It Takes all Sorts to Make a World

On Civility, Divided Opinions, Political Maturity & Rational Discourse in Singapore blogosphere

"My philosophy is that there is room for all philosophies on the station."
- Captain Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek:Deep Space 9

The Stormy Present

Recently, Fearfully Opinionated posed this interesting question in his blog about the Singapore plogosphere (to his credit in coining the term), i.e. social and political commentaries in Singapore blogosphere), "Why can't we all just get along?" The main message in the piece emphasizes the need to disagree gracefully in a debate or discussion, instead of widening the rift between both or many sides of the house.

Prior to her piece, Alex Au (aka Yawning Bread) offered a critical analysis of the internet that the future may not belong to the bloggers because there is the possibility that the individual has a higher chance to narrowcast and cherry pick information which suits his or her agenda. After with so much inundation of information, why should we listen to everybody but instead decide what we want to believe or not? In a different context, Kitana offered the thesis that the internet is the most powerful voice that we have. The existence of an uncharted space for freedom of expression and speech offers alternative views to be heard and social injustices to be addressed. Even better, it provides the space for us to express indignation and outrage when a scandal broke out in our backyard, from comments like "S$600,000 a year is peanuts" and "get out of my elite uncaring face". It is precisely the double edged sword that this uncharted space for freedom also offers the disgruntled and angry mob to conduct their witchhunt without fear and hesitation. The Kway Teow Man (KTM) reinforced this argument clearly in his belated response to my earlier piece "Two Singapores", by asking metaphorically how to count the number of Singapores. The metaphorical piece asks a few interesting questions whether the anti-establishment voices really represent the common people and substantiates with examples to show the herd mentality, rhetoric (or polemic) arguments and lack of reasoning provide a clear and present danger to the state of civil debate in Singapore.

This sets up the motivation for this piece, setting up the talking points to review our differences and how we can take the road forward.

The truth hurts and the differences make it worse

To start my piece, it might be good to ponder on three simple questions. I start by the first, "Why do people always say, 'The truth hurts'?" Once you get over this question, you can ask the second question, "Why do people like to highlight differences rather than similarities?" Finally, if you see a problem arising in the society, the natural instinct is to point the finger and make blame and accusation to the victims. The question is, "Why are we keep blaming them?". Let's put these questions in context to Singapore using the education system (and if you take a look at most writings in the blogosphere, it can be applied to any issue from the GST hike):

• "Why do people always say, 'The truth hurts'?": The truth hurts because it may not be aligned with what you believe. In Singapore, we face the brutal truth in the last decade about the social strata created by the education system. If you did not start from a good school, it is likely that your university education and subsequently career will not take you to nowhere. The truth here is the paper chase, and many of us acknowledge that as the brutal truth.
• "Why do people like to highlight differences rather than similarities?": A lot of times, the different social strata created by the education system choose to highlight their differences. For example, if you start the argument from the better schools, you will hear them saying, "Why are those people resenting us for our talent and brilliance?" Then start taking the other position, you find the neighbourhood schools, "Those people are just snobs." In both situations, the differences are highlighted but rather the similarities. Usually, this question provides the pretext to observe how people issue ad-hominems and character assassinations by diverting their opponents questioning the main point of the question.
• "Why are we continuously blaming them (or the system) for the problems?": This is evident from the way which we are taught to write general paper essays. When I was studying for my 'A' levels, I always steered clear of the subject on the Singapore education system. A lot of times, my contemporaries blame the system for "not giving them a chance to show their talent" and "encourage creativity and innovation". Life is often easy for everyone to keep blaming on the system and stop asking ourselves why we are not taking a step back to examine the system. In these situations, civility is thrown out of the window and so begin the dawn of witchhunting and Spanish Inquisition.

Take the example on the 18 year old Singaporean girl making insensitive remarks about the class stratification, we can see all three questions happening at the same time. Most of us acknowledged the truth, chose to highlight the differences and finally, blamed the system for manufacturing such a person and subsequently to the government for the unrelated problems to this issue. Is there all we can do? Can we move forward beyond these three questions?

Compassion, Understanding and Necessity to move forward

Our problems are small compared to the bigger ones see out there. It might be easier to take a step out of Singapore and look at the race relations in US. During an episode of the West Wing, a Latino presidential candidate was asked about his views on a latino policeman shooting a nine year old black kid for stealing a car in the midst of tragedy that divides both communities. Both sides acknowledge the brutal truth in lack of understanding between both communities, highlighted the differences between the blacks and the latinos and blamed the system for engineering that difference. In the end, the candidate gave a speech that provides the alternative to the clear and present problem in their society:

"You know, I find myself on days like this casting about for someone to blame. I blame the kid, he stole a car. I blame the parents. Why couldn't they teach him better. I blame the cop, did he need to fire. I blame every one I can think of and I am filled with rage. And then I try and find compassion. Compassion for the people I blame. Compassion for the people I do not understand, compassion. It doesn't always work so well. I remember as a young man listening on the radio to Dr. King in 1968. He asked of us compassion, and we responded, not necessarily because we felt it but because he convinced us that if we could find compassion, if we could express compassion, that if we could just pretend compassion, it would heal us so much more than vengeance could. And he was right: it did but not enough. What we've learned this week is that more compassion is required of us and an even greater effort is required of us. And we are all, I think everyone of us, tired.

We're tired of understanding, we're tired of waiting, we're tired of trying to figure out why our children are not safe and why our efforts to to make them safe seem to fail. We're tired. But we must know that we have made some progress and blame will only destroy it. Blame will breed more violence and we have had enough of that.

Blame will not rid our streets of crime and drugs and fear and we have had enough of that. Blame will not strengthen our schools or our families or our workforce. Blame will rob us of those things and we have had enough of that. And so I ask you today to dig down deep with me and find that compassion in your hearts. Because it will keep us on the road. And we will walk together and work together. And slowly, slowly, too slowly, things will get better."

So are my thoughts that go with the many issues which are dividing us. In Singapore, any form of political debate is always reduced to "either you are with us or you are against us". It is almost impossible to have a spectrum of possibilities which appears difficult to conceive. Of course, a lack of space to express our political views give us less chance to express them. The inability to express these views translates into anger, and hence even the best of thinkers among us (with myself included) are in danger of being polarized into different camps. Oftentimes, I see that political apathy and passion to serve the country are both sides of the same coin. If you resolve one side, you get the other. However, if we get the passion to serve the country, an immediate problem (faced by our politicians) is that how we can manage dissent and disagreements.

It takes all sorts to make a world. There will always be differences, and we need to understand how to manage those differences. We need to go beyond bearing grudges to see how we can take small steps forward. The small steps require us to be more critical in examining issues and use compassion to helping those understand our positions even if we differ greatly in ideology. Political maturity is not about objecting to the establishment, but also embodying the principle that we can find ways and means to raise our objections with civil and rational discourse. There will be hard decisions and we hate to accept their final decision, but we must not stop fighting. It is always hard to please everyone, and if we get rejected or snubbed, sensitive to criticism is not a good reason for us to stop trying. Yes, we can question the experts on what they say and place skeptism in their recommendations, but we do not undermine them if they are able to provide a reasonable answer.

Even as an idealist, I came to the understanding that it is better to have people govern in necessity rather than ideology. Only that, both sides of the house will make sacrifices to ensure things get better in smaller ways. That is the only way which we can move beyond the age of wonder to the age of action.

Comments

[gecko]

"Oftentimes, I see that political apathy and passion to serve the country are both sides of the same coin. If you resolve one side, you get the other."

Hi BL,

I tend to treat that situation you described above as an analogy to a pendulum. The 'plogosphere', being vast as it is, draws a diversity of people, who will always cause the pendulum of rhetoric/civil-discourse to swing from one end to the other end.

What people need to bear in mind is that the pendulum always comes to rest eventually - at the centre and its most stable.

If we take that as an indicator of how issues should be viewed from, then perhaps the diverse plogosphere will become more 'mature' and well-debated.