Rules-based naïveté

Singaporeans are stupid. - Li Ao

新加坡人笨。 － 李敖

When Chinese television personality Li Ao made the above comment in 2006, it sparked off a furor in Singapore, with a wave of indignant anger mostly from the Chinese-educated Singaporeans (most English-educated Singaporeans don't even know who Li Ao is).

In general, I frown upon such generalizations and stereotyping, as labels tend to stick and often set up the basis of bigotry. Most of what he said on television about Singaporeans is hugely debatable and plain wrong (including his assertion that "Singaporeans have poor genes" and "no culture", as our "ancestors came to Singapore from China with only their underwear, let alone any culture whatsoever"). I think what Li Ao said is hilariously funny (especially if you don't take him too seriously), and I think what he says needs to be taken with enough salt to cause kidney failure in an elephant.

But what Li Ao says is not without a seed of truth, especially if you translate the Chinese word 笨 into clumsy or naïveté, rather than stupidity.

While I would not be so extreme as to say that Singaporeans are stupid, I would say from my limited personal experience that Singaporeans can be very naive; they tend to be pre-occupied with rules and regulations, and often have their thinking limited by those rules and regulations (see my previous blog post on my condominium's security guards).

When I see Singaporeans in a rules-free environment, I am often reminded of this Zen story about a horse that worked its whole life turning a grinding stone in a mill; when it was retired and allowed to graze on a large field, it went to the only tree in the field, and continued walking circles around the tree (like it did when it turned the grinding stone).

Like the horse, a lot of Singaporeans who grew up with a lot of explicit and implicit rules tend to be lost when they are thrown into an organic environment where the only limits are the ones you set for yourself. Like the horse, they then draw their own rules, and limit their own thinking to the imaginary box that they grew up with. So even if they are in a large open field, they will find their own tree and orbit around it.

I myself am not immune to this, as I remember what it was like in the Matrix, and the shock I had upon stepping out into the New World. I still vividly remember my surprise at how freely and easily my American classmates challenged professors in class (once, about the need for homework!) I also remember how pleasantly surprised I was when a venture capitalist who was guest-speaking at my course said that venture capitalists prefer entrepreneurs who had failed before, which surprised me as failure in Singapore is a social stigma to be buried and never talked about.

I suspect that is why there are so many implicit social rules for Singaporeans, like "marry and have three kids", "get a stable job", etc., often without any real questioning of assumptions. Most people in Singapore complain about the pressure of social norms; they really only have themselves to blame if they unthinkingly accept those norms and apply them to their own lives.

This naïveté is also perhaps why I have heard more than one Singaporean prescribe a standard set formula to developing nations: "Why is everything so disorganized? They should pass some laws and fine people to get them to behave. They should put bad people in jail, death to drug smugglers. They should have laws and rules forbidding pollution, corruption, etc. They should attract foreign investment."

But in my experience, mainland Chinese and Indian (especially those from the big urban centers of both nations) will understand that, it's often not that simple, especially in big countries with large populations (i.e. very complex systems) and myriad conflicts of interests by myriad parties. Some Singaporeans can be very simplistic, because we have grown up in an engineered-environment where we often do not see the larger consequences and ramifications of decisions because we are not big nor complex enough for these decisions to go wrong. (My working hypothesis is that people from big and populous nations have seen enough central plans go awry, because they come from nations which are big and complex, and where simplified engineered solutions often go completely wrong.)

Despite this, things are definitely changing in Singapore, as more Singaporeans study and travel overseas and as the next generation comes to being. You can see that in the younger generation, with people questioning how things are done in the Straits Times forums and in the local blogs. We can only change our viewpoint one assumption at a time.

The question I have for you, dear non-existent reader, is this: what assumptions around you and inside you have you questioned today?