By Andy Ho, The Straits Times, 29 Nov 2012
A RECENT Gallup survey reported its findings rather infelicitously, labelling Singapore as the most "emotionless" country in the world.
The survey was repeated each year between 2009 and 2011. Participants were asked questions such as "Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?" The questions asked about five positive experiences (smiling and laughing a lot, feeling rested, treated with respect, enjoyment, and learning or doing something interesting) and five negative ones (anger, stress, sadness, pain, and worry) the previous day. Last year, only 30 per cent of respondents here reported experiencing any positive or negative emotions the day before.
Apologists have pointed defensively to people's angry responses to train breakdowns and housing woes as obvious proof to the contrary. Psychologists have critiqued the study's methodology while proposing better ways of measuring emotional well- being.
Dr Josephine Lang, who teaches organisational behaviour at the Nanyang Technological University, felt that the survey captured only expressed emotions. There would also be emotions that were not reported (or suppressed).
After all, no one has no emotions, so the "emotionless" moniker was a red herring. Dr Lang felt that this did reflect Singaporeans being generally reserved and wary about expressing their feelings or opinions, especially when asked about them as the survey did.
That a pervasive guardedness, and thus a lack of levity, is indeed a cultural trait of ours is reflected at, say, local graduation ceremonies, where the audience is generally asked to refrain from clapping until the very last candidate gets his scroll. Most of our leaders in government or commerce generally have impassive faces in public, setting the tone for the rest of us.
Obviously Singaporeans are not emotionless - Who is? - but kids learn early on that the system is not very tolerant of difference, so if you stood out like a nail, you'd be hammered in like one. They learn quickly to keep their opinions or views to themselves.
To the extent that the majority here is ethnically Chinese, this reservedness may well have something to do with our traditional Confucianist ethos. Dr Yue Xiao Dong of the City University of Hong Kong felt that, traditionally, the Confucianist saw boisterousness, braggadocio and levity as indicative of a lack of intellectual depth and inattentiveness to one's place and role in life.
This faux pas was seen to undermine the appropriately hierarchical arrangement of human relationships in a system that assumed social harmony came from humility and conformity to roles and rules. Thus the Confucianist culture is "inherently against" expressiveness in general and levity in particular, said Dr Yue.
Perhaps this underlies the finding in a 2001 study of National University of Singapore undergraduates who generally did not resort to humour to alleviate stress or anxiety. Dr Yue's 2011 study found that ethnic Chinese undergraduates in both Hong Kong (southern China) and Inner Mongolia (northern China) considered themselves not humorous.
He highlighted how the most important scholar of humour in modern China, Dr Lin Yutang, had noted in Chinese Wit and Humor (1946) that the Confucian gentleman was vigilant against levity and humour because of lijiao (decorum) which stressed a serious demeanour, the opposite of which was levity. The bearing of the well-bred was thus to be sombre and his mien grim.
Hence Confucius' own dictum that "a man has to be serious to be respected", he should "behave seriously" and must "restrain laughter". This meant that it was always a dicey affair to joke and laugh: You have to know when and how to joke and laugh and do it with right person as well.
The appropriate social bearing of solemnness and gravity was a virtue. Making sport, loquaciousness and mirth were highly disvalued antitheses. So the Chinese tend to avoid humour for fear of jeopardising their social standing.
In Discourse On Humor (1924), Dr Lin noted that, as a result, "the serious becomes too serious and the non-serious too vulgar" in Chinese culture. In the same vein, the only issues worthy of consideration in the Chinese classics were social and political concerns.
Dr Lin wrote that "light, humorous writing, imaginative literature (except poetry), drama and the novel were despised as unworthy of a respectable scholar's occupation. This austere public attitude has persisted to this day".
Appropriate levity was characterised by an expressive subtlety and a fine sensibility. The educated engaged only in elegant banter, witty word play, quips, couplets and assorted scholastic devices.
For the Confucianist gentleman, moderation was key. But boisterousness was evidence of an emotional extreme, so it was to be discouraged. Dr Lin proposed that the Chinese should merely have "thoughtful smiles" and not the "hilarious laughter" that Westerners tend to elicit with their jokes, which were aimed at precisely just such an end - belly-shaking laughter - and indeed nothing else.
Another historical reason for the Chinese disvaluing of expressiveness, levity and humour, according to Dr Yue, was "literary inquisition". He noted that Chinese rulers have always resorted to it from the time of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who had 400 scholars buried alive and their books burned in 213BC.
Since then, Dr Yue noted, Chinese rulers have always suppressed political dissent including that expressed in political satire, novels, plays and jokes. This was to climax in the last two dynasties - the Ming and Qing - while the Cultural Revolution in the communist era also discouraged voice, satire and humour as well.
Many learnt not to say too much or make sport too readily, Dr Yue said. Such an attitude could save one's life, so it percolated through space and time in Chinese society. Perhaps our immigrant forefathers who came from China brought with them this Confucian world view, which continues to inform the heartlander's life philosophy even to this day.
If that makes us who we are, why deny it? Popeye the Sailor Man sang "I yam what I yam". Our forefathers sailed here and made us this way. So we are who we are, not emotionless but wary, guarded and reserved. Generally.
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