Kevin Low

We are a few more days from the mandatory theory tests for food delivery riders here in Singapore starts. The tests will cover maintenance and handling of the various e-mobility devices (mainly scooters) for the riders and also safety when riding.

I think exams and theory tests are good for propaganda. After all, propaganda involves repeating things to people and what better way than to test them on it so they have it in their minds all the time. They are also good for things where people must regurgitate to someone else. But these theory tests are not so good for things that are practical. It is hard to declare someone capable of performing first aid just because he completed a theory test with flying colours.

Likewise, you might prefer the surgeon who has performed more surgeries than one who has repeatedly scored better than him on theory tests. But why do we continue to trot out these sort of tests and credentials?

It’s to create deniability; to say it’s been checked so we’ve done our part. Why we do this to ourselves, I’m not sure. Better perhaps to change the culture from one that is focused on grasping for individual credentials to one that is about caring for people.

There was a time when information and knowledge are scarce. And misinformation is rife because there are people who are uneducated and ready to believe in those who might appear more knowledgeable. And then qualifications and credentials started to make a bit of a difference because it helps to refine the signal a bit and tell the noise apart.

Yet when more and more people get qualified and the pool of unqualified people shrinks (eg. More people have gone through mass education), scammers begin to pray on the ones who are slightly knowledgeable or even the worldly-wise. It is better to know nothing and hence choose not to engage with a scammer than to know a little and get led on.

At the same time, the signal starts getting mixed up with much more noises. For example, you could have passed an exam because you memorised solutions rather than really knowing how solutions work and solving them at the exam. You can think of more situation of such noises crowding out the genuine signal.

Since a college degree is more common, it is harder to justify paying a college graduate more. And then brand name colleges starts to get prized even more and we’ve an unhealthy dynamic going for us.

So we are back to fundamentals, where we try to make learning and education democratic, where it is less about paper qualifications. And we try to make the formal systems less about exams but more about proving oneself. We see big tech firms requiring talents looking to provide training themselves and picking talents in a whole new space. It’s almost like when Sabermetrics was first discovered and undervalued players were being picked up more.

Better to start creating new games to play than merely just figuring out rules of others’ games.

When I look at my dog, I wonder if she cares about what I think of her. I happen to sometimes think she is a little spoilt, manipulative, overly skittish. I also wish she knows that I care for her, that it bothers me she is often scared of me for no good reason. Humans as social animals happen to operate a level of functioning so sophisticated and high that it often borders on leading to malfunction.

We seem to care so much about other people’s thoughts (of ourselves) that our minds are constantly seemingly wondering about that. And as social creatures, we want that approval, even subconsciously. And we will gravitate towards fulfilling their expectations. We might even allow our emotions to rise and fall on the opinions of others.

The best weight you’ll ever lose is the weight of other people’s opinions

Unknown

That sounds like a normal way to live. How can you ever even expect to be freed of the influence of others? After all, you’ll always be a function of the society, culture, upbringing and environment that you exist in. The main challenge perhaps, is when we end up becoming anxious about the life we are living in a bid to satisfy everyone’s expectation. Remember, living for everyone, is living for no one.

Should we be more concerned about losing competitiveness or creativity? Singapore just lost its top spot in global ranking for competitiveness and the explanation was ‘unfavourable geography’. It really wasn’t clear how geography was factored in but Asia certainly got a beating (maybe with the exception of China) probably because of the pandemic. Europe nations topped the ranking – they’ve been jostling with Singapore all the while anyways.

For most of our nation-building days, the objective was never topping rankings or rising up league tables. Those were by-products. It was always about bettering the lives of people. And our metrics were simple: home-owners as percentage of population, median income levels, access to clean water and electricity, etc. All of the progress on these simple metrics helped us get on rankings and league tables, which is really testament to the zeal and passion of our founding fathers and civil service.

But somewhere along the lines, we got lost in trying to get ahead in the race, to be better along the old metrics. And we forgot perhaps what we were bettering our lives for to begin with. We wanted to free our people from the constraints of a wretched existence without clean water or electricity, without a safe place to live in, without income security. We knew that improving their lives itself, making people more productive would help the society progress and move towards prosperity.

But maybe at that point, we didn’t expect ourselves to be addicted to prosperity, that we crave for access to luxuries for all, to desire better housing beyond top of the world public housing. Building a society where everyone is on an escalating escalator sounds good – until we pose the question, “where is the escalator heading to?”

To me, we should be more concerned about the lost of creativity. We should not feel pressured to prepare ready-made solution for everyone to get on the escalator, to have a sure formula or pathway to success. We should be expending our resources to enable people to find different escalators, to identify the various heights they want to reach and be able to reach them. Open up pathways, encourage the creativity and innovation; not just getting them to jostle on the same path.

I wrote about bioplastics and other biodegradable plastics and the environmental impact. And I also mentioned that you probably need to re-use paper bags way more times in order for it to be environmentally friendlier than plastic bags. That does mean that if you’re using a paper bag for a brownie as opposed to a small plastic bag, the environmental footprint of the paper bag might be more. Of course, that is mitigated perhaps by the fact it is made from recycled paper, and it can be used additionally to wipe your mouth, albeit with slight discomfort – something you cannot achieve with plastic (which probably would only make it oilier).

But here’s the news, or maybe not-so-new: Plastics can be recycled and they sometimes are but globally, less than 10% of plastics ever produced are recycled. For most countries, in most parts of the world, it is still cheaper to make fresh and new plastics than to recycle old ones. The economics didn’t work, even when we were told there will be recycling. NPR together with some other journalist outlets studied this in the US. They realised that the industry pushed for the impression that plastics will mostly be recycled because that helped to sell plastics. There are old(ish) articles discussing the cost of recycling plastics.

So let me just repeat my prescription again; let’s just cut single use plastic – cut it all out. Let us be forced to find alternatives; because as long as it is convenient to use plastics, we will pay for it – whether with money or sacrifice to the environment.

I think the ability to build a sustainable business around a cause is remarkable; and to have this cause to preserve the earth and ensure we all have a shared future is truly worthwhile. Truth is often more complicated than a simple rallying call or a catchphrase however.

Recently a friend asked if it is more carbon intensive to produce biodegradable plastic bags compared to ordinary plastic bags. And whether it is worthwhile especially in Singapore where most waste are incinerated. The truth is, paper bags need to be reused at least 3 times compared to a plastic bag in order to be more environmentally friendly. And since in Singapore, we typically reuse plastic bags at least once (except maybe those used to hold food), paper bags are not more environmentally friendly. As for those compostable bags, or plastics that dissolves in water, and so on, it depends on the manufacturing processes and the energy intensity.

For those that have more complex processes and takes up more energy, then it might be more carbon intensive, particularly if they are actually produced in developing countries where the generation mix of the grid-drawn electricity leans heavily on coal. So truth is complicated, but then I think any businesses looking to drive forward the movement of getting people to care more about the environment is worth applauding.

So just a note here that this conversation by the friend was sparked off by telobag.

At work we were musing about the sheer number of ex-corporate people who went on to do something different: selling coffee, fixing bikes, cycling in Latin America, settling down in some secluded island. And there’s this dream of starting a bed-and-breakfast somewhere remote, perhaps by a beach, perhaps in the mountains, we’ll grow our own food and embrace sustainability. And all that. It can be pretty romantic, the idea of being back to nature, being subsistence even, spending last, consuming less.

I thought about the persistence of such dreams over the past 2-3 generations. Modernity wrecks havoc on our soul in many different ways. 2 generations ago, it was the world wars; and in the last generation, there was much violence in the form of hidden repression: within corporations, amongst societies. Then the current generation had almost an entire decade lost from the financial ravage of the Global Financial Crisis and then now a Global pandemic.

The dream persisted because we all desire to create a safe space; not necessarily one we have so much control in but where we find ourselves better able to let things go. It is the psychological kind of freedom we crave, away from wars, repression or the violence of competition.

For far too long, in the modern industrial age, with the sense of control over our environment, inputs and outputs, we mistake worry for work.

The time we spend worrying is actually time we’re spending trying to control something that is out of our control. Time invested in something that is within our control is called work. That’s where our most productive focus lies.

Seth Godin, The Practice

Even if we do not dwell on the issue of productivity, worrying strangely feels like work maybe because there is psychological labour involved. But this labour accomplishes nothing even as it afflicts the costs.

Recognising worry as something unnecessary isn’t really helpful because it hasn’t improved things much. Realising worrying changes nothing also seem to have very little impact on psychology. Better to focus on what is within our control, and to handle the work we have been given, to ponder over how to do the work, rather than think you’re working by worrying about those things you cannot control.

It’s amazing how inconveniences shapes us, our concerns and thinking more than we expect or imagine. For a while, we were all super concerned about the TraceTogether tracking app on our mobile phones and also having the token with us. And then because the pandemic continued and even worsened, when the government implemented mandatory use of it for ‘Safe-entry’ registrations into malls, people started using it. It was too difficult to challenge the regulations; and alternatives provided were too inconvenient.

Then comes vaccination. People had their concerns; and there were people thinking about which vaccine to take, and whether it was risky, etc. Well, I’d imagine there are many things we do such as crossing the road, driving a car, going to earthquake prone places which probably carries higher risks than getting vaccinated. But once regulations are such that vaccinated people have it easier when they enter places, participate in events because they either don’t have to be swabbed or if they allow the capacity of the events to be higher, than the practical thing to do is to get vaccinated.

Targeting the practical aspects of people works well. Especially when it is once-off and you just have to get it done and over with. Make the preferred alternative just slightly less inconvenient than the one you’re getting people to avoid, and you might just be able to get people to ‘do the right thing’.

I got 69 for Chinese and my classmate got 93, though I speak more fluent Mandarin than him. My school’s basketball team made the 3-point shot after the time-out whistle and “lost” the game 52-54. Winning and losing are meanings we attribute to different circumstances and situations we find ourselves in, whether set up initially as a game, competition or just merely events in life.

When we allow winning and losing to count for more than the process of learning, more than sportsmanship, more than character and values, we are missing the point. We are prizing outcomes above process. A question that demonstrates the absurdity of this attitude is that: “if life ends with death anyways then why does it matter how we live?” Of course it matters what happens between the starting point and the outcome. It matters how we win, and it matters also how we lose.

When we allow the winning or losing to mean more than the work we put in to attain the result. When we value the work we do based on the outcome we get, then we miss the point. And we miss the true value of what the process is for. A life lived like this will never get to truly enjoy the wins, nor truly learn and gain from the losses.