Denoument

Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic "I have a dream" speech. 40 years ago, the good reverend spoke out against discrimination and poverty.

Of course, our national newspaper posts nothing about the anniversary, or the commemorative events and speeches in the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington today. Perhaps our journalists think that there is no poverty and no racial prejudice in our beloved Singapore?

Instead, we have 4 pages devoted to the "Singapore Succession System" and the Heir Apparent, Mini-Lee.

I quote from Pascal:
We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.

The coming crisis of capitalism

Sometimes I wake to the feeling that the world is going to the dogs, and I have a front seat to the ensuing spectacle.

Yesterday's economic figures show France joining Germany and Italy in the League of Nations in Recession (or lurching into recession). Today, we read that South Korea, the economic powerhouse least affected by 1997, is in technical recession this quarter. In a desperate attempt to grow out of its own recession, Singapore's leaders take the extraordinary step of cutting the pension rate of its citizens.

Compounded to all this: reports that regardless of skills, efficiency, specialisation... all kinds of jobs are haemorraging from the developed world to China and India. To me, this is the biggest and most prominent sign that capitalism is once again in crisis.

Let me explain: the 'rationale' for international capitalism is 'free trade', leveraging on supposed efficiencies of production and specialisation of skilled labour. In theory, developed countries should lose low-skilled jobs to developing countries who are more efficient, cost-wise. Developing nations should technically lose out to the skill-efficient labour and higher-order services of developed nations. What should not happen is for low cost to trump over skills and technical specialisation. But it is happening.

The theory and rationale for international capitalism and free trade is unravelling before our very eyes. It is impossible for developed countries to compete on cost alone. That's why our economic leaders have always stressed that going higher-skilled will create more jobs... but the facts show their advice is wrong. We're haemorraging both unskilled and skilled labour.

Let's take a step back. Capitalism is a long tradition; it has seen several crises and remade itself several times over the course of 4-5 centuries. There was Mercantile Capitalism in the 16th century, run on equal parts free trade and the expansion of empires.

The most recent form of capitalism, "Industrial Capitalism", started during the Industrial Revolution. For a short while, it brought some progress to people. However, it soon came to a crisis: Capital had too much power over labour. Workers everywhere were genuinely exploited, with low pay, long hours, and poor, hazardous conditions. Confrontation looked imminent, and Marx became the prophet of the Communist Revolution.

Thankfully, Marx saved Industrial Capitalism. Realisation of the dangerous trends within capitalism forced everyone to reform it. Unionised labour was legalised. Minimum wage and other employment laws were drafted.

Both Capital and Labour were corporatised into the State, so much so that almost all modern democracies are actually Socialist. The state's major duty is the education of the population - so that they are employable for Capital. At the same time, it guarantees the safety of Labour in employment laws. There is Social Security, to ensure that unemployment is a temporary yet non-threatening state.

While Industrial Capitalism faced the problem of unfettered Capital, International Capitalism faces a similar crisis: unfettered free trade. 1997 was caused by the unfettered currency and investment flows. The reform? World Band and IMF agreed eventually that Malaysia's currency controls was the right step to take. However, the greatest problem still plagues us: the unfettered flow of jobs that goes against the "mutual specialisation" rationale of International Capitalism. Now that cost appears to be the ONLY factor, it makes mutual specialisation a joke.

I have no doubt that there will be an eventual crisis. I look forward to the next prophet, and the resulting reforms to the system, and the birth of a new kind of Capitalism.

Kill the Thirtysomethings!

How do we evaluate the role people play in history? I present you the case study of the 30something generation of Singaporeans.

Following accepted historical procedures, one might begin by looking at the Singapore they inherited when that generation came of age and first started out work, and compare that to the Singapore our quarter-life crisis generation has inherited from them, when it's our turn to start out...

Wasn't it not so long ago that Our Generation was predicted to screw up Singapore with our wishy-washy liberal leanings? (Old Man Lee's theory that the 3rd generation will undo what the founders and the 2nd generation built up) Well, whaddaya know... the country didn't last long enough for us to ruin it ourselves. Thanks alot, 30somethings!

You disappoint me deeply. Let's see: our 30somethings were the first SG generation to be
1. highly educated
2. experience upward social mobility never seen before by their parents generation
3. exposed to cosmopolitan forces

Unfortunately, they didn't pick up anything but an unbridled lust for pleasure and money. Ah, the allure of the 1990s! Upgrade mania, conspicuous consumption, and the Singapore Dream of the 6Cs. Politically, the 30somethings truly deserved their "leadership of Singapore", with its bloated policies pandering to greed and a penchant for reducing every issue into a referendum for "4 more good years" - aka more upgrading.

I'm sure you had a good run, 30somethings. Wasn't it such an experience to be able to buy, upgrade and sell flats once every 3 years during the economic bubble? Well, WE can't even afford new housing nowadays, unless we want to remain in debt for more than half of our working lives, thanks to the property inflation that you single-handed caused.

Way to go, 30somethings. You occasionally complain that this recession has cost you your whitecollar, middle management jobs and sometimes lower pay. Well. WE can't even get decently employed because companies would rather hire experienced 30somethings instead of fresh grads. You've stolen our jobs.

If I had a big hammer now...

The meaning of words

Ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi language), n.
1. Crazy life
2. Life in turmoil
3. Life disintegrating
4. Life out of balance
5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.

This should be a Singaporean word, it's so fitting.

Also, according to my O Level tuition kids, our local English examinors leaked the news to their teachers that "Don't" is officially banned from the oral examination (because the kids pronounce it as donch. My my, just when I thought education reform in Singapore was crazy enough.

Love Song for a Merlion

I was born in kk hospital and delivered
through the singapore mill
the standard life cycle of a clone
(the limited presidents scholars edition is now available)
reproduced in strict quality control
allowing, of course, for a touch
of personal creativity.

in my years in kindergarten, hao kong ming, social studies,
and now the national education module in university
i have bowed to the icons of singaporeanista
drawn the courtesy lion the orchid
and crude representations of the singapore flag
(this is not a singaporean flag
but it really is, since i'm not a
countercultural american liberal artist)

never have i heard
the name of merlion
uttered in the same breath as the courtesy lion
singlish or garden city

i was lied to.
all tourist brouchures compress this nation
to an icon the size smaller than a postage stamp
but placed in the same upper right-hand corner
a fish-lion in the posture of a sea-horse.
another singapore first:
proud product of our life sciences industry.

when the merlion turns 80
perhaps there will rise
from the concrete ground of this manicured garden
scribes, biographers, each hired pen mythologising.

for them, the merlion did not just exist
and was created by the wild imaginings
of a tourist promotion board
but had stood since time immemorial
a singaporean - OUR VERY OWN!!!! - colossus of rhodes
benign guardian of the singapore harbour
that has seen this country rise from the sea-foam
small fishing town to the aphrodite of the knowledge economy.

the missionaries of our urban redevelopment gospel,
the excavation tractor and the demolition pile
shall boldly put to death the real
transmogrify place to memory
replace it with a million ornamental plaques
and a merlion:

We can learn to remember.

United Nations to Recruit Singaporean Graduates Next Year

Well, don't blame me for being cynical about this.

The New New Colossus
(poem inscribed on the Statue of Bureaucracy)

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled graduates yearning to find jobs,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these potential agitators for democracy to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Colonial Postcolonial II

I talked about colonial history and the story of the white man last week. However, it's not wise to overrate the role of White man in the greater scheme of things, and let them run away with "the most important (good or evil) civilisation" prize!

Asians too, have been very sucessful colonisers. More than 1200 years ago, China imposed its imperial system of government, bureaucracy, writing system and language, and festival holidays on Korea and Japan. For quite some time, Korea was regarded as a Chinese protectarate, and sometimes ruled as such. Even today, enforced migrations of Han Chinese populations to Tibet constitute a silent 'ethnic cleansing' policy that would be familiar to the Spanish colonialists in the New World.

Japan has a 150 year history as a colonial power, controlling Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, parts of China, before conquering most of Southeast Asia in WW2. The Thai kingdom's historic domination over Cambodia and Burma that still continues in the present-day, and was a contributing factor to the mass riots in Cambodia late last year.

Singaporeans have come into their own in recent decades as the neo-colonialists of Southeast Asia, exploiting cheap labour from Indonesia and the Philippines as "domestic helps", from the Indian subcontinent as construction workers and manual labour to build our homes, our monuments, to pave our roads and plant trees in this beautified city, to clean up the garbage that we leave behind... Hundreds of thousands of people are transported in this disgusting and poorly-disguised slave trade to work in appalling, cheap, and sometimes fatal work conditions. And I'm talking about the death of maids at the hands of their Singaporean employers!

I haven't even begun to talk about Singapore's role in the decade-old 'trilateral trade pact' or "Growth Triangle" with Malaysia and Indonesia. We provide the management, supervision, and capital to set up factories and equipment. Malaysia provides the physical equipment. Indonesia hosts the factories, and hires its natives, to provide the cheap labour.

That's a really neat way of ensuring that the poor will poor, working in factories and producing goods that they can't afford (i.e. "exports"). It ensures that a country cannot produce the goods and services that it needs, but produces goods and services to people living in First World countries (which Singapore has pretensions to). If this isn't colonialism, what is? And all in the name of capitalism too...

Colonial Post-colonial

"In the beginning the White God (of course he's White! Ever seen a Arabic or Jewish looking portrait of Christ?) created White man, who went forward to multiply upon the earth, with his first companion and then servant, the White woman.

White man was given dominion over the animals and the plants on the land, the fish in the sea, and as he also believed, dominion over other Peoples who came in different, lesser skin tones.

So, White man quelled the lesser peoples, under the commission of the White Man's Burden, to improve them to the level of White humanity.

Then, White man made some mistakes, and discovered perhaps that the whole colonial project was wrong. So now, White man goes around apologising to everyone for all the evils on the planet, bearing his message of White Man's Guilt.

Of course, this story is all about White Man's Ego. If they can't be the savior of the world, they will settle for nothing less than to be the only cause of all the Evil in the world. If they can't be the all-powerful Hero, they'll settle for the all-powerfull Villian. It always has to be about the White Man!"

On Monday, I became a wedding videographer

Well, a friend wanted to do a hip and stylish photo shoot that involves lots of costume changes and posing at Robinson Rd, the beach, and a field where airplanes fly really low overhead. And, he wanted me to videotape the photographer shooting them. That's like, totally weird, right?

Nonetheless, I had fun playing with his Canon 450 DV camera. An old model, but still very useable.

Lessons Learnt:
1. Wedding photographers have a certain style. Looking at all the albums in the studio, we agreed that most of the poses, the shots, the locations used... were about the same. I'm just going to call it the photographer's style and speciality =D. Although, the couple who did their shoot in Little India gets my applause.

2. Beautiful locations are actually very mundane. The more beautiful they are, the more ugly in real life. Ah, the power of fashion photography. And cropping. LOTS of cropping needed.

Otherwise you'll capture all the rubbish at the beach. Or the oggling crowds at Robinson Rd who kept looking at us. Or the dozen wedding pairs who turned up at the TINY patch of grass near Tanah Merah for the "Wide expanse of grass and plane flying overhead" shot. Which, of course, since the couple wanted me to shoot the process, it's all there in the videocam, heh.

3. Never accept an assignment, however trivial, from people who worship Wong Kar-wai and go on annual pilgrimages to the Singapore Film Festival. Even if they're your friends, and say "just have fun with the cam!", it's going to be stressful *grin*.

4. Have fun. Lots of it.

PLU meeting

I gatecrashed a minor event last Thursday and kept it from you people =D. Those who've been reading the papers or TIME magazine would vaguely remember something about PM Goh saying that gay people won't be forced to leave their civil service jobs from now on. In fact, he sounded very liberal and accomodating towards "people who are different", and urged for tolerance of diversity. This is a very major about-face in policy and attitude - however semi-official. Short of forcing all private companies here to follow the non-discriminatory policy, or repealing the anti-gay laws, this is the strongest and most symbolic move the Prime Minister can make.

Now, back to the minor event I gatecrashed. Since my spectacle frames literally fell apart late Thursday afternoon, I rushed down to Plaza Sing to get it fixed, and there was just enough time to crash into a meeting of the Signel list. The agenda? Those people want to re-register PLU, the gay society that was refused registration 5 years ago.

Evidently, the media hype got into their heads. Instead of appreciating the PM's actions, they derided him, and cast aspersions on his motivations. Instead of being content, they want to push for much more "outness and proudness" and "in-your-faceness", to force the issue NOW, and alienate a population that might otherwise tolerate their existence. Their current attempt to re-register PLU will fail. And they're HAPPY to see it fail, because it just re-confirms that "the government is not sincere with its comments".

Failure to understand the field, of what the game is, and what the stakes are for different players... will always produce matyrs who are willing to sacrifice chances for some qualified success, just to make a symbolic point.

The organisers in Thursday's meeting made Chee Soon Juan look like a dignified and accomodating statesman. Chilling, isn't it?

The Twins

It breaks my heart to announce that the 29 year-old Iranian twins, Ladan and Laleh Bijani, have passed away in the middle of their operations this evening. The twins shared the same skull cavity, and the operation was to cut open their skulls, and separate their brains.

The twins had faith in my country's healthcare system. Now, their operation began yesterday morning, and the first stage of the operation took 5 hours longer than scheduled, because "doctors had not anticipated the thickness of the conjoined skull" of the twins. I kid you not. Today, the process of separating their brains took 15 hours longer than scheduled, because "their brains appeared to have fused together" after 29 years of very closed living conditions. Thus, the doctors had to literally cut open their fused brains, millimeter by millimeter, blood vessel by blood vessel. Again, I kid you not. Of course, the twins died of post-separation complications, chiefly the loss of too much blood during the brain separation.

Singaporeans are a complacent lot. While ill-prepared for contingencies, they are nonetheless easily adaptable to even the worst of situations.

I will be interested to find out why a simple X-ray did not reveal the abnormal thickness of the twins' skulls. I will be interested to find out why an MRI would not have revealed that their brains were fused together. I will be interested to find out why it was only 2 days before the surgery, during the pre-op tests, that the doctors found out about the abnormally high blood pressure in the twins' skull. And I will want to know why the German doctors rejected the twins' requests for a separation in 1996.

Of course, our doctors and the media are now doing a damage control operation. "The risk of this surgery was known to the twins, and they accepted it." I'm sure they would've changed their minds had they or their doctors known about the complications before hand. The risks of the surgery was so obviously not calculated fully, and the twins were not aware of the full complexibility and dangers of their operation. As were their doctors.

It doesn't help that just yesterday, the hottest news on the stock market was a 15% rise in the price of shares for the Raffles Medical Group, which runs Raffles Hospital, where the operation took place.

And it makes things even worse, if you consider that half a year ago, the same hospital offered to operate on a pair of Nepalese infants (joined at the head also), for free. The price of the Iranian twin surgery? US$300,000 for the operation alone. The Iranian president offered to pay the bill, in the end.

Whatever possessed our doctors to go ahead with this surgery, short of yet another Singaporean First, another chance to gloat in the record books, "First Adult Craniopagus Twin Separation"?

There was a great tragedy today. That a pair of twins died on the operating table is just a tiny part of the tragedy. I'll be in mourning for their lost lives, and our lost humanity.

Higher Education as Con Game

It surprises me even now, but only because someone close to family had succumbed to a con game, and a very sophisticated one at that, too. In fact it's even more surprising, and then it sinks in as just being tragic, that many more Singaporeans still fall into this con game, very willingly. And currently, there is no recourse, no compensation. There will be no investigations or explanations. Anything can happen in Singapore; it just gets buried, then forgotten, and then vehemently denied in the national psyche.

Even for a small Asian country, Singapore abounds... no, it overflows with universities and other institutions of higher learning. Like every other 'industry' or area of life, Education is very tightly regulated by Singapore's authorities. This includes all of Singapore's universities.

Over the years since independence, we've had many universities set up and formed by the State. Decades ago, there was the forced merger of Nanyang University (Nantah) and the Malayan College, to produce the english-language NUS, plus a technical university called NTU (Nanyang Technological), thus finishing off the only Chinese language university in the world, outside of China. In recent times we have the Open University, the Singapore Institute of Management, and the new SMU (after awhile the acronyms just lose significance and differentiation). Each of these universities were set up under the suggestion, justification, then guidance, and resources of the State. That's pretty fine with me, it shows how important Education and Higher Learning is for a State to want to take charge of the process, because our leaders believe in "constant relearning" and "upgrading of skills" of our citizens.

Some time ago, in the previous millennium and the previous decade, there was the Open University, touted as a path of higher education especially for older students (Education in East Asia tends to a thing for the young. You'll never see a diverse range of ages at a university in China, Taiwan, Japan, or Singapore... unlike Europe where it is more normal to see a slightly more mature crowd duke it out intellectually on the same ground, for the same degrees). As it happened, the University was given official support, justification and resources from the State. And as it happened, graduates from the Open University discovered after graduating that their hard earned degrees counted for nothing. In the private sector, companies paid these OU graduates salaries that were clearly not for degree-holders. In the public sector, the State itself did not pay them degree-level salaries.

Fast forward a few years to the SIM. The first few batches of graduates - ranging from management, computer science, engineering - this is not a 'fake university', hard subjects are taught and learnt - are finding that it's the same story. That's right. The state never puts the money where its mouth is. So, Singaporeans continue to believe in our universities, enroll in them, spend years of study in courses, and graduate to find that their degrees count for nothing. Now, this about-face, this silence, from the State is astonishing. For the staff of the SIM were culled by the State from NUS and NTU, the courses were designed by those lecturers and professors, and then approved by the State.

And yes. Take note, gentle readers: the Singapore government now has a new initiative and a new target for the education of Singaporeans. Our leaders have decided to slowly increase enrollment and number of universities, so that our nation can reach their "golden figure" of 25%. 25%, or a full quarter of the population, should have University or tertiary education.

And those of you in Singapore should know very well the rate of unemployment for university graduates, right?

The Magician

This tarot card holds some fascination for me as a student of culture, and a believer in the game. The following is my re-working of the symbology and significance of the Magician, and does vary from most orthodox Tarot readings, be warned.

The Magician is a man or a woman who stands before a table, on which a sword, a cup, a wand, and a coin are displayed. The 4 objects are the 4 suits of the Minor Arcanna of the tarot deck. The garb and the pose of the Magician suggest the figure as a communicator of magic, an empowered creator who brings forth new possibilities, using the raw essence of magic (ie. the 4 objects).

So far, this is the standard interpretation of the Magician as a Protean creator, the infinite craftsman and unbounded artist. What follows is my personal reworking of the card.

"Magic" in human civilizations has always been linked to the concept and practice of ritual. While Magic can be wielded to effect great changes, it is constrained by Ritual, and hence by rules and laws. All magic and ritual in real life must be performed under special conditions - the Magician must undergo spiritual purification, physical fasting, or mental meditation; certain procedures or rites must be performed, and in a set itinery; the practice of magic obeys a strict code of social and moral logic.

The magician then, is not a sorceror. The magician is bound by rules, works their magic by the rules, and is empowered by their awwareness, knowledge, obedience, and enforcement of the rules. This ties in, and explicitly explains some orthodox readings of the figure as an intellectual of mental acuity, willpower, desire and humility, and skill.

The magician is a deep reader of the game; he is invested, taken in and by the game. (This sentence may sound familiar, but only because the later half appeared on my blog 2 entries ago, under my justification of this blogsite) It is by knowing which stakes are important and worth pursuing, what rules one operates and is bounded by, that allows a person to realise their potential for certain action, and bring forth that potential to fruitition.

The following is my obverse reading of the Magician. As much as one is empowered by the rules and logical function of the social universe, one is bound by them. The Magician, being a deep reader of the game, at a high level of skill, will be more than conscious of how bound he is in actuality. The Magician becomes a tragic figure, for what he desires to do is not the same as what he is allowed to do according to the rules. And desire is always in excess. Despite great power, movement is hampered, ironically by the very source of that power.

Prospero, the magician from Shakespeare's The Tempest, is a Magician fulfilling both usual and obverse meanings of the tarot card. So is Morpheus, from Neil Gaiman's well-crafted Sandman comics. In the end, both characters escape their binds, by being better magicians. Both read more deeply into the social and moral rules that helped define and shape their selves (and power), and find at last the one and only escape route that the web of rules have allowed. The right moment and mix of circumstances present themselves, the Magician recognises it, and unbinds himself. And of course, breaks his staff of magic, and leaves the game.

Why all this talk about tarot cards, magicians, and philosophical anthropology? I empathise with all those who feel trapped in relations with people, or groups. It might have made sense in the beginning of the relationship, some things may have been made out of it, but now... there is a sense of entrappment, or indecision.

Read more deeply into the rules that you allowed to govern this relationship; in other words, know yourself and the relations that tie you to the current situation. There is always one, and only one true exit, only one path of action that is morally and spiritually satisfying.

And then, you leave. Pack your bags and go where the sun is shining, etc etc. And find something else to be interested in, to invest in and by.

The magic was never in the staff, symbols, the rituals, the incantations, or the realisation of potentials. The magic lies with the Magician's ability to understand and read the game, it is an inalienable part of the Magician. The magician remains the magician, even without the staff.

Weapons of the Weak

Word of my fascination with short films got around, and I was forwarded this interesting student film, which some Singaporean bloggers might've already seen at Mr. Brown's website, (Use the "mirror 2" link, or go directly to http://www.tookoolfoskool.schoolreference.com/). A nice preview was suggested to me: Another Student Film, starring: local poetess Ho Toh Pun, teaching at RJC. "caught tearing up student assignment and unwarranted scolding in class by digicam".

My, my. How little things change! I was worried, with all the recent educational reforms and influx of younger teachers, that students nowadays will have it easy. I was envious at the possibility that they would get away without tasting how the education system was like 10 years ago, or even 20. Cranky me feels a blooming generation gap between these young upstarts who have it easy, with enlightened teachers and innovative CCA programmes.

The more things change, the less they change. There, I admit there is a sense of gratification at seeing a teacher lose her temper and ill-treat a student in this day and age. Comforting to know that all this enlightenment, reform, this idle talk of a Kinder, Gentler Society, has absolutely no effect in changing the basically violent relationship between teachers and students.

To be fair, I applaud the fact that students now know how to stand up for themselves, and give this a good fight. Ever remember how a certain teacher terrorised you in Primary or secondary school? If you're of my age, you'd have cowered away, and tried to get over the emotional trauma over a few years. If you were a school-kid from 5 years ago, you would've ratted to dad and mum, who would raise hell on your behalf.

Now, this is a revolutionary change. Instead of shying away from ill-treatment, or lending a knife for someone to do your dirty work, these student filmmakers are responsible and dignified enough to settle scores by themselves, using tools that they possess.

This is what I meant by the Tools of the Weak. Even if you're subservient, you still possess that little something which has power. Maybe, after all these years, things have finally changed. Generation Y, you have my respect.

First Entry

BLog the First, which of course follows the second entry in this blog. In which certain objectives are set, an ethical outlook for this blogger is proposed, and much ink was spilled on his table due to a leaking pen...

Illusio is not my word; the late, great Pierre Bourdieu coined it 15 years ago... but I'm getting ahead of myself already.

In the game of life, or in any sub-game of life, it is all too easy to end up in a state of apathy, disinterestedness, and indifference to the world around you.

To be indifferent is to be unmoved by the game, to say "This game does not interest me", or in Singaporeanese, "No comments" (most often quoted in the Straits Times).

It is a state of willful ignorance, of saying to hell with the details, of pretending that nothing is of any significance. Like "There's no real choice, Bush and Gore are all the same" or "It doesn't matter which party wins the election" (quote from Simon Tay, NMP and advocate for active civil society, in 2001 for a Political Science Society talk!)

Willful ignorance, self-inflicted blindness, almost as criminal as turning a blind eye to troubling matters. In other words, apathy.

ILLUSIO then, is the very opposite of apathy: it is to be invested, taken in and by the game. To be interested is to accord a given social game that what happens in it does matter, that its stakes are important and worth pursuing.

And in the end, it's the only reason for communication, or any activity between human beings. And this is why I write.

Illusio: Do you believe in the game?

Blog... the first?

This should be the second entry in the blog, after the usual introduction and manifesto. Unfortunately, life would be so bland if everyone stuck to the script, yes?

Here then, is my tribute to the blogger who expressed himself, got thrown into jail, and then won a peace prize.