I read an article in The New Paper about how 40 passerbys looked on while 3 youths were struggling to rescue a 66 year old handicapped man who fell into the sea near the Esplanade.

This showed just how apathetic regular Singaporeans are – whipping out their camera phones to film the incident rather than lending a helping hand when faced with a situation where several lives are at risk. Deplorable behavior.

Just what is going wrong with our society? In my earlier post I pointed out how Singaporeans responded without sympathy to a wheelchair user’s comment on Stomp about how able-bodied bus commuters should allow wheelchair users some space to get off the bus, by not standing too close to the designated space for wheelchair users, and here we have a situation where 100% of passerbys (presumably a majority of Singaporeans) rendered no assistance to a life threatening situation despite repeated calls for help – even nonchalantly viewing and recording the scene like they are watching a performance.

The New Paper interviewed a psychiatrist, whose opinion was that Singaporeans are actually not heartless ‘when you see the amount of donations that they made in response to the crises in Myanmar, Sichuan and the Asian tsunami’. This is a fallacy.

As the psychiatrist pointed out, people do not render assistance for various reasons… and that goes the same for donating money. People do not donate money just purely out of compassion, altruism, or community-spiritness. I suspect major motivators for monetary contributions include feelings of guilt, display of wealth, peer pressure and other non-altruistic reasons. It is also the most convenient way to prove to others that ‘I’ve already helped’.

As one of the youths rightly pointed out, there could have been some people who could not swim, or as I like to think, most people (admitably, including myself) wouldn’t want to risk their own lives to save someone else – however, there was a guy on the banks who was holding onto a piece of canvas supporting the three people in the sea, who needed assistance in holding on… but nobody stepped forward despite the relatively low risk involved.

By the process of elimination we can thereby prove that a significant number of Singaporeans are indeed apathetic, uncompassionate and unhelpful. Although there were only 40 people or so at the scene, they are a random sample of the population and thus I believe to some extent this statement can be generalized to the overall population.

Bear in mind I’m not stereotyping all Singaporeans – I said a significant population, not all. I am aware of many people who do go out of their way to help people in need, but unfortunately they are a minority. I am also not comparing to other countries – it could be that the same trend can be seen in other places, but I suspect this is a bigger problem in developed countries than in poorer places where the sense of community-spirit is higher.

I also admit that to a certain extent, I can be apathetic at times, too. But I think in a situation where there is relatively little risk to my own life or limb to help someone in a life threatening situation, I would not hesitate to help.

Another thing to be ashamed about Singapore.

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