Prosper thy neighbour: A noble aim or naive quest?

SINGAPORE – Imagine you lived with your family in a bright, airy, top-floor apartment boasting views of West Coast Park and Jurong Island beyond it. Every morning you’d spend a few quiet minutes on the balcony nursing your coffee, contemplating what’s in store for the day as you gaze at the sea and listen to hornbills cackle from the trees nearby.

Now imagine that idyll being shattered just because your youngest child scattered Lego pieces on the floor. The clatter sets off the difficult neighbour in the apartment directly beneath yours, and he is banging at your front door within minutes to complain about it.

This happened to a friend of mine, but such neighbours could be around any of us. How would you handle an encounter like this? Is a long-term, amicable solution possible?

How you view this neighbour and deal with the situation will depend on your philosophical bent and which adage you subscribe to.

Are you a “let sleeping dogs lie” person, an “eye for an eye” advocate, or an “if you give an inch they’ll take a mile” cynic?

I’m generally a no-nonsense “nip things in the bud” person with little patience for those who try my patience. And while I am partial to peace and quiet and have been known to be an irate complainer about noise myself – more on that later – I also believe there are some sounds you just have to live with, because they form part of the rich soundtrack of life. Stuff like crying babies, crowing roosters, late-night cheers during World Cup season, fireworks and the off-key wails from the community karaoke event down the road.

So in this instance I would have stood my ground and told the complainant to go live on a desert island if he couldn’t deal with the bustle of people going about their daily lives around him. Then I would have reported him to the housing management for harassment, with a view to getting him evicted from our rental-only staff housing.

Thankfully, there are wiser, kinder people than me in this world. The kind who not only practise yoga physically but also spiritually, and find their answers by meditating and listening to the quiet voice within. And luckily for the intolerant resident, my friend is one such person.

She came up with a novel solution: swop apartments with him. This way, she reasoned, he would not be evicted and his family would not be penalised for his outbursts. And, living on the topmost floor, he would no longer have to suffer noise through the ceiling. In return, her family would get exactly the same type of apartment, albeit with a slightly less spectacular view, but best of all, never have to deal with his tirades again. By giving in, she says, she had achieved a win-win solution for all of them.

Granted, this “prosper thy neighbour” policy is not everyone’s cup of tea. You could argue it is too idealistic, rewarding the aggressor for his bad behaviour and possibly encouraging worse antics to come. He needs to be taught a lesson, some will say, not given a nicer apartment. And from a practical perspective, house-swopping is not workable in a city state where most homes are privately owned.

As it turned out, the complainant decided to stay put, but my friend moved to a different block and is much happier for it. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence from the security personnel reveals that the man continues to shout about noise from upstairs, even though the apartment is now vacant.

The growing number of incidents like this in built-up Singapore –

noise-complaint cases filed with the Housing Board averaged 2,300 a month in 2022

, five times more than in 2019 – is serious enough to warrant establishing a new unit that will help resolve protracted and egregious disputes between neighbours over noise disturbances. This unit, to be in place by the end of the year, will be given the power to investigate disputes and stop certain nuisance behaviour, said Senior Minister of State for National Development Sim Ann in March.

There are also plans to make mediation mandatory,

with a view to encouraging amicable and early resolution of such disputes.

Also worth considering is the fact that the “prosper your neighbour” approach is often cited in foreign policy. It has cropped up in speeches on Singapore-Malaysia relations. It is partly why richer countries give aid to poorer ones like Afghanistan, in the hope that a thriving, politically stable nation is less likely to shelter terrorists who plot attacks on the rest of the world. Similarly, Singapore and other Asean countries are keen to lend a helping hand to develop Timor-Leste, because a peaceful, successful neighbour is good for regional security and economic growth all round.

Of course there is no one-size-fits-all solution to conflicts, be they about fellow residents cluttering common areas with their personal belongings or foreign vessels sailing into your country’s territorial waters. And sometimes you have to stand your ground when efforts at peaceful, negotiated settlement are going nowhere.

But most times, day-to-day interactions can be more pleasant. Forget the grand gesture of apartment swopping; opportunities for small, gracious acts present themselves every day. It takes very little effort to, say, slow down for a few seconds so the car ahead of you can switch lanes, or let the mother with the ill toddler see the doctor ahead of you. Of course you are perfectly within your rights to accelerate, glare at and teach a lesson to the driver who’s in the wrong lane, but wouldn’t everyone on the expressway be better served by having two fewer frazzled drivers on the road?

I would have thought gig drivers, of all people, would understand this “live and let live” approach. But when I told one of them that I had taken a short walk to reach a private-hire car that had gone to the wrong office entrance because it was quicker than staying put and making the driver take the long way round to come to me at the correct entrance, he was incredulous. “You walked to the car? Even though you were in the right?” he said. He then sighed and shook his head as if to say I was a hopelessly naive bunny rabbit who would not survive long in this concrete jungle.

The upshot of all this? I will have to exercise journalistic neutrality and pronounce “to each his own”. Though I would add that the last time I complained to our upstairs neighbour about his noisy parties, he responded by inviting us in for a drink and to many more parties after. His charm offensive continued with festive gifts every year – medjool dates during Ramadan, wine and fruit cake at Christmas, pineapple tarts for Chinese New Year – thereby co-opting us into becoming prosperous-looking neighbours who have never complained since.