Many Singaporeans and I are compelled to recite a cultural script that prescribes a standard life trajectory: one pursues a university education, finds a job and a partner, marries, applies for government housing, has kids, and works till retirement.
This script is not unique to Singapore, though, it manifests in forms idiosyncratic to Singapore’s culture. Although we are aware of being caught in the “rat race,” we are unable to free ourselves. In a secular Singaporean society, materialism seems to be the source of meaning. As Singapore prospers, we are compelled to chase after the state narrative of cosmopolitanism, a narrative the state has been broadcasting since its independence, priding in its acclaimed miraculous transformation from a “third world to first world country.”
However, I predict you only have to talk to the closest Singaporean you can find, to sense that the general Singaporean is increasingly disenchanted with the prescribed meaning that is materialism, though, they cannot stop themselves from an borderline obsessive pursuit of material wealth. As Singapore continues to economically prosper, I sense a growing spiritual void within myself and my fellow Singaporeans.
Conversations with my friends will eventually reach the topic of the meaning of life, which often accompanies the lamentation of the rat race in which we are stuck. Many of them invariably reach the same conclusion: “it is what it is.”
In essence, they have accepted their “fate.” One friend dreaded the monotony of her corporate job and pretentious co-workers, but counters it by maximizing her high salary through compulsive spending on anime plush toys. One was recently ambushed by a wave of anxiety when he acknowledged the increasing sense of meaningless about his job that pays 12 thousand dollars a month as a fresh graduate, and was considering volunteer work to fill his spiritual void. Another made a promise to resist lifestyle inflation, but eventually succumbed to the allure of travelling as a form of escapism. Yet another, amidst the hopelessness of his situation that he dreads, obsessively tracks his projected net worth on an excel sheet to ensure sufficient funds for his future wedding and house.
Seeing how every single one of my friends attempted to quickly gloss over their despondence with a brittle optimism of “aiya, what to do?,” I leave our meet-ups always feeling a little empty and sad. They did not want to further demoralize everyone, including themselves. It seemed like they wanted to motivate each other, and in motivating others they hoped to find within themselves the motivation to carry on.
But it was clear that we were all at a loss; we did not know how to console our souls that have evidently grown weary. Would life be like this from here on out? Would we somehow emerge intact? These days, we barely meet each other. It makes me sentimental, reminiscing the good old days, where we had impromptu supper and drinking sessions whenever we wanted, fooling around and idealizing about a better world, hopeful about what is to come. Although we were naïvely happy, I am certain it was happiness of the most genuine and surest kind.
As you read this, I wonder if you’ve felt the same emptiness and weariness I am experiencing right now? How have you consoled yourself thus far? Or have you “given up” because “it is what it is”?
Only until recently did it dawned on me that lurking beneath our conversation about money and meaning, was possibly our subconscious anxiety about death.
Singapore’s independence has always been portrayed as an arduous one. The national narrative painted Singapore’s independence and survival as miraculous and perpetually precarious. Singapore is a tiny nation-state, and was so “close to death” at the point of independence without natural resources, a national defence system, and established political alliances.
The Singaporean government constantly reminds us Singaporeans the possibility of death, inciting anxiety about maintaining political alliances and securing resources. Hence, political leadership had to develop a national gene of resilience, not only for Singapore to continue prospering, but to ensure its survival as a little red dot amongst geopolitical giants (Koh, 2007).
In his 1999 National Day Rally Speech, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong introduced the trope of Singapore’s identity as a cosmopolitan city. However, his promotion of Singaporeans-as-“cosmopolitans” over Singaporeans-as-“heartlanders” highlighted a worrying “class divide between the well-educated, privileged, globally-mobile elite, on the one hand, and the working class majority, on the other,” breeding competition amongst citizens to ensure national economic progress (Tan, 2008, p. 758).
When I was primary 3 (9 years old), I recall vividly tagging along to collect my older brother’s (primary 6; 12 years old) Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) results, and my mother fiercely reprimanding him for not studying hard enough. I remember feeling a sinking feeling in my chest, as if something truly terrible had happened. “I told you to study harder, right? You see, now what happened? Next time how?”
My mom always told us, “Don’t become like me, never go to school, cannot study, cannot use brain, and work at a coffee shop. You both must study hard, then can get high-paying and respectable jobs. Then you can survive in this world.”
As we stormed home, my mother’s disappointment was palpable in every step she took. I remember not my brother’s reaction, but how 9 year-old me, amidst an air of doom and my mother’s ongoing reprehension, made it a point to study harder, to “make it big” when I grow up, in order to prevent what seemed to be a world-ending tragedy in my mother’s world.
It is only until much later that I realised, while she definitely should have shown more support and encouragement, her anger and anxiety were nevertheless still a form of care, an unfortunate product of societal pressure to be cosmopolitan.
The competition amongst us Singaporeans cultivates the single most defining adjective that captures one of Singaporean’s national identity: kiasu (Cheng & Wee, 2023; Tan, 2015). The pioneer study of kiasu defined it in terms of five behavioural types: fear of losing out, selfishness, calculating, greed, and kiasi (afraid to die) (Ho et al., 1998). Hwang et al. (2002) describes kiasu as “an obsessive concern with getting the most out of every transaction and a desire to get ahead of others” (p. 75). Put another way, Singaporeans adopt the kiasu attitude for self-preservation, with a “constant concern that there would be no more resources for them if they do not take action” (Choi et al., 2022, p. 1352).
What happens, then, if one does not get the “resources”? Would us Singaporeans, like Singapore who has to continuously prosper economically to ensure survival, cease to exist if we were “left behind”? If one digs deeper into Singapore’s history and the resultant cultural attitude of kiasu, there seems to be an underlying anxiety about death and non-being.
As mentioned, one of the behavioral traits associated with kiasu is kiasi, which literally translates to “fear of death,” but re-ascribed the meaning of “risk aversiveness” and the “unwillingness to venture into unknown realms and tendency to hold back in the face of uncertainty” (Ho et al., 1998, p. 364). Out of the five behavioral traits, the trait most associated with kiasu is the fear of losing out (96%) while kiasi scored the lowest (55%) (Ho et al., 1998).
This brings into my mind some questions:
Why are we so afraid of losing out and of risk?
Why the substitution of “death” with “risk” when defining kiasi?
What is my relationship between the fear of losing out, the fear of risk, and the fear of death?
What do I really want?
Fast forward 8 years, I was 17 years old, alone in a classroom revising for my International Baccalaureate exam when I broke down from anxiety. I recall shuffling frantically back and forth in the classroom, tearing up, head spinning, and heart thumping, thinking repeatedly, “What if I fail? I cannot fail. How can I be prepared when the teacher didn’t even teach us properly? Shit, shit, shit. What am I going to do? I’m going to fail. No, I will not fail—I cannot afford to fail.”
I would proceed, with desperation to calm down, to relook at my notes only to be reminded of the absurdity of the situation. Before I knew it, I was shuffling across the empty classroom again. My notes, initially organized neatly by themes, were now all messy and mixed up across the tables, chairs, and the floor, as if a reflection of my spiralling state of mind.
I asked myself, “Why am I even studying so hard?” Yet, I couldn’t resist the compulsion to study. In that instant, I felt like I lost complete control of my mind and body.
Was I studying for my mother?
Was I studying for myself?
Was I studying to be a productive member of society?
What was I actually studying for?
I was not sure. But I sure as hell was not going to fail. I was not going to find out what would have happened if I actually failed.
The 17 year-old me shoved that possibility deep, deep into his soul. He continued studying.
Yalom (1980) argues that death anxiety lies outside of our awareness, or more accurately, human beings subconsciously work to keep death out of their consciousness because at our gut level, we are afraid to face our mortality.
To suppress death anxiety, humans employ defence mechanisms—sometimes compulsively when death anxiety becomes overwhelming—such as pursuing career, material goods, social status, sex, etc. This makes sense, considering how kiasu is “an obsessive concern with getting the most out of every transaction and a desire to get ahead of others” (Hwang et al., 2002, p. 75).
For us Singaporeans, then, might being kiasu be our defence mechanism—an incessant pursuit of material wealth, to get ahead of others and to attain the status of a cosmopolitan—the purpose of which is to reaffirm and concretize our existence, thereby pushing death further away from our consciousness?
By getting ahead, we avert the risk of the uncertainty of being left behind, the meaning of which remains intentionally unventured. Perhaps, in a visceral sense, to lose is to die.
Hence, being kiasu might allow us to uphold an illusion of immortality, to avoid facing their mortality. To kiasu is to assuage one’s kiasi—my fear of losing out is perhaps an expression of my fear of death.
Growing up as a Singaporean student, I often hear adults perpetuate a common narrative: if you don’t do well for your final examinations, you will have no future.
Although I was initially sceptical, I eventually introjected this black and white narrative as I observed how my classmates became increasingly hardworking. It was best not to attend neighbourhood schools, and only strive for the elite schools because that was what all the adults said.
To be honest, back then, I didn’t even know what having “no future” truly meant. Was not attending an elite school, or not having a high paying job, that bad? What would actually happen? I mean, I would still have my basic needs met and I would still have my friends and family, right?
Yet, my instincts were on high alert whenever I confront the possibility of not performing well academically, as if sensing an impending catastrophe. It truly felt like that. And so I studied harder.
The connotation of doom held by having “no future” seemed to mean having “no life.” Adults always said, “If you have a high paying job, you will be set for life. Marry someone, buy a house, go on holidays, do what you want, and enjoy life.”
There seemed to be an extreme black and white assumption that if I did not secure a high paying job, or put another way, if I earn an average income, I will not be able to sustain your physical needs amidst the growing economy and rising standards of living, and immediately perish from the social hierarchy of prestige and status.
In other words, if I do not I am assumed to die a physical and social death. I have “no life,” I am not worthy and have no means to live, and I cease to exist. So I cannot afford to lose and fall behind.
Now, at 26 years old, I still hear the same narrative being thrown around. That breakdown when I was 17 years old sparked the emergence of a new consciousness about my being and my positionality in the world; it marked the beginning of my obsession with authenticity and meaning.
Ever since then, I have been hyper-attentive to my inner world. I became increasingly attuned to my personal sense of meaning and values, to ensure I do not carelessly compromise my being for what the crowd often blindly dictates as the “truth.”
But I’m still human.
Now, when I examine my professional credentials (or lack thereof), I still get sudden bursts of anxiety, though, they do not persist as long, nor am I as bothered when they do. I was tremendously lucky, because one microscopic misstep and I would have fallen of the rails. Many others might not be as fortunate as I was.
It is against such a context of Singapore’s culture and history that I sense an urgent need of an intervention, not of a psychological nature, but of a philosophical one that can guide Singaporeans in the creation of their own meaning, to fill their potential spiritual void before their own being concaves and collapses on its own weight.
Here, I suggest that intervention to be Existential Therapy (ET), a philosophically based therapeutic modality grounded on the western philosophy of Existentialism. A psychological intervention may ease psychological symptoms, but often times only temporarily, as it does not alleviate the underlying existential dread and spiritual void that are the roots of many human sufferings. Hence, alongside the examination of one’s cognition, drives, family history, and emotions, one must embark on a philosophical exploration of meaning and the facts of human existence to truly manage that spiritual void. Currently, there is only one official and practicing existential psychotherapist in Singapore, which seems to suggest a potential incompatibility between Singapore’s Asian culture and ET. My reflection is an attempt at an existential interpretation of the Singaporean way of life, to demonstrate the relevance and applicability of ET in an Asian context, in hopes of carving out a space in Singapore, however minute, for ET to provide Singaporeans with a much needed existential healing.
Finally, more than writing this piece to promote ET, I am writing because I want to feel a connection with you, the readers.
In many ways, I know we are all facing similar pressures from living in the same culture. But, lately, Singapore is beginning to feel colder—everyone is just going about their own lives, with a “everyone for themselves” type of energy. I feel lonelier nowadays, existentially isolated from my fellow Singaporeans. It has been hard for me to catch a breath while chasing the world that seems to move on so quickly.
Writing this piece allows me to take a break from chasing blindly and take stock of who currently I am and what I want.
As I write, I feel my frustrations slowly dissipate: my life began to make more sense when it is contextualized against a larger cultural phenomenon. I felt excited and inspired, too, as I imagined how my writing might potentially help some of you make some sense of what is happening to us, and with that understanding you might feel less lonely, even if there is no clear solution, as with many human issues.
Theories aside, I guess I am writing because I am afraid of what is to come. I hope by sharing a part of myself here, we can at least be afraid and “weak” together, and take a break from pretending to be “strong” all the time. It is because human beings can be “weak” that we can be “strong.”
It is with “weakness” that we find ourselves and others kind and warm because we can then relate to so many others who, like us, are actually struggling to keep themselves afloat.
My humble wish is that my writing can, in some small ways, be that kindness that provides enough warmth for the cold void within us, so that we can continue pushing on together in this crazy, scary world.
About the Author
Hello, I’m Gary: A recent Anthropology graduate from Yale-NUS College, and an incoming student pursuing a Masters in Counselling. If I were to describe myself in a sentence — which is impossible, but I’ll try nonetheless — I’m currently someone who’s in a perpetual existential mood!
I invite you to join me on my journey of writing to make sense of that mood, myself, and this crazy, complex world. I’m not following a fixed structure, so I don’t know what I would come out of this conviction — I guess we can only find out as I write!