Tim Jackson

I read his book, and I'm even more impressed about this TED Talk. What he seems to be doing, is to lay the ideological foundations for a genuine post-recession world. How does this differs from Natural Capitalism? I think what makes his ideas stand out from the rest is that he has truly put the human project at the centre of his concepts which intersects with the environment and the rest of economy. This differs markedly from Lovins in Natural Capitalism where the environment-economic nexus is primary, where human capital is only one chapter towards the tail end of the book, almost like an afterthought. I will be watching his work more, I guess. 

Renewing what needs to be renewed

There is a way to think about societies. I read about the Long Now by Steward Brand, about making things last.

And one way of making things last, is to keep renewing them, in long abstract rituals, where the meanings are always talked about, renewed to the surface of consciounsess, like the monks in Japan that construct and deconstruct an ancient temple, like the Bibles and other religious texts that are being constantly copied and re-copied.

So is the same with the values of society. It's not too hard, to connect such replication with the processes of genetic evolution - how life reproduces itself through replication with some mutation. Societies will replicate the DNA - their values, but every once in a while, 'random mutations' in the form of new ideas, enter into the value system (the DNA) of society, and drive it towards something else - not necessarily better, but definitely different. So values need to be renewed over and over again, and how that renewal is done, is through discussion, and debates, with one another...

This renewal has to be done with every generation in society... It is the task of the population to educate their youth... Which I guess, is missing in SG. There is no ownership of these values - the values taught to 'us' are no longer 'new' and become stale. Yet these ideas have to become 'new' or they lose their... place in society.

Family resources or rather, what I did not receive from my family.

Family resources or rather, what I did not receive from my family.

Hey all,

This is a long message, so read the abstract to decide if you want to continue reading.

Abstract:

On previous ocassions, I have mentioned that I'm very thankful for my family, for giving me the resources that allowed me access to the different cultural contexts and even some unexpected skills and values that have proven their worth time and time again. This time, however, I would like to narrate about the values that they didn't give to me, which should segue into my interest in Outliers, and about the additional reasons why I love the book. The point is that, I realise that I might fall under the 'Outlier' under Gladwell's rubric, and my personal life-narrative compels me to find ways to address this 'Outlier' phenomena, and to find ways to empower more people to be 'Outliers' in their own right.

---

In other occasions, I have mentioned the Hokkien and the values of working hard that I think my family has given to me. Hokkien is valuable in that it allowed me access to the different socioeconomic contexts that existed in SG. And of course, working hard. Enough said.

Now, however, as I was thinking through things, I realised that there were things that my parents did not give to me, that might even handicapped me somewhat even till today. Now, I say this not to bash my family, but to be honest, and sometimes it hurts. Nonetheless, I still feel its important to share this, because I think I am not unique.

I think as always, it helps to provide some context, both personal and social. The personal context is this: my parents were born in the 50s, were the recipients of the PAP's socio-economic programme, which has led to considerable material prosperity. Also came along the political constraints, and the belief in 'minding your own business and not get involved in politics'. The additional context is that my parents were primary-school educated, and so I was pretty much left to fend for my own when it came to decisions about higher education (I chose my own JC, chose my own university, chose USP by myself). Since then, I have pretty much lived an independent life, making my own decisions, and learning about handling consequences.

I realise that my parents did not exactly do the 'concerted cultivation' but that Gladwell talked about, and coupled with the 'MYOB' attitude, pretty much gave me a slow start in activism and the additional cultural capital that other people might have in some other areas (fine dining, photography, technology, concerted cultivation, personal initiative).

I guess after a while, people get stuck about their attitudes and ideologies, and if one does not learn to unlearn them, then... well, I guess that's what happened to my parents. They kinda got 'stuck'. Meantime, the world has changed around them, and so have I. I began to dabble a bit in activism, and got myself engaged in interesting conversations about the future of the country. Problem now is, parents and family don't fully understand the significance of these conversations that I've been having, and out of sheer concern, are trying to limit my attempts at acquiring those conversations...

The preceding paragraph then is a good place to start segueing into Outliers. The problem with me with Outliers is that I relate to it at a gut level. The narrative that Gladwell describes matches my own experience, except for one thing, that I did not have the complete set of cultural values to get to where I am now. If I had stuck to my parent's attitude, I could simply be another mugger at NUS doing science or engineering, trying to get good grades, just trying to earn money and all. Not that it's a less meaningful life, but a different life nonetheless. I might be more boring, but also more focused, hmm... oh well. Not that I'm successful, but seeing the past drawn out like that, I believe that one could not possibly predict, based on the circumstances of my family and past. Despite the flaws and the gaps, Outliers continues to haunt me, because of its narrative that the success of an individual can be socially and culturally constructed, that it depends on the cultural capital that the person is brought up in, but that it also depends on the individual choices that are made. Quite 'duh', but the major point is that, legacies matter, and for my case, and I'm sure the case for many people, is that those legacies still continue to haunt us, as people find ways to change and adapt in the future that is always becoming the present. The narrative that Gladwell presents compels me to think of ways of how I would like less of the 'Outliers' like myself, and instead, push for more people to be equipped with the cultural capital to allow them to live their lives to the full.

incidents with technology

In just under 48 hours, the calendar says 2009 will be past, and 2010 will come. Hmm... I wonder what celestial mechanics would say. The points of reference to gauge these cycles are changing somewhat - its never quite exactly the same orbit...

On that thoughtful mode, I thought about the technological ecology that we have around us. 'Technological ecologý'? Huh? Well, as with any system composed of many units, it is usually somewhat more advantageous to have many diverse units, rather than to have, say a set of homogenous units. What am I really talking about? Well, I'm using my iPhone, which together with my Mac, means that I'm using Apple for my informational, communication needs. But the transition wasn't easy. I'm not an organised person - my contacts were messy, and disorganised. Also, I forgot to ask the dude at the counter to transfer the contacts from the old SIM card to the new one. Taken together, the transition then posed a serious challenge, the consequence of which I am still working out. As I thought about this, I weigh the pros and cons of going fully Apple-d. Sure, Apple products are nice to work with, but it also means that I have to keep the components sync-ed all the time, even more so now that they can communicate with each other, whereas with the old set-up, the mobile and the computer were quite separate. Well I guess now it requires a greater sense of diligence to maintain the contact list - which would require a lot of diligence on the part of the user.

This incident has also caused me to appreciate how intertwined the different devices are in our lives. By this I mean, not just in our communications, but in many other areas. Transportation, food, accommodation, energy.... Just as there are ecologies in nature, so there are ecologies in the human sphere, and just as there is the biosphere, so there is a technosphere, or rather, an eco-technosphere - that there isn't really a biosphere distinct from the technosphere, but both are now enmeshed intimately, and that this enmeshing is intensifying, yet there isn't a broad consensus about how to handle this relationship, and how it could translate into tangible changes in how people live their lives... Kevin Kelly got there first, again, I think. so... oh well.

So long 2009. Thanks for all the fish!

politics of alienation, compassion in SG + usual frustrations

During a recent ICT, had the chance to meet with all the lao chiao people - the old birds; the veterans who have heard from other friends about their ICT experience... Although there are many things to be said about the entire ICT experience, this post does not intend to look into this; rather, I will explore other issues - in particular, those relating to how people experience the SG bureaucracy.

I am beginning to think of the key words that will shape the vision that I have - they are 'engagement', 'compassion', 'openness''... In essence, I want to mean this: that there needs to be an acceptance of worldviews, of the plurality in SG society - to be aware of this plurality, and to reformulate policies to address those issues. In other words, there is also a requirement for compassionate and empathetic policymakers, who need to step in the shoes of the people whose policies they will affect. I hear of stories of prostitutes being expatriated for two years but foreign wives being expatriated indefinitely... One really wonders about the genuine rationale behind some of the policies, and wonders about the degree of information control and openness to Singaporeans to debate and discuss these issues. One wonders too, about the kind of feedback received by REACH... I've always thought about some of these things in connection to the reasons for the conduct of NS - defending SG - but what kind of SG do I want to defend? An SG that continually closes the doors of engagement by a concerned citizenry? I'm really conflicted at times... If there is something truly worth defending, there will be commitment...

Without an engaged citizenry, you get a politics of alienation - where people are disconnected from the reality of their lives in not having any chance of engagement with the bodies that formulated the policies. When people are disempowered by the bureaucracy of their countries, then what is left is something that robs the drive of people to live their lives, people that are covertly oppressed in not realising the potential of their lives, in following uncritically the values being told from governments. Surely this existence is a poorer one compared to an alternative where people are given the chance to actively define, and shape their lives - where they can contribute in small but effective ways in the way their lives ought to be run by their country. While the condition is ideal, it also requires compassionate institutions that are willing to empathise with the way people live their lives,and to understand... Concerns of economics? Hmm, I really don't know...

The frustration part has to do with an old complaint: that the not-so-educated Singaporeans from a previous generation are essentially strangers in their own lands - they do not know English, and so are lost in our English-dominated streetscape - they can't get around without an English interpreter for them. This should not be the case... and reflects in a lack of empathy for the condition of thousands of Singaporeans who are lost...

post-reservist

There are many things that could be written about for this reservist. I could talk about... allocation of man, expectations of discipline, and so many other things. But for now, I will look at things from a sociological perspective and reflect on the things I learnt...

I realise that being in university exposes oneself to a limited subset of people in Singaporeans. The people who go to university have at least a mindset of a partially secured future, that at the minimum, they should graduate with a bachelor's degree - better than nothing in a qualification-driven society at least for entry positions.

However, I return to reservist, and the norm is for people NOT to have the advanced tertiary education of a university... Instead, these are people who survive through their wits alone, with the accumulation of insights and experience. They live by their cunning, their resourcefulness, and their EQ... However, they don't have a future entirely secured by themselves. They are risktakers, and that means they will resort to illegal activities at times... Sadly, they are also left out in the SG society - they are seen as callous, unruly... when in fact, they are more intelligent than the atas people at university give credit for.

I understand better now, this concept that SG is really on the verge of class warfare - because the cultural capital of the different parties are divergent, that these worlds, if not for the context of NS, do not interpenetrate at all, but are based on so different assumptions of success and failures. In my context, and perhaps for the university students; the scholars; success comes from the ability to participate in the system - notably the public sector, or the corporate sector. For these other people, success is defined by the sheer ability to make money by yourself - forming your own company perhaps... This really strikes me as an issue of empowerment - these people need to be further empowered with the necessary knowledge and skills; to give them more space to grow, and develop. These people do not do well in the current school system that we have - they simply have intelligence(s) that are not measurable by examinations and interviews, but by their ability to form and harness relationships for themselves. These people are the true masters of their own fate - no institution can fit to them - they will test the systems, find the loopholes, and exploit them to varying effects - the mindset of a ristktaker, an entrepreneur, and if given the right knowledge, could be the leaders of a different kind of economy in SG...

But SG institutions have ignored them...

To step into their world is to accept a different set of assumptions about the ways and means to live a life... hard work, perseverance and all these values take on different meanings in their application in their way of life...

Way of life... there isn't a 'way of life' in SG - there are different ways about it.

techno-socialism (kevin kelly got there first)

1. Wondering: if its possible to measure social/cultural capital, and you latch on some kind of management, distribution system to it, I think its going to look like socialism a lot. The measurement of the social/cultural capital is the problematic part, and I'm thinking if thats where the tech part will come in providing new ways to measure the intangible.

When I'm thinking of this, the Niels Bohr quote comes to mind, 'We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.'

2. So... This socialism I observe stems from my observations of technology - that Wikipedia, Internet, and various such projects have come into existence by the sheer goodwill of people, and I think if socialism is going to arrive, it won't be due to a revolution which overthrows capitalism, but the result of incremental progress made possible by the developments in technology, as how steam engines led to the 'Industrial Revolution', and to the capitalism of our present day.

This observation also stems from my observation that 'social change' usually creeps along - dramatic revolution is the exception to the norm, and so... yeap.

3. The third thread to this idea is this: that I observe that technology consists of the embodiment of ideas (remind me to read Paperclip). It is really difficult to abstract the social from any of our present-day artifice. Hence everyday-objects embody some kind of logic, and I believe in our everyday, that logic is our contemporary-capitalism - in the creation of wants, the accumulation of material, and that it is then possible to imagine a different kind of world where the everyday-logic is composed of a different set of assumptions, one that is reflected in the physical technology of things. One could imagine the forms of technology that constantly levels any hierarchy in society - in such a way, inequality is minimized to perhaps, an infinitesimal extent - and that everyone's inequality keeps things equal because of the deployment of technology in asymmetrical ways.

I'm thinking I'm not the first to... oh, Kevin Kelly wrote about it...

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=all

Now we're trying the same trick with collaborative social technology, applying digital socialism to a growing list of wishes—and occasionally to problems that the free market couldn't solve—to see if it works. So far, the results have been startling. At nearly every turn, the power of sharing, cooperation, collaboration, openness, free pricing, and transparency has proven to be more practical than we capitalists thought possible. Each time we try it, we find that the power of the new socialism is bigger than we imagined.

So.. I think its really interesting that socialism could come from so unexpected a source!

some thoughts about education

After going around places, I have some opinion about SG education. Not that it would be mindblowing.

The distinction I want to make is between efficient and being effective.

SG education seems to churn out efficient people, who can do great things, like solve problems and write wonderful essays. What it does not do so well, is to train people to be effective people - what to do with all these wonderful skills that they end up with.

In fact, that is all the difference there is. SG has brilliant people - no doubt about that. The question then is, where do these brilliant people go? Because these people found no avenue of being effective, they end up being baited by SG govt dangling prestigious looking packages called PSC scholarships. Or the lure of money in the finance sector. It's because we don't have a truly effective programme for education that talent is lost... When these scholars go overseas, they realise that they don't want to be efficient for the government, and conflicts arise. They want to be effective for themselves.

The difference is really subtle - and its sometimes difficult to tell them apart. The difference is really this: being effective is about knowing what you want to do and why. Unless an education can teach people how to do that, then really, everything else is moot.

the interconnectedness of health and poverty

With this post, I think I have amassed a whole backlog of issues worth further analysis in my wordpress blog. And to add to that...

I'm now helping out with a community project, which is about evaluating whether people require funds from a welfare organisation. Part of that involves a home visit, and this post was about the home visit... tangentially.

A near-retired man has heart disease, and that is preventing him from taking job. And he requires financial assistance. I wonder if being poor and having such chronic health problems is correlated. I wonder about the access to health education and good food, and think about whether the poor have access to cheaper but poor-quality food, rich in fats and carbohydrates, which ends up causing health problems, financial problems in the longer run.

So the thought is: is education also correlated with health problems correlated with economic problems? I don't know. But observing the family, health problems have been more obvious, and I hope that the cycle does not get perpetuated.

Add to that, is the thought about the elderly. Govt is probably now in mitigation mode, which means that they want to lessen the social, economic costs of being old. Won't work. Because the perspective is entirely wrong. Being old isn't all bad, but instead, needs to be re-looked at. The framing of the old s crucial, because its prob also one of the missing components that make SG a place really worth living. Can I grow old here? - that question will come into full force many years later...

In other words, old has to be reframed as gold.

lessons learnt from a short gathering

Had a short gathering with some sec sch friends.

And perhaps today I finally laid things to rest and understood better what friendship is: that despite all the divergence, friendship - the legacy links are what remain.

I thought about the agency-structure thing a bit, and I thought about the scholars bound for the various agencies. I guess they would be the ones who would understand the agency-structure thing most. For me, I guess the complicated thing is that structures are also composed of agents, and its a conflict between those who wanna maintain the structure, and those who wanna change the structure. Even the real anarchists, would define a social order, one that is based between the arrangements of people, using a shared framework - and that would include an order within.

The next thing I thought about was context. I thought about the overseas scholars again, and how they would be from scholars who studied in SG. Overseas dudes bring a different experience, but it is the SG scholars who are immersed in the local environment, whom I hope would know and understand the situation here. The challenge for all of us is how to remain critical thinkers, in the midst of a deeply entrenched system that does not always tolerate divergent opinions....

Which brings me to another point, that understand is not empathy, and I think, for policy to be truly effective, it has to be empathetic, not just effective. I know that govt tries to do that, and sharing by people who are there leads me to believe that policymakers don't live in ivory towers...But in SG's current path in development, policies could perhaps move not just from effectiveness, but have components of empathy...- a lot of fluff, and perhaps I'll get to there someday in fully fleshing out the idea...

And so... understanding is not empathy. Empathy is understanding, with the added emotional, experiential context. And that perhaps, is the end for all information systems, with technology being the means in bringing about the end of emapthy. Maybe infocomm is misleading, maybe empathetic tech might be better, though the juxtaposition is surely jarring...

Is that all?

-All these from a run. bleargh.

A curious MRT train ride

Today I did a couple of things that might have been wrong.

I got fed up with MRT commuters that I deliberately pushed an oncoming MRT passenger. I felt his buay-songness as he shoved back.

I'm not feeling exactly proud of it now, but after-the-fact, I think about the fact that Singapore's social engineering isn't working in some of the areas it SHOULD work. Commuter courtesy is definitely something that leaves much to be desired.

I really shouldn't have pushed that oncoming innocent fella, but I was just so fed up that people don't know what to do, despite them being in the same situation as I have been many times.

Why can't people just understand that they need to step aside when people need to move out?

This line of thinking got me started on... the notion that Singapore is really a place where there are first-class infrastructure and maybe, third-world people. I know that phrase is a cliche but still, I can't help but think that the notion is quite spot on.

Which leads me once again, to the acknowledgment that there are many different Singapore(s) that there are sections of Singaporeans that live life very differently from that presented by the government. Which means there are rifts and gaps that need to be SEEN, and bridges need to be built. Some of these rifts are taboos, words spoken in private, but hardly in public... Things need to be seen as they are, not imagined to be, nor glossed over.

Some stray thoughts that jumped...

Education is the key to... courtesy? One could imagine comparing commuter behaviour between the rush hour traffic on weekday mornings, which compose of office executives... and the commuter behaviour during weekend rush periods. Different crowds, different behaviours, perhaps?

Because in the weekday rush hour, people do get out from trains at stations to let people alighting passengers exit. Whereas in the weekend evening rush hour... civility... ?

I am making some casual correlations, and observational studies might prove or disprove my correlations. And of course, the golden adage in all statistical studies: correlation is not causation. Anyhow, the observation of different behaviours might also be the result of entirely different reasons, reasons that are independent of education level or socio-economic status. Carefully designed social experiments might be able to tease the details out. But one wonders whether the appearance/inner gaze of the office suit and its behavioural entailments might figure in somewhere.

Next, I wonder about foreign workers, and thinking about their social integration... but thats an open-ended thought, which leads to nowhere, at least for now.

More importantly, I'm looking at the notion of different Singapore(s), because like I said earlier, I stood opposite someone who might be called an Ah Beng, who professed, in his conversations to his young brother, to aspire to be a gangleader, summoning man with the twitch of his finger. So somewhere along the lines, gangs have been romanticised, and the guy seems also to disregard his education, saying, 'whether i study or not, the results are still the same' which might seem to reflect nothing, until his young brother says he aspires to university and trash his elder brother in that area. Note also the coarse use of language.

The entire sequence on the train was rather... interesting. Fact that the supposed Ah Beng is still with his mum could mean that he is still at least, financially dependent on him, and that deep in his heart, he's still also a mother's boy who simply found alternative ways of social involvement (note: gangs) that might make his mother proud of him. But that might not be the case.

I mean, I don't know, actually. I wonder if its alright to say that these kids went 'wrong'. That might be politically, socially correct, but right/wrong statements are limiting. These statements merely 'state' things. Nothing changes. But if these people do commit socially destructive things - ie, hurting other people, hurting themselves, physically, emotionally... then... no one is better off, eh?

"Productive" is such an economic term, I avoid it. But one can't help but feel that something went wrong in their lives... some misguidedness.

Anyhow, this post is going nowhere.

I really wanted to talk about education, and how the parenting and social environment very much affects the individual's response to it.

I really wanted to talk too, about the kind of education that exists, and I think I finally get it! We receive an Administrative-ended education, an education system that really trains people to become administrators. Even university is not untouched by that attitude. Really smart people get training and amazing things do get done, but within a box, within a system. While that is really cool and all, the box exists.

But then, every education system is the same in that respect. People do become administrators, oversee, supervise, project management, plan... Very, very few visionaries. They are rare, hence highly sought after, anyhow. Hmm... something to mull about. Singapore has smart people. A lot of them. And there are mindblowing things being done. But... but... something is missing, eh?

Shall blog about these things another time, another space.

reflecting on social activism

Lord I have dawdled the time away when I could have done something more meaningful... worship is one, serious devotion is another. Decent reflection is yet another.

(and now strangely it transits into reflection on social change)

Lord, You know how tired I am of the phrases such as 'changemaker' and 'social change'. These things have become so overused (at least for me), that they are hollowed out of meaning. I'm not sure aht to do regarding activism now. But still, a portion of my soul still yearns for social justice, for people to lead more meaningful lives, for people to have a decent shot at education and a fulfilling life. Thats social change for me, and its so different from the values-based notion of social change that some people might have, not all of them, definitely ('freedom?!?', 'democracy?!?'). or even specific causes. Yes, values and causes have their place in society, but not everyone is keen on them. And besides society is not about the values in themselves, but the lives that live out whatever values they hold most dear, or simply their lives as they live everyday. Father, I think thats the measure of real-ness, to be real, to live out love.

--- then i wandered off-topic---

But now, as I blog about it, I want to add: that the society that I wish to see, is a love-based society, of sensitivity and tolerance, no matter the religion.

Also, ref: http//www.eddiechoo.wordpress.com

awaresg, new media, implications

To be honest, I had no idea what AWARE was about. I mean, Repeal 377A came, and I let it passed me by, and this AWARE incident, and though I know that my CSO/NGO/activist friends would all be rather interested in all these, I well, just let it passed by. But this AWARE incident has demonstrated at least, I think 2 things. The first was the impact of the social technologies that are becoming more and more pervasive in Singapore society. Looking at the tweets that were revolving around the AWARE saga, it demonstrated that Singaporeans are becoming conscious of the use of social technologies to express themselves. This definitely has certain implications. But first, additional observations. The crowd that is using the technology seems to suggest that for a bunch of people, technological-savviness is coupled with a high level of social activism. My peers that are engaged in their CSO/NGO work know how to use technology to spread their message across. Many informal groups use Facebook extensively, and the use of Twitter and the ability to text updates through their mobile phones, is truly a powerful technology, and it will surely take a while for government to respond to the implications.I would think that these social technologies will finally begin to become pervasive throughout Singapore, and these technologies will come to centrestage come the next GE. It would be interesting to see how Singapore government and society will view these technologies...

The second thing, that I'm more worried about, is that the whole episode was perhaps an insight into Singapore society. While the whole issue has been framed in terms of societal maturity, I would actually think that the AWARE saga reflects that Singapore society, at least the bit that engages in such civil discourses, is highly polarised. As far as I can tell, it is only the English-speaking crowd that is engaged in this, and I can hardly see the same level of engagement within the rest of Singapore, in particular Chinese-speakers. What does that mean? Is social activism limited to the English-speaking crowd?

Regarding the maturity, the so-called secular bunch of people have been shown to be as intolerant as the so-called Christian Fundamentalists that, as others have framed, 'took over AWARE'.

To sum, while the entire episode has been interesting from a society-technological point of view, it does reflect rather troubling trends in Singapore society.

the embodiment of knowledge

I stared very hard at a car and a market today, and my mind begin to drift away into thinking about how social knowledge/information is embodied by food centres and cars. What does a market embody? It embodies the socio-cultural norms embedded in the neighbourhoods, in the food that it contains, in the items that it sells to the residents. What about cars? Still thinking about it though, but I think I am on to something there. I'm now trying to think of EVERYTHING physical artifact as embodying some kind of social/personal information, but I'm not sure how it might all work out. 

What kind of informational flows? I imagine cars to be outfitted with sensors and flexible surfaces so they change the aerodynamic profile given different road, temperature, and air conditions. But thats merely autonomous smart systems, and aren't really paradigm busting. Similarly for buildings - how buildings might self-optimise for energy efficiency - but thats not really new. I don't want to be looking at smart systems, I'm looking for relational, social information, and how they are embodied in the physical artifacts in our lives. 

What does a car represent as an artifact of society? How does a 'car' reflect the personalities of the user? Ditto for a market - how does a market/food centre represent the neighbourhood and the people living in it? How people are part of a larger community, incorporating them into their identity, creating this personal mosaic, perhaps...

Now, I admit that many of these things sound rather abstract, but all of these thoughts and ideas come down to this: how do we think of institutions as stores of information, and what can we take out from thinking in this way?

revisiting an old idea...

A few days ago I was thinking about an old idea - to have a conference/event where people present and share their ideas about the future of Singapore. Really. Have people/students gather in small groups, and think about socio/technological change in the next 20, 40, or even 60 years. Present pictures of optimism, pessimism, failure and success - how, and why things get to there.

Need lots of official partners though, for the prize money and promises of internship at specific government ministry.

Family and Chinese/Lunar New year

It was a busy first day of the Chinese/Lunar New Year, going around to the houses of various relatives, my mum's side. It was all the usual meet and greet kinda stuff, with the usual snacks and hongbaos.

I guess my mum's clan - the extended extended family has went past a demographic phase. The youngsters ten years ago have all grown up, and we don't bother about snacks anymore. Another 5 years, and I'll be in the working/postgraduate phase, talking about the economy and whatnot, I suppose, talking about the price of cars and houses and computers and stuff - all the usual nonsense. But I hope I won't be talking about those. I will be aware, but that will not be the main focus of my conversations with relatives. I will, want to say that I'm on the road of achieving my dreams, that I'm on the verge of changing the world - thats what I would like to say. I would also say that I'm too busy with work to find a girlfriend, and that I'll need to be flying off the next day to meet some global partner. Or something like that. Make the extraordinary sound plain ordinary, at least to me.

But personal ambitions aside, I'm thinking about what familial clans mean - what does it mean to have such extended relatives... Are they of any 'use' - if I were to use such a technical/functional term.

I suppose before there was such globalisation, the main avenue of success was through the family - as in, when one fella made it big, others would use the connections to piggyback on his success. Hence the exciting family feuds in Taiwanese dramas involving family and betrayal and big money.

But are extended families still as important? Or are they merely a longing on the part of the aging for a past that has since faded away? Because right now, I would consider my friends to be of greater importance than that whoever's-cousin. The emotional factor peters out extremely fast as you go further along the relational line. In other words, the less related you are to me, the less I care about you, much less. But for friends - no such relational hierarchy exists. I guess in our times, closely related uncles and aunties, maybe 20-year or so apart, are useful in the sense of being a mentor who is easily accessible to their nieces and nephews. Someone close to them, intimate enough, to teach them something useful in life. I guess thats the main role of being a relative nowadays - but that only happens for intimate connections - you can't have that with a distant uncle or distant niece/nephew.

Distantly related contemporaries/peers aren't really that useful as well. They end up becoming strangers you see at ritually-designated periods. Like another relative's wedding, or something like that. You recognise their face, but other than that, nothing else matters. And seniority and familial hierachy - who gives a heck nowadays... Today's coming-of-age Singaporeans live in a time of flatness - without hierarchies. Any attempt to institute them will just be irrelevant.

But back to the point - do extended familial connections - especially those of the past, with a productive matriarch/patriarch having 8, 10 kids - still matter, especially to a 21-yr old like me? Hardly. They matter to me only in the sense of observation, what they do, how they do. Who they really are makes no difference to me, since I have my own life, distinctly different from them. All I do near them is to listen - listen to their anxieties, to them talking about their jobs, and their worries. To hear about their expectations for themselves and for the future, to know how to handle myself around working people. That is all, I guess. I have my own lessons to learn, and hanging around them doesn't help me learn them. And I guess that in itself, is a lesson too.

Happy Chinese/Lunar New year!

thinking about identity, food culture, and culture in general

I've actually talked about something like this, but today, there's a different epiphany of sorts. I remembered talking about social change with my pals at NS, and they were hardly receptive about the idea. They erm... well... can't really connect to that idea of a different Singapore. All they want to do, was to get on with life, go to university, get a job, have a nice life. The old me back then would hold partially-elitist thought at them being satisfied with the status quo, and try to convince them that a better future was possible.

But now, the present me would go, 'Thats cool!'

I realise that talk about all those abstract things about social and technological revolutions - all of it seems hollow (vacuous) when I look at the guy in front me in a coffeeshop chopping pieces of meat. I wonder what he wants - just a simple life, I guess, save up enough money, buy a house, even a car, have a family, raise kids, send them off to university, perhaps. And its all the same. All of these choices seem to be equally valid ways to live their lives, and there's no badness or wrongness about it. Its only elitist people with their heads in the clouds who would want to impose a different choice for them, and to declare that ONLY these lifestyles are 'good', 'right' lifestyles to live. Which is plain nonsense.

At the same time, I'm starting to not really care about who's in front me when I order food. Be it Chinese nationals (which is beginning to become common) or anyone else - it just doesn't matter. Its a decent job, serving happiness in the form of food - everyone needs to eat, right?

As for issues of integration and assimilation, well... I guess its just one of those things that takes time. Time for them to settle down, to adapt to Singapore society.

And I'm thinking about the need for creativity. Even culinary creativity, and not just the traditional notions of academic or artistic creativity. Thinking about the notion of cultural hacking, looking at how we might change cultural norms of food and rituals, and how they might be transformed in new ways - something unexpected, but pleasant and desirable. In this instance, I'm thinking about how we might hack our food to become unique Singapore variants of food eaten in SEA.

Is it still feasible to think about intelligent jobs? The perspective that all jobs are really a form of information arbitrage between the source and the consumer. Intelligent jobs are suppose to break down the information asymmetry between the producer and the consumer for mutual benefit. How might that work out?

I guess I'll be on this line of thinking for a while...

So, what really is social change? Its more like, social justice - meaning, have equitable jobs for all, even redistributive income system of taxation, political fairness, inclusiveness, openness.

Again, coming back to the point that the average person on the street really just want to get on with life, unless there is something that captures their imagination.

Things to focus on for 2009

My view of the world I guess, is kinda different from most other undergraduates, even in USP.

I have decided that I shall not pursue grades blindly, rather I will try to have an undergraduate education that will equip me with the necessary skills in order to realise my personal visions. Besides, because of demographic reasons, where so many people graduate with degrees (even honours degrees), a degree isn't as important as it was once. A person bent on *success* now needs a *special sauce* - something that will distinguish him from the hordes of graduates that pass out from commencement ceremonies every year.

And I am finding mine.

Mine is based on a society of compassion, envisioning Singapore's future in 2 or 3 generations' time, looking at a future that we want to enter into, taking care of the old and allowing every young person to find and develop their own *special sauce* to compete in the global economy. I guess this is about a kind of compassion for the future.

I've realised that education is destroying cultural legacies. Or rather the whole society as-is in Singapore seems hell-bent to destroy the legacies of the past. Why aren't signs multilingual? There is a huge section of the population out there that is English-illiterate, and the little language they know is of their own linguistic group ie., Chinese, Malay, Indian. They might be able to recognise basic characters... The issue of signs is sensitive to me since my parents have gotten lost in shopping centres before, and I. AM. PISSED. AT. SUCH. CALLOUSNESS.

Meanwhile, my peers in university seem to live in their own bubbles and ignoring all of these, and thinking only about their own social universes. Our education has made us insensitive to the worldviews of the previous generation, when hard work alone was sufficient for security in their lifetimes. There is now a failure in connecting to our parents - because a lot of us don't speak dialect, don't speak chinese decent enough to connect to them. A whole bunch of them are concerned about their grades, which is understandable... I'm not that uptight about grades since I'm already onto *something else*. Grades CANNOT be the only thing that matter. I am concerned about originality and syntheses that have real impact... THERE ARE BIGGER THINGS OUT THERE...

The second strand is about having compassion for the world, to define the role of chemistry in context of all the tragic abuses of science in the past - to clean up the past in recognition of the horrors - to remediate the toxins that have been unleashed on the earth, to find reagents that will render the toxins of the past into harmless substances, or better yet, into beneficial substances that will add value to the lives of all. I think this is the start of Ethical Chemistry as I define it... Not just in shaping the world in a different way as defined by Paul Hawken, McDonough, and others at the Rocky Mountain Institute and Cradle to Cradle, but in cleaning up the past - like the accumulation of plastics in the North Pacific Gyre. A better future is waiting for us to be built, and the basis of that future CAN come from the past, if we find a way there.

I don't know what happens after that future becomes realised though.

on the way to fetch shaun

I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which essentially says that success is the product of hard work (100,000+ hours of practise) and having the social connections to opportunities.

There was a chapter on why kids in low-income families don't do well. Its not because they are stupid, but because they are not in the environment of education. That got me thinking, don't we have institutions that are suppose to serve this need?

I thought about our community centres and what they are suppose to do. But I realised that they are quite static institutions, serving as platforms for service providers, and not to actively reach out to the community per se.

So that got me thinking. Its not that we need community centres, its that we need community ENGAGEMENT centres. We need places and buildings to engage the community outside, serving the needs of the community. What do people in the community need? The kids, especially, need a place to LEARN, but also someplace where they can hang out too.

I am thinking along the lines of Dave Egger's Once Upon a School concept. I am thinking of a place, where you put nice tables and chairs, study lamps, daylights, wifi, computers, books, and lots of books, and you have volunteer instructors to teach the kids stuff when you need. And then I thought, maybe to improve the stickiness of the place, have guitars, keyboards, drums, so that groups of kids can come and do jamming sessions with their friends, and then, why not have skate parks, dance parks, so that they will stay essentially in the same area and not hang out with potentially unsavoury company. Ask music, dance, other kinds of instructors to come help out on a pro bono basis. Same for any other kind of say, visual art. Impose restrictions that people can only do their own things after spending say, 2 hours mugging.

Then invite people in the community to participate with the maintenance or in the foods, maybe selling small widgets. Better yet, let the community decide in how this community engagement centre might work. Make the building energy positive, maybe wait till solar power becomes damn cheap, have lush gardens to filter rainwater and contribute to the local community, then sell whatever excess energy and water to the local community.

Business model might come from the usage of the jamming facilities, or from the proceeds of whatever community entrepreneurial venture at the centre. Might even come from sales of excess energy or water from the building itself.

I know this is like a castle in the sky, but wth. The supposedly lower-hanging fruit would be to retrofit the existing community centres with the said facilities.

Its really a mash-up of two TED ideas, Dave Egger's Once Upon a School, and this Bill Stricklands guy.



http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bill_strickland_makes_change_with_a_slide_show.html




http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html

saturday-sunday

Today I learnt to trust God a little more regarding relationships. I hand that part of my life to Him again, knowing that all things will work well in the end.

Not a very productive holiday. many essay ideas, but only two concrete stuff so far. Arrgh. need the atmosphere to work. Home not exactly conducive. And that tempting CNC 3 disk... haha.

Ploughing through Natural Capitalism. Coolios. Wished I had read it sooner. Thinking about the concept of justice. oh wells. Thinking about non-cliched stuff in science to write. Which is damn. freaking. hard! meanwhile, seeing more allegories of justice in movies and popular media.

I guess the media of the entire world is really about looking for, defining, applying justice, or the failure to do so. The moral sense of goodness and evil. Could I summarise social sciences through the perspective of justice alone? What about geography? especially human geography - how might that fit into the larger sense of things? I could break the whole thing down into Political justice, social justice, economic justice, community justice, even? And everything slots into place. How we define what is right and wrong, how systems sort of, trigger people into right and wrong, how urban planning ameliorates or exacerbates social problems.

Another observation:some of the intellectuals today actually take a degree, and then go for another degree, before going on to specialise in something. I need the breadth too. Hmm. My mind refuses to be pigeon-holed into a single category - guess there are really multiple modes of thinking.

Thinking about citizen-scientist, soldier-scientist (if there ever was one), career-scientists, and 'social-scientists' - people who specialise in the social sciences, but we tend to call them specifically, sociologists, economists, political scientists, the like, or simply, 'writer'. What are their roles, and how do these separate identities harmonise or are in conflict?

What is the role of the expert in our time of crowdsourcing?