A timely movie tries to justify “Covid sacrifices”. To save the earth in 2058, individuals above 50 were sacrificed. The audience applauded, but were they thinking? Who would fall under that category? Are they willing to sacrifice themselves for mistakes made by their leaders? Yes and no. Yes, when others are being sacrificed and no when “I” is being sacrificed.
This is the mentality that must prevail for a country of this size that has managed to keep its borders intact for the last 2,000 years. When unfortunate people get eliminated in the name of stability or for the “greater good”, it really “sucks to be you”. It’s the exact opposite of the driving force behind saving Private Ryan. Everyone is celebrating the end of lockdowns Nobody gives a second thought to the hundreds of thousands of elderly who have been sacrificed, the families who have lost their elders and the lockdown protesters who have been disappeared. That’s the “right” kind of attitude towards “positive energy” that has been sustaining China over 5,000 years of greatness.
When the Zambian scholar talks about how the Chinese government is sponsoring her education with money left over for seeing the world – a privilege which the vast majority of China’s own citizens do not enjoy, it reminds me of our own universities sponsoring foreign scholars who can’t even pass our English Language at PSLE level while our own parents need to pay through their noses to send their children overseas for tertiary education. Are we becoming more and more like China and is China taking advantage of us?
Sacrificial lambs, step out.