Incessant Summer thoughts

Summer holidays
Reason for me to come up with 1001 topics to waste my time and ponder over

Since sk and P were on the topic of materialism and love, it got my brain juice churning at 2am in the morning.
But first......
I cannot comprehend how the situation is like right now
We didn't really text directly like we used to
I don't know if i'm oversensitive(because I'm rather unoccupied this few days and tend to overthink)/overreading (as per usual), or I just sensed that I'm the only one trying to revert things back to original
Effort has to be mutual and two-way.
but it's hard to keep it going without being reciprocated.
I tried hard to initiate conversation/topics every now and then when it dies down.
It used to be us falling asleep on each other's texts but we would resume the following day
Now it's different
I'm not complaining
That's because she has no obligations to do so
But i'm just feeling a little upset that this might just go to waste like this because of that incident
I'm back to normal for sure though.

but that's the last thing on my mind, for now.

Anyhow
Materialism - How did it come about?
Materialism wasn't that big an issue a few decades back, so why is it today?
Materialism is reflection of desire of wealth
So where's the root of this desire?
The search for improvement in life is an endless process towards attaining nirvana
What you desire in life pretty much determines where your "nirvana" lies
And the "improvement" is the actions one will take to achieve this "nirvana"

Life in the 60s to 80s was pretty unpredictable as changes in society occurred rapidly
HDB were introduced, slums were removed.
Policies were changed as quickly as they were implemented.
The gameplan for Singapore was to achieve rapid growth in infrastructure and standards of living
However, the knee jerk reaction of introducing these changes in rapid succession was inevitably the looming uncertainty.
There's no way to be certain that what you did today would be applicable/useful the next day
People wanted stability and certainty in life
Stability became the "nirvana" to attain
And earning your keep of 'kachings' turned out to be the method to do so.
Nobody exactly knew how to earn more money, people expanded into business and many other ways they can think off.
But success stories were far and few
In that era, parents (the grandparents of today) who were more far-sighted, viewed education as a means to achieve wealth and sent their children (the parents of today) to school.
Evidently in today's society, those who were more well-educated enjoyed a more wealthy future compared to those who didn't receive as much education.

But this led to the propagation of a necessary, but unhealthy ideal in the people growing up in that era.
People began to rate wealth with increasing importance, often surpassing as the top priority in life.
Unhealthy, because it turned from an ideal into a national obsession
Judging by how the wealthier people were better educated (because they were able to command a better paying job), education was seen as an unavoidable path to riches.
The new mentality that is deeply ingrained is that:
In order to achieve this wealth, one must first be educated.
For the generations of our parents, the "nirvana" is wealth
And the way to nirvana is through education.
And this ideal is what our parents impose on the young generation today.
Education doesn't simply means going to school, but rather, it refers ace-ing exams and test.
Whoever cannot do well would be deemed as a failure to a certain extent.
This laid the foundation to rat race of my generation in today's world.
Students compete to strive to be the best, even though 90% of the kids out there have no idea why they are studying.
They are just sticking to their parents' mantra
"Study hard and next time you will earn a lot of money"
While wealth IS essential, I feel that it was overblown and it has overshadowed many other aspects of the Singaporean life.

So, when it comes to my generation of today.
What is our "nirvana"?
My opinion is that our "nirvana" is materialism (cars, branded goods, labels)
And the way to be represented by material goods is through wealth.
As a whole, Singapore grew to be a more affluent society.
However the desire to be wealthy remains strong, or might even be amplified.
People grew richer, but we developed the need to SHOW that we are richer.
There's no better yardstick of measurement of wealth than material goods itself.
Thus the growth of an obsession for material goods.
The unhealthy obsession with material good is coupled by the fact that materialism seems to be a necessity nowadays.
Yes, necessity.


I am not able to fully pen out my arguments at 4am in the morning right now
Everything seems the least convincing
My bottomline being that this desire for materialism did not appear out of nowhere.
But rather it was the cumulative snowball effect of the desires that was passed on from one generation to another.
From desire for stability -> desire for wealth -> desire for education -> desire for material goods.

Cant think anymore.
Ciaos.