On "Weak" Singaporeans and NS

On the matter of the "weakness" of Singaporean males, I came across this which led me to this. There we have a professional soldier C attacking reasonable advice from a non-professional soldier K. C gives a rousing account of honour and glory while K gives pragmatic sounding advice about doing what it takes to be safe.

I think it is good for men to be manly. There is something about being able to walk around with a 20-30kg combat load with the optional (annoying) Hand Held Thermal Imager dangling around your neck and enjoying jalaning in the semi-open terrain in Thailand or Australia under the hot sun. There is something quite manly about doing all that and in the course of doing so, falling into a somewhat deep hole, quickly emerging cursing and swearing and then carrying on like nothing happened. (The falling into a whole bit happened to someone else.) There is something satisfying about getting nods of approval as some people stop to count the 20 chin-ups you do before lunch.

Yet, I take K's point that it is important to be careful while being manly. Brief recognition for an episode of manliness is not worth permanent injury. I think K was horribly misunderstood by many who took him to be advocating unbridled malingering. My take away from what he wrote was: do the risk-reward calculus and make your choice.