GotongRoyong.sg – the advent of the online kampung
If you asked a Singaporean youth today where they live, they might humor you with a cursory “Jurong”, or “Ponggol”, or god forbid, “Yishun”. But a more truthful answer would be – “I live on the Internet.” Singapore has more smartphones than Singaporeans[1], and 3 in 4 of the latter use social media.[2] The average Singaporean spends more than 12 hours daily on a digital device,[3] with 6 in 10 admitting to being addicted to social media or the internet[4].
At the same time, many a Singaporean looks back through a sepia-hued Instagram filter to the glorious days of the kampong: the rural villages of the sixties which most of us have never lived in, purportedly multi-racial utopias surrounded by nature, warm-hearted neighbours and rustic charm. The nostalgic fetishization of the kampong is reinforced by the constant governmental exhortations to revive our “kampong spirit” or “gotong royong”, which can be described in English as “communal helping”, or American as “neighborliness”.
However, the case can be made that we never lost that “kampong spirit” – we merely relocated it from the physical kampongs to the digital kampongs. We choose our “neighbors” – from the root Old English word “neah” which means “nigh, near” – who are near to us not in distance, but in preference of politics or pop music.
By design or choice, we interact less in our community centres or common spaces. If anything, compulsive lift upgrading has reduced the bottlenecks at void deck lobbies where people used to share a conversation or a smile. Instead, the common spaces we inhabit are the news feeds and conversation threads of social media. Where friendships used to grow over a slow process of visual acclimisation through daily corridor encounters, they now blossom from a single like.
If one translates our social behaviors to our system of political representation, one would assess that the system of grassroots activities all the way up to group representation constituencies[5] representing these geographical interests is grossly obsolete, and should be consigned to the bowels of history along with kampong plumbing. Already enough sheltered walkways have been built and enough MRT stations criss-cross the island – what more can a geographical community campaign for? Another cookie-cutter mall with BreadTalk, Uniqlo and Daiso? An occasional frisson of NIMBYism? When all your constituency can demand is #firstworldproblems, the relevance of the geographically-elected politician diminishes. And when the links between constituents weaken, his speaking power ebbs as well.
The communities of 21st century Singapore campaign over identity politics, not locality politics. The LGBT movement and the parallel rise of conservative fundamentalism is one prominent strand of this development, but from Bukit Brown conservationists to typecast minority actors to Mediacorp fan clubs, countless Singaporeans pour themselves into niche pursuits rather than neighborhood activities. And they are more likely to mobilise their digital kampong rather than pop out of their flat to knock on their neighbor’s door. If a favor is needed or a rumor tidbit is spotted, Singaporeans turn to their smartphones first – to their whatsapp groups, their facebook pages, or the damning Instagram post that tells a thousand words.
The NMP scheme[6] is a step forward in catering to the representation of these conceptual polities. While some may recoil from the notion of inviting poisonous interest groups into decision-making bodies like Parliament, would it not be more effective to have their influence out in the open, with all the concomitant accountability of open representation, rather than them mounting shadowy campaigns to lobby individual MPs? And for those who wonder if this is too revolutionary a move – the Trumpestuous Brexitations of the past year evidence that democracy in its traditional form is well due for a ground-up retooling. So why not build in a window to technology-enabled representation of interests? Singaporeans have spent half a century filling in the Maslovian ground levels, and are only now discovering that the company is better when you can choose among the higher floors.
[1] https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report
[2] http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/consumer/7-in-10-singaporeans-use-social-media-on-mobile-double-global-average-survey
[3] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/12hr-42min-connected-for-hours
[4] http://www.mumbrella.asia/2016/06/excessive-screen-time-harming-singaporeans-health-bad-media-habits-passed-from-adults-to-kids/
[5] An electoral division in Singapore where teams of 3-6 candidates are elected into Parliament as MPs collectively. These are supported by over 1,800 grassroots organisations that include Citizens’ Consultative Commitees as the umbrella community organisations, Residents’ Committees in public housing, Neighbourhood Committees in private housing, and Community Club management committees.
[6] Nominated Member of Parliament. These are up to 9 non-elected MPs appointed for 2.5 year terms and selected by a Special Select Committee chaired by the Speaker of Parliament, intended to bring more independent voices into Parliament. NMPs can be proposed by community groups in the fields of arts, culture, sciences, business, industry, social service, labor etc, as well as from civil society.