Third World Attitudes

To say that Singaporeans have third world attitudes would be to insult the Third World. Travelling through South East Asia, a region still characterised as the Third World, I have seen truly elegant social graces, far more civilised than those that exist in this country! We are supposedly, if you listen to the authorities, the beacon of economic prosperity, in a region mired in political and social chaos. And to a large extent this is true. Why oh why then do we have such abysmal manners and social behaviours. We treat the people who do the jobs that no one else wants to do, the cleaners, the maids, the army of service personnel, the construction workers, as though they are the serf class in an increasingly 20th Century feudal society. We behave as though we are feudal Lords in Castles, employing people on disgraceful wages, forcing them to wake before dawn and to work tirelessly till way past dusk, berating them, abusing them in horrendous ways should they even make a single mistake. Is this what economic prosperity does to human beings? Do we truly believe that it elevates us above our fellow human beings?
This is how we appear to be raising our children...I witnessed a child, a student at a Primary school, barging his way to the front of a queue at the canteen. When chastised by the stall operator, he sneeringly said "My father told me that I don't have to queue because I am rich!"
This is the future of our nation? Then it is a future that I will gladly abandon for a less arrogant society....