Antipathy and Social Fallout

I was reading George Soros’ Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror . He mentions that one of the earliest factors that eventually led to the decline of the US as a superpower, was that they stopped seeking truth. They became what he terms a “feel good society”. This led me on to the following thoughts: That the pursuit of truth in the context of society would likely manifests in the policies and rules that govern how we live and interact with one another. The largest form of this seeking of truth in the general sense would be the prevailing ideology. In most countries that practice an “open society” ( see Karl Popper’s Open Society and its enemies) this system is likely to be democracy. A danger however lies when people stop questioning, and base their judgments on other factors other than logic, such as emotions as would be demonstrated in a “feel good society”. This in turn could lead to a situation in which a person in the government by appealing to popular feeling, could rein in free rule, enhancing his powers and exploiting the people’s fears or satisfaction to further his own agenda. This would be not different to a dictatorship, except he is protected by the guise which is democracy. This constant deception of the people, is powerful, in that the people belief they are making the choices, that their society is a reflection of the majority, but in actual fact it is the product of one man’s or administrations’ desires. The danger is therefore, that overtime the country might slip slowly into a different form of government, one that is no longer an “open society” one which is closed to the expression of intellectual pursuits and ideologies. This would not be much different from George Orwell’s world in 1984. The truth being that people’s lackadaisical attitude and general lack of regard perhaps to knowledge has brought the possibility of this situation. Now, this is what struck me most glaringly, that the attitude is very much ingrained in Singaporean’s of my generation. The utter disregard for politics. I would be the first to raise my hand and say “I’ve no interest in politics”. In fact often times, I tell adults in irony, that “Yes! you’re right, I’m one of those politically antipathetic youths”. However, the statement might just as well, carry much truth in it. I read the happenings, but could not be bothered really to think about it or reflect on it. In Singapore, the cause for this, is different I believe. I do not think we are a “feel good society”, but instead I think the problem with us is that we have given up the search for truth, to pursue success. In the general and common definition marked by wealth. We have decided to separate ourselves from the politics that we actually live in to focus on other issues. We do not questions or think critically of politics. I think this might be because we have been brought up in an age of control. At least in Singapore. We have access to world news, and we learn that in general the world is pretty chaotic. Than we look at the local news, and everything is seemingly under control. So much so that a petty feud between bloggers manage to feature in the local news. We have come than, to just accept that nothing important could be happening locally. The dynastic sense of our government must also be considered, the same ideology, the same policies, which have worked, might have lulled us into a false belief of equilibrium. This issue is important simply because, as Singapore is trying to “open-up”, we could simultaneously actually be disintegrating as a society. There is the possibility that we are constantly being deceived by our leadership, but nobody is interested enough to bother. I am not advocating we become political, but more, that we bother with knowledge and truth, that is we have an interest in the epistemological perspective of things as it unfolds around us. (In writing this, I realise there is much which was unanswered, and ideas which weren’t clearly formulated, I would like to blame being in camp, but I shall harbour instead the onus. Forgive me for having attempted to write a post on knowledge.)