His Story

The world have been in chaos for a couple of decades now. It started barely 20 years after the end of World War I. It wasn’t just physical war but there was the Great Depression before that, the runaway inflation in some parts of the world, and the seeds of communism growing. And then even when WWII ended, we had a series of proxy wars during the Cold War period.

But nevertheless, problems starting being solved, people who were fatigued from the world wars, the tragic deaths realised it was important to unite in the right ways. The blueprint for a new world order became laid down in the centers of gravity of the world.

It was hard work but nevertheless, it was about getting on the right trajectory, the right bandwagon, and we’ll see double digits growth in things. Maintaining peace and stability gives rise to natural growth as investment in the longer term rose. Interest rates started falling without as much consequence on inflation, private investment into longer term assets soared, helped by the socialisation of longer term government borrowings, helped by imaginary sense of control investors have through the establishment of sovereign risk rating systems.

Incentives everywhere were getting more aligned towards pumping up GDP numbers, increasing political rhetoric about competition, and investing into the right places. The military-industrial complex took hold because it made sense to industrialise everything and create more wealth; though they were mostly distributed to the industrialists.

These are the conditions of the world that gave the world the Great Moderation, unprecedented growth and lifting of people our of poverty. It has also given us a growing climate change problem, a global economy that was resilient in some ways but more fragile in others.

We all have a choice whether to perpetuate these. Whether to make history, your story.

Social Narratives

I was reading this interesting take on the woke meritocracy by Blake Smith. The similarities to Singapore is uncanny not least because we have similarly competitive systems that have evolved to take into consideration academic grades and a myraid of criteria for university admissions.

What is more similar, despite cultural differences in our preferred kind of leadership, is the narratives expected of our elites and accordingly engineered into the social consciousness. The point has become to narrate one’s background in such a way as to simultaneously acknowledge the existence of inequality but to subtly suggests the system of meritocracy is still being able to pull up able members of those seemingly disenfranchised groups.

The contemporary ideal, increasingly, is no longer someone so charmingly personable that others forget he is in fact a ruthless competitor, but a person who so convincingly narrates her having overcome some kind of social injustice that others forget she is in fact a beneficiary of systems of privilege.

Blake Smith

These stories are no doubt powerful and casting skepticism do not help with building up the social fabric. But what I want to point to is the fact that we ought to have a more objective view of the meritocratic system and be more aggressive in combating the downside of the system.

One of the key assumption of the system is that merit as defined by the prevailing narrative and system is independent of your access to resources and opportunities. That is just patently untrue. If the inequalities are actually perpetuating structural inferiority amongst the disenfranchised, then how are we dealing with that?

Why me?

A humble unasuming man who has done good work for a community where he has been voted to lead the committee for the neighbourhood. He asks God, ‘Why me?’ And takes on the responsibility in trusting in God to lead and guide Him. There is still the ‘Here I am’ moment when he takes up the responsibility but his confidence is not in himself but in God.

His brother had been a fit young man, always exercised and practised healthy habits. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and it was not discovered until late stage. He asks God, ‘Why me?’ And accepts the diagnosis, trusting in God’s plan for him. There will be the struggles, the “what did I do to deserve this?”, but also the acknowledgement: “the days of man are numbered by You Lord”.

Genuine faith is not about being triumphant in your own circumstances but in the victory that God has won on the cross. And each win or lost in the life we live on this earth are but tests – all of them seeks a faithful response. We will not always pass them; but I want to show here that the Christian faith is not one-sided, all positive but much broader and encompassing so much more.

Financial Burdens and reference groups

As we step into adulthood, we begin to realise how financial burdens starts to weigh on us just at a point when there’s supposed to be more financial capacity and independence. You look around you and see what you have been working for: being in a good job, wearing the nice suit or dress, driving the car you always wanted, even living in an apartment location in the neighbourhood you want to be associated with.

Yet at the same time, there are concerns about the future: retirement, rising cost of living, cost of raising children if we ever have them, ageing parents who would be faced with high healthcare costs while not having been insured. These concerns will weigh on this ‘freedom’ we believe we have.

The reality is that the modern society we live in have hone its ability to generate wants and demand for goods and services. And that is causing the anxieties. What Juliet wrote in The Overspent America applies as much in Singapore: we live in societies where we are comparing ourselves within reference groups. If our classes were seggregated, the society will be even more divided but our social mixing can impose a huge cost on the mental health of the society as well.

And here is how: in every product we own, we probably have a clear sense of what is the product that is just a little better, faster, classier that we can pay a little more for. When we are in the same schools, camp, office as the people who are of higher income groups, we take reference off their consumption habits as well. We desire to go to the same restaurants, send our kids to the same schools, ensure our kids have the same branded stationery as their classmates.

That is where inequality can hurt our society more than we traditionally think. The middle class who are mixing with the upper clsss, able to get themselves into debt to match the consumption patterns of those in their reference groups suffers the most. So when we think about the issues of inequality, it is not just about the ones at the lower end of the spectrum suffering. Even the ones in upper classes are trying to catch up and move further up the ladder.

We need to sharpen our thinking about the true cost of inequality and the design of our societies, having already did such a terrific job designing the physical space of our country.

Dyad of boss and bossed

Seth Godin have been talking about the concept of enrollment and deepening it for years. Which is why some of his thoughts are really worth looking into, dissecting and pondering over. His influence is really at the level of marketing so to speak- he gives you the incentives that appeals to being human to act in alignment with the ideas he discovers.

Anyways, I want to talk about the concept of the dyad of bosses and bossed which he mentioned really briefly in that brilliant blog post.

Sometimes, this evolves into a mutually beneficial entanglement between the boss and the bossed. The enrollment turns into a desire to please, a figurehead-focused loyalty and dedication that often ends poorly because there’s nothing beyond the dyad. Without external signposts, solipsism and dittoheads result.

Seth Godin

The idea of external signposts point is interesting because most of such pairings he mentioned continues to operate and do not “end” per se as the boss tends to have certain requirements to continue perpetuating. Either because bosses needs to please their bosses and the top is looking at the stock market (which serves as an external signpost) or that they are indeed looking at some external signals.

The “dyad” tends to result more perhaps in a situation where organisations have less resource limitations (eg. Huge MNCs, public organisations, well-resourced donor-funded organisations). Those are situations when the bosses can truly relish so much in being pleased that she/he allows that mutual entanglement to take place.

The issue is how far removed those external signposts are for each one in the organisation. If only the boss cares, then clearly, solipsism and dittoheads will still result. Some people do prefer to be in those context either due to cultural conditioning or just plainly inertia.

But once you are aware of that, the question is whether you want to see that change.

The complain cycle

Years ago Singaporeans had a reputation of complaining. I’m not sure if this is still the case. I think they just call it feedback now. But the poison in complaining is not that it taxes resources of companies and government agencies by way of trying to address even trivial issues. It is the attitude that it creates.

It coaxes our mind into the habit of denying responsibility. It is a way by which we de-stress by assigning blame but doing nothing to improve the situation. In short run, you might be better off psychologically but because it does not address the problem at its roots, your stress level remains if not heightened.

There is a way to complain that rectifies this. First state the circumstance – which is completely neutral – to yourself and stakeholders. It should ideally point to things that happen without stating names or parties involved. For example “the pizza arrived at 1600hrs when I ordered it at 1200hrs” rather than “you guys delivered the pizza late”. Then go on to state your intentions and expectations, and take ownership if it: “your website stated that it was going to arrive in 45minutes from ordering and I needed to take my lunch at 1300hrs so I had expected to have my lunch on time”.

Then, having established the reasonability of your expectations (because if by now you articulated it and feel it is not a reasonable expectation then please don’t waste resources complaining); then invite the other party to take responsibility for any mistakes on their part: “I had to bear the cost of your mistake – whether it is the misleading statement on the website or the delay in delivery. I can only appeal to your goodwill in making this up to me”

Ultimately in this case, the actual problem they have is with their system and they have to rectify it. But the challenge we have is our expectations and correspondingly, we have to deal with ours.

Born a Syonanese

My Dad turns 76 this year. He was born in Singapore when it was called Syonan, when The Straits Times was The Syonan Shimbun. A look into the news articles published then reveals somewhat normal life.

There were advertisements about recruiting locals as officers with interviews at the officer’s club in Bidadari. That seemed innocuous to me though there may be some other motives to this activity. There was even a lottery going on and winners were announced on the papers. The prize money was huge!

For most part the sense of normalcy in the papers could be engineered as part of propaganda. But during wartime where perceptions are mostly skewed, it is interesting how the propaganda press looks like. You can check out the newspapers in those days as well here.

Growing up & responsibilities

There are lots of preconceived notions about growing up, being an adult, and the responsibilities associated. The truth is you often don’t grow up if you don’t or can’t take up the responsibilities. They come first, not the growth because they drive the growth.

Sometimes we wait around for time to pass so that we have “grown up” and can take on some new responsibilities. But the age doesn’t mean anything if you’ve just been wasting that time on nothing but hitting the number. So are systems that prize seniority in age or experience in years. Time is a proxy, not a measure of growth.

So instead of giving up because “time passes too slowly”, what are you spending your time on right now that prepares you for the responsibilities you want to take up?

Trashing Stuff

Waste is under-rated everywhere. Demand for second hand stuff mostly fell as the price of newly made goods fall with the rise of mass manufacturing. Efficient logistics moving manufactured goods helped to fuel the purchase of brand new items. Recycled goods are being seen as second class or for those underprivileged.

There is a clear case to using second-hand goods besides savings and economics. The reason is that the cost of waste and disposal has not exactly been priced into the goods because cities everywhere tends to put a blanket price on things like waste. There are arbitrage opportunities where this is the case and have been used by many different businesses or informal organisations around the world. But they are hard to scale, tend to be very specific around local context and culture.

Which is why growing a culture of acceptance for recycled products and second hand goods is going to be part of the drive for sustainability. It is not just about packaging but the goods themselves. I really think highly of marketplaces like Carousell which helps to match the needs and supply for such second-hand market. Curators of communities need to add this dimension of facilitating exchanges across members as a vital additional pillar to communities: coworking spaces, residential committees, management committees of buildings. Local community based marketplaces have the highest chance of spreading the culture and creating quick wins.

Memes & heroes

Memes are essentially ideas copied and spread across the internet with slight variations. What is interesting is the way a conceptual framework is being used to apply to various context often in humorous ways. There are two drivers for viral memes – humour and resonance. The manner by which the image and/or text combined generates universally appealing humour or the sense of “I know exactly what this is about” allows it to be shared, copied and spread.

Yet to be part of the media which carries the conceptual framework for the meme is perhaps a whole new level. Andras Arato experienced that being the meme character “Hide the pain Harold” and shares about it on a TEDx. It was completely accidental and the fact it started with some harrassment on part of internet users was pretty disturbing. But Andras embraced it in such a huge way – even starring in a funny video of a tour of Manchester particularly displaying his love for the Man City football team. The video reflects how sporting he is about this internet character and that genuine sense of enjoying the persona given to him.

Most recently, Swedish authorities used his stock image on the website for Covid-19 vaccinations and alongside giving people a good laugh, had to try and assure themselves this would not mislead the public on the level of confidence about the vaccine.