Dear Handover Generation/Gen X’ers/Post 65′ers (those born between 1965-1985),
How quickly time files… it wasn’t too long ago that we were heralded as the new generation of leaders who would guide the world away from the baby-boomers’ cry of want, spend and waste, and propel it towards a post-consumerist future. Before sharing how I think we have done thus far, let’s acknowledge the massive impact the boomers have made on economics, politics, and society, both locally and on a global scale.
Schools in Singapore were never nearly as organised or structured before World War Two. Yet the end of the War signalled the beginning of an urgent need to provide the island’s inhabitants with the necessary skill-sets to fuel Singapore’s fledgling economy. The establishment saw it fit to streamline the existing education system (chaotic though it was in those days), and English became the default medium of instruction. Having met the boomers’ hunger for jobs, the establishment next had to manage their insatiable appetite to spend their new-found wealth. This they did with relative ease, through the leasing of apartments, in the name of the public good. Our parents soon realised that most of what they earned would go to ‘ownership of property’ as it were, and refrained from over-celebrating their achievements in the workplace. In this aspect they were unlike their peers in countries such as the Thus organised, society metamorphosised at an unprecedented rate; gone were the times of unsuspecting neighbourliness in placid rural-life, and a new sense of languid weariness pervaded the ever-increasing number of towering brick and mortar structures.
