- Day 13 -

Blaming the Japanese?

The Eurasian Clan Assoicaiton Museum had its materials mostly on the period of Japanese Occupation in Singapore, with special emphasis on how hard their lives were under Japanese rule, as well as the tortures and despicable crimes the Japanese committed. While all this might be very well be true, I'm concerned about this presentation of information as being overly suggestive. Would it reignite senses of injust, anger or even revenge?

You'll find that the truth is often complicated, since there are infinite aspects of the truth. Indeed the Japanese army have committed atrocities during their occupation of Singapoe and other places, especially towards the Chinese population. But have we thought about what we are doing in fact? We are the assigning blame to a country of people, for the actions of a few! This thinking is actually built on several levels of cognitive errors, which I will uncover in the next few paragraphs.

Suppose someone in your country beat up his wife. What would you feel if another country called you and all the people from your country "wife-beaters"? Since humans are the most skilled animals at killing one another in mass, should we call ourselves mass murderers? On the same note, if we think on a clear mind, how many Japanese were actually involved in the actual atrocities? A couple of thousand perhaps? Or are the soldiers simply evil or perhaps they were just following orders or "following the herd"?

While we have seen how it is unfair to assign the blame to the Japanese, it brings the next underlying problem of still seeing people as collective identities. Why do we have to group people into categories? Grouping people into categories commonly fuels the rise of prototypes (neutral) and stereotypes (negative), and this hinders our interpretation of the individual identities. And of course, it gives us a convenient target to point our blame to.

Categorising people might have been acceptable and feasible years ago. Then, people were exposed to similar cultures within their countries, and grew up with similar experiences, hence we can expect them to be pretty similar in thinking as well. But in this age of globalisation, people are exposed to the global cultures. Is it still fair or neccessary to categorise people by nationality, ethnicity or place of origin? Are we that different from one another? Is it the fault of the individual ofr the country?

The final problem is the issue of blame. Many people have still not learnt that blaming others is merely a refusal to take actions or responsbility ourselves. It is also based on the barbaric mindset of "See? I'm right, and you're wrong!". Can blame be assigned? For hundreds of years, judges and courts have been assigning blame and responsibility to criminals. But what has happened? Many criminals serve their sentences, but have never admitted their wrongdoings.Are they repentent? Have they learnt?

Responsibility is the courage to take action to change what we can change about an event. And it does not only fall on the shoulders of the supposed wrong-doer. Sure, you can blame the Japanese for all you want. But does that change matters? What steps are you taking? What have you learnt from it? In fact, what do we want Japan to do? Do we want to ask the Japanese to pay for the sins of some of the Japanese a long time ago?

So much for human intelligence, isn't it?