Thursday, March 02, 2006
blog
For any organization that wishes to survive for at least another era, it needs and requires a dedicated batch of youths.
Youths are probably the single most powerful group of people in the world. No doubt that positions of power are often held by veterans and experienced staff, youths are the ones who bring about new changes and ideas to an organization which need these in order to survive in a rapidly-changing world. Without the new changes and ideas, the organization will rapidly fade into something that is past its time. For example, the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union failed to create a solid base of youths in the later periods of the Cold War era. As such, the Party did not have any reforms that is crucial to its survival in the increasingly capitalist world. The China Communist Party, on the other hand, had a solid youth base which spawned many of the technocrats and reforms which propelled it into the forefront at the start of the 21st century. As such, we can see that without the many changes and ideas that youths bring with them, an organization will find itself hard to gain a foothold in a changing world.
Another reason why youths are important to an organization is the fact that youths often have the zeal and passion to propagate a cause which they believe in very deeply. This characteristic of youths, coupled with the point that youths are often impressionable and easy to mould them into proponents of a cause, make them the perfect driving force behind any organization. Often, the leaders at the apex of an organization find themselves lacking a certain driving force to complete certain tasks and these youths provide the driving force to complete that task. In fact, influence a significant number of youths successfully and you do not need to wage an extensive propaganda campaign. They will be the ones carrying your cause around and spreading and seeding them around the world. A good example would be those of the Bolsheviks. They had a group of dedicated youths in Trotsky and Stalin. These people would later oversee the establishment of a communist enviroment in the former Soviet Union bloc. Another example would be the Red Guards of China. They are the army and youths of the CCP and as such, usually form the power base of the leaders at the top. The last example would be those in the street that are influenced by agressive marketing from companies such as Nike. Having successfully influenced them that wearing Nike products is 'cool', the youths hence help Nike to wage a free advertising campaign and propagate the cause of 'buying and wearing of more Nike products'. Hence, it is undoubtable that youths often help to propagate a certain cause of an organization that successfully influences them.
Now I am going to link it back to the issue that I wanted to address in this post. It is because last night I went to attend a dinner thrown by this temple in Toa Payoh. The thing is that, the temple committee has a striking characteristic, none of the committee members are females and none of them seem less than 35 years old. As such, we can see that it is a committee of veteran males. The thing is, the budget of the temple is in a mess and the format of the dinner has not changed (still an auction-cum-dinner format). This format has not changed since I was conscious of my surroundings I guess. It would be sad if this temple does not last because of inept management and their refusal to recruit fresh blood, especially youths, to help manage the temple.
Let me draw a comparison between religious organisations that have a youth base and those that do not have one. Churches often are able to survive, even with small numbers, because they always have activities for youths and actively seek out youths to join in their cause. Compare this to most of the temples that do not have such youth bases and you would see that the declining numbers of worshippers to these temples are perhaps not that difficult to explain after all. No doubt, the lack of interest by youths could have played a part, but this is also because the temples refuse to reach out to the youths and thus lose a future potential group of worshippers. Contrast this to the Bright Hill temple, which is the biggest temple in Singapore. They have an organized youth base and youths can often be seen helping out in activities by the temple. As such, the number of worshippers to the temple has always been steadily increasing.
In conclusion, it can be seen that youths are a group of people which organizations, whether commercial, religious or political, cannot afford to ignore. Youths are a source of renewal as well as acting as a spring of ideas and changes. If you fail to exploit this fountain, you risk getting swept off your feet by youths of other organizations as well as by changes to society with time.
shermon blogged @ 6:01 pm
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name: ong kah han shermon
b-day: 12 feb
pri sch: pei chun public school 1996->2001
sec sch: raffles institution 2002->2005
jc: raffles junior college 2006->2007
bmt: cougar coy, platoon 3, 01/08
ocs clm: delta wing, platoon 1
ocs svc term: air wing, flight 3
ocs pro term: afs, c3 wing
unit: ???
ccas: rinpcc, ricsc, rj club alchemy, recas
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Graduation Night 2007
