Singapore's narrow-minded employers This post is about Singapore's narrow-minded employers. I'll be highlighting two problems, which I think Singapore government should try to do something about. I'm not sure what it can do, of course. If I've got all the solutions then what are the gifted Ministers and top civil servants for? :) I'm still caught up with my own stuff and new baby, who is a lovely girl. Shit has also happened to me recently which I just found out yesterday. But this is not surprising because I'm such a 'sway' person, so shit always happens. Anyway, while I patiently hope for life to get better, here's a short post for my fans, friends, and other readers to read. :)The first problem is a significant one in Singapore, which is that the job market is overwhelmingly in favour of graduates of certain 'practical' disciplines (e.g. business/finance, engineering, IT, etc) and overwhelmingly biased against graduates of other disciplines deemed to be 'not so practical' (e.g. humanities, social sciences, pure sciences). An ostrich may ask Heavenly Sword, where are your statistics to prove that there's such a trend? Sorry I have none, but look around you and talk to people, especially those final year undergraduates or recent graduates of the latter type of disciplines. What do they tell you? Do we always need tons of statistics or 'black-and-white' facts before we believe something that is right in front of our eyes? Some of these graduates may well have technical skills that they've acquired on their own, but they will still be deemed to be technically incapable. Others may have done internships (often obtained on their own as well) with top MNCs, but they are also not given a chance, often not even an interview. And employers often state in their job advertisements that they want specific 'practical' disciplines (usually business/finance/engineering/IT). While this is understandable for certain jobs that really require specific technical skills, I think that there's a cultural dimension to this 'preference' as well. It is this cultural preference that is the target of my critique in this essay. In other words, what I'm unhappy about is that there's this culture of discrimination in the job market, even for jobs that could have been open to graduates of all disciplines. I'm criticizing those employers who actually could have given graduates of non-technical disciplines (e.g. social sciences, humanities, etc) a chance (perhaps because the new entrants could receive on-the-job or in-house training), but choose not to simply because they are biased, whether they realize it or not. While these employers may have their valid(-sounding) reasons, my point here is that this culture is not healthy because it's carried to the extreme. And my related point is that what's good for the employers may not necessarily be a healthy trend for society at large. This is something that is commonly talked about in private conversations but seldom publicly discussed. Now, there's another very stupid idea in Singapore, which is that of 'over-qualification'. How often have we heard people warn us not to study too much, in case we're deemed to be 'over-qualified' for the job? What happens when someone is deemed to be 'overqualified', and who precisely are these people who use 'overqualification' as a reason to discriminate against otherwise talented job applicants? Despite all the rhetoric about 'wanting talent', 'cherishing talent', 'upgrade or perish' etc, the Singaporeans who really heed such advice could well find themselves facing a grave that they've unwittingly dug for themselves - they have studied 'too much' by Singapore's standards and nobody in this country wants to hire them now! Ironically, Singapore's knowledge-based economy doesn't want people with too much knowledge.Isn't strange for employers to discriminate a masters degree holder just because he has studied for one or two more years (and for that matter, a doctoral degree holder just because he has studied for three or four years)? Many people might think this is natural, but it's not natural; it has simply been naturalized. Isn't it better to have someone who is clearly not unmotivated and is capable of handling difficult materials? Why discriminate using the euphemism of 'overqualification'? Why give people that crap? Employers might say, 'oh but we cannot afford to pay him so much'. But this hardly makes it right to reject these job applicants outright just because they're assumed to be unwilling to settle for a lower pay. Employers should at least give them a chance (e.g. at least an interview) and ask them what's the salary range they would be comfortable with, right?So, lifelong learning in Singapore is not as good as it sounds. First, additional degrees could make the job applicant 'overqualified' when he should have been regarded as 'motivated' and at least not stupid' or 'potentially reasonably capable'. The entire institution of lifelong education also gives capitalist employers a reason to conveniently remove many employees from the workforce on the pretext that 'they never upgrade mah' or 'they never upgrade sufficiently mah'. Thus when employees are sacked or retrenched, they are supposed to blame themselves for not engaging in sufficient lifelong learning and no one else. It's ironic that here in Singapore we are constantly told to 'upgrade' ourselves and be participants in this 'lifelong learning' culture. But when we look around us, lifelong learning amounts to little more than the acquisition of a second certificate which could be a liability to us (and so much for the 'lifelong' aspect as well). In addition, lifelong learning here usually involves highly 'practical' disciplines, such as business (M.B.A), engineering (M.Eng), education (e.g. M.Ed.), and other 'applied' subjects (even the social sciences are applied versions, e.g. social work, counselling, etc). In a way this reflects Singapore's tendency to discursively reinforce the importance and value of the 'practical' disciplines while denigrating others deemed to be 'not so practical'. And by the way what's the point of having a liberal arts college when employers are all so narrow-minded? (c.f. Wayne's recent post at Singapore Angle)I have no solutions but only questions and unhappiness. Why has it come to this? Why make lifelong learning sound so good when (a) Singapore hates 'overqualified' people, and (b) Singapore only likes the 'applied' disciplines. It's no longer really about the love of learning or knowledge but about keeping one's pathetic rice bowl. Could one go as far as saying that lifelong learning is an expensive way of making the already-discriminated older workers more discriminated? I certainly hope not. Myths about love Myths about 'love' are some of the most powerful myths in contemporary society. Many people have misunderstood what love is. Common misunderstandings of love then produce a whole range of unrealistic expectations about behaviour, promises, and obligations. When these expectations are not met and people are let down, sadness ensues. People who love expect too much out of this social relation; they forget that love is in fact very much a socially constructed notion, shaped by a myriad of socializing forces of modern society. Its quality appears natural but is in fact 'manufactured', as many wise folks who see through what Valentine's Day is all about would have realized too...In this post, I'd deconstruct the whole idea of love, not because I don't love anyone or because I don't believe in it. I think the enterprise of deconstructing love is useful because it serves two functions: First, it will lower everybody's expectations about love as a social relation to the extent that when things turn out to be better than expected, these will be pleasant surprises :) Related to this is the fact that realistic expectations will soften the blow when bad things do happen, for love is always on the 'edge of chaos' and thus unpredictable. Second, it will be the basis for a more enlightened understanding of 'society' as well as its institutions such as marriage - which could, ironically, contribute to more lasting marriages in society. There is far too much romanticization of love and marriage by the media and popular culture, as well as by commercial entities like gift shops, birthday cards industry, 'cute artefacts' industry (e.g. Precious Thots), restaurants, advertising companies, etc (not just around Valentine's Day but also throughout the year).Myth 1: There can only be one person you love in your lifeThis is probably one of the greatest myths about love. Cards designed for loved ones always repeat mythical sentences, constanting reinforcing this myth that the 'normal' way to love is really to love one and only one person in one's entire life. All deviations from this 'norm' are then viewed with suspicion. Love is conceived of in a binary fashion, as 'all or nothing' rather than as something that comes in degrees on a continuum or with different inflections ('you either love someone, or you don't; you can't love different people all in slightly different ways'). For a woman, there could be a tendency for people to compare 'how much' the man loves her compared to 'the ex', as though this is a valid comparison when in fact two different relationships should never be compared like that. MTVs and television series often portray love as melodramatic, as though that should be the case. Break-ups in popular media often represents 'the end of the world' - a state of affairs that makes suicide, wailing, fainting, or other forms of 'escape' necessary and natural. Such modes of story-telling have great entertainment value, but they powerfully socialize people into a mode of thinking that says, 'there can only be one person', and 'therefore life cannot go on without him or her'. Such modes of thinking, in my opinion, do more harm than good in society, even though romantics tend to endorse them as though they do not involve unintended negative side-effects (such as making people weak in the face of life's uncertainties and traumatic events).Myth 2: The person you marry is the person you love (most)This is another myth. I'm not saying that this cannot be true for some people (of course it would be true for some people). But in reality, for many people, the person they married is not the person they love most. The politically correct reaction so often displayed by people to whom such a view is presented, is to condemn the very act of challenging this myth, often in a most moralistic fashion. I suggest that such reactions result largely from political correctness more than anything else. Reality is not perfect and marriage has never, throughout human history, been a perfect form of arrangement anyway. Why re-enact the hypocrisy by pretending that it is perfect? Critics of challengers of this myth do not realize that life is lived as a lifecourse, which can be very long indeed. So at the age of marriage (which could be early 20's or late 20's), one may not have met the person whom they could most intensely love. Critics also assume that challengers of this myth don't believe in marriage, or will fail to take care of their family/spouse, but this assumption is flawed and is accompanied by again a series of over-romanticized views of marriage. Marriage could go on and in a not-too-unhappy manner as well, even if the other half is not 'the most desired lover' in one's imagination, simply because life itself always goes on and because people can and do separate imagination from reality. Marriage is a practical arrangement and this practical dimension of marriage is not often talked about. The person you desire most may not make a good marriage partner; the person who makes a good marriage partner may not be the one onto whom your wildest fantasies are projected.Myth 3: Love is pure, whatever that meansIt is interesting that there are two simultaneous social representations of love circulating around in modern society. The first is that love is pure, so pure that 'sexualizing' love makes it impure. The second is that love is accompanied by a sexual intensity called passion. Most magazines, for example, speak to us as sexualized subjects, who express and receive love through the very act of consummation. Both sets of social representations contradict but they are both accepted by people who don't usually notice this contradiction. Perhaps this is good for complex human beings who wish to invoke different representations of love according to whatever circumstances they find themselves in at a particular time. For example when a woman wants to reject someone, she could say, 'I judge from the way you are physically attracted to me that your love for me is not 'pure' and thus not real; you just want to have sex with me' (and thus I reject you because your love is not pure); when she wants to end a marriage with the husband, she could say, 'I think we should not go on, for there is no passion in the marriage'.The first example above of course reveals stupidity of the highest form: how could love be disentangled from the desire for sexual intimacy? Of course if you like someone, you would want to be intimate with him/her (this does not imply that if you can't experience intimacy you'd leave the person!). Critics may argue against this but I'm not interested in counter-arguing back. I'd just say, 'don't give me that crap' :) The great philosopher Nietzsche also said that 'A woman and a man could very well remain as platonic friends, provided this is accompanied by a little physical antipathy'. The second example shows how the positive social representations of marriage as a way of life that necessarily unites practicality with passion (the 2 'P's'), rather than one that leans more towards the first 'P' , leads to negative social outcomes when 'passion' is regarded too seriously as a criterion of a 'fulfilling' marriage. It is as though one's sex life within marriage gotta be unparalleled (or in Singlish, 'super tok-kong') in order for that marriage to be regarded as 'good', and that one's spouse has gotta be the ultimate sex partner par excellence. Myth 4: We gotta love in a way that the government would approve ofThis is another myth, which I shall let others (such as the prolific blogger Aaron Ng) discuss in greater detail. I'm of course speaking from my imagination of what the government would say to us. I think they would say, 'If you love someone hor, you die die better get married with him or her (and if you are a him, it had better be a 'her' you're marrying and vice versa)'. This is then accompanied by the exhortation to have 'three kids or more if you can afford it'. It's a bit like what they call in Chinese, 'ji2 jiang4 fa3' (or a method of provocation) -- as though if you don't have three kids or more it's because 'you can't afford it' ('You got no money right?!'). Also, the age of marriage cannot be too late -- if you want to get married at age 40, 50, 60, or even 90, don't expect them to congratulate you! :) It's as though marriage is something that must always begin in the early part of people's lives...********Anyway, the discussion of 4 myths is enough for a Sunday morning. Basically I just wanted to move away from those hypocritical, politically-correct, reactionary, and moralistic views that are disjunctures from social realities as they are actually experienced by many people. Love is lived individually in everyday life (there is no 'one best way' of loving and it's not the business of any entity to interfere with people's private lives); it dynamically changes over time (but the fact that it changes should not be viewed negatively, for as the 'Book of Changes/I-Ching' says, change is part of the human condition); it does not need to be accompanied by out-of-the-world experiences such as 'a tour in romantic Paris' but can be experienced as you are eating Hor Fun in the humble kopitiam. Myths of love make people unrealistic and expect too much, and they are the sources of much unhappiness in modern society. The connection of love with morality is deemed to be essential, natural, and transhistorical, when in fact throughout human history many memorable relationships of love had been slightly 'deviant' from cultural norms of that epoch. A melancholic post Everything disappointments me. Why? The world as I experience it is largely based on a transactional approach to social relationships. This applies to ordinary social relationships as well as relationships with organizations and other entities. But sadly, it can also apply to family relationships. Most things have turned out to be ultimately transactional in spirit. Even kinship is not a safety net in this world permeated by the ideology of money and skilful coping with a heartless society.There is so much hypocrisy everywhere. People who make nice-sounding proclamations nonetheless don't offer any help when it is needed. Sessions of sociability do not translate into material forms of assistance in times of desperation. Friendships are always easily performed when one is soaring. Convenient excuses from friends and institutions are always ready on hand to deflect sincere requests for a little kindness, making the excuses seem innocent enough. Words of thanks are cheap compared to the actual concessions that could really have been given to make life easier for one. Routines invented are premised upon hyper-fit bodies that can work endlessly like machines. An idealistic focus on ultimately personal goals dressed in rhetorics of lofty ideals make this myopia seem unintentional and not malicious. Ambitious motives are hidden behind a calibrated performance of nonchalance. Contradictions between words and actions cannot be blatantly confronted, in order to maintain a facade of cordiality of social relationships.Experience of too much nastiness in life makes one tired. What more do they want? Just tell me. And yet in that very questioning one gives him licence to say that the fault lies with the questioner alone. Problems are thus always individualized. Words of frustration appear as expressions of 'whining' to outsiders who think with economic models. Harsh words from one or two thoughtless young minds appear like weeds in a corner. There comes a time when even the truly frustrated refuses to speak, for his anger prevents words from coming out of his mouth: he can't physically speak anymore, even though he has so much anger and jadedness in him. Every night is a night of pondering; a thorough audit of all the things right and wrong which one has done in life. Yet dissonance is intensified every time as one reconfirms that he hasn't in fact done that many things wrong. And yet the rhetorical discourses go on - across diverse sites of utterance and vehemently defended by self-appointed moral guardians - justifying and naturalizing a system deemed as 'fine', and once again condemning the social actor that cannot succeed. SDU: steering the dynamics of love SDU has come to an end, and many critics feel that the main lesson delivered to the government is that it's not omnipotent and cannot control the dynamics of love and related activities (e.g. getting married, etc)... :)I'm actually a supporter of the SDU :) I think that the idea of matchmaking Singaporeans is cool, and there's no better institutional actor to do this than the State itself. Why, then, did the SDU fail? In this very short post I'll offer my views as an ikan bilis of mighty Singapore, mighty in all ways including the management of male-female relations....1) First, the name given to the agency was so lousy that I think whoever thought of that name 'Social Development Unit' should bear at least 40% of the responsibility. 'Social development' sounds terrible and it makes the members of SDU seem like problems of society to be solved. It's as if the successful matchmaking of these people will somehow alleviate one of the major 'social problems' in Singapore society, and society will 'develop'... In addition, 'Unit' sounds bad too: it simply doesn't accord a sense of importance and grandeur to the whole mission. This type of name is incapable of generating any sort of pride and excitement in members and non-members alike....2) The institutional separation of SDU and SDS was also unnecessary and unwise. They should be combined so as to pool resources together, and to expand the membership base. This will then increase the chances of members finding someone they like or love, who may or may not be from the 'same social class' (whatever that phrase means). Is it not common wisdom that 'opposites attract'? A male, highly educated professional may well be more attracted to a woman who is not a graduate, and this lady may also be impressed because the man seems so different from others whom she hangs around with. A man and a woman with different class experiences may in fact have more to talk about because they find each other more intriguing and interesting. So the assumption that people from the same social class can 'click better' does not always hold. Finally, I suspect that women who are not university graduates are more inclined to get married....3) SDU should be reincarnated, but with a different name and with a 'consolidated membership'. Men and women of all nationalities and citizenship statuses (citizen, PR, non-citizens), educational levels and 'social classes' should have platforms to mingle around with one another. They should be able to view each other's profiles and photos online, and send each other messages.The State should realize that social engineering has its limits (although it is sometimes necessary). Many things need to be done correctly and when a project fails, it may not be because the idea itself is bad but because the execution was not properly thought through. It must show some sensitivity to the feelings of the members, at least, for example by getting rid of the 'class' dimension of this matchmaking mission, and having a more romantic-sounding name for the organization. I wonder if the people sitting on the steering committee (is there one?) are trained in the humanities and the social sciences. The dynamics of love can be steered, in my opinion, and getting large numbers of people to interact in actual physical social space or cyberspace can indeed allow magical unpredictable sparks and combinations to emerge. So I feel that there is indeed magic in the system, but it's not an omnipotent kind of magic. Anyway, SDU is gone, and I can only hope that its reincarnation won't reflect the rather elitist assumptions of the earlier project.Related postsYaw Shin Leong's essay On the wrong approaches to learning at HE level A thoroughly worn-out Heavenly Sword rose from his disturbed sleep, and decided to spend the rest of the sleepless dawn pondering about some 'real issues' surrounding university education in Singapore.What is 'university education'? I believe there is a reason why university education is called higher education: it's because it is pitched - and definitely meant to be pitched - at a much higher level of difficulty compared to the A-levels. If it wasn't more difficult than the A-levels, then there is no reason why graduates should be paid more than non-graduates, and no reason why people should invest 3-4 years of their short lives attending classes at the university campus, if the things that they are going to learn do not advance their intellectual abilities (e.g. coping with analytical complexity, distilling the essence of complex literatures, etc) in some ways. Let's face it: life is short, and 3-4 years is a significant length of time.The problem I see in some of my younger friends (who are studying in various local universities) is that they are struggling to make the adjustment from JC to Uni. This adjustment has various components, and I'll briefly talk about the 'expectational' component, and the tactical component.'Expectational adjustment' (my term) concerns expectations. Recently I communicated briefly with a friend who is an assistant professor at a university in Singapore, and he highlighted a very good point. Many students in Singapore find the first 1 or 2 semesters of university life extremely traumatic, because they have been so used to getting A's at the earlier stages of education that getting B's and C's end up amounting to a personal disaster (when it is in fact really common at university-level), and some of these students cannot deal emotionally with the perceived 'setback'. I feel that the real disaster is not in the receipt of B's and C's grades itself, but instead the loss of many Singaporeans' ability to cope with grades indicating academic imperfection. This problem, which is the problem of a 'straight-A's culture' in Singapore, is a real problem in Singapore which has hardly ever been problematized; in fact the problem has been packaged as something 'good' through frequent glamourization of 'perfect scores' by various institutional actors and the media. Singapore has a culture of perfection which needs to be replaced by a culture of imperfection that will be more in line with the atmosphere of creativity that the country badly needs.To these institutional actors and individual actors who have always been singing praises of the straight A's culture, I'd like to say this. Let's not be overly proud of this straight A's culture and forget to look at the dysfunctions of it. What are some of these dysfunctions?1) The pursuit of a blemish-free record becomes the sole purpose of learning. (Some) students are not interested in learning the subject, but simply want the A's. Because of this, the whole spirit of learning is wrong. The obsession is always with things which are so-called 'inside the 'syllabus"; some students treat the 'model answers' as literally 'models' (when these should be treated as 'indications of a general approach that lecturers hope they can display'), and they want lectures and tutorials to package the information in 'exam-usable' format. Anything falling short of the above-stated 'ideals' is then criticized as unfocused teaching, which will lead to condemnation of the university teacher. In some subjects, there is a trend of increasing 'interdisciplinarity', but some students think in narrow ways, along the lines of 'i am majoring in this subject, why do I have to read materials from another subject?' This is very sad. If Singapore really wants to train students as future 'knowledge producers' for a creative economy, then university-level socialization must get them to think more like creative knowledge producers rather than passive knowledge consumers.2) The overly pragmatic and grade-driven approach to learning a subject will guarantee that the student can never achieve the highest level of understanding of that subject (the 'jui4 gao1 jing4 jie4'), due to the overly powerful socialization at undergraduate level that results in the wrong spirit of learning that is hard to change later on. Too much attention and effort will be spent on the readings that have been officially assigned, and there is usually no motivation to venture into the library to hunt for more interesting and more advanced books on particular concepts, theories, and topics. This in turn creates the problem of unskilful library users. The use of the library is itself an art and a science: it requires some practice and training.There are two situations that might then result. First, the 'trained incapacity' of students, who will end up lacking the self-confidence to explore unbeaten paths or select their own sources of information due to excessive fear that they will be 'wrong'; and second, top students are satisfied to stop when they have mastered the 'official' readings, thinking that because they have satisfied the lecturer's demands, they know the subject 'oredi'. This results in a kind of complacency that hinders further intellectual advancement as far as that subject is concerned, due to premature extinguishment of the inquisitive spirit.So, the above two paragraphs dealt with the tactical adjustment aspect of university-level academic life. This is the paradox: tactical adjustment itself will have certain dysfunctional outcomes, precisely because the learning has become too tactical. Then two further problems will result: first, the students who are tactical enough to do well end up acquiring some problematic mindsets; and second, the students who don't do so well 'officially' in this kind of system ends up (a) losing their self-confidence (for they then think that they're 'lousy' simply because they did not get an A from a particular lecturer), or (b) being actually pushed down the hierarchical educational stratification system and have no chance of redeeming themselves (think of students who don't do well in the first years, they may not be able to 'recover' from the damage if the system is too 'unforgiving'). Point (b), it seems to me, is closely related to Singapore's unforgiving culture.*********Since I cannot change the system (as I'm only an ikan-bilis, a non-elite in Singapore), I can only offer some words of advice.1) Don't be too obsessed with grades. If you truly love the subject (or at least try to love it) and see the spirit underpinning a particular subject, you will master it, sooner or later, at your own pace. If you tell yourself, 'I'm going to try my best; if the lecturer gives me a 'C', so be it'. See it as a signal that you may need to read more books, rather than an indicator of your self-worth. Never ever think that you're BAD at a subject simply because of a single C. Singaporeans, it seems to me, are too easily defeated or intercepted by tiny little alphabets. Isn't that very sad, if you think about it? I mean, so what if you get a C in that subject? Do you then say, 'Eeee, I don't want to major in this subject 'oredi' (even though I thought I wanted to earlier)'. Or 'I don't want to be an accountant 'oredi', the lecturer gave me C for accounting, I'm not cut out to be an accountant'. That is not the hallmark of a mature person. View your lecturers/tutors as people of equal standing as far as humanity and intellect are concerned (of course!): they are not that much smarter than you are; they have only read more books than you have, maybe because they visit the library more often :)2) Make use of the library and its resources (including online resources such as journal databases, etc). At the university level, it is not right to be a passive learner. Be an active learner, and take responsibility for your learning. If the readings and assigned books are hard to understand, there are many other books out there that will explain the same concept, theory, or topic in different ways, and some of these will definitely phrase the points in a way that you prefer and can understand better. You are not held hostage to the assigned readings (if you don't like them, feel confident enough to create your own reading packet). And most of all, university lecturers and tutors are there to help you, so make use of their services such as consultation hours, etc (they are not ferocious animals who will bite you, I firmly believe).That's all I have to say....In short, Singapore's culture of perfection is not as good as the elites think. I am not a member of the elite, so this is my subjective view as an ikan-bilis in the system. I, too, have been severely punished by an unforgiving system before. But I am still alive.... Problematic system (Heavenly's recommendation) One of my favourite bloggers, Trisha, wrote an essay entitled, 'Why I hate teaching'. I highly recommend it (in fact, I highly recommend her blog). The essay is about the many aspects of the education system that need to be changed, so that people who do love teaching can get on with their real mission...Announcement for friends & loyal readers:Actually, Heavenly Sword uses this blog to keep in touch with many people. Some of them have told me that they've been checking back every now and then but 'how come there are no new posts?' So, for those who care about my 'life and death' :) (and wondering whether I'm 'sheng1 si3 wei4 bu3'/still alive or not), I'm fine; it's just that I'm still struggling with something very critical in my life (Yes, I know, it has been ages, but I've already tried my best to get it done by July this year, but I still can't achieve my own target). So I told myself, until that thing is done, I shall not blog....May I wish everyone good health (don't be like me now) and delightful happiness amidst a generally horrible world. Best,Heavenly Sword6th October 2006 Metaphors of the nation: person, place, and club Today Heavenly Sword wishes to write about 'the nation' using three metaphors: 'person', 'place', and 'club'. My discussion will focus on 'reasonably well-educated Singaporeans' who are potentially mobile, and I shall argue that the first metaphor of the 'person' should be abandoned, while the next two metaphors of 'place' and 'club' should be retained. To forestall any misunderstanding regarding the general spirit of the post, I'd just like to say that it's meant to be positive and not negative or overly critical about Singapore and its futures in general.In many discussions of the nation, for example in Singapore's cyber-civil society and in mainstream media, there has been a tendency to anthromorphosize Singapore and treat it as though it's a 'parent', an 'elder', or some other person whom you should physically care for and love. But a nation is not a person. It does not 'lose' any love, or any 'care' if you leave the nation. The relationship with a nation is simply different from the relationship with parents. If you leave your ageing parents, they 'lose' the companionship and the care that you could have provided if you were by their side. But if you leave your country, the country does not 'lose' any companionship or care. I'm not saying that the country doesn't lose anything. But what does the country lose? In my view, the country only 'loses' something if one is truly talented enough to make a difference to his professional field. So I argue that the one of the primary duties of a reasonably well-educated citizen for the next fifty years or so is to make himself as professionally skilled and talented as possible, for by doing so he can make more valuable contributions to the country - in the quantitative and the qualitative senses.Now, there is one obstacle, however, lying within the realm of political culture. One prominent area of emotional warfare in Singapore is the perceived 'divide' between Singaporeans who are 'ungrateful' and those who are 'grateful'. There was a stormy debate earlier surrounding blogger Kway-Teow-Man's claim that the tendency for some to think in terms of government 'listening' to them is flawed. I argue that is not appropriate to use the term 'listening' to characterize the relationship between the government and the people. Talking about 'being grateful' is also not a good way to proceed, because if you have this criteria, there will always be a hierarchy of gratitude. Some people are inherently more capable of feeling gratitude to their parents, teachers, company/organization, nation and so on. Those who feel that they 'possess' more of such emotional 'goods' then believe, misguidedly, that they have more of a 'right' to this place compared to their compatriots, which seems to me like people asking for the conferment of an honourary doctorate where none is deserved. It's like a man thinking that he has more 'rights' to a woman than another man does just because he loves her more. The worst thing, however, is not the mere fact that some Singaporeans think like that; it is the fact that Singaporeans view 'moving overseas' as a sign of ingratitude. This is the wrong way to understand the practice of 'moving overseas' in the contemporary era, as the rest of my essay will make clear.A nation is a place. Because it's a place, we can do things to it, to make it better. A place that people make it to be, and by their actions, inactions, and interactions shape the aesthetic, political, and societal culture. In a globalized village characterized by efficient communications and transport technologies, these actions and interactions can always take place at a distance. So the view that you must be 'based here' to do anything at all is flawed, and so is the view that 'if you are based there you can't do anything'. The boundaries between 'here' and 'there' have become fuzzy, and while Singaporeans most probably would have heard of this, I think that they have not appreciated the great significance of it. Many Singaporeans have also failed to realize that what makes the place shine is not 'lots and lots of grateful people', but 'lots and lots of talented people'. Because this is the case, all the practices of 'chiding' on the part of those who perceive themselves to be more 'loyal', 'grateful', 'patriotic' and so on to Singapore (as though the nation is a person) does more harm than good. If people perceive themselves to be patriotic, then all the more must they refrain from such practices of chiding, which they know will make people unhappy. In this era, the world is one's oyster, and a person who doesn't venture out really does miss out on some valuable experiences; let's face it, overseas expatriation experiences are actually really good for career development. A person who can show that he can succeed in different 'systems' would have proven his worth, and because he has proven his worth, what he says and does will have more weight than one who has done nothing in his life to prove his worth. And he who has ventured abroad can always come back when he is ready...But a nation is not a club, critics would argue. One should not just treat it as a club where you come and go, as and when you please, as and when you need to 'use the facilities'. This appears to be a convincing statement, but only superficially. Firstly, there is nothing stopping people from loving a club ('oh I really love that club'), and most entities can be analogized to 'clubs' anyway. What is needed is simply a paradigm shift, to realize that one can love a club; think of it in more emotional ways, for otherwise, even if it's not a club but something else, you will treat that something else in a transactional manner anyway. Secondly, Singaporeans should come and go as they please. Why not? This is their home. These are their lives (and they only have one life each, just like Heavenly Sword), and only the individual concerned should have ultimate control over his own life. I am strongly against the view that an individual should 'jiao1 dai4' (account/report/explain one's decisions and non-decisions) to anyone, other than his parents and immediate family members (yes, not even relatives). Neither is it the 'business' of anybody unrelated to him to judge his actions, using unflattering words and discourses. Having said that, I do not mean that Singaporeans should always 'go'; what I'm saying is that it's really fine to treat this as a place for you to come and go, and then after going, come back anytime - precisely because 'this place always welcomes you back', 'this is your home'. The vision I have is a Singapore where a hug always awaits one when one comes back home, no matter how many years one has been away or for whatever reasons one might have chosen to leave initially. People grow, and they grow with time and with new experiences. The person complaining about things at age twenty may very well be that very person who gives his everything to the country at age fifty; the person complaining about things at age fifty may have contributed a great deal in his youth - he should be allowed to go wherever he likes, for whatever reasons, without being judged. This why I do not agree with any analyses that do not build in this 'developmental' perspective.The nation is global, not national. Singapore is a small place, but 'Singapore' need not be confined to this place; the home can be expanded. However there is a slightly worrying trend: the world is big and Singapore is but a tiny dot on the map, yet many Singaporeans still think that 'Singapore is the world' or even 'better than the world', which is wrong because 'the world does have much more to offer compared to Singapore'. To argue against this would amount to incredulity, for how can such a vast entity known as the world 'lose' to a compact entity called Singapore? Surely one cannot argue that 'Singapore 'beats' the world because Singapore is so safe', can he? But quite amazingly, many Singaporeans do think like that. In the first place, Singapore isn't safe; it only feels safe, and I believe it's good to be vigilant and recognize this. It is nice to be able to see the world that has much to offer, to get a sense of perspective and balance, and to know that there are alternative ways of being a human, of making a living and of thinking about things. Globalizing oneself also makes one more valuable to the nation, for one would then have become valuable through his travels, as my favourite fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip shows. Conversely, immobilizing oneself only maintains the status quo. Think beyond a tiny 'wiggle" room', as Xenoboy wrote. On their part, those who are more patriotic should take care not to let their patriotism do damage to the sensitive emotional relationship between the rooted and the mobile. Knowing that it's sensitive and then still insisting on provoking others is not right. Zen Buddhism says that small actions that might be 'right' at a micro level may well turn out to be 'wrong' at a more macro level, and vice versa. Therefore I want to argue that even if being dissatisified and uncontented with what one has is not really good, as long as this has the effect of making Singaporeans venture outwards, it is good in its overall effects. Without brain drain, you can never have too much reverse brain gain, and Singapore's 'global network' can never be too spectacular. The NSSS culture Heavenly Sword the wandering swordsman takes a break from his kungfu practice, to talk about something 'light'. I'm gonna talk about what I call the NSSS (or Not-So-Siao-Sa) culture in Singapore. This is defined as a culture that is not so siao-sa :), where 'siao-sa' means 'cool about it'. Basically, I want to argue that Singaporeans tend not to be so cool about things.....things in general.... :)First, Singaporeans tend not to be so cool about fellow Singaporeans wanting to venture abroad. Some get emotional and react strongly when they hear of Singaporeans wondering 'what it's like to live abroad', and start calling their compatriots names such as 'quitters', 'traitors', 'ungrateful brats', 'whiners', 'complainers', and so on. What is so wrong about wanting to experience life overseas, when this is already a globalizing era? This is an era in which diversity of cultural experiences is prized, and it is simply amazing to me how such parochial mindsets can exist in a (wannabe) cosmopolitan society like Singapore in the year 2006!Second, Singaporeans tend to be stingy with their smiles. A smile is worth a thousand dollars here, so it seems. It's so precious that very few people here like to smile, or bother to return a smile. That's why some bloggers feel that it's rather unnatural when we are asked to smile specially when there's some major event going on. That's why when we smile at strangers or neighbours we get a blank stare in return, which seems to be saying 'what's your problem?'Third, Singaporeans are very afraid of 'authority'. This great fear of authority has reached the state of paranoia. As a fellow blogger (Sze Meng) over at my group blog Singapore Angle once commented as an example, Singaporeans worry too much about the secrecy of the votes. To him, even if it's not secret, so what? Even if the government knows that you supported parties other than the PAP, so what? Is one's sense of self-importance so great that he believes that the government will deal with him (as Sze Meng puts it)? Personally, my theory is the theory of the ikan-bilis: nobody will care about ikan bilises. The government really has better things to do. The same argument applies to bloggers and others who worry incessantly about writing 'critical' articles. When Heavenly Sword first started his blog, he wrote essays about the 'beauty of complaining', 'Singapore's system of talent production', and criticized the playgrounds in Singapore. Well-meaning friends who saw my blog warned me over lunch to be 'very careful' because 'you'd never know what might happen to you', 'better to be safe than sorry'.....they said in a most ominous voice. They told me, 'Big Brother is watching', again, in a most ominous voice that ended up sounding comical to me. (I thought, 'Yeah, Big Brother is watching, I know ah, so? Should I say hi to him?') After all, I didn't think that there was anything wrong with me writing about my unhappiness with the tendency to slam 'complainers', or with my poor assessment of local playgrounds. If I do get caught by the police for this, I'd gladly suffer that fate, for one very simple reason - cos this is so globally interesting!Heavenly Sword really thinks people are not-siao-sa enough in Singapore. They worry too much, think too much, fear too much, and are so paranoid that I do not know whether to feel sad for Singapore or not. The New Economy requires risk-taking behaviour, which boils down to courage. And to me, the tendency to 'think/fear/plan/worry/suspect too much' is simply anti-thetical to 'courage'.I think that this NSSS (Not-So-Siao-Sa) culture manifests not just in the above realms, but also in individuals' personal lives. People usually worry too much about 'what others think' when making important life decisions. For example, they worry about (a) choosing the 'right course or stream' in JC/university, (b) choosing a life partner whose educational qualifications are 'not bad at least' (i.e. not so-called 'high school oni'), (c) choosing branded schools, universities, or organizations to work for. The excessive concern for 'face' is extremely unhealthy for development of a culture in which people would genuinely pursue their passions, for the passions may not be very well 'respected' by 'others' in their lives. Sadly, for Singaporeans, there are always Many such 'others' in their lives. The family and social network here is cohesive, but in that very cohesiveness one always has too many people to 'jiao1 dai4' to (that is, report/account/explain your decisions or non-decisions to). It's too community-based, and not individualistic enough; everything we do we have to 'jiao1 dai4', because we are juniors - juniors in the family, juniors in the organizations we work for, juniors in the nation (compared to our majestic leaders). Who dares to be himself or herself?When the natural instinct to be one's True self is so strongly suppressed by many external forces, people tend not to pursue unique life paths, unique life goals, and try out different things. 'Trying out things' is considered a sign of frivolity in Singapore; a sign that you are somehow 'not serious enough', 'not committed enough', or 'not focused enough'. These are extremely negative and unwarranted connotations to latch on to people who simply want or need to 'try out more things, more jobs, more countries' to know what they really want in life. Yet here in Singapore, we're expected to 'settle down' ASAP, do whatever everybody else is doing, and play it safe. This is Not a good culture and it Should be changed. So what if people around you do not 'like you'? Why do you need them to 'like you'? Why do you even need their approval, their endorsements? What bad things can their criticisms of you do to you or your loved ones? Seriously, why take things so seriously all the time?With that, I end my frivolous post on the NSSS (Not-So-Siao-Sa) culture in Singapore. Note that I occasionally write on what some bloggers would call 'useless topics', but who cares? This is my blog, so I call the shots :) To me, one should really never worry too much about what others say or think. Be yourself, you have the right to be different, you have the right to your own thoughts, own life decisions. Use the phrase 'so what' as your amulet against the ghosts of fear, ask 'so what' all the time: so what if you're wrong, so what if you don't make it in this system, so what....? It is much better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all; much better to have experienced extreme pleasures, than to live a life without passions and intense memories. LEGOs and the 'happiness' debate in Singapore The topic of 'happiness' seems to be attracting quite a lot of attention in Singapore blogosphere. In this essay I focus on the debate between those who argue that the government's role in cultivating societal happiness is restricted to economic management and those who argue that the government's role is broader than those listed above. The former group argues that people are 'diverse', and because they are diverse and want different things, the government can 'never please everybody'. Since this is the case, the reasoning goes, the next best thing to do is to simply secure the minimal conditions for happiness - that is, focus on economics, law and social order. As a response to HuiChieh's post on this topic, I presented a two-part argument comprising the following points (in his comments section):I argued that the problem with the view that the government's role should be restricted to economic management is the following one (which I shall elaborate on over the next three paragraphs). Some citizens only wish to have a good Life, in the individualistic sense, while others wish to have a good Society. The happiness of the former group is more easily secured as long as (a) the economy is doing well, (b) infrastructures are good/surroundings are beautiful, and (c) the place is safe. For this group, there are only three 'necessary' conditions. For the latter group, there may be more, or different, 'necessary' conditions, which may or may not include (a)-(c) above. For them, perhaps the necessary condition for happiness is not (just) a good individual life, but a good society. Now, the tricky part lies here: (1) it is not that the former group discussed above does not Want to have a good Society, it's just that for them to be happy, they only need to be in a place - any place in this world - where they can make money, enjoy physical safety, and so on. And (2) they Want a good society but they do not 'will' it (as philosopher Immanuel Kant would've put it). That is, they do not want it badly enough to do what's necessary to achieve it, and instead just go about their daily lives in a rather apathetic manner. This does not mean, however, that they will not be happy if they could see their Society progress in terms of cultural and political development (e.g. 'opening up'), and they may even agree with the latter group regarding the elements of the good Society.I believe that the latter group performs an important role in society precisely by urging people to shift their focus from the good Life to the good Society, to be less 'utilitarian' and more 'Kantian'. Dansong in his essay has gone even further, talking about the good World characterized by a global ecological sensitivity. So what exactly is good? For the first group discussed above, the good life is secured by good economic management. For the second group, the good life has 'the good Society' as a necessary condition, which means the government cannot say that they've done a good job just because the economy is doing well, for the 'society' is broader than the 'economy'. The fact that there is a coupling between Life-Society for the second group and an absence of coupling for the first group creates a fracturing in society. If the first group still forms the majority, yes, one could say that the 'majority is happy', but this would then amount to a 'tyranny of the majority', for the intensity of the Unhappiness of the minority (perhaps not even a Small minority) could be very high indeed.My arguments presented in the three paragraphs above have been rebutted, but I shall present a counter-rebuttal here. Essentially, the objections hinge on the claim that there is indeed a vast 'diversity' of views concerning the 'good Life' and the 'good Society'. This objection appears convincing on the surface, but its convincingness is based on a vagueness that translates into an apparent accuracy of description. Both HuiChieh and The Legal Janitor felt that any society, including Singapore, will definitely be diverse enough to make their arguments stand, and that empirical research will definitely not produce evidence to challenge the diversity-argument that has been marshalled in the rebuttal. HuiChieh nonetheless presented some observations concerning the 'multicultural diversity' that characterizes Singapore, and inferred from that very multiculturalism that there is indeed 'sufficient diversity' to make his original argument stand. Thus, we are led all the way back to square one - to the suggestion that the role of the government is really just to do a good job in economic management, law and order maintenance, and minimization of risks of all kinds. Is that really true? I argue that it's not, for the following reasons:First, the diversity-argument amounts to little more than an assumption or hypothesis, and it conflates various kinds of 'diversity'. For example, just because a country is multicultural does not mean that it cannot at the same time be 'one-dimensional'. This one-dimensionality could be characterized by a pervasive culture of consumerism, political apathy, 'kiasuism', and so on. Ethnic, religious, and nationality-based 'diversities' and other kinds of diversity may or may not be correlated with diversity regarding conceptions of the good Life and Society, and they are not effective defences against the pathological effects of one-dimensionality. But at the same time, thankfully, they are also not necessarily factors that will always make agreement concerning the good Society impossible.Second, I present my theory of 'Life Still Goes On' in order to help me counter the rebuttals. This theory posits that for a significant number of people, cultural and political development in Society at large simply has no bearing on their happiness in their own lives (as I argued above while discussing the Life-Society coupling). As long as the economy is doing well and they are still Breathing - that is, as long as Life Still Goes On - they are not likely to be unhappy and might even be happy. The problem with HuiChieh and Legal Janitor's dismissal of the need for empirical research in specific societies in that in different societies, the number of such people varies. For the sake of further discussion, I call them 'LEGOs' (Life Endlessly/still Goes On), and they are a type that can be contrasted against 'LAGOs' (Life Actually Goes On). LAGOs are defined as people whose concern about Society (or even the World at large) causes them to be significantly affected emotionally by the state of cultural and political development in their nation. Their existence in this world is accompanied by the passionate desire to see a Good Society. Now, here's where yet another rebuttal needs to be countered. It is argued by critics that what characterises the Good Society can never be agreed on totally.It is true that there can never be 100 percent agreement on what constitutes the good society. However, this does not mean that the main elements of such a society are equally contentious. The seemingly convincing rebuttal derives its convincingness from a strategic distraction achieved by pointing to an obvious truism, namely, that there can never be 100 percent agreement on what constitutes the good Life and good Society. Yet, the critics then forget that proponents of the original argument (e.g. myself) do wholeheartedly agree on this point. I also agree (and most people would, too) that the good Society and Life is one that is without religious, ethnic, or political conflicts of great intensity, one that is without the 'clash of civilizations' described by International Relations scholar Samuel Huntington. Why can't there be agreement on most elements of the good Life and Society? Once again, the critics (a) point to the existence of a visible diversity (of race, nationality, class, and so on), and (b) argue that this apparent diversity therefore signals an invisible 'diversity' concerning conceptions of the good Life and Society. As I have argued earlier, these are two different types of diversity; they are not the same, and the first type of diversity doesn't necessarily offer any defence against the virus of pervasive one-dimensionality of life.How, then, do we conclude on this issue? First, I still believe that empirical studies in actual societies must have a place in the discussion, for just as the critics believe that there is 'diversity at large', there is simultaneously a 'diversity of types of societies', some of which are possibly more one-dimensional than others. Second, I believe that HuiChieh's focus on economic management ends up prioritizing only one of the three categories of factors in a proper calculus of happiness, namely, 'hygiene factors', to borrow and adapt the term of management theorist Frederick Herzberg. There is a problematic neglect of two other important factors, namely, what I'd call (a) 'happiness factors', and (b) 'disgust factors'. Hygiene factors merely ensure that people in a nation are not unhappy, but it does not make them happy. Happiness factors are required to make them happy, provided the counter-effects of disgust factors are not overly strong. Two other points need to be made: first, the temporal and developmental elements should be taken into account in trying to understand why people are happy or not. For it is not merely the state of a society that makes people happy or unhappy; it is also the perception about the speed And the direction in which that society is progressing culturally and politically that affects happiness. Second, people in a society have been treated in earlier analyses by others as discrete units of pseudo-robots (which may well be capable of experiencing a narrow range of binary or simple emotions, e.g. either happy or sad/not), but they are not treated as complex human beings who are likely to experience ambivalence (mixed feelings), self-denial, regret-mixed-with-disappointment, dilemmas (e.g. 'I want the cake and eat it too') and other more complex emotions. It is only through a recognition of the complexity of human emotions that one can begin to appreciate the seriousness of the problem of a society made up of seemingly-contented-but-not-really-satisfied people, living alongside seemingly-neutral-people-who-nonetheless-have-hopes, as well as physically-alive-but-soulless-worker-humanoids.Relevant web-pages(1) Harvard's Business professor Michael Porter's 'Diamond Model of Competitive Advantage of Nations'(2) George Mason's Public Policy professor Richard Florida's observations about the 'Rise of the Creative Class'(3) U-of-Southern California/Berkeley's Communications/Sociology/Urban Planning professor Manuel Castells's book, 'The Power of Identity'(4) Affective Computing robot-building projects at M.I.T.'s Media Lab(5) Film Analysis of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)(6) World Database of Happiness and the U.S. Misery Index (Economics approach)(7) Psychological research on emotions at U-of-Geneva, Switzerland(8) Funny/wise/interesting Quotes on 'Boredom' (Literary resources) Living in Singapore Blogger Ringisei once left a comment in Xenoboy’s blog which sparked off my thoughts that constitute this essay; Ringisei said, ‘Iain M. Banks wrote that the universal human desire is not to feel useless. Laying that out in parallel with JFK's line that ends with what can one do for one's country, perhaps then fulfillment lies outside the borders of our republic because of the sense that I, as an individual, have nothing to offer my country. Especially when its rulers seem to want nothing more from me than to be an anonymous statistic.’ It is indeed quite ironic that the desire to do something significant for the country could sometimes translate into a strange feeling of disillusionment, which might in turn trigger the urge to leave this place. In Xenoboy's own essay, he considered the tensions that one might feel if (a) one moves or migrates but doesn’t actually feel like moving and (b) if one stays but actually does feel like moving. I actually think that the former case is quite rare; it is the latter case that is more common…. Here, I talk about related issues of 'contemplations of leaving' and 'happy living in Singapore' and focus on the situation faced by married couples with or without kids.I think that the ‘cost of leaving’ (a phrase coined by Xenoboy) is always determined by the perceived cost of leaving felt by 'the family member who is most reluctant or somehow unable to leave’. A man may really dislike living in Singapore, perhaps because he doesn’t like certain things here, but may stay on because his partner/wife thinks that life in Singapore is still tolerable, or because a next-of-kin (e.g. ageing mother) needs or prefers to stay here. To the one who would rather stay here, this ‘First World paradise’ is the only place in this world where one can find the things that he/she cherishes - tasty food (although it's getting costlier), comfortable trains (although they're getting more crowded), and functioning and beautiful lifts (on every floor soon!) Clean shopping malls and safe streets, conservative and wholesome culture without porn. A place where sexuality is tightly regulated in a global era of decreasing conservativeness and a place of morally perfect beings. There is no other paradise better than this place.Thus, a man with the inclination to move may end up choosing to stay, not because he really loves it here, but because of loved ones who think that everything is ‘okay wat’. Note that the Singlish term 'wat', conveys a great deal about the nuances of the emotions felt in Singapore. In this place, family ties reign supreme, and therefore in order to leave, you need everybody in the family to feel the same way. But why might one even want to leave a place that’s seen by others to be like ‘Heaven’, Xenoboy asked in his blog. It's indeed puzzling, given that in this world there are many places that are not so livable due to natural or political forces. In some ways Singapore does feel a bit like Heaven, but for this ‘heavenly’ characteristic to surface, I think the following conditions would have to apply:(a) indifference to what goes on in society at large (e.g. happy to indulge solely in pop culture and/or in a work-till-you-drop culture);(b) no deep liking for variety in terms of leisure options (e.g. happy to go to Orchard Road or the zoo to see orang utans, week after week, month after month);(c) no inclination to be close to nature (e.g. happy to be surrounded by concrete buildings and fake and non-artistic artefacts) and no liking for the four seasons;(d) no financial worries (e.g. people who find HDB flats ‘affordable’);(e) no worries about the future (e.g. people who tend not to think long-term and worry about high medical costs especially when one gets old);(f) happy to take the public transport and not own cars (do not mind waiting for 25 mins for a bus to come; do not mind paying $4 to book at 'peak-hours' for taxis that crawl through crowded highways; the 'peak hours' are really long, mind you, and there are more ERP gantries now);(g) the tendency to compare ‘downwards’ with economically worse-off countries, instead of ‘sideways’ or ‘upwards’ with economically comparable or better-off countries, especially those that are slightly or significantly more 'open', culturally and politically.This is not meant to a criticism of the fine job that the government has done. I would acknowledge that no government can overcome the inherent limitations of a place that is lacking in natural scenic places and natural resources, and has such a small land area and tiny population. In this volatile era, no government can really feel confident of maintaining economic relevance as a hub for high-end knowledge-based activities or control escalating costs of imported products. So economically, I would say that the government is doing a good job. But in this globalizing era, when ideas flow across borders, discontentment regarding the ‘unique political system’ will invariably arise among a significant proportion of the population and the resulting tensions will always be there. This emotional tension is something that citizens must choose to live with or ‘grow to like’, as I see it, because the failure to do so will result in an angst-ridden dissonance that is not spiritually healthy. And those who are capable of leaving or capable enough to leave may really just decide to 'exit', rather than 'voice' their displeasure or 'stay' on (And it would be problematic if some of the most talented locals leave; let's face it, it is a loss to Singapore.)I think there are two groups of mobile citizens: the first group leaves because they are pragmatic and leave for the sake of a better lifestyle or other instrumental reasons (esp $$), the second group leaves because they are idealistic and feel that Singapore is not the kind of ‘open society’ that they want. Apart from those who stay because of family reasons, there are three other groups who stay: (a) people with no views (they just don’t think about the kind of life they prefer, and so they just hang around wherever they are, due to inertia), (b) people with views but can compromise, perhaps because their views are not so strongly held anyway, and (c) people who fit in very well ideologically because they find Singapore’s ‘unique political system’ not merely acceptable but actually ‘quite good’! (Having said that, there's also nothing wrong with being group (c) - it's up to individual preference.) The 'extreme' people in group (c) would be those ‘patriots’ who occasionally write in to the Straits Times Forum section with their mushy letters that alienate people, insofar as they come across as ingratiating and sarcastic reprimanding letters more than anything else.My guess is that many Singaporeans fall under group (b) above. Here's the reason: Singaporeans aren’t exactly the type of human beings who are inclined to hold strong views for anything. I don't think they'll hate something very much, or love something very much. For example, if you ask them how's their work, they'll say 'Okay lah'; if you ask them how's their studies, they'll say 'Okay lah' (see Xenoboy's essay). Where's the passion for the work and the subject! Heavenly Sword really wants to see people with passion, and feels upset when he can't see many of them. Also, many are so well-trained in ‘super-balanced reasoning’ during their school days, that they have become reasonably competent when it comes to seeing both sides of an issue but have somehow lost the ability or inclination (a) to firmly decide which side is better (and stand by their views), (b) to formulate a more unusual position (and present it publicly) or (c) to analyze things more creatively (and risk being wrong). I add that they are (analytically-speaking) also not quite able to piece together many parts of the jigsaw so that the whole picture becomes clearer and the contradictions of society become clearer. The latter type of inaptitude is perhaps due to the constant stress by all kinds of figures of authority that you ‘must always have facts to back up what you say’. The ghostly voice urges one to be a mental slave and subject oneself to the ‘constraint of the empirical’ - for facts may sometimes limit one’s imagination. So being a slave to a set of facts means that one’s capacity for unusual thinking is delimited by what that set of facts says, because anything not said out loud by the facts fall under the realm of the subjective (re the saying that 'facts speak for themselves'), and Singaporeans do not dare to be subjective, and hence they do not dare to interpret – at least not in a radically creative way. Being a slave to facts destroy one’s confidence in his or her intuition which can be a most powerful thing. I have some ideas for Singapore, but I do not present them to the Minister, even if I have the conviction that I'm right. Why? Because I don't have enough 'facts', I don't have enough statistics; it's all sixth-sense...Sadly, a facts-focused orientation and an intuition-driven one are fundamentally different, and what Singapore badly needs now is greater confidence in the latter, in things which are intuitive...Will Singapore change significantly in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time? I don’t think so, unfortunately, because this system as I see it is built for century-long equilibrium, and the stabilizing forces are too deeply entrenched. These forces have been presented above, and I summarize them briefly: First, most families here tend to think that life is generally fine because they use the material rather than the spiritual yardstick. And Singaporeans, being always glued to the family network, will always compromise obediently. So even the disgruntled talented Singaporean isn't so mobile after all, because of the stickiness of family ties and the immobility of entire family networks. Second, Singaporeans tend to be well-socialized in what I call 'super-balanced reasoning', and this affects their tendency to hold unusual views or hold any particular view very strongly, let alone articulate them. Finally, an obsession with a harrowing work culture and consumer culture is de-politicizing in its effects. Nobody has the time and inclination for heavy discussions of social issues and politics; they would rather 'chill out' in the pubs. Work culture supports consumer culture, while consumer culture legitimizes the oppression imposed by the work culture. When both cultures are well-accepted as part of the way life is Meant to be, that's still alright, but when both cultures are well-accepted as the whole way of life in Singapore, together they make Singaporeans think that that is all there is to life in general. Sad it is, indeed, but not if one doesn’t realize it, since ignorance is always bliss, and I have tried (and have given up on) changing the views of those who think differently from me. I do not want to disrupt the happy equilibrium in this nation, even if the foundations of this equilibrium don't feel quite right to me.Related essays and webpages(1) Xenoboy's 'Cost of leaving in Singapore', 'What makes me, me?', and 'Lost leaves, lahs and lors'(2) Ringisei's review of Albert Hirschman's classic, 'Exit, voice, and loyalty'(3) Prime Minister's Office, Overseas Singaporean Unit (OSU) and Ministry of Home Affairs's press release on Overseas Singaporean Community (March 13th, 2006)(4) Parable of the Prodigal Son(5) Fairy tale Three Princes of Serendip and The Meanings of 'Serendip' Against non-anonymity in cyberspace Today I shall argue against an influential school of thought regarding the issue of 'anonymity in cyberspace'. I believe that the proponents of this school of thought are wrong not only because of the kind of claims that they're making, but also in the way they have made them. Some even go as far as expressing a strong sense of 'disgust' and 'distaste' for bloggers who do not reveal their real identity.Expressions such as 'closet of anonymity', 'coming out of the internet', 'hiding behind the internet', 'using pseudonyms to disguise themselves' are unflattering and also disturbing to the ears. They are disturbing because not only are they mistaken to assume that anonymity and pseudonymity are driven mainly (although not exclusively) by fear and guilt alone, but also because such an assumption then becomes an implicit attack on the moral character of the anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers. Such an implicit attack is uncalled for when the latter have done nothing wrong at all simply by doing what the available technology and the laws of the land allow them to do.I think everybody has a right to decide for himself whether he wants to 'let the whole world know who he is' or not. For those who have good reasons to want to be known by the people with whom he communicates, I'm happy for them because they have found a reason to step forward and say 'look, this is who I am', and presumably a range of practical, psychic, and social benefits (both real and imagined ones) would follow from their declaration. But this does not mean, conversely, that people who do not follow suit are somehow morally inferior for not doing so.First, one cannot assume that other blog readers really WANT to know who you are. Are we so important that our views must necessarily be accompanied with our photos, full name, occupation, and other details? How far shall this revelation of personal details go, and who is to decide for bloggers? Why should these people decide in a society of equals (ideally-speaking)?Second, like what blogger Design Translator says, he does not go around flaming people and so he should have nothing to hide. I agree but this argument can swing the other way too: if a blogger using a pseudonym ALSO doesn't go around flaming others, why should he be treated as though he is 'morally lacking' in some ways? What 'wrong' has he done other than to deprive others the knowledge of who he really is and how he looks? Some may argue further that bloggers who use pseudonyms tend to flame others, 'take pot shots' at others, and say irresponsible things, but would this not mean, then, that the REAL issues concern the latter three actions or practices, rather than the mere adoption of an online pseudonym per se?Another important point I'd raise is that even the majority of the pseudonymous bloggers themselves (and anonymous readers) would agree wholeheartedly that defamatory, seditious, and blasphemous comments are unethical and unlawful, and should not be made. So why should they be blamed, given that they also condemn such actions? Finally, if something that has been said is serious enough to warrant legal action, I am sure the parties concerned or the police force would do so, without concerned citizens having to worry about whether the policemen would shirk their responsibilities or not.May I go on and present a set of reasons for wanting to remain anonymous or pseudonymous in cyberspace. I hope readers will agree that these are perfectly honourable reasons for using pseudonyms when presenting one's views for the rest of Singapore (and indeed the world) to read, or for remaining anonymous:First, I believe that it should always be strength of the arguments and the frequency of well-argued essays that determine one's overall 'credibility'. Who you are--and thus your gender, age, race, occupation, employer, educational profile, and so on--should not be used to support your arguments in anyway. The mere fact that someone reveals his identity, credentials and affiliation does not make his arguments any better. In fact, at times one's affiliation may well affect the credibility since people might think 'ah you're writing that because your identity is public and you simply have to appear politically correct!' Similarly people in positions of authority may want to write anonymously because of the desire to let people decide rationally on the basis of sound arguments alone rather than on the basis of power relationships. Another situation could be that one may not want his own pessimism about certain phenomena to be associated with his organization, which is in fact a hallmark of a sensibly responsible (albeit pessimistic) person. I would urge critics to remember that the blogging audience is only one among several groups of stakeholders to this activity of blogging, so the 'stakes' of other groups are not any less than the 'stakes' of curious bloggers who are obsessed with real identities. Note, too, that unless one is a parrot and/or a person who does not think, being a supporter or even member of organization (say X) does not mean that one AGREES with every single policy of organization X all the time. Yet, having said that, just because one does not agree with every single policy also does not mean that he cannot simultaneously accept the necessity to be politically correct at least on certain occasions. And one of the ways to be politically correct is precisely NOT to use one's real identity which can always be traced--with the help of the Internet search engines of course--to the organizations with which one is affiliated.Secondly, I would urge the proponents of this 'anonymity-is-atrocious' (AIA) school of thought to consider the fact that things are really not all that different in the real world in which we live--where feedback forms of numerous organizations are often anonymous by default, or at least allows anonymity as an option. Thirdly, not everybody likes the whole world or whole nation to know so much about them. Even in a big conference, members of the audience who have views may not want to step out, for the simple reason that they do not want 500 pairs of eyes staring at them even for those few minutes. If this is part of the 'shy' personality of real people, should they not be granted the basic rights to be shy?Fourthly, the 'game' of cyber-interactions is precisely designed like that--critics should therefore blame the game and not the players of the game. Can you imagine a game of hide-and-seek where passers-by condemn the individual players for hiding? In addition, given the way this game has proceeded, it is currently only the minority who are NOT anonymous, and so at this stage the following argument can be made: people remain anonymous because they don't want to be the minority! And as a blog reader or forum participant, one also has the option to remaining anonymous, so I consider this to be a very fair game since people who do not agree with certain points can always argue back and if they do so skilfully, they may be able to make the other party's argument look much weaker than it originally appeared to be.Thus, with the above criticisms of the AIA (Anonymity-Is-Atrocious) school of thought regarding cyber-anonymity/pseudonymity, as well as the set of reasons I've presented for wanting to participate in cyber-civil society without being a public figure, I hope I have managed to convince not only the undecided, but also the skeptical, particularly the proponents of the AIA school of thought themselves. On organizations that are less than world-class This very short essay presents my views about a type of organizations that I call 'organizations that are less than world-class'. There are 4 characteristics of such organizations:(1) They pay peanuts and yet they expect the people working for them to devote 300, 500, or even 800 percent of their energies. They tell you to be 'professional', to put in extra effort, to be 'prepared for long hours', and so on, conveniently forgetting that they are actually under-paying you (hoping that like a small child you'll forget)...They do not care if what you earn using all your time will not be enough for you to pay your bills or take care of your family, because what they care about is only the question of how to extract everything out of you (or in Mandarin, 'ba2 ni3 zha4 gan1'), like the way the SugarCaneDrinks Man puts the sugarcanes through the extractor-machine repeatedly until every drop of the sugarcane juice is squeezed out, and the sugarcane promptly discarded....(2) Not only do they do (1), they also have the cheek to say this aloud and with a straight face - for the employees, temp staff, and the public to hear. It's obvious that such organizations (especially their useless HR departments) think that they are doing the right thing. The most sinister thing about such organizations is that they under-pay you but they tell you that it's 'a fair wage' or 'market rate'. The term 'market rate' is abused by these unethical organizations and their agents to justify the practice of paying peanuts. Ironically, these organizations tell you that you're really valuable to them and you play an 'immensely important role' in upholding the image of the organization and in delivering the goods; yes, you are crucial to the organization, without all your 'good work' the show cannot go on. Indeed the show cannot go on, for this is hypocrisy well-performed - co-acted by the employees who are sufficiently brainwashed...(3) Following from (1) and (2), you might think that only people with low skills are affected by such unethical practices. This is not true - even highly skilled people are affected. The rhetoric of the knowledge-based economy may give the public an impression that 'ah, finally people with Knowledge are going to be recognized and rewarded more!' But this is a misleading image which masks the actual realities of organizational HR practices. In the knowledge-based economy, what happens might be the opposite: the highly skilled people are rewarded less, or at least less than what they deserve, because the transformations towards the KBE involve the mass production of highly skilled workers, to the extent that the plentiful supply makes each of them a cheap commodity. Have I shattered your dreams? No fear, my friend, for shit happens... :)(4) They do not have the ability to recognize good people, including job applicants and existing staff. So if great applicants apply, they are promptly rejected, precisely because a mediocre or lousy organization simply cannot recognize greatness (If they could they wouldn't still be mediocre or lousy, would they?) Existing staff who add value or are rare gems are not treasured, and they are sometimes even treated with suspicion - precisely because of their greatness. Greatness sometimes manifests as a form of 'deviance' (without deviating from the crowd, how does one be great?), and mediocre and lousy organizations are entities that cannot tolerate deviance, so they remain just ordinary players in whichever industry or sector they are operating in. When the nail that sticks out gets hammered and only conformist 'yes-men' fill all the professional roles, how can such organizations ever hope to become 'world-class'?So this short essay has presented my views on a certain organizational type. These organizations are liabilities in any knowledge-based economy, but Singapore has failed to recognize the threat that they pose collectively. The tricky thing about these organizations is that they are lousy but not lousy enough to die off, and so they go about their businesses as usual, projecting the image to outsiders that they are 'doing quite well'. But in their lastingness they do even more damage to the country as a whole, as they silently finish off on a massive scale all the great people or do things that extinguish their creative excellence, slowly but surely..... Analyzing Mr Brown's original article Mr Brown wrote an article in Today newspaper, entitled 'Singaporeans are fed, up with progress!' on 3rd July 2006, which triggered a response from the Ministry of Information, Communication & the Arts (MICA) of Singapore.The response from MICA has been thoroughly deconstructed by many pseudonymous bloggers as well as anonymous/pseudonymous blog-readers. Many argued that the most troubling conclusions from this episode are the following: (a) that citizens cannot criticize Singapore in any way (including the humorous way), (b) that if citizens do want to criticize, then they must offer solutions, and (c) if citizens criticize publicly, then they must be prepared for nothing less than the swiftest and harshest response. Make no mistake: this is Singapore, and we are definitely a 'swift-response' city and the 'hub of harsh replies'! :)Thanks to MICA's response which triggered an uproar in cyberspace, I became curious and popped over to Mr Brown's blog just to see what the fuss was all about. I read MICA's response first, and by the end of it I was almost convinced that Mr Brown is an anti-Singapore person who is highly dangerous and who can never see the positive aspects of government policies. Then I read Mr Brown's original article, just to see what are some of the terrible things he wrote, and I reached the following conclusions....(1) MICA should not be angry with Mr Brown, because Mr Brown did say that the Progress Package which should have been used to 'cope with the rising costs' ends up being used by some Singaporeans for the purchase of unimportant consumer goods. Hence, 'too bad for them then', says Mr Brown. (2) Mr Brown did not criticize Singapore's IT programmes; he was simply arguing that 'outsourcing' of projects to private companies comes with an inevitable price. He did say that he 'understands the cost of building these roads is high, and the government is relooking the financing of these big road projects'.(3) Mr Brown's real criticism is probably his suggestion that despite the glittering and impressive symbols of progress, these symbols themselves come with a price, thus neutralizing the progressive effects of the policies put in place by the well-intentioned government. He did not say that the government has bad intentions. Neither did he say that the policies were ineffective. He was simply saying that you need money to pay for all these shiny, cool, and efficient technological artefacts - which is true!(4) Regarding means-testing, Mr Brown wrote, 'we do know many families who cannot [afford it]....but don't worry. Most of you don't have this problem. Your normal kids can go to regular school for very low fees, and I am sure they will not introduce means testing for your cases.' Mr Brown is pointing out - in a non-partisan manner - the fact that many families cannot afford it, which is a truism in any society! (Which society doesn't have poor families?) He did not say that the government will neglect the needs of these poor families or will fail to exercise flexible discretion in borderline cases. He is simply saying that while price increases are not necessarily nice, as long as he can still afford it, he can't complain because the poorer families are worse off than him.(5) Next, Mr Brown, through his article, merely expressed a sincere hope that children with special needs can get 'a little more therapy to help them walk and talk', and 'if the country does really well,...a little more subsidy'. What's wrong with a citizen writing this to express a hope? Can't citizens have hopes?(6) And finally, the pseudonym 'Mr Brown' is used by Mr Lee Kin Mun; even Heavenly Sword who usually stays in the mountain practising his kungfu knows this... :)The response from MICA, nonetheless, did not surprise me. (You mean you're surprised?) :) I can see where it's coming from, and I respectfully acknowledge what it's saying. But the purpose of this short post has been to argue that MICA's interpretation of Mr Brown's original article is wrong, hence triggering an overly harsh reply to an actually-innocent Singaporean.Related postsMr Wang Xenoboy Molly MeekNew Singapore Angle Others (accessible from Molly Meek) :) Announcement The announcement is (drumbeats)..... that 'I'm going to make an announcement soon....' :)Ever heard of anyone practising kungfu until he becomes 'zou huo ru mo'? This is a dangerous physical and psychological state that could lead to severe internal injuries, fainting, coma, insanity, and/or smoke coming out from one's head if one is not careful - a state that one has to risk reaching if one wishes to learn the most deadly skills in the pugilistic world today. My kungfu is going to be perfected in another 7x7 (49) days...Wish me luck.************Real Announcement #1: The new Singapore Angle group blog is here. It is specially dedicated to social and political commentaries, and the writers are: HuiChieh the philosopher, Dansong the sociologist, BL the scientist-and-entrepreneur, Kway Teow Man the chef specializing in local cuisines, Ringisei the international politics and international relations specialist, as well as The Void Deck team, The Legal Janitor, Sze Meng, and Wayne the public policy and political analysts. Last but not least (or last and indeed least), there's Heavenly Sword the wandering swordsman himself. :)Real Announcement #2: pending.... :) Light touch approach to Internet regulation Heavenly Sword likes to analyze things and write long essays online, but he also believes that the phrase ‘paralysis by analysis’ could sometimes be true. I think that there are really some events around us that are best interpreted by intuition. So here’s one of my shortest essays in my blogging history, written on the basis on intuition alone.Debates about how light is the ‘light touch’ or what the government is going to do to bloggers are not going to lead us anywhere. Right now, the situation is one in which bloggers find themselves in a muddy pond where the kind of fishes swimming in it cannot be seen. So for the sake of prudence, a 'political blogger' may well have to assume that the ‘light touch’ may not be so light after all if he or she is even 'just a little bit worried'. This is Singapore after all, a famously (or notoriously) uptight country with a government that leaves nothing to chance, not even the creation of something as elusive as creativity. So my interpretation is that basically nothing has changed: it’s still business as usual, my friend, as I would tentatively conclude...I think that it is precisely this reluctance to accept the fact that the ‘light touch’ isn’t going to be so light that creates a further series of concerns (see Gayle and Charissa's blogs and SBP, for example). The announcement by the Minister probably gave some people a ray of hope that this light touch might be really light indeed! But I feel that even this momentary feeling of hope is borne out of an unrealistic optimism. As some people say in Chinese, 'mei you qi wang, jiu bu hui shi wang' (if you don't hold any expectations, you will never be disappointed). Perhaps that's why I feel okay! Because I have never held any expectations that Singapore's 'opening up' will manifest as obvious transformations in my lifetime. The official message will probably not change for the next few decades and it is this: blog ‘responsibly’ (and Xenoboy has written an essay on this some time ago), and the government will usually ‘close one eye’ if one is relatively harmless and is merely complaining about various aspects of Singapore, but may intervene if one is blatantly defamatory, seditious, or racist....This is really a case of the available information being ‘interpretable’ in various ways at this point in time - ‘oh maybe very light huh, if they decide to be nice, but maybe not so light eh’. The night is still young, baby...This brings me to the conclusion that Singapore's approach to Internet regulation is best summed up as follows: ‘it's not as heavy-handed an approach as the government could have adopted, but certainly not as light as bloggers would like it to be’. Serious transgression will definitely still result in a lightning bolt striking down on the respective bloggers, leaving them in a vegetative condition, which is kinda of scary if you ask me, but is a real possibility that needs to be accepted. I guess this is a kind of scariness that differs in psychological intensity for people who are paranoid to varying degrees, and their paranoia is probably in turn related to who they really are and/or the threat they actually pose, politically or otherwise.The threat posed by most ordinary bloggers is, in my opinion, not something that the government should even worry about, for what can a scattered population of bloggers do to change the consciousness of the vast majority of Singaporeans who are not connected to the non-infantile blogosphere? This fact of course will not lead the government to announce that they will make it ‘free for all’, because from its perspective, there are operational advantages to be gained from a perception that it's 'very tough and very watchful', rather than 'understanding and kind' when it comes to regulatory matters. So even humourous satirical works are frowned upon; it's like your army sergeant warning you with the phrase delivered in a most ominous tone, 'you laugh, you dare to laugh...never mind...' This keeps everybody obedient. It's done in the hope that such perceptions would translate into a fear of reprisal which may help to prevent even more critical online articles and satirical multimedia works from appearing.So this is Heavenly Sword’s rather short and 'neither optimistic nor pessimistic' assessment of Minister Lee’s pronouncements on Singapore’s Internet regulation. This essay is delivered in the spirit of not wanting to over-analyze something that is firstly, too vague to be analyzed and secondly, too contingent on future events to be debated on the basis of competing guesses at this point in time... Can entrepreneurship be taught?? Blogger BL at Singapore Entrepreneurs once wrote a great essay entitled ‘Can entrepreneurship be taught?’, in which he argued that there are some things about entrepreneurship that cannot be taught. Being rather uncreative, Heavenly Sword decided to write a post on this topic as well and with the same title, except that in my title I've inserted one more question mark than BL. :) Anyway, over at Mr Wang’s immensely popular blog, a certain reader called Hinly hinted that entrepreneurship education is essentially rubbish, because ‘we can only read about success stories, and we cannot account for the failures’… Mr Wang modified that argument and created a more acceptable variant, which says that ‘entrepreneurship cannot be learned in a school environment.’ Other blog readers, including Wayne, linked the lack of an entrepreneurial activities in Singapore to the ‘culture of control’ here, thus adding a ‘political’ dimension to the issue. I shall tackle the above issues one by one....My view is that the ‘nuts and bolts’ subjects required of an aspiring entrepreneur can and should be taught. For example, modules like financial accounting, cost/management accounting, taxation, & business/company law can and should be taught. Other potentially useful modules include business plan writing, business strategy, operations management, human resource management, marketing, and international accounting (if the person is thinking of venturing abroad). Thus in terms of content, at least the basics of the business world can and should be taught. This actually has a minor positive side-effect in terms of networking with fellow business associates. Sure, you may not need to bring out your ‘Porter’s five forces of industrial competition’ as you speak to your business associates, but the more things you know in your head, the more you can speak to them about, even if the jargon is not mobilized in your attempt to impress…There is also another important point about entrepreneurship courses, which is that they don't merely aim to teach aspiring entrepreneurs what to do (the so-called 'success stories'), but also what not to do (that is, the stories of failure). The 'what to do' portion has no boundaries: nobody can really list out all the possible business strategies for an aspiring entrepreneur; creativity is needed and several permutations are possible in complex business situations…. But the 'what not to do' portion can be illustrated using case studies of what has failed despite using apparently sound strategies. Business education is more about learning what NOT to do. After all, why waste time (and money) making all the same mistakes that others had made before? That's why business schools like Harvard and Wharton use the 'case method' to teach business courses, including entrepreneurship courses. And in those courses, questions of 'what went wrong with a company's apparently brilliant business strategy?' always pop up. And this ability to not be blinded by superb-sounding strategies is a skill that can come about with practice, even if that practice is based on simulation on paper. (A disclaimer should be put in place here, though, for I do not think that everything should be taught by the formal education system: things like sex education should probably not have existed at all…) :)Adding to the confusion in the discussions of entrepreneurship education is the unfortunate conflation of two things: the types of ‘entrepreneurship-related knowledge’ that I have discussed above, with a more elusive ‘entrepreneurial spirit’, which results in people talking past one another. I used to think that this elusive spirit simply cannot be taught, and so in a way I was supporting the ‘you either have it or you don’t’ argument. But I’m now more inclined to think that even that entrepreneurial spirit can be taught. As the philosopher Alastair MacIntyre wrote eloquently in After Virtue, ‘the well-trained soldier….may do what courage would have required of him in a particular situation, not because he is courageous, but because he is well-trained.’ So things like ‘spirit’ can indeed be cultivated through training, precisely because the human mind is flexible, capable of learning (as Mr Wang has wisely pointed out), and respond excellently to ego-boosters. That training could well have an important motivational effect, turning a previous timid person into one who is more self-assured, and more ready to take the steps needed to start a business. I believe that an appropriately motivationally-charged person will have that necessary burst of energy that an entrepreneur requires especially in the initial phase of his operations….The last point of my essay is that entrepreneurship is a distinctly business-focused activity, de-linked from the sphere of the political. If one wants to be an entrepreneur, does he or she stop short at becoming one because there is a ‘culture of control’ that supposedly ‘stifles creativity’? A relative of mine is a winner of the Cultural Medallion, who did think that Singapore is kinda strict when it came to modes of expression, but nonetheless went on to produce many internationally-acclaimed creative works. My view is that if one really wants to do something, it’s surely possible. So even if that culture of control is really there, one should probably bash through it….Unfortunately, the situation now, which stifles entrepreneurship, is not one in which there are numerous young people thinking ‘wah I really want to start a business but cannot la, got culture of control here!’, it is in fact due to some other reasons that steer capable young people towards other areas or organizations - a phenomenon that I shall write about at a later date… Concentric model of obligations / the social versus the political Confucius has this cute little concentric model of obligations, which goes like this: xiu shen (first cultivate the self), qi jia (then start a good family), zhi guo (then help with national affairs), ping tian xia (and finally think of more universal problems). However, Confucius spoke about this in an era that is very different from the current one, so would this concentric model still apply?I suspect that Singaporeans are roughly split into two groups: the first group focuses on the first two tasks, namely, the cultivation of self and management of the nuclear family. The second group focuses on the third and fourth tasks, which concern national politics and ‘global’ issues such as poverty in developing countries, ‘human rights’ issues, and so on… The problem in Singapore is that there is a fundamental incommensurability between the world views of these two groups. The ‘self/family-focused’ Singaporeans feel that their priorities should be to take care of themselves and their immediate family members. They are more concerned with day-to-day problems in their work and family lives, with ‘the bills’, and their free moments are usually spent on things which do not require much thought, such as watching TV, shopping, and basically indulging in the pleasures of consumer culture. Life for them is best expressed with the help of a Singlish term as the following sentence will show - ‘Singapore ok wat, see, the shopping is so good, food is sooo nice...’ (Xenoboy once wrote an essay focusing on the ‘Singapore ok lah/Singapore ok lor’ mentality). This group is viewed by the ‘politics/society/global-issues-focused’ group as being too ‘apathetic’. The latter group thinks that everybody should be concerned about and interested in politics and society. The failure to see what’s the big deal is common in Singapore, unfortunately.In a sense, it’s true that if one is ‘ni pusa guo jiang, zi shen nan bao’ (Buddha made of mud crossing river, can't even help himself), one should not even think of other things. This idea is expressed as a piece of advice which says that unless one is truly well-established and pretty successful in his or her career and have a blemish-free record, one should not even think about entering politics. Other views supporting the supposed ‘apathy’ of this camp would include: (a) the view that we can safely ‘leave everything to the experts’, (b) the related view that being able to wash one’s hands off national affairs is a luxury indeed, thanks to party X which has ‘done such a gooood job’ (sounds familiar?) :), (c) the view that one can be concerned about ‘society’ without being ‘political’, for example, by being a social worker, a grassroots volunteer, or just by excelling in one’s profession….The first view is premised upon the saying that ‘too many cooks will spoil the broth’. If one simply does not have the expertise in a certain policy area, participation in it might make things worse, so the argument goes. In fact there is a ‘law’ called the Gresham’s Law, which, when applied to what we're dealing with here, would suggest that ‘the average’ will always have more influence that ‘the best’, and that the preferences of the majority may not translate into an optimal decision. The second view reflects the ‘sit back and relax’ mentality of many Singaporeans. It assumes that a ‘good job’, once done, is there to stay. But this line of thinking is flawed because even if a good job has indeed been done, there is always much more to do. There are always little things that can be done to improve policies, living environments, strategies, culture, and so on… And finally, the third view is that one should not conflate the social with the political, and that although politics includes societal affairs, being concerned about societal affairs does not mean that one needs to be political (for example, by joining a political party or being a ‘die-hard’ supporter of certain parties). And blogger Gayle at I-Speak says that blogging is itself a meaningful form of participation in society, which I do agree, but only to a certain extent…Blogging is limited in its power to influence society because of the inherent nature of this technology, which shapes the way users (bloggers, blog readers) respond or do not respond to it. Blogging is temporal in nature too: readers will only keep a blogger on their ‘blogrolls’ if he or she blogs constantly and with at least a fortnightly frequency (who still remembers or reads ‘Rebrab Moor’ these days?). Articles written by various bloggers only have a fleeting, momentary influence. The newer articles will be the foci of the day, while the older articles slowly disappear into a cyberspace blackhole and forgotten by everybody. So it’s a bit like ‘fashion’, which comes and goes quickly. Analytical essays (including those covering the elections) are read only by a minority of Singaporeans. You could almost say that bloggers at most form a ‘subculture’ in Singapore. In fact, bloggers who write about social and political issues may very well be viewed as ‘a handful of trouble-makers'. Most people still read blogs of a small circle of people whom they personally know; many others read but do not comment. On the whole, I think that blogging as a form of social participation doesn’t involve a sufficiently large portion of society to make a difference yet. Even if an online essay does get readers’ attention, the virtual crossfire in the comments section usually reinforces their preconceived beliefs, leaving those who are in favour of a position and those who are against it more divided than ever, for this ‘divide’ now consists of not merely differences in viewpoints, but also a memory of quarrel which will be remembered bitterly and carried over to future interactions. So unless Singaporeans really try to be civilized and gentlemanly to one another, and try to have a real dialogue despite their political differences, cyberspace 'discussions’ will always turn out to be divisive, which is quite a bad thing if you ask me….Anyway, to reiterate my earlier point which is the central theme of this essay, I think that there is a fundamental incommensurability between the worldviews of people, who could be roughly grouped into two camps. The purpose of this essay is merely to map out their positions and to show that both sides do have valid reasons for thinking and behaving as they do. (a) The self/family focused Singaporeans are not necessarily unconcerned about national affairs; they might be, but they may (i) want to focus on improving their individual or family lives first before moving on to larger things (based on the concentric model of obligations), or they may (ii) prefer to focus on social rather than political issues, for to them the ‘political’ may well be too political for their liking. Some of these people who do not actually step forward to join political parties may prefer to contribute anonymously and independently as bloggers. However, their influence shall by default be fleeting and negligible. (b) The politics/society/globally focused group has lofty ideals, and they should not be discouraged, viewed as idealistic, or dismissed. This incommensurability is not something that any person can resolve, because the problem resides in the very nature of any society that is not made up of clones, and no amount of eloquence by any blogger or politician can reason away this contradiction with the power of words alone… Power over the body This essay is about the immense power of the State over every male citizen’s ‘body’ in Singapore. It is prompted by this new controversy that is building up in cyberspace, which revolves around the issue of whether a certain gifted Singaporean violinist should be granted deferment of his mandatory military service. Despite the heartfelt and forceful rhetorical attempts by concerned citizens to help the gifted violinist to plead with Singapore’s defence ministry, I fear that all these voices are not going to make any impact at all at the executive level of the ministry, and of the government in general.In the first place, the actions of the well-meaning Singaporeans who write in to help the gifted violinist are based on the assumption that the defence ministry has a heart. But it doesn’t! It’s a bureaucratic machine and a machine is just that – a ‘thing’ or ‘network of paperworks’ which does only what it was designed to do originally, with no other purpose. Since it does not have a heart (literally and metaphorically speaking) and has instead a singular focus (to force everybody to serve NS), all the letters that appeal to emotions (e.g. feelings of 'ah what a pity') will simply be deflected like bullets hitting a massive rock, even if individual decision-makers reading them do in some way sympathize with the poor gifted violinist...As for letters appealing to rational reasoning, they will also fail to convince the bureaucrats, for the ministry will 'reason' that (a) if he's really that good, he will get into the same or another top music school after his NS, and (b) his skills won't weaken during NS (and if it does, then he isn't that good). In any case, MINDEF will be able to retort by saying, in a somewhat circular way, that "if you can't achieve your own professional goals despite the NS hurdle, then you aren't really that good, which then means that MINDEF was right after all to refuse to grant you the deferment in the first place". And through this episode, MINDEF achieves a scarier goal: it once again reminds people of its immense power, which manifests most clearly when it rejects, for the sake of macro-level interests, requests that actually seem reasonable at the individual or micro level.In any case, the poor gifted violinist would most probably have to accept his fate or karma. It is intersubjectively understood as part of Singapore’s social contract that to be a citizen of this country you have to agree to let your ‘body’ be fully taken over by the State, via MINDEF and through the Enlistment Act. So first you have to let it be consigned to a powerful regime of two years, known as NS (2-1/2 years in my time). Then you have an immensely long period of reservist activity. So this regime operates at two levels which are very creatively known as ‘National Service (full-time)’, and ‘National Service’. The latter term, which is an extremely creative variation of the former, essentially refers to the seemingly endless military regime that continues to bring Singaporean men immense stress, physical ‘torture’ (not literally, obviously), and inconvenient disruptions to their otherwise peaceful and focused working life. A more pervasive pair of ‘sub-regimes’ would be the IPPT physical fitness regime and its associated ‘remedial training’ regime, which strikes fear into the hearts of many Singaporean men over the age of 30 (young men under the age of 30, you won’t understand, so you can stop reading this essay from this point onwards…) :)One might say ‘oh come on’ and say proudly that HE thinks IPPT is easy, personally, but it’s true that it can be a great hurdle for many people. The remedial training of 8 weeks is simply ridiculous from the individual’s point of view, although the ridiculous nature of the experience is translated from a seemingly non-ridiculous organizational logic (which is to get people to pass the test). At a more fundamental level, one could also ask why there is this necessity to run at such a fast pace for such a great distance? ‘National defence, of course!’ comes the rapid answer. But in this technological era characterized by terrorism and unconventional warfare, I do not believe that the 'bricks and mortar' way of preparing for a war makes much sense. It’s more important to train people how to cope with unexpected attacks (e.g. bioterrorism) and know some basic civil defence skills. Honestly, why waste the precious time of busy professionals who are fighting for their careers and looking after their kids by calling them up so frequently for mobilization exercises, in-camp trainings, 2-1/2 weeks guard duties (euphemistically called ‘protection of installation’ exercises), and even telemarketing-like duties such as ‘detachment IC’ duties, where reservists need to take a list and perform the role of telephone operators, calling up fellow reservists for some ‘secretive’ reasons that cannot be revealed...I've meditated on the above issues for a long time. I still feel great unhappiness each time I have to drag my feet to run (I hate running, by the way, even though when I was younger I didn't mind it so much.) And I have come to the following conclusion: I think that this regime is actually put in place by the defence ministry for two unarticulated purposes: the first of which is to create an impression that the defence force is always ready to fight. And because the metaphor in use is precisely that – to ‘fight’ (as though it involves guys delivering punches at one another) – IPPT fits well as a complementary regime and a ‘wayang’ show to tell potential foreign attackers that ‘hey don’t pray pray with Singapore okay, our soldiers do IPPT one okay….they do reservist 40 days a year and get mobilized all the time okay….’ The second reason is slightly more hilarious: it is to remind you that your body is actually theirs, and thereby gain an opportunity to reassert and consolidate their identity as an organization and social institution of ultimate power - power over your consciousness (‘how not to think about NS since the letters come at regular intervals each year, ‘reminding’ you of your obligations to Singapore’), and power over every muscle in your body. This is, I guess, legitimate power - one that is legitimized by the 'national security/national duty' argument and supported by many Singaporeans, ladies especially :) So remember that with ‘every step you take, every breath you take’, you are under its total control: ‘Move on, you insignificant hamster! Unless you want to go for RT and have less time for your little hamsters at home and for your hamster job.’ (Don't you think running on the treadmill makes us look a bit like hamsters?) :) But being a rather optimistic person, I will try to look at the bright side of things. Perhaps this IPPT regime is actually GOOD for Singaporeans because it forces them to exercise. But then if it is indeed so good, my suggestion would be that the age limit be extended to 60 years old, or more (say, 90?). After all, who says that we cannot run when we are in our fifties or older? We can!! And if it’s for national defence, we will do it! And in fact because of its natural goodness, perhaps ladies should do IPPT every year too – all the way until age 60 as well. That would be my prescription for a healthy and secure Singapore which is strongly defended by people of all ages and sexes who can RUN and do chin-ups, even if they have zero knowledge about how to react when there is a simple terrorist or bioterrorist attack. Yes, running is the priority in a war, especially if you are on the losing side. :) On leave Dear faithful readers and friends,Apologies to those who still bother to click and check if I'm still alive. Thanks for not giving up on Heavenly Sword. Things are still rather busy now. The above is an interim post for your reading pleasure. In the mean time I'll finish whatever I have on hand and try to resume regular blogging soon... HS Conservative Singapore Singapore is a highly conservative society. In this essay I'll not be wasting precious space to describe how conservative it is. Instead, what I wish to suggest is that Singapore's conservative culture is an extremely stable and deep-rooted one, to the extent that this country will still be as conservative as it currently is even in 60 years' time. In other words, I predict that there will be no social change in this particular aspect of society as long as I live. I'll be focusing especially on the way society thinks about 'expressions of sexuality', and sexuality itself.Do not be deceived by the apparent signals of decreasing conservativeness in society. Things like Sexpo and Crazy Horse may make people feel as though Singapore is finally becoming less prudish. But do you really believe that there will be a day when Singapore allows magazines such as Playboy to be sold in Singapore? I do not think so. Censorship of the print media and online media will continue to be strict for the foreseeable future. So, to the extent that there are clear and unambiguous limits that cannot be crossed, the suggestion that society is somehow 'opening up' may cause people to think that this 'opening up' shall proceed in a teleological and linear fashion. Such guesses are overly optimistic and do not to take into account the ways in which powerful brakes exist in Singapore to halt the unbridled development of Singapore into a totally permissive society.It is sometimes said that there is a silent majority in this country, which is an extremely moral bunch of people. While I do not know the exact size of this group of people, my wild guess is that they amount to at least 60% of Singapore. Naturally, the older generation will be conservative. The younger Singaporeans are split between the conservative, the not-so-conservative, and those who have never thought about this question or issue. Do a rough calculation based on some estimates and you might arrive at the same percentage as I have: the not-so-conservative group is a minority group in Singapore, amounting to probably only 10% of the total population!Thus the Singapore in 20, 40, or even 60 years' time will still be the same old Singapore. Playboy magazine and that company's website will continue to be censored, and society at large will continue to support strict censorship. No doubts about that. There are two philosophies supporting this form of censorship by the State. The first is that pornography (both hard and soft porn) corrupts the mind absolutely, and will therefore convert most Singaporeans into lust-filled monsters who ought to be quarantined immediately. It is assumed that total chaos will follow and this pristine moral paradise will then be reduced to Fourth World status from the fighting, fires, rapes, molest cases, and a whole series of crimes due to the pornographic magazines and their close cousins. Why do you think the scene where Kate Winslet appeared nude in Titanic was cut? To those in charge of censorship, there is no such thing as 'forms of nudity' or 'nudity for artistic purposes'; there is only one monolithic category of 'nudity' which is equated to pornography and to the notion of 'evil'.The second and more fundamental belief is that anything related to the enhancement of sexual attraction and desires or serves as a form of sexual expression is inherently bad. I'm not surprised because Singapore rests upon a system-wide perpetration of a 'wholesome' image for the sake of attracting tourists, foreign talent, and investors, and this overall country image can only be sustained when the circulating discourses, practices, and products (e.g. magazines, television programmes) are all equally wholesome. In fact, even married couples are not spared from the pressures that this subtle moral culture exerts. As an exaggeration, they might even hear some ghostly voices telling them that sex is at best a necessary evil (even for married couples!) It is a practice that is tolerated here only because it has the positive externality of churning out the next generation of workers. Once the goal of reproduction has been achieved, this evil practice shall promptly be discontinued, for there is no longer any reason why a person needs to touch his or her spouse. True or false?Now, do I need to place a disclaimer to say that I am obviously writing rhetorically in the above paragraphs? Please don't take the sentences literally...What I want to say is really this: that Singapore will always be conservative. And the proxy that I have used in this short essay is the censorship of expressions of sexuality. Sex, lust, intimacy, and liberal attitudes, according to the invisible moral majority, must not be tolerated in our squeaky clean, no-nonsense island. One can only wonder whether local married couples are exempted from such moral injunctions, and whether it is a bad thing to be intimate with one's spouse after the national 'duty' of childbearing has been discharged. The worsening of contemporary songs and cartoons This short essay is about songs and cartoons, and how they reflect the increasing meaninglessness of society...Songs these days are substandard compared to songs in 'my generation'. In 'my generation', both English and Mandarin songs are so much more melodious and the lyrics are often touching, educational, and/or much more meaningful. Personally, I do not like to listen to songs which are meaningless, even if they have catchy tunes.The lyrics of a currently very popular song goes like this, "Mayee-yahee...Mayee-yahoo.....Mayee-yahoo....Mayee-ya-heh-heh...." My wife says it's quite cute, but I simply cannot stand it! Especially if she hums that song!I told her that this song is really written for frogs to listen to, not human beings. And she challenged me to post this statement on my blog, saying that I will definitely become the number one public enemy in Singapore if I do so. Well, perhaps just let me say first of all that I do think the singer sings well and has a lovely voice. But still, with due apologies, I have to say that I really can't stand that song because it's just meaningless! So it's the song that I don't like, not the singer. Anyway, this is a free society and I can certainly express my personal views. So any attempt to make me follow the crowd and say that this 'frog-song' is good will simply show that this society is intolerant of dissenting views, that the nail which sticks out gets hammered down. This will then be an interesting discovery for me personally. So either way, I will gain something. In any case, does Heavenly Sword ever come across as one who is afraid of anything?Well, I've digressed. Back to the songs. It is very unfortunate that in today's world, it is often songs without very deep meaning(s) that can strike a chord in people's heart, for society and life today are in general becoming more and more lacking in meaning and substance. So in a way, the kinds of songs that you get merely reflects the state of society. Another trend is that people do not like to think so much. So songs that make people think are simply not welcomed! This is a reflection of Gresham's law - it will always be the lousy things that dominate the world. Because the taste of the majority tends not to be the 'best' if you judge 'taste' in terms of strict professional standards! Interestingly, this is also why people who write garbage blogs have lots of readers - precisely because they write garbage!Cartoons these days are horrible too. Just look at all those repulsive cartoons these days. In particular, look at the atrocious cartoons that you are 'forced' to watch on the buses thanks to the Mobile TV. I feel a strong urge to lodge an official complaint about those cartoons. The military themes are highly inappropriate for children, who are growing up and would surely benefit more from more 'innocent' and more easily understandable themes rather than such 'dark' and complex issues concerned with warfare and military technologies. Who cares about these technologies of death and violence anyway! Why bombard children with such garbage images when they are so young? Just look at the faces of the characters in these cartoons - totally unlovable, totally sinister, and totally stuck up. Are these the kinds of 'personalities' that we wish to expose our younger generation to? Just look at the things they say: they are full of hatred and desire to kill ("sha qi" in Mandarin). To me, cartoons should be cute, have lovable characters, and focus on more light-hearted settings.To conclude, songs are getting meaningless and cartoons are becoming more 'adult-like'. Will there be a day when I can listen to more classical music or contemporary instrumental music rather than 'mayee-yahee, mayee-yahoo' FROGs' song everywhere I go? Will MDA please show some good cartoons such as the cute little Smurfs? I don't think my wishes will come true, for the world is undergoing a process that could be known as 'meaningless-ization'! Cars, taxis, buses, and the MRT: Singapore's transport system Singapore's transport system is truly world-class. Just look at our Mass Rapid Transit system, especially the new 'North-East line': the stations are so safe, posh and artistically designed, and the trains are so fast and comfortable. The buses are impressive too, especially the newer ones installed with MobileTV sets. Who can complain that the transport system is not world-class?Taxi companies are also becoming more professional and IT-oriented. Bookings can be done over the phone and the taxi that you need will arrive in about 5-10 minutes. "Convenient!" At least that's what the rich 'tai-tai's' would say. Cars are said to be 'cheap' too, since the prices of the COE have fallen....My mother happily parted with $80,000 cash and bought a Honda Civic, and was telling me that 'it's so cheap!' In the area where I live, there are numerous Mercedes-Benz's (especially the 200 series), BMWs (especially the 300 series), Toyotas (esp. Altis), Hondas (esp. Civic), and so on. It just looks as though everybody is so rich nowadays! Gosh, I'm really under-achieving!Anyway, it appears that there is really nothing for one to complain about, regardless of one's preferred mode of commuting. But still, my everyday experiences of commuting leave me frustrated and tired. Pardon me but I really cannot afford to maintain a car (even though I can probably afford to buy one with a loan). Anyway, for car owners, the highways are always packed with cars that move like turtles. And even if they were not, I cannot afford a car because all my money is spent paying off the numerous bills that come to me in scary white envelopes every month - the service and conservancy charges, the electrical bills, the handphone bills, Internet connection bills, and other miscellaneous bills.Unfortunately, my alternative modes of transport disappoint me. The public buses take ages to come, especially the feeder buses. Taxis are always taken, and I usually have no choice but to book one over the phone. The booking fee for 'peak hours' is $4, which sounds fair enough since those are supposed to be 'peak hours'. But hey, 'peak hours' is defined to be the period from 6pm to 11pm! That's when I need to get home from work! So you can imagine 'getting home from work' to be a most excruciatingly painful experience for me. I can either pay $17 to get home by taxi, or spend 1 hour and 45 minutes commuting in packed buses....So this is the world-class transport system that impresses everyone but makes a poor commuter like me suffer daily. The strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link. I consider the buses to be the weakest link of our otherwise excellent transport system. From 6pm-10pm, buses are always packed like sardines. Sometimes they remain packed even until 11pm or later. The reason is that the frequency of the buses is too low, resulting in overly packed buses and in people having to wait for 20mins or even more sometimes at the bus-stops. The bus companies can at least provide printed time-tables at the bus-stops, like what they do in UK, so that when I wait at the bus-stop, I can at least read a book rather than constantly look at the oncoming buses to see if my bus has arrived. Bear in mind that I'll have to rush in order to get onto the bus when it comes, thanks to all the equally kiasu commuters!Actually, I could understand why they're rushing too - for nobody wants to wait for another 25 mins for another packed bus, since even when the next bus comes, you STILL have to 'compete' with people, especially the middle-aged aunties in order to board it! I'm not being biased here but in my experience, it is always the 'aunties' who are the rudest, the most 'pushy', and 'kiasu'! They simply have no respect for young professionals like myself and literally dash past us like elephants even if we're obediently queuing up in front of them! This is what I call uncivilized behaviour at its extreme (very common in Singapore)!Anyway, I've digressed. Regarding the world-class transport system, feeder buses are the worst culprit that undermines the efficiency of the system. The feeder bus that serves my area takes at least 20 minutes or even half an hour to come. It has been like that since I was 12 years old, and it is STILL like that. Zero improvement over nearly two decades, which is absolutely pathetic. The bus companies have either underestimated the importance of feeder buses, or they simply don't care about the quality of the 'service' they're providing. It's bad, by international standards, to put it bluntly.Having presented my personal experience of commuting in Singapore, I have to say that my views are not representative. They do not in anyway represent the views of all social g