2023MIPrelimQP (H1 General Paper 8807 02 INSERT)

Class Adm No Candidate Name: This question paper consists of 3 printed pages and 1 blank page. [Turn over ©2023 Millennia Institute 8807/0 2/PRELIMINARYEXAMINATION/PU3/GP 2023 Preliminary Examination Pre-University 3 GENERAL PAPER 8807/02 Paper 2 12 September 2023 1 hour 30 minutes INSERT READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Write your name, class and admission number in the spaces provided at the top of this page. This Insert contains the passage for Paper 2.

2 ©2023 Millennia Institute 8807/02/PRELIMINARYEXAMINATION/PU3/GP Benedict Arnold considers the changing perceptions of loyalty today. 1 At a time when age-old political structures are crumbling, civil str ife abounds, and economic uncertainty surges, loyalty offers us security in our relationships with associates, fr iends, and family. Often revered as a virtue across time and cultures, loyalty is commonly associated with the ideas of unwavering commitment and duty. Epic poems of ancient worlds, t he Mahabharata and Odyssey, boasted stories of loyalty, from Yudhishthira ’s refusal to ascend to heaven without his devoted canine companion to faithful Penelope ’s patient wait for the return of her husband, Odysseus. In feudal systems, loyalty to one's lord or ruler was considered a sacred duty . Religious and philosophical teachings, such as those in Christianity and Confucianism, emphasise loyalty as a moral imperative that encourage individuals to remain steadfast in all their relationships. 5 10 2 Loyalty, however, is a suspect virtue. It is essential for good human social life but susceptible to abuse. It focuses more on persons rather than principles , which often leads to unethical choices and behaviour. In more competitive times, loyalty seems more of a handicap rather than a virtue , particularly at the workplace. Young workers are changing jobs more frequently, some as often as every year. Possessing diverse skills to take on more challenging roles, these work ers seek out better employment in different companies in a perpetual pursuit for higher salaries. Consequently, remaining at the same job is interpreted as incompetence or foolishness – someone who stays is either unqualified to find a better-paying job, or too naïve to think that they w ould be rewarded fairly for their loyalty to the company. Gone are the days of starting and ending one’s career in the same company, which was once seen as a mark of capability and dependability. It is now fashionable to change jobs as soon as one is able. With employers looking for different types and levels of skills, qualifications and attitudes, workers today are literally spoilt for choice, compared to workers in the past. 15 20 3 Many commentators claim that in this time of infinite choice, loyalty is dead. Statistics seem to bear them out – on average, corporations now lose half their customers in five years, half their employees in four, and half their investors in less than one. A look at the bigger picture suggests these indications of decreasing loyalty are replicated across society. Besides frequent j ob- hopping or being more fickle customers, studies also suggest that people today are less likely to stay committed to their choices, in all areas of their life. Divorce rates ha ve nearly doubled over the past two decades; migration is on an uptrend; and people constantl y change their cars, their phones, their hobbies and even their identities ! We seem to face a future in which people no longer seem to care about maintaining existing relationships, but instead p refer to make new ones when it benefits them. 25 30 4 There are numerous reasons for questioning loyalty as a virtue. History ha s repeatedly shown there is nothing worse than blind loyalty as evinced by the Nazi SS ’s motto of “My Honor is Loyalty”. Loyalty here apparently encompassed the killing of millions of innocent ci vilians in the most brutal way imaginable. Some SS veterans even attempted to defend their participa tion in these killings by appealing to this motto and their duty to be loy al. This allegiance to a group of people instead of the whole of humanity, if taken to an extreme, is what makes loyalty dangerous. Beyond the extreme example, loyalty has the potential to promote exclusion and discrimination of others outside the group, thereby promoting conflict and impeding societal progress. Iron ically, in such circumstances, disloyalty, desertion, and treason become virtues. 35 40 5 The perils of loyalty are even ins tructed in fairytales. In The Emperor’s New Clothes , the entire kingdom pretends to admire the emperor ’s non-existent clothes. He only realises his nakedness when a child guilelessly blurts the truth. In the tale, the subjects ’ loyalty to their king merel y results in his shame when he realises the truth, but in the real world, followers blinded by their loyalty may not merely overlook the crimes of their leaders but ration alise them and spin them into acts of heroism. It undermines the integrity of our political system today as leaders then turn a blind eye to the worst sins of their followers. Ultimately, the group or cause eventually become corrupted because people mindlessly obey. Loyalty is such a force for destruct ion because it readily clashes with other virtues such as honesty and fairness, and people treat i t as superior to 45 50

3 ©2023 Millennia Institute 8807/02/PRELIMINARYEXAMINATION/PU3/GP those virtues. 6 To many economists, loyalty is hardly a virtue. Indeed, loyalty result s in higher costs to the consumer. The amount paid for goods and se rvices become artificially inflated when people do not realise there are cheaper comparable alternatives or refuse to switch over. As a result, companies can then charge more without losing customers, since the customers are willing to pay more for what they believe is a superior product. Monopoly is an inevitable outcome of bran d loyalty. And the loyal consumer is punished for their devotion with higher costs and shrinking choices. 55 7 Nevertheless, the outlook is not always bleak. There remai n optimists who believe that loyalty is still an essential virtue today. Pointing to the trend of whistleblow ers who are reporting on their employers, superiors and other authority figures, they argue that these incidents are actually an indication of loyalty, not the lack of it. Whistleblowing as a dilemma relates to the choice between the whistleblower’s’ obligation to care for the public good and their loyalty to their employer. When Edward Snowden famously exposed his employers, the National Security Agency, for spying on the American people, many were outraged at his apparent lack of loyalty. Y et, Snowden ’s argument was that he was indeed loyal, just not to the Agency. Snowden, li ke many whistleblowers, believed that when authority f igures transgress against ethical boundaries, their loyalty to society at large supersedes any loyalties to their immediate superiors. 60 65 8 Should we be concerned with the patterns of decreasing loyalty today? As it turns out, the numbers may not tell the whole story. Instead of signalling some sort of moral decay, the seeming lack of loyalty exhibited by many do in fact have reasonable justifications on moral grounds. While young workers change jobs more frequently, many of them also eventually settle down into a career path for life. Changing jobs, to them, is a matter of being fair to themselves and to the company. It is a refusal to work in a job they feel no passion for (or worse, a sen se of dread or hatred instead), which shortchanges themselves and the company. Similarly, divorce rates are up, but many of these are marriages dissolved by mutual understa