Following on from my post of last year, I saw this sign in a shop …
Yes … it’s a no smoking sign … but look at those 2 little words under the image.
BY LAW
BY LAW!!! ???
Christ almighty, that’s pretty big isn’t it? I mean, it’s saying that if you do in fact light up a fag, you’re not just breaking the shopping centres rules, you’re actually going against the countries. In short, you’re a bloody terrorist, Or rebel. Or demonstrator. Or a rebel terrorist demonstrator!
To be honest, I think people would understand they couldn’t smoke from the image alone … however the good ol’ Singapore Government doesn’t want to leave anything to chance … so not only do they want to make sure that you know they are really, really serious about not smoking, they want to make you aware that no where on the island is safe from their iron-fist and if you take the piss they’ll cane/jail/hang you.
Maybe.
Now I’ve written in the past how Asia tends to not leave anything to chance.
The airlines are called ‘[Insert Country] Airlines’.
The jewellery shops have names like ‘Expensive Jewellery’.
The cafes give themselves monikers like ‘Big Eat Cafe’.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with this – but linked with my rants of the past regarding how Asian education tends to be centred on ‘memorising’ rather than ‘learning’ – it’s little surprise that the concept of ‘conceptualisation’ is something people find quite hard to grasp.
The weird thing about all this though is the Asian culture pretty much sees meaning in everything said/seen and done … their ability to read subtext is second to none … and when you marry that to the fact the region contains some of the smartest and most creative people I’ve ever met … you’d think this overtly literal attitude towards messaging, especially communication based messaging, could be overcome.
And here’s the thing, I genuinely believe it could … however whilst it would take some time, I believe one of the main reasons it is not embraced is that in a place like Singapore, keeping people in a state where they ‘follow orders’ and seek to be ‘spoon-fed’ information keeps the Government in control and keeps the country on the ‘straight and narrow’.
I’ve spoken many times of my adoration of Singapore – and without doubt I think it gets a bad rap – but I do think this subliminal ‘fear & control’ attitude has dangerous implications … not in the sense they’ll be a revolution or anything like that, but in the countries ability to adapt to changing needs and demands because if it can’t do that, it’s only ability to attract foreign talent will be through giving more and more incentives and whilst that may help continue the countries incredible growth, like Wal Mart are with China, their prosperity is no longer really in their hands, regardless what they may think.