to the loose lot, the aggression remained.

Here is a reference piece that maybe of interest:-

Population overload: mice advice - overcrowding in laboratory mice

Population Overload: Mice Advice

In the story of the pied piper, a town is rescued from its ballooning rodent population by a young musician who leads the creatures away with his enchanting tunes. The burgeoning rodent populations of psychologist John B. Calhoun at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), however, disappear on their own. As crowding intensifies in their experimental colonies, the animals reach a point of no return and self-destruct; behaviors necessary for survival, such as mating and parental care of infants, disappear.

What is more, Calhoun calculates that the human population is entering a 200-year period of rapid growth that, based on his animal model, may reach a similar point of no recovery in around 80 years. Since crowding effects strike at the most complex behaviors of a species, he says, escalating human population density is likely to progressively impair each person's ability to create and use ideas necessary for adaptive changes, rather than reproductive ability.

But in Calhoun's scenario, humanity is not expanding toward an inevitable oblivion. He sees a way for people, in contrast to experimental rodents, to reverse rapid population growth and bypass the point of no return. The "pied piper' in this instance is an increasingly sophisticated use of computer systems that will extend the human capacity to solve problems and adapt to the environment.

If such an "evolutionary' extension occurs, Calhoun predicts it will lead to intentional efforts to put a brake on fertility and set the stage for a rapid population drop beginning in the 21st century. He contends that unless this conceptual adaptation occurs, attempts to institute widespread contraceptive use will fail and the population will continue to increase.

"I try not to be a "doomsdayer,'' says Calhoun, "but if there's high probability of our entering a point of no return, then [my animal model] is worth considering.'

Calhoun attracted considerable attention with his early crowding and cooperation experiments on rats and even inspired an animated movie about humanlike rats (SN: 8/7/82, p. 92). His willingness to assign human significance to animal data has been scoffed at by some scientists, but he remains undaunted. Calhoun described his latest and most elaborate crowding study --this one with mice--at a recent lecture in Washington, D.C., and used it to buttress his human population predictions.

The project took place in "universe 133,' an 18-foot-wide, four-level mouse house at NIMH in Bethesda, Md. The structure contains eight cells of equal size, food and water dispensers, nest boxes and platforms on which mice can climb. Each cell has 120 numbered locations to aid in recording behavior. The entire unit was designed to house an optimum of up to 16 groups of about 12 adults, or around 192 mice.

Beginning with eight pairs of mice, the researchers allowed the population of universe 133 to expand. As it progressed through stages 1, 2, 4 and 8 times the optimum density, successive generations of mice became less and less able to reproduce or interact with others in normal ways. In late stages of crowding, around 200 weeks after the study began, mating ceased altogether. At that point, the population fell precipitously from what had been a peak of nearly 1,600 mice.

Childhood and juvenile behavior, says Calhoun, extended increasingly into adulthood (which begins at about 172 days of age for mice) as new generations crowded into the living space. Adult females often persisted in the juvenile behaviors of wandering from cell to cell and following strange objects, such as the feet of an investigator when he entered the structure. Males often continued in an even earlier type of behavior, huddling together in small groups on cell barriers. Some became extremely aggressive, clamping onto other mice with their teeth and swinging them from platforms; an attacked mouse rarely fled, and if it did, the attacker rarely pursued.

In a previous experiment with rats, Calhoun had found that a group trained in two cooperative behaviors--gaining access to water only when two rats were present at a fountain and gaining access to food only when two members of an experimentally designated "clan' were present--was better able to adapt to increasing population density than a control group. The training, he says, allowed the rats to develop new social roles and maintain an optimum number of social contacts for each individual, even as crowding became worse.

But left to their own devices, the mice in universe 133 reached a point where all animals failed to develop relationships and reproduce. Crowding was reduced, of course, but the colony rapidly became extinct as older mice died. Calhoun estimates this point of no return to have fallen somewhere between 2.5 and 4.0 generations after the mice reached two times optimum density.

How does this apply to humans? The modern human population, which started out about 43,000 years ago, has grown rapidly only in the last two centuries, says Calhoun. According to a computer simulation he and a colleague developed, a 200-year-long world population transition period began around 1975, when density reached approximately two times optimum. Assuming a 27-year generational span for humans, the point of no return (2.5 to 4.0 generations after 1975) would fall between 2042 and 2083.

With all due respect, Atobe, I don't think our government would be moved or be concerned over the findings in Lab Mice Overcrowding Effects. All these while, their concern has always been stoking the furnace of our economy for their own financial gains.

They will just turn around and say: "People should adapt..."

This is their mentality, the dollar sign over & above, the quality of Singaporeans' lives.

Originally posted by ShutterBug:

With all due respect, Atobe, I don't think our government would be moved or be concerned over the findings in Lab Mice Overcrowding Effects. All these while, their concern has always been stoking the furnace of our economy for their own financial gains.

They will just turn around and say: "People should adapt..."

This is their mentality, the dollar sign over & above, the quality of Singaporeans' lives.

I'll use a little story from small Lee himself .... the german study about frogs and boiling water ....

plonk a frog into boiling water and he'll know to jump straight out and save himself ...

plonk a frog into a pot of cold water and slowly bring it to boil and the frog will try to constantly adapt to ever warmer temperatures until he's boiled alive ......

so ... I wonder if the powers-that-be think of us as frogs (in a well) .... or frogs who know when to bail and jump ? ....

Some of these assaults were unprovoked and directed at senior citizens, a blow to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s Asian values of respect for the elderly.

When such things happen, I simply assume that it's because those bastards/biatches are simply too cowardly to pick on someone their own size and age. Older people are very easy to bully.

As for the maids matter, it's very sad because some employers don't see their maids as humans simply because they are the employers. They have a tendency of thinking that they are gods or something, and because they are the employers, they have the right to do anything to the maids. It's a sad and infuriating society ill.

Plenty of reasons can explain our heightened aggression:

For one, our changed lifestyle - where the pursuit of $$$ has driven the average family man into a money-mongering SHARK, who speeds off in his tireless pursuit of monetary riches, forgoing the work hard, play hard mentality.

In addition, the rise of impatience and intolerance of the habits of others, especially driving behaviour and public actions, have goaded many unrestrained and stressed-out people to lash out at perpertrators deemed encroaching on one's personal space; all victims of a high-stress environment brought about by a vicious education cycle of continuous excellence, where those who fail mid-way are unceremoniously dumped and labelled failures by our unforgivable system.

A stereotype that we need to start breaking out of.

its a natural byproduct of the highly stressed & charged society today. As our country gets more populated, we have less private space, everywhere you go, you turn, you bump into fellow human beings.

heck, even you go cemetery at night, you are not alone with night tours catered to tourists who want to check out the ghosts. In this type of society, there's really no space or hole where you can "get away" for a while to retain your sanity.

its the same, even in Japan, where we all think the Japanese are all polite and cultured but the most peverted sex acts & crimes are from Japan - recall the small boy who gave his mother's head to the police as present?

Not surprising for people squeezed and milked by our employers and then by the government like cows and fed peanuts like monkeys.........

It's a jungle out there. Don't talk about morals and values when the enivonment created is a dog-eat-dog world where the law of the jungle prevails.......

Yup....Sillypore getting more claustrophobic and the rise in violence and tempers flaring will only continue...of course the MIW will step in and try to calm things down but this is as natural as breathing air...history has shown that as a city matures and grows...the population will increase and there will be more problems....

Worse still is that Sillypore does not hava a hinterland or some lake or mountain to retreat to....so good luck Sillyporeans....the problems will be here to stay....consider that you will have the F1 to contend with (imagine driving home from your office in Shenton Way during race days)...or when the 2 IRs start ops (more people and tourists in town)...or when more condos are built (foreigners investing in property and getting richer while majority of Sillyporeans get poorer) or when the new downtown Shenton Way gets built up...Oh holy Cow.....

Do like what many of use ex-Sillyporeans have done...Migrate! Life is not perfect elsewhere but we have many benefits that can't be found here....mountains, lakes, cleaner air....moentary assistance....

It is true... have you all noted how much more crowded coastal areas like East Coast is on weekends?? It's like Refugee Camps along the whole stretch up to Changi Beach! People have nowhere to go and unwind on weekends and holidays! I know some have gone overseas for holidays and vacations, but there is a large majority who can't afford that luxury.

And yet, our stubborn and thoughtless government can insist on increasing poplulation size to 6 million???

I tell you, at 6 million, if SARS ever re-visit our shores, it will surely be VERY HARD to contain!

The larger you are, the harder you will fall!

Stupid gov!

I cannot even imagine how bad temper we all gonna get when our population hits 6 million.

The road jam during morning work/schling time, the roads jam after work/sch time, the crowded bus/MRTs, the crime rises, less job avaliable.

More buildings up, less relaxing quiet place to hang out, shopping centres crowded, queues gonna get longer/slower etc.

>.<