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 life

This 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 means

It 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 of

This 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...

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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 posts
Yaw 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.

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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 Sword
6th 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.