Is Singapore a 'kick ass' country?

“Singapore kicks ass, I dont want to leave, and I'm unemployed.

Iv said it befor, and I'll say it again, is one of my favorite places... its got it all.  Its clean,modern, safe, multicultural, organized, its a breath of fresh air in an Asian wasteland.”

FilthyPhil

It is the goodness-of-fit between one’s stage of maturity and a particular locale that determines if that person thinks the said locale ‘kicks ass’ or not.  That, of course, does not mean that that place can be asserted to be good.  Just as a child thinks that a playground ‘kicks ass’, it takes a particular type of mind - of the ‘stunted’ variety, some might say - to think that Singapore ‘kicks ass’. When one thinks about it, the reasons cited by Phil, and which is supposed to be diagnostic of singapore’s ‘kick ass’ status might also be those cited by inspectors positively evaluating the conditions of a factory. 

How would I describe, for instance, the UK, and how would it compare to singapore ? 

Well, I would say, the UK’s 'got it all'.  (Relatively speaking)The people are intelligent; its not only multicultural but multiculturally harmonious; there is a higher incidence of social empathy; a low incidence of political docility; an appreciable degree of accountability on the part of the servants of the masters – that is the ‘people’; there are a myriad of avenues via which one might explore, develop and express a myriad of other aspects of one’s persona other than having little choice but to be well-practiced in being a rabid shopper or glutton; where people are generally guided by reason as opposed to prejudice; where no evil is left to fester unaddressed or apathetically and idiotically attributed to fate; where people are able to speak intelligently about both profound and trivial issues; where people are generally polite; where people stand up for others even where they themselves have little to gain directly; etc, etc, etc. 

Now that is a country that ‘kicks ass’ in a positive and progressive sense.  Few are afforded the luxury of gestating within a self-centred, self-absorbed, myopic and perspectivally-debilitating 'comfort zone'.  One’s ‘ass’, in the UK , is constantly ‘kicked’ up the path of perspectival progress.  However, anyone exhibiting those positive traits engendered by the British variant of ‘ass kicking’ here in singapore, gets her/is ‘ass kicked’ for it – unless they are British.  If one is able to appreciate the significance of this, then, the phrase, ‘ singapore kicks ass’, takes on a wholly different meaning counter to that claimed by the above.  Singapore 'kicks ass' alright, but the direction towards which it is kicked begs scrutiny.  The bloke above views technological advance and homogeneity as the summum bonum of civilisation.  I, however, view perspectival multifariousness, cultural miscegenation, social empathy and the belief in the fallibility of humankind as an indicator that things can’t be as good as we think they are, and the existence of the means and mores to promote these, as far greater goods. 

These are the only traits and tendencies, to the more mature mind that is, that makes a country a truly ‘kick ass’ one.

S/he who is little, values little as much.

S/he who seeks to be of much value, values much as too little,

And thus,

 seeks more that in turn leads to her/im becoming more than she otherwise would be.

ed-infinitum