093245Y (Group 4)
I was surfing through the net when I came across a video. It was about an elderly woman staying with her son. She knew little about using a phone and so he forbade her from using it, claiming he had taught her many times before. In another scene, the woman urinates on the sofa and her son then chides her for it, claiming it is an expensive sofa. The old lady then recalls when she was younger and took care of her infant son, bathing him when he soiled himself. She then tells him aloud, and his young son then tells him that if he does that in the future, he will put her in an old folks’ home.From that, I realized the differences acquired as generations proceed. Children grow up and they seem to inductively forget the effort their parents took to raise them well. The thought that followed was even more disturbing. If children who had grew up under their parents’ direct care could show such lack of filial piety, what about the children of Generation Y, who came from families where both parents were breadwinners? They were raised by their maids, so to speak. The first person they saw when they came home from school was their maid. The person who cleaned their room and sent them to school was also their maid. Where would the bond be between parent and child then?
I feel the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports foresee the possibility of a pending dilemma and has decided to take precautions. This comes in the form of a new campaign launched this year which teaches the baby boomer generation of today to lead by example should they want their offspring to care for them in old age.
However, I just wasn’t satisfied. How did we come to this? A state so bad we needed a campaign to tell us to take care of our parents. What happened to good old fashioned Asian values? Respect, loyalty and obedience. Did they become unimportant?
Was it something we read? Something lost in translation? Or worse, could it be the Grim Reaper of everything “proper”, MTV?
Think about it, was it globalization? With the influx of Western movies and TV shows on our screens, did we somehow get subconsciously involved in their culture that we followed their ideals of individualism and independence?
Either way, it doesn’t matter how we got where we are now, it is how we’re going to get past it and make something out of it. In today’s context, maybe legislating filial piety is the only way to ensure it takes place. The idea that parents have to fill out an application form with Tribunal for the Maintenance of Parents seems appropriate enough. In fact, it is the most justified thing deemed possible. Children who are disloyal would have no choice but to pay whether they liked it or not. Also, no elderly would be left abandoned and ill-treated.
Legislation of filial piety? After all we’ve seen of the world today, that seems just about right.
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