I forgotten where I learned this, whether from an article or from documentary, but I never forget the lesson.
It was from this lesson, that Broken Windows theory was born in the 80s (apart from other incidents), I think.
Long time ago, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew was developing rapidly, and they encounter housing problem.
There wasn't enough houses for everyone, so the Singapore Government had to intervene.
And so, flat houses developed by the Government are built and then rented to the people.
By time, they encounter the same problem as were faced by the Brits at UK in the 80's.
The flat houses becomes slums.
They conducted a study, and found out, since the houses were RENTED, the people living in it never really cared much shit about its upkeeping.
You pay for your living in the house, but you don't own the house itself. So why bother?
And so, the Government changed the policy, rent and buy scheme were introduced, and the slum problem were solved.
The property prices for the flat houses were also increased.
That means you don't have to build new ones to give your country economic growth, you just make sure people pay for what is worth , help them own it within their means, and let them sell for profit if they could buy better houses elsewhere.
Ceiling prices were also introduced to help.
The reason why I talk about this, is about this incident happening at my neighbour as per photo above.
You see, thunderstorm strike our neighbourhood a month ago, resulting in a tree falling down.
The house facing this incident were my neighbours, but I'm appalled by inaction. Nobody care. Nobody give a shit.
It seems that they were praying God would open the hearts of Kajang Municipality officers to clean this mess.
I watched this for a month, but I myself doesn't care. Since I went off at 7am in the morning and reached home by 10pm.It was not even in front of my house. But today the eyesore is too much.
----
Last time, I wrote in my blog, where I cleaned the drains of my neighbourhood, and I was helped by my Chinese neighbours.
The Chinese neighbours were self-centred, but, they helped because they themselves feel like shit about the smell.
The Chinese neighbours paid few Indonesian workers to help me clean the drain.
What I feel shit about, is my Malay neighbours who I think were God-fearing.
They just watched. The Malays talked to me incessantly about the kajang municipality, then I screwed them for their worthless talk.
----
Even though I was tired as I reached home early today (I worked even on Saturday and Sundays too), I was fueled with anger because of inaction.
I went and pluck all the fallen tree branches and collect it in a rubbish bag.
After 10 minutes or so, some neighbours came and help.
But we never speak to each other. We just did what we could and eventually. the fallen tree has transformed to 7 rubbish bags which were thrown off.
Everybody sighed happily. There was no need to talk. The smiles in our faces itself were rewarding.
---------------
I hate preaching. Because I think, just do it.
It's useless to appeal to people.
Self interest rules.