So I was struck with fever for over a week. My doctor tells me it’s dengue but of course, who wants to trumpet that one is down with such a disease when one is already a month deep into the dreaded course and has survived 3 live intro-venous infusions? Nonetheless, my somewhat capricious temperature took its toll several times on me while I was in camp, with me severely losing patience with some of my oftentimes desperately jejune platoon mates. There are a few, definitely less than a handful, who are around my age, one at least who is already close to thirty, and the vast majority simply youngsters who are – in my opinion – still fresh from school, be it the polytechnics or JCs. I was telling Ying on Sunday when we met for a truly nice, heartwarming lunch and ice-cream at Serene Centre that even when I was in BMT five years ago, I had serious trouble communicating with my bunkmates. We just hardly shared much in common. The only rare common ground on which we could often only build shallow conversations on was the typical bitching of sergeants and our horrid time on the dreaded island. But my bunkmates’ interest in the then-oh-so-popular game CS and all the other LAN games that were in vogue never figured as a particularly comely activity to me, and the characters, moves and cheatcodes that they were so obsessed with were just the bulk of a rather alien tongue that they conversed in. Now, it clearly is worse, because #1, I had serious issues talking to my colleagues in office before my course started, #2, I have even graver issues talking to my coursemates now since my morale is way lower after each day of pottering about slaving over the most mundane and pedestrian of chores. I lamented to Ying about this, who well managed at least to master a rather comforting statement. She told Hsueh (and I’m sure Hsueh told her too) that she was a weirdo since she hung out with (and still hangs out with) weirdoes, and well I readily agreed to be labeled a weirdo since I do hang out with weirdoes, if I hang out with anyone at all.
Sometimes I do feel like I’m some antediluvian zombie that forgot to die some centuries ago. I have been whining about the absence in Singapore of properly close friends to hang out and chat with for ages, probably even before I came back. Nat was probably right to say that one reason is that my interests are too narrow. If candour is demanded of me, yes, I would say that there is more than a grain of truth in that. I don’t like most of the films that many people (my peers, those slightly younger and even those a decade older) like to catch; in fact I don’t see much sense in catching a single film in this country where every film screened in every legal establishment called a cinema costs an exorbitant rate. The most rational justification for catching films in this country in a cinema is that you pay for the sound and visual effects you don’t get if you watch it in any of your friends’ homes. That’s true, but what if you don’t watch films that need that kind of effects cardinally? The only genre I’m drawn to is simply drama, and clearly you don’t need big booming speakers to listen to Meryl Streep weep to get the message. Well basically, my whine is that I’m a lonely, dejected old fool who’s been bitching about this loneliness and dejection since time immemorial.
Today while we were waiting for one of our beloved sergeants to start his enlightened teachings to us fledgling life-savers on *dang … I forgot the lesson*, I was talking to Andy who was telling me how much he misses his *platonic* girl friend and his chats with her, all of which made me realize how sodden in solitude I’ve been. I’ve been scrambling to the same old Oxford clique since Xmas effectively every weekend; while I must admit that I’m comfortable most of the time being left alone in my room reading during the weekend, I certainly need a breather with some close friends who can understand my brand of sarcasm and who can really tickle me into incessant bouts of laughter, friends who can talk to me about (the precious few) things I am interested in and well basically friends I enjoy hanging out with. Ying has been back for at least two years now, but she still finds it hard to relate properly with the SG Singaporeans here. I’m beginning therefore to empathise with the Singaporeans who left the country in their formative years and tried to fit in but left in the end given the reason that they just couldn’t quite find their comfortable little niche in their social circles (if any). I never quite agreed with SM’s simple ‘stayer-quitter’ dichotomy, but now I see another dimension to the emigration problem. Ying herself isn’t sure if she’ll stay in SG for long, and when I met Liz randomly on the bus some weeks back, she is admittedly tortured by the stultifying nature of her job in OCBC (understandably, given that she is a linguist) that she is quite bent on leaving. I’m not talking about the friends I have who never even tried to fit in occupationally into SG. I’m talking about those who stayed, but later flirted with the idea of quitting, and ultimately quitting, as it were. I’m still going to try out my stint in the civil service and hope to like it, but jobs are one thing; the company you have and the environment you work and play in are quite another.
But that said, I haven’t quite put my finger to the reason as to why so many Singaporeans I know who were overseas for their tertiary education decided to stay out of Singapore when settling down. Clearly, part of the reason is that these are the young ones, those who are mobile, who are probably not married and even if so, don’t have children and even if so, have children so young they can quite easily supplant them from the system here and find new soil to sink their roots in. Clearly also, there is more than meets the eye. ‘Overseas’, as we like to call it, often has a connotation of being westward. Perhaps it’s the liberal lifestyle that may be led there that cannot be led here that is in question (liberal not in the lewd way but in the liberalism liberal way), but why then is that ideal so popular it reaches almost categorical multitudes? It’s something I’ve never really understood. Admittedly, liberalism is almost a logical corollary to ‘The West’ or ‘Westernisation’, but if the appeal of liberalism lies so simply in the fact that it is a baggage of Westernisation, the conclusion that must follow – that so many people here are taking to the West in a way as if they have no alternative or reject all possible alternatives – is a harrowing one. I myself am tempted to say that this liberal lifestyle is increasingly endearing, not because I want to be liberal but because I want to choose between being liberal and being not, and the beauty of liberalism lies precisely in its flexibility of being liberal on a fundamental level or on a higher or secondary level. I remember when I first read of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, I was enthralled because I thought there was finally a systematic (and well just to be unhelpfully tautological) Rawlsian means of justifying liberalism. However, sad to say, his theory was only a justification on the secondary level, as his veil of ignorance must catapult his entire theory towards that end point. Ultimately therefore, his theory drew flak from multiculturalists who sought to defend liberalism on a fundamental level, if I may try to paraphrase their views broadly. While I don’t quite know if I’m a multiculturalist myself yet, I know that their objections have my sympathy. That’s probably why from my second year in Oxford, I sought to work on comparative philosophy, or at least I sougtht to understand ways of thinking entrenched in cultures radically different from the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy that Oxford preaches. My hunches after LEP already told me that Chinese classical attempts of thinking philosophically were radically different from the Western tradition, and now as I try to understand Islamic thought in a historical context, albeit at a pitifully slow rate, I am myself becoming confused as to how US foreign policy could betray so abashedly an ignorance of the various Islamic nations they are so fond of dealing with. I cast doubts on my own understanding of Islam and the tradition of Islamic thought for sure; I am but the greenest of novices. Nonetheless, the radically different systems of thought, presuppositions, and priorities in societies, ethics and culture have always intrigued me. My request to do a thesis on Chinese moral philosophy invited a slight concern into the Oxford sub-faculty of philosophy, as I recall.
I know I am gravely mistaken if I think that migrating to the US or the supposedly ‘liberal’ states in Scandinavia would allow me to experience liberalism on the primary level; I doubt any country will allow that because it would probably call for the construction of a national culture based precisely on the obliteration of any homogeneity of separate cultures. I doubt that any heart will be magnanimous enough to allow for the stripping of traditional pride and tradition, and I doubt any mind capacious enough to draft a constitution or letter of laws to manage a state as heterogeneous as that. Multiculturalism as multiculturalists see it remains an impossible ideal in my opinion; attempts may be made to approximate towards it, but just as the Form of the Good in Plato remains incorporeal, multiculturalism traditionally understood is beyond any human society, in my opinion.
Therefore, I still have a fear for SG. If there is indeed that massive wave of Westernisation breaking into the country and with it an unstoppable tide that will pull away with it our most mobile and learned Singaporeans (including many of my closest SG friends), what is left for SG? This isn’t the same old story of a brain drain that right now even East European countries are suffering from. This is a fear that the drain cannot be reversed or even repaired. I doubt we can be less Westernised. The expression ‘de-Westernising Singapore’ sounds almost oxymoronic. If Westernisation is a tide in SG that cannot be turned, and if the trumpeting of liberalism as I defined it above cannot be avoided, the brain drain that SG is going to face seems permanent. We hear of India issuing citizenship certifications for overseas Indian professionals, and the demand is rising. We hear of Chinese professionals who desire to return to China. We even hear of Polish academics who desire to return to Poland for drastically reduced pay, all for the love of their country, for the certainty that they are serving their motherland. Is that kind of mentality prevalent, let alone ubiquitous, in Singapore? Even if it’s not, can we make it so?
Sometimes I do feel like I’m some antediluvian zombie that forgot to die some centuries ago. I have been whining about the absence in Singapore of properly close friends to hang out and chat with for ages, probably even before I came back. Nat was probably right to say that one reason is that my interests are too narrow. If candour is demanded of me, yes, I would say that there is more than a grain of truth in that. I don’t like most of the films that many people (my peers, those slightly younger and even those a decade older) like to catch; in fact I don’t see much sense in catching a single film in this country where every film screened in every legal establishment called a cinema costs an exorbitant rate. The most rational justification for catching films in this country in a cinema is that you pay for the sound and visual effects you don’t get if you watch it in any of your friends’ homes. That’s true, but what if you don’t watch films that need that kind of effects cardinally? The only genre I’m drawn to is simply drama, and clearly you don’t need big booming speakers to listen to Meryl Streep weep to get the message. Well basically, my whine is that I’m a lonely, dejected old fool who’s been bitching about this loneliness and dejection since time immemorial.
Today while we were waiting for one of our beloved sergeants to start his enlightened teachings to us fledgling life-savers on *dang … I forgot the lesson*, I was talking to Andy who was telling me how much he misses his *platonic* girl friend and his chats with her, all of which made me realize how sodden in solitude I’ve been. I’ve been scrambling to the same old Oxford clique since Xmas effectively every weekend; while I must admit that I’m comfortable most of the time being left alone in my room reading during the weekend, I certainly need a breather with some close friends who can understand my brand of sarcasm and who can really tickle me into incessant bouts of laughter, friends who can talk to me about (the precious few) things I am interested in and well basically friends I enjoy hanging out with. Ying has been back for at least two years now, but she still finds it hard to relate properly with the SG Singaporeans here. I’m beginning therefore to empathise with the Singaporeans who left the country in their formative years and tried to fit in but left in the end given the reason that they just couldn’t quite find their comfortable little niche in their social circles (if any). I never quite agreed with SM’s simple ‘stayer-quitter’ dichotomy, but now I see another dimension to the emigration problem. Ying herself isn’t sure if she’ll stay in SG for long, and when I met Liz randomly on the bus some weeks back, she is admittedly tortured by the stultifying nature of her job in OCBC (understandably, given that she is a linguist) that she is quite bent on leaving. I’m not talking about the friends I have who never even tried to fit in occupationally into SG. I’m talking about those who stayed, but later flirted with the idea of quitting, and ultimately quitting, as it were. I’m still going to try out my stint in the civil service and hope to like it, but jobs are one thing; the company you have and the environment you work and play in are quite another.
But that said, I haven’t quite put my finger to the reason as to why so many Singaporeans I know who were overseas for their tertiary education decided to stay out of Singapore when settling down. Clearly, part of the reason is that these are the young ones, those who are mobile, who are probably not married and even if so, don’t have children and even if so, have children so young they can quite easily supplant them from the system here and find new soil to sink their roots in. Clearly also, there is more than meets the eye. ‘Overseas’, as we like to call it, often has a connotation of being westward. Perhaps it’s the liberal lifestyle that may be led there that cannot be led here that is in question (liberal not in the lewd way but in the liberalism liberal way), but why then is that ideal so popular it reaches almost categorical multitudes? It’s something I’ve never really understood. Admittedly, liberalism is almost a logical corollary to ‘The West’ or ‘Westernisation’, but if the appeal of liberalism lies so simply in the fact that it is a baggage of Westernisation, the conclusion that must follow – that so many people here are taking to the West in a way as if they have no alternative or reject all possible alternatives – is a harrowing one. I myself am tempted to say that this liberal lifestyle is increasingly endearing, not because I want to be liberal but because I want to choose between being liberal and being not, and the beauty of liberalism lies precisely in its flexibility of being liberal on a fundamental level or on a higher or secondary level. I remember when I first read of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, I was enthralled because I thought there was finally a systematic (and well just to be unhelpfully tautological) Rawlsian means of justifying liberalism. However, sad to say, his theory was only a justification on the secondary level, as his veil of ignorance must catapult his entire theory towards that end point. Ultimately therefore, his theory drew flak from multiculturalists who sought to defend liberalism on a fundamental level, if I may try to paraphrase their views broadly. While I don’t quite know if I’m a multiculturalist myself yet, I know that their objections have my sympathy. That’s probably why from my second year in Oxford, I sought to work on comparative philosophy, or at least I sougtht to understand ways of thinking entrenched in cultures radically different from the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy that Oxford preaches. My hunches after LEP already told me that Chinese classical attempts of thinking philosophically were radically different from the Western tradition, and now as I try to understand Islamic thought in a historical context, albeit at a pitifully slow rate, I am myself becoming confused as to how US foreign policy could betray so abashedly an ignorance of the various Islamic nations they are so fond of dealing with. I cast doubts on my own understanding of Islam and the tradition of Islamic thought for sure; I am but the greenest of novices. Nonetheless, the radically different systems of thought, presuppositions, and priorities in societies, ethics and culture have always intrigued me. My request to do a thesis on Chinese moral philosophy invited a slight concern into the Oxford sub-faculty of philosophy, as I recall.
I know I am gravely mistaken if I think that migrating to the US or the supposedly ‘liberal’ states in Scandinavia would allow me to experience liberalism on the primary level; I doubt any country will allow that because it would probably call for the construction of a national culture based precisely on the obliteration of any homogeneity of separate cultures. I doubt that any heart will be magnanimous enough to allow for the stripping of traditional pride and tradition, and I doubt any mind capacious enough to draft a constitution or letter of laws to manage a state as heterogeneous as that. Multiculturalism as multiculturalists see it remains an impossible ideal in my opinion; attempts may be made to approximate towards it, but just as the Form of the Good in Plato remains incorporeal, multiculturalism traditionally understood is beyond any human society, in my opinion.
Therefore, I still have a fear for SG. If there is indeed that massive wave of Westernisation breaking into the country and with it an unstoppable tide that will pull away with it our most mobile and learned Singaporeans (including many of my closest SG friends), what is left for SG? This isn’t the same old story of a brain drain that right now even East European countries are suffering from. This is a fear that the drain cannot be reversed or even repaired. I doubt we can be less Westernised. The expression ‘de-Westernising Singapore’ sounds almost oxymoronic. If Westernisation is a tide in SG that cannot be turned, and if the trumpeting of liberalism as I defined it above cannot be avoided, the brain drain that SG is going to face seems permanent. We hear of India issuing citizenship certifications for overseas Indian professionals, and the demand is rising. We hear of Chinese professionals who desire to return to China. We even hear of Polish academics who desire to return to Poland for drastically reduced pay, all for the love of their country, for the certainty that they are serving their motherland. Is that kind of mentality prevalent, let alone ubiquitous, in Singapore? Even if it’s not, can we make it so?
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