The chocolate fallacy, racism and the Singaporean mindset

I had hit such a raw nerve on a recent post that I simply had to do a follow up. It is on the topic of racism: more specifically, how Singaporeans can be so obsessed with being a victim of racism. Firstly, allow me to start off with a little story about the chocolate fallacy. Once upon a time in Singapore, there was this woman - let's call her Mrs Pui. Now there's no way to say this nicely, Mrs Pui is fat, she is only too aware that she is obese and she wants to lose weight. When she was young, her parents made a big deal about not allowing her to eat chocolate because she was already overweight and she was very fond of chocolate; so somehow in her head, she had established this link between chocolate and her obesity. So she went on this "no-chocolate diet", convinced that if she avoided anything that contained chocolate (chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate puddings etc), then she will become thin.

"Does it contain chocolate? I can eat it if it doesn't."

Guess what? Mrs Pui followed her "no-chocolate" diet very strictly and at times, she watched her friends and colleagues eat loads of delicious chocolate products and she abstained. She was convinced that her will power in resisting the temptation of chocolate will somehow make her thin but after a month, she realized that she had gained weight: 5 kgs in fact. She was extremely puzzled and frustrated at the same time, "I had avoided all chocolate in the last month, why did I still gain so much weight?" Her best friend looked at her in disbelief and asked, "Really? Are you really puzzled? When we were eating chocolate, you were eating prawn crackers. When we had chocolate cake, you had cheese cake. When we had chocolate pudding, you had Cendol. Yes you avoided chocolate, but you were still eating food with a lot of calories and fats in them. It was not like you were eating raw carrots whilst we had chocolate cake?! Oh and whilst we're on the topic, when was the last time you did any exercise? Like what, a few years ago?"

Let's analyze the story of Mrs Pui and her chocolate fallacy. There is so much to think about when you want to lose weight: you need to think about your diet, you need to think about exercising, your lifestyle, the kind of psychological motivations you need, the kind of emotional support you need - it is probably the one challenge that will involve every single aspect of your life. Take sleep for example: if you get enough sleep, but you do not have the luxury of having afternoon naps, many office workers resort to having high energy, sugary snacks like chocolate bars, cakes and sweets to get that sugar rush/high - whether or not it actually works is another issue altogether, but the very act of snacking does keep you awake. You are chewing, your mouth is moving, you are tasting some pleasant, stimulating flavours in your mouth, the experience of eating will keep you awake. Trying to make sure you get enough sleep at night will involve making sure you get to bed at a reasonable time, you are not disturbed during your sleeping hours and maybe having your dinner early enough so you do not go to bed on a very full stomach. So many aspects of your life impact on your weight, so trying to lose weight will require a plan a lot more complicated that "avoid chocolate".

Laksa... contains no chocolate, so Mrs Pui ate a lot of it.

When people are faced with a huge challenge that requires a very complex solution involving many different factors, some people panic and give up. What they then do is that they simplify the situation in their heads by identifying just one aspect of the problem to deal with and they convince themselves that as long as they deal with that aspect of the problem, they have dealt with the situation and solved the problem (as in the case of Mrs Pui and chocolate). Of course, we all know that you can never solve complex problems like that - but it doesn't stop people from oversimplifying complex problems. In focusing on just one aspect of a complex situation, they are effectively acting like an ostrich who sticks its head in the sand. Needless to say, it does not lead to a productive outcome.

I have already talked about this before when discussing Asian parenting. It is tough to bring up a child in this day and age, so Asian parents often pick on one thing to focus on and effectively ignore all other aspects of parenting. Often Asian parents focus on grades as the barometer of their parenting skills - as long as the kid gets good grades at school, the parents think, "okay then everything must be fine." This child could turn out to be the most evil bastard on earth but the Asian parents suffer from tunnel vision as they constantly focus on their child's academic progress. This is actually no different from Mrs Pui and her chocolate fallacy: yes, making sure your child does very well at school is just one aspect of parenting - but there's a LOT more to parenting than simply your child's academic performance.

"As long as he does well in school, all must be well..."

Another common fallacy they fall prey to is this paranoia about their children getting distracted from their studies if they fall in love or even start having sex. This one is so incredibly stupid I just have to laugh because there are so many things that can potentially distract children from their studies (and most of them can be found on the internet) but sex and relationships are just one of many things that can be a distraction - the same way chocolate is just one of many kinds of foods that can potentially make Mrs Pui very fat. But no, instead, Asian parents fall prey to tunnel vision and are convinced that they must focus all their energies on preventing their children from becoming interested in sex and relationships whilst almost totally ignoring all other forms of distractions. So Asian parents would gladly buy their children an Xbox (hello, a big source of distraction) but totally freak out if the child wants to go on a date. It makes absolutely no sense because this kind of behaviour is not motivated by logic, but an irrational urge to simplify a complex situation. And yes, even highly intelligent people can behave irrationally like that.

How does one explain this kind of irrational behaviour then? Are the people who behave irrationally stupid - or is there a more complex explanation for it? Well, allow me to explain it like this: in life we are faced with problems that we simply cannot solve (well, cannot solve easily). Take global warming for example, that's probably the biggest problem facing our generation. We cannot solve it easily as individuals but we do little things like recycling that make us feel a bit better about doing our part to solve the problem. On the scheme of things, the difference that a household's recycling makes is really negligible when you look at the kind of carbon dioxide emissions in countries like China, India and America - but we still diligently sort our waste and do our little bit of recycling regardless: why? It is because the act of doing something makes us feel better, even if we do know that it will make no difference whatsoever to the final outcome. Such is the power of rituals - that is why people keep on doing their rituals regardless of any sense or logic.

Why do some pointless rituals make us feel so much better?

When it comes to Singaporeans worrying about racism in the West, that is so similar to the way Mrs Pui is worried about chocolates making her fat. When adapting to any new environment, there is undoubtedly a very long list of things for you to worry about. If you were to start thinking about all the issues that could potentially go wrong, good grief - you would drive yourself crazy. So what do we do? Most of the time, we look at a potential problem (say that of a major terrorist attack in the city you live in) and you think, ah well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. That's one quite common response but the other is Mrs Pui's response: which is to focus on just one small part of the problem and ignore everything else. Now that's hardly a useful or practical way to approach the issue of living/working/studying in another country. Say you are coming to the UK to live for three years to do a degree. What are some of the problems you have to worry about when you move to the UK then, apart from the (very slim) possibility of racism?

Well, I could write an extremely long list of reasons why a British person may not get along with you, but let me just focus on the most common one which you Singaporeans are strangely oblivious to. This is discrimination on the basis of social class and this definition is not dependent on your skin colour but on your wealth, your social circles and your cultural experiences. So a black person can be in the elite category, whilst a white person can fall into the poorest and most deprived categories. Why don't you try this test on the BBC's website and find out what social class you belong to? It will only take a few minutes and it is both quite fun and enlightening. Whilst the test is a good indication of one's class status, it is also rather brief and I would also include other details like the level of one's education, one's job and other social habits/skills to further enhance the test, but this is as good a test as any out there right now for this.

Singaporeans are often totally oblivious to the social class system.

After all, this is not a precise science: when you meet anyone in a business or social situation, from the moment you start interacting you are giving away clues about your social class. By the time you have spoken your first sentence, people can already pick up from your accent just how well educated you are, what kind of family background you have, what your place in society is. And even if you kept your mouth shut, people can still study your body language, look at what you wear and pick up on subtle clues that still tell them exactly who you are and what your social class is. Now there are some people who are happy to socialize with anyone from any social background, but there are those who will tend to prefer to socialize with those from a very similar social background and discriminate against those from different social backgrounds. I don't want you to think that this is a straight forward "posh people looking down on working class people" situation - it actually works both ways, as I had found out at work a few years ago.

Singaporeans tend to be utterly oblivious to the British class system - I am not sure why, I think it is more because they assume that the rules for Singapore apply in the UK. And even when they are outside Singapore, they insist on playing by Singaporean rules whilst interacting with non-Singaporeans. The rules in Singapore are so extremely different: firstly, there is this manic Asian obsession with good grades so as long as you have straight As, nothing else seems to matter to you. Perhaps the generalization of a generation of academically brilliant Singaporeans who are utterly socially inept when it comes to any social skills is a bit harsh, but that is the impression I see some of the Singaporean students in the UK. Likewise, Singaporeans seem to judge adults on one criteria only: money. So you can have the Towkay show up in slippers and pick his teeth with a toothpick in the middle of a meeting, but as long as he drove an expensive Mercedes Benz to the meeting, Singaporeans would be like, "wah you see that Towkay's car park outside so big one. That kind of car must be very expensive one leh so he must be 很了不起 one, you have to respect him." Don't try to do that in the UK, please: different countries, different societies, different value systems, different rules.

He may be a Towkay who drives an expensive Lexus...

Are there Singaporeans who fail to adapt to different cultures when living abroad? Of course. That is bound to happen when people move to another country and find it hard to adapt to a different system abroad. What is frustrating about Singaporeans in this situation however, is that they tend to place the blame on the other party ("I'm doing nothing wrong, the Angmoh is being racist to me") rather than themselves ("I am struggling to adapt to a different culture - hence the misunderstandings"). Playing the victim is a tempting option as it simplifies a very complex situation where one is faced with the difficult challenge of adapting to a whole new culture in a different country - hence we go back to Mrs Pui and her chocolate fallacy. Surely you guys are rational enough not to fall prey to the chocolate fallacy time and time again like that? Or am I just wasting my time, trying to fight human nature here?

So that's it from me on this issue. What do you think about the chocolate fallacy then? Is this a temporary phase or is it a habit of a lifetime for Singaporeans?  Please do let me know what you think about this - many thanks for reading.

I'm having plenty of fun in London!