DR LEE Woon Kwang's letter ("S'pore not ready yet", last Friday) took issue with my comment that Singaporeans are over-dependent on the authorities for maintaining social peace.
His response betrays the kind of attitude that would endanger the very harmony that he claims to prize.
First, it is precisely because we treasure peaceful, respectful coexistence that Singaporeans should not automatically delegate disputes to the Government to mediate.
The instinct to lodge police reports instead of first trying to work through our differences horizontally is hardly a mark of a committed citizenry.
Furthermore, it does nothing to develop the social capital that is ultimately the best source of national resilience.
This is not even a controversial view. Government ministers and grassroots organisations such as OnePeople.sg have repeatedly emphasised the need for Singaporeans to step up and take a stand, and not over-rely on the state.
Second, Dr Lee dismisses views such as mine as the "easy" comments of "people outside Singapore" who "do not have to live with any adverse consequences". For the record, although my quote reappeared in The Straits Times last week, the columnist got it from an article I wrote in 2011, before I moved to Hong Kong.
But that is beside the point. I remain a citizen with a home and family back in Singapore, and my current inability to work as an academic there is hardly due to a lack of emotional investment in the affairs of my country; quite the opposite. Thinking of the thousands of Singaporeans working overseas, I hope Dr Lee's remark is the kind of divisiveness that would be rejected by our public.
Third, even when faced with non-Singaporeans' comments, we would be indulging in fatal hubris if we duped ourselves into thinking that we had nothing to learn from outsiders.
The challenge of balancing freedom of expression with other societal interests is eternal and universal; and the specific dilemma of dealing with racial and religious provocation is something most societies continue to grapple with.
Nobody has found the answers, and everybody - yes, even Singaporeans - can learn from developments elsewhere.
Cherian George (Dr)
Hong Kong
