Jilla's rather tricky question about love & knowledge

I have to thank my reader Jilla Tan for asking this question which I will answer in this post. Ms Tan asked: What is the benchmark then, if I may ask, for people's knowledge of LKY to be sufficient enough for them to love him? 10%, 50%, 90%, or 100% of the historical facts behind this man? How much will ever be enough? 

Well, that is a challenging question but I have thought about and I do know how to respond to it. I would like to start with a little analogy if I may. I used to be a regular-church goer back when I lived in Singapore and I used to love Christmas at my church. There would be a magical atmosphere at the church - it would be so beautifully decorated, there were so many different activities on the theme of Christmas and the concepts were amazing: everyone who participated in those concerts put in so much effort into the performances. And then there would be food, good food and more amazing food. And as if that was not enough, people would be so friendly and nice - on Christmas day itself, they made sure that nobody left empty handed. Everyone who attended the concert would receive a gift and she organized a 'welcome team' to seek out the newcomers and guests to ensure that they were made to feel welcome.

Can you ever be wrong to love someone or something?

Ironically, I am an atheist today - but let's say I had invited you to one of those Christmas concerts at my ex-church in Singapore and they made you feel incredibly welcomed. You would be touched by their kindness and hospitality and you would think, "this is such a wonderful place full of such  nice people, I would like to be a Christian." At which stage does that statement change from, "I would like to be a Christian"to "I am a Christian"? Do you simply say, "oh the moment you welcome Christ into your heart you are a Christian!" I know of some Christians who will say exactly that. Then why go through the ritual of conformation and baptism then? But wait, but what if you then went back to the church in January, found the people a bit cold and unfriendly after the buzz of Christmas, you stop attending church in March and nobody really noticed you had left. Can you still consider yourself a Christian at that point? How does the faith of that kind of Christian compare to someone who has been regular churchgoer for a few decades?

I have made this point many points before: not many Singaporeans have a very deep understanding of the life of LKY. They probably have learnt quite a lot in the week since his death - but then again, the man has just died and the tributes are going to focus primarily on his greatest moments, his best achievements and nobody was going to bring up anything that was even mildly controversial (well, not unless you're Amos Yee). When presented with such a one-sided view of LKY's life and history, I say it is pretty much like visiting my ex-church in Singapore on Christmas day - you would be undoubtedly dazzled and impressed by the tributes. But if you actually visited that same church in mid-January, it would be a rather boring experience and most of the people sitting at the back rows during service would almost certainly be sleeping away. That's quite a far cry from the buzz of the concert on Christmas morning.

At what stage does your 'love' not really mean anything?

It is hard not to be impressed by the way world leaders have been heaping praise on LKY and the way so many leaders from around the world are attending his funeral. Few leaders can expect a send off like that - I am thinking about former leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and François Mitterrand who have had grand funerals in my lifetime and certainly, LKY's funeral is one that is going to match them all. If you knew nothing about LKY and all you knew about him was what was in the media since his death, then you might be excused for believing that he was one of the greatest human beings who had ever walked the face of the earth. I grew up in LKY's Singapore and just like going to church on a rainy mid-January Sunday afternoon, I had lived through far more mundane, less spectacular times under his rule. Thus my knowledge and understanding of LKY was built up over my lifetime.

A tribute is a tribute - one tends not to speak ill of the dead, that is considered pretty bad taste. That is why even LKY's fiercest critics have been very civil in their tributes this week because they know that they would incur the wrath of the Singaporean public (well, again, Amos Yee seems to be the exception to this rule). Thus we were really given only one side of the story in that week. However, we have a situation here where Singaporeans who have never really taken much of an interest in their own country's history are getting a crash course in it this week as the local media is feeding them a non-stop feed of tributes, glorifying LKY. Now there's a time and place for everything, but how many Singaporeans realize that such tributes tend to ignore all the less attractive and more controversial details of LKY's life? Or are they so swept up in the collective mourning that they start to believe that the tributes represent 100% of what LKY has done over the years? Well that would be like going to my ex-church in Singapore on Christmas day and imagining that going to church would be such a totally incredible experience based on what you saw that day. 

Many tributes were pay to LKY upon his death.

So going back to Jilla's question: how much do you need to know before you can love someone? She was talking specifically about LKY of course but let's look at that question in general as it is a very good question indeed. I am going to talk about a couple I know very well and have observed in very close quarters for many years: my parents. They were probably not the best match and they rushed into marriage - I wouldn't go as far as to say that they married for the wrong reasons, but let's just say I doubt they knew each other well enough before they got married. My mother had a miserable childhood - she was born during WW2 into an extremely poor family. She lost her father shortly after the war and was in very ill health and suffered from malnutrition all of her childhood. My grandmother struggled to raise all her children after the death of my grandfather so when my mother finally started working, she was giving practically every dollar she earned to her family, just to put food on the table. 

My Chinese-Malaysian father on the other hand, had just finished his education and training in Singapore and was at the crossroads: his family were pleading with him to return to Malaysia and help with the family business but he wanted to stay in Singapore. So when he met my mother, they married pretty quickly after a whirlwind courtship. My mother married to get away from her family, from the grinding poverty that she had grown up with (my dad's family was considerably richer). My father married because he simply didn't want to go back to his sleepy little hometown in Malaysia, he had grown to enjoy the cosmopolitan city life in Singapore. So they got married and soon my eldest sister was born. Were my parents really truly in love or did they just need something from each other at that point in time? 

I can respect your choice, but don't expect me to agree with it.

It was not the happiest of marriage - I think my sister might get very offended and upset if I divulged more details as to why my parents never really got along, I certainly didn't have a happy childhood.  I don't think they were ever that great a match as a couple, yet when the children came along, that held the marriage together. I did wonder what would happen once we had grown up - then fortunately, my sister had a son and so now it's my nephew who is holding their marriage together again. But it is evident that my parents have little in common - my father is Chinese educated, he primarily speaks in Mandarin and refuses to speak English. My mother is English educated and primarily speaks in English and Hokkien and her Mandarin sucks. I do wonder how on earth they ever communicate on a deeper level since they don't even share a common first language to express their inner most thoughts. 

So Jilla, you can claim to love someone you don't know very well, you can even marry them, start a family with them and then spend the rest of your life wondering whether you have really married the right person. Ask my parents if they love each other and of course they will tell you that they love each other deeply - but I have wondered at times if it was actually true? I get the feeling that my mother married my father because she was hoping for him to be this knight in shining armour who would waltz into her life and solve all her problems - but that simply didn't turn out to be the case as my father has his own share of emotional baggage and flaws as well. Well his money certainly solved many problems, but she also needed someone to make her feel loved and protected. What did my mother do then? 

Do you ever justify the choices you have made?

There was clearly an emotional need that my father simply was not in a position to fulfill for my mother, thus she turned to two other men in her life for direction: Jesus and LKY. Now here's the problem with my mother - because of the very difficult circumstances in her childhood (poverty + WW2), she didn't have a good education (like many people of her generation). I hate to speak ill of my mother like this, but she isn't the kind of person who knows how to analyze complex situations or solve problems. She prefers simple answers and often simplifies complex situations by ignoring the stuff she doesn't understand. By that token, there is a child-like quality about her: she is simple, naive and sometimes, she even speaks like a child. When she spouts something totally ignorant, I have to bite my tongue and resist the urge to correct her at once, lest I hurt her feelings. 

My mother has a knack of simplifying everything, breaking it down into simple bite-size chunks that even a simpleton like her can understand. I know she has tried reading the bible but she doesn't understand what the hell it is all about - it is way too cheem for her. She makes little effort to follow politics in Singapore, she doesn't understand what the hell it is all about - again, it is way too cheem for her. So her understanding of the Christianity is hardly based on what the bible says, quiz her on the bible and she would probably not be able to answer most of the questions. Likewise, quiz her on LKY and she will not be able to answer most of the questions either. She is ignorant and doesn't really mind or care - ignorance is bliss. And when she doesn't have the facts, she just defaults to the belief that both Jesus and LKY are there to take care of her as long as she worships them. I suppose in light of the rather distant relationship she has with her husband, she is filling the gap with two benevolent 'god-like/fatherly' figures in her life (remember that she lost her own father when she was a child). Was this a conscious choice on her part or was she just brainwashed? 

Are all your emotional needs fulfilled or even addressed?

What is this love my mother has for LKY then? Is it based on a purely intellectual appreciation of his many great achievements? Or is it merely a simple tool that she has used to plug an emotional gap in her life? It is a means to an end, it is what gives her peace and it is what helps her sleep at night. I don't try to correct her, I don't try to change her mind because I don't see the point - she simply isn't capable of processing the information about religion or politics and I would rather she remain blissfully ignorant than to be confronted with complex information that will only confuse the heck out of her. So yes Jilla, my mother doesn't know that much about LKY but she worships him - the same way she doesn't know that much about Christianity, but she goes to church every Sunday, sing loads of songs and feels good about belonging to a church (especially when all the people there are so kind to the sweet little old ladies like my mother). They would never turn my mother away or berate her for not knowing all that much about the bible - as long as my mother faithfully turns up Sunday after Sunday.

Take for example the fact that my mother gives thanks to LKY for the comfortable life she has had - now I think she has my father to thank for that, it was his family's money that allowed him to buy the house that I grew up in. However, given that my mother was treated pretty badly by my late grandmother (oh my mother had the mother-in-law from hell), my mother refused to acknowledge the fact that it was my father's family's wealth that gave us a comfortable life. Call it a blind spot if you must, but my mother found it much easier to give thanks to LKY and thank him for the house she lived in and also she gave thanks to Jesus for providing everything nice in her life. You see, some people find it hard to accept the fact that they have to rely on themselves to get through life: some of us have family members who are there to help us, some of us have a spouse, some of us have close friends we can rely on - but how many people would be brave enough to face life alone? My mother lacks the self-confidence to do that and so she has invented two larger than life Tai Kor Tai (Cantonese, "big brother big") characters in her life who are always there for her like guardian angels: Jesus and LKY. This is why I think Amos Yee was onto something when he compared LKY to Jesus in his video because I can see the way my mother worships LKY the same way she worships Jesus. Is my mother worshiping LKY because she respects him for what he has achieved, or is she simply creating a personal guardian angel out of him to plug an emotional gap in her life? And if she was, well, then, is that really such a bad thing?

Do you have the confidence to rely on yourself?

Certainly, no one is going to tell my mother that she has no right to express her love for LKY or to claim to be a pious Christian just because she hasn't quite got the intellectual capacity to process complex information quite the way we can. Such is the messy situation that is the reality. In an ideal world, we would be able to take a subject in school, analyze it and then come to our own conclusion about it. But in reality, people like my mother simply are not able to do that - so whilst she certainly has the right to love LKY for whatever reason, please excuse me if I am going to point out the difference between someone like her and some of my peers who are extremely intelligent and have a very deep understanding and appreciation of the journey that LKY has taken. Of course there is a huge difference, it just seems somewhat unkind to pick on someone like my mother by pointing that out. 

Ultimately, whether or not you want to love someone is a personal choice - no one can stop you from loving someone you barely know. It's your choice. But conventional wisdom states that loving someone you barely know is hardly a rational decision - but hey, human beings are not often rational and they often make irrational decisions. It is a free world and we are free to make irrational decisions if that is what we want. But having the right to make an irrational decision doesn't make that decision a rational one at the end of the day. Imagine if I was a very obese person and I eat too much cheesecake - you could persuade me to go on and diet for the sake of my health, but I could claim that it is my right to eat as much cheesecake as I like. I can make that irrational decision, but what would that make you think of me if that was the decision I made after your pleas to think about my health? You may then choose to walk away and leave me in peace with my cheesecake - that is a choice I've been forced to take many times with my mother.

Oooh cheesecake.Delicious.

So on that note Jilla, I shall end. You asked a complex question and I've tried my best to answer it. I don't think I could have done it justice in the comments section, hence I had to organize my thoughts like this. Please let me know if you have any other questions and if they are good questions, then I will try to answer them. Many thanks for reading.