A major flaw in the way Singaporeans think

Sometimes I finish an article and then like 24 hours later, I realize ah I forgot to mention this point. Often I go back to edit the article to add that point, but in this case I decided to do a new post about it. In my last post, I criticized Dr Tan Ying Ying over a very biased, unbalanced piece about the Singaporean accent in CNA. Oh I didn't beat around the bush, I said that Dr Tan was a deeply insecure woman who had been terribly unprofessional in the way she behaved at work - that piece was really that badly written. So after I had published the article, the thought occurred to me: this piece was featured on a CNA website, so surely there was some kind of chief editor who would be controlling the content, editing the articles before they are published for the public to read. So why didn't the editor step in and say, "Dr Tan, people are going to think you're an insecure moron if you publish this piece. let's sit down and try to make you sound more professional and create a more balanced piece, so that people will not ridicule you and we will work together on it." Well that's what a nice editor would do, I would probably just tell her to rewrite it and do it properly this time or we won't run her piece if she can't bloody write a half decent piece. I don't suffer fools gladly, my boss certainly wouldn't be nice if I made a mistake at work, so why should the editor be nice to Dr Tan when she produces such a shoddy piece of work?

Do you know when you exercise your judgment?

I had a look at the CNA website and I think it might be Jaime Ho, chief editor of digital news who may have been caught sleeping at the wheel and allowed Dr Tan's article to be published. Or it could be a number of other editors, but I'm wondering why any editor in the right mind would publish an article like that? That's what I want to explore in today's post. Now the most obvious explanation is this: he probably simply thought "wow look at her fancy title at the university, of course she must be an expert, right? So she knows more about the topic than I do, I trust her." After all, wouldn't we want to live in a world where we can trust experts? Say you go see a doctor and get a prescription, wouldn't you just want to go to the pharmacy and get the medicines, rather than have to seek a second opinion or check online if that would be the right kind of medicine for you? We do trust professionals like doctors in such circumstances of course, so am I being really too demanding by expecting someone like Jaime Ho to double check the article that Dr Tan has submitted to his website? Well actually, yes - whilst an ordinary person who isn't a medically trained professional would find it quite hard to verify if a prescription is suitable (short of seeing another doctor or pharmacist), someone like Jaime Ho is a chief editor and it is indeed his job to check if the people he has engaged to write for his website are indeed doing a good job. Dr Tan was offered the chance to write an article on the basis of her credentials, but there's no reason why her work shouldn't be subjected to the same level of scrutiny - since we now know that she is actually a terrible writer.

In a recent article, I talked about how Papaoutai by Belgian singer Stromae is one of my favourite songs. It was released in 2013 and reached number one in both France and Belgium; it was the best-selling single in Belgium of 2013. Why is it such a controversial song? Well, it is a song of hatred and frustration: the title can be translated as "papa where are you?" Well it should be written as 'papa tu es ou' or 'papa ou es toi' in proper French but he squished it together as one word Papaoutai in a kind of baby-talk broken French. It is clear from the lyrics that Stromae hates his late father, oh the angst and anger expressed in the lyrics are painful: Hein ? Dites-nous qui, tiens; Tout le monde sait comment on fait des bébés. Mais personne sait comment on fait des papas. Monsieur « j’sais tout » en aurait hérité, c’est ça ? For those of you who don't speak French, here is the English translation: "hey, tell us who then, everybody knows how we make babies, but nobody knows how we make fathers. Mr 'know-it-all' would have inherited it all, is that it?" Many people did think this song was controversial (or even shocking and offensive) because they didn't want children singing a song about how much they hate their fathers, about how awful their fathers are. That is just a line many people refuse to cross. Well, that song struck a chord with me because I have a very cold and distant relationship with my parents. I stumbled upon an old article I had written out of frustration tonight and thought, damn my parents really behaved atrociously on that occasion. This is precisely why a song like Papaoutai strikes a chord with me - I can truly empathize with Stromae.

But here's the thing with Asian cultures: we're usually expected to given unconditional loyalty to figures of authorities be it parents, teachers or politicians. I have talked about this in a post from quite a while ago regarding this 'benevolent egg' model that my mother subscribes to. She believes that everyone who has authority over her: from her parents, her (former) employers, to the government, to her Christian god are benevolent, that somehow she can trust them to look out for her and take care of her best interests. People like her go to bed and sleep better at night in the firm belief that she doesn't have to worry too much about having to take care of everything, because there are other people and forces who will take care of her. This is in fact a rather large part of religion, it is what gives a lot of people comfort after praying to their gods about the problems in their lives. So what my mother is doing really isn't that unique, in fact it is rather common. However, problems arise when the very authorities she puts so much faith in commits a horrible atrocity, such as when the Singapore government turned away a boat full of Rohingya refugees - she start defending the Singapore government's stance and I screamed at her, "you have no mercy, you have absolutely no humanity, you are trying to defend the indefensible, you actually claim to be a Christian but you're no more than a lying hypocrite because you don't practice these Christian values." But the problem was that she is not intelligent enough to get her head around that contradiction, that's why people like her are so easily brainwashed into offering their blind allegiance to those in authority.

So in Asia, even if you are frustrated with your parents because they did something stupid, you're not meant to say that out aloud the way I did on my blog or at least avoid washing dirty linen in public because doing so would not only embarrass your parents but people would probably be unsympathetic as they will see you as being deeply disrespectful, having broken that social taboo. That probably explains the substantial amount of hate mail I get on a regular basis on my blog, but hey I can cope with that. When I was growing up in Singapore, it was drummed into my head that kids in the West show their parents no respect and would have the audacity to argue with their parents - that somehow this was an awful thing which makes their culture inferior to Chinese culture. Now don't get me wrong, I believe that children and parents should have a cordial, respectful, loving relationship - but that shouldn't be unconditional. Let's not underestimate how hard it is to forge any kind of meaningful social relationship and it does take a lot of hard work to make it good but if you were to simply assume, "oh my kids are going to respect me regardless, even if I treat them like shit" then it can lead to a very dysfunctional state of affairs. Mind you, that's why my parents continue to treat my sister like shit because she does offer them that unconditional respect regardless - hey, that's her choice and prerogative; she's a grown woman.

Why do I have such a problem with this aspect of Asian culture then? Well, you can see the problem it manifests: if Jaime Ho was prepared to reject Dr Tan's article, "if you think I'm paying you to write an article like this, you're dreaming. Wake up and do your research properly, or I'll get someone else who's far more capable to write for my website." If there was some kind of quality control exercised as part of this editor-writer relationship, then guess who will benefit the most? The reader, because bad articles would never get past the strict editor. Now the problem with Singapore is that Singaporeans are one of the most law-abiding, obedient people in the world - whilst this is not entirely a bad thing, it is a double-edged sword. The fact that Singapore is such a safe country with low crime rates is mostly because of the law abiding nature of the people there, because people don't litter (mostly out of a fear of punishment), the streets of Singapore are a lot cleaner than other Asian cities in the region. Such a respect for authority usually starts from a very young age at home, where Asian parents demand respect from their child and if they don't get the obedience they want, they would not hesitate to discipline their children harshly. Nonetheless, the other side of the same coin is this inability to question authority: Jaime Ho probably doesn't question how awful Dr Tan is at her job for the same reason why my sister simply allows my parents to keep on treating her like shit - it is this very aspect of their culture that stops them from questioning those in some kind of authority, so they simply shove their better judgement into their blind spot.

Here's the problem with the CNA case study with Dr Tan - users like me don't pay for content, I didn't have to pay a subscription to access that awful article written by Dr Tan. It makes money through their news channels that is widely watched across Asia and they do carry a lot of advertising both in their news channel and website; so if I am not a paying customer, then they really don't have to care if they disappoint or upset me with a bad article. Let's contrast this to the situation where I went for pizza this afternoon with two of my American friends - the pizzas were pretty okay, the service was a bit slow but overall, it wasn't so bad that I would complain or leave a bad review online. I was  paying customer, so I had thus the right to make demands on the staff in terms of the quality of the food and service I was getting in the pizza restaurant. But imagine what you would do if you had a really bad experience at a restaurant - you would complain to the manager, you might refuse to pay for the meal if it was really awful or you might write a really bad review online if a staff member upset you just to warn other diners to avoid the place. Of course, restaurants know that even one unhappy customer can cause a lot of trouble, that's their incentive to try to make sure each customer has a good experience. The ideal situation is of course when the diners have a great experience: good food, friendly service and then goes on to recommend the restaurant to their friends. But note that this kind of good relationship in business is only possible with the threat of unhappy customers kicking up a huge fuss (and that in turn could potentially damage your future profits) - after all, you can't expect business to offer a good service if they are operating in a consequence-free environment.

Now let's contrast that to a parent-child relationship - well, the kids rarely ever get any say in that relationship. Imagine if we're dealing with an extreme situation whereby a father is physically and sexually abusing his 12 year old daughter - the daughter probably wouldn't dare to speak up if she doesn't think that anyone would believe her. She simply cannot just pack her bags and leave home, where would she go as a child? She has no money and nowhere else to go; she has no means of earning money; at that age, she is completely reliant on her parents for everything. This may sound horrific of course, but it explains why a lot of parents do get away with being extremely abusive towards their own children as the children simply have no escape from that situation. Effectively, many parents do feel as if they are operating in a consequence-free environment, whereby there really isn't anyone to stop them or punish them should they mistreat their children. This is especially the case in a lot of Asian cultures, where people tend to look the other way even if they know that the parents are being abusive, because in Asian cultures, parents are allowed pretty much free reign to punish their children in the name of discipline - this is of course, very different in the West where we have stricter laws about this. The only recourse for abused children in many cases is simply to have a very distant (or non-existent) relationship with their parents; and I do realize that's pretty much my case. I don't talk to my parents these days, not if I can help it. Conversations really only happen when I visit Singapore and that doesn't happen very often since I live in London now.

Now, if I may clarify please: I don't hate my parents - I simply don't believe in putting them on a pedestal and offering them unconditional respect. There are two things I have to make clear about the situation with my parents. They are both severely autistic and even if you were to look past the autism, well, I can't find a delicate way to put this. They have below-average IQ, some people might use the word 'stupid' to describe them. These two factors makes any kind of relationship or interaction with them very challenging. So when they say or do something incredibly stupid or unreasonable, I usually remind myself of that they can't help it - the alternative would be just to take it personally and I don't do that. I tell myself they have an excuse to behave like that and that's the way I cope with the situation anyway - my sister would instead simply go into auto-pilot mode when it comes to my parents: she just accepts any bullshit or abuse they throw her way without once questioning it. I suppose in her mind, that's her understanding of what filial piety means and she is being a good person (and I have a one-way ticket to hell). I just don't see what I can possibly gain by having any kind of relationship with my parents, if all it will bring me is frustration, angst and disappointment - I just don't know how to fix that relationship where there was never ever any love to begin with. But the contrast between my sister's attitude and my attitude is really stark: I love and respect my sister, but it is evident that we're really very different people.

And so I turn my attention towards my nephew: how can we get the balance right for him? I don't want him to grow up and become another Singapore robot who blindly respects anyone in authority. Here's a horrific story to illustrate my point: there was once a dog owner who was extremely abusive towards his dog, the dog was underweight and mistreated. Yet because the dog is not capable of being rational like a human, the dog remained totally loyal to its nasty, abusive owner because, you can actually train a dog to do that. We'd like to think that most pet owners choose to get a pet because they truly love animals, but things can go badly wrong and the dog cannot speak up for itself against abuse. Battered wives who end up in abusive relationships can suffer years of physical and sexual abuse as well because they totally lose perspective about their situation, not realizing they are in a very toxic relationship and they are unable to stand up for themselves despite the abuse. Can you actually be a good judge of character, to trust your own judgement enough to question those in authority - be it your own parents, your own teachers or those in government and hold them to account for the mistakes that they make? Or do you blindly bow down to their authority? Right now, I'm not sure if my nephew is capable of that - he is rather young and inexperienced as a 15 year old teenager; this might be something he can figure out for himself at some stage, but wouldn't it be so much easier if someone could just teach him how to do it?

On the other hand though, he is after all a 15 year old, let's look at a situation which I faced when I was 15 years old. I had a terrible teacher in my school, he shall not be named but since he was my mathematics teacher, let's call him Mr Math. As an adult, in hindsight, I can look back and say, yeah he was terrible at his job but back then, there was little I could do about the situation. I had to do the subject and was expected to get good grades; I achieved this in spite of rather than because of Mr Math. But any kind of outright rebellion or even questioning his authority would get me into trouble with everyone from my parents to the school to even my peers - I'm afraid my fellow classmates did the very Singaporean thing and respected his authority whether or not he was a good teacher. Quite recently, Mr Math passed away and there was a huge outpouring of grief from his former students, there were tributes paid to him and as I read those tributes about what a great teacher he was, I did a double take. Hang on a minute, are we talking about the same person here? I had to double check his photo and the year he worked at the school and sure enough, it was the same person, the same terrible teacher Mr Math. Oh gosh, I remember how he totally failed me as a teacher - it was only with the help of my tuition teacher that I managed to achieve the grades I needed in mathematics. I was just shocked that so many of my former classmates remembered him so fondly, as if he was actually good at his job. I only regret not having met him again, because I waent to remind him that I was the boy who sucked at mathematics but I am earning millions working in corporate finance now - so how does that compare to the modest salary of a secondary school teacher eh? 

What is going on here with Mr Math? Perhaps he was good with the students who were naturally good at mathematics, but he didn't know what to do with students like me who struggled with mathematics. He used to call me stupid and lazy - my brain just isn't wired for mathematics the same way as others, I may be able to speak 20 languages but it is hopeless when it comes to mathematics! I was so frustrated with him because he used to accuse me of not paying attention when he was explaining something - I told him that I paid attention but just couldn't understand what he was saying, then he would accuse me of being stupid, "everyone else gets it, how come only you don't understand?" What were my classmates doing then, did they genuinely like him? Was it simply a question of them resigning themselves to the fact that whether or not they liked him as a teacher, they were stuck with him until they had to do the O level exams, so they were making the best of a bad situation by trying to get along with him. Mind you, I did plenty of that in NS, there were people I was stuck with whether I liked them or not until I finished NS, so I learnt to get along with them. That actually turned out to be one of the most important lessons I took away from my NS experience. But this was a carefully negotiated relationship that I managed, learning how to work with people I despised but just couldn't walk away from because of the circumstances - so were my classmates in secondary school doing the same thing with Mr Math then?

Perhaps, but I doubt that they were that analytical about the situation back then - my guess is that they were so Singaporean that they were conditioned to offer unconditional respect to people like teachers, who were in a position of authority over them, even if they turned out to be terrible teachers. Perhaps they were no different from the poor puppy who remained extremely loyal to an abusive owner, because the puppy simply didn't have the mental capacity to deal with the complex situation otherwise. Short of literally asking them point blank, "how could you like Mr Math, don't you remember what a horrible teacher he was?" They would probably snap at me, "please lah, the man has just died, this is not the time to talk about this - show some respect!" You see, even if my Singaporean friends thought he was a bad teacher, they probably wouldn't dare to voice that opinion for fear that it would come across as disrespectful to someone in a trust position of authority - questioning his right to work as a teacher (well, because he was an utterly terrible teacher) shows that you don't have faith in the system that qualified him and put him there in the first place, it also questions the school's decision to have employed Mr Math as a teacher for so many years and so the moment you start questioning his ability to do his job, you're not just making it personal - you're literally taking on the entire system that has put him there in the first place. Therefore, most people would prefer to just keep their mouth shut and not risk upsetting or offending anyone. Mind you, I suppose the fact that I have declined to identify Mr Math makes me one of them as well.

We are after all, dealing with a very imperfect world where dishonest, corrupt and even downright evil people get into positions of authority and commit terrible atrocities. Can young people these days trust those in authority? I don't think so, cultivating this kind of blind respect for anyone (however evil and corrupt) in a position of authority only leaves them open for exploitation. For the last decade, the Catholic church is constantly in the headlines not just about the amount of sexual abuse and rape that has gone on within the church, but the scale of the cover up that goes all the way up to the Pope. The only reason why so many priests have gotten away with this rape on this kind of scale is because of the unconditional trust that Catholic people place in the church, which makes them totally blind to the sexual abuse and rape that is going on, sometimes to their very own family members. Yet religion is such a powerful force to manipulate people into offering this kind of blind trust and unconditional faith, if you dare to ask questions, if you dare to show any kind of doubt about those who are in a position of authority, then you are accused of lacking faith and being a bad Catholic. After all, the very basis of the Christian doctrine is based on blind trust: read this book, it's called the Bible, I have no proof but if you demand proof that anything in there is real, you don't have faith. Yeah, well look where this has led us in terms of the scale of sexual abuse involving the Catholic church? No, I don't want my nephew to ever have blind faith in any kind of authority - religious or political or anything else, I want him to be brave enough to ask questions and judge for himself.

Of course, asking him to exercise judgement like that is a big ask and it goes against every grain of the way he has been brought up. I also don't want him to abuse this right he has to question figures in authority - is he mature enough to handle it in a rational and sensible manner? I don't know. I don't think he's quite there yet, but what is the alternative? You can't treat him like a child and tell him to 乖乖听话 (be very obedient) for the rest of his life and blindly trust authority. I think everyone in my family is so keen to offer him guidance, to teach my nephew - but one thing I don't think they do enough of is actually allow him to make up his own mind on any issue. I find this particularly annoying (I'm not sure if my nephew is used to it or annoyed, but good grief it drives me nuts). Take a simple issue like adding sugar to breakfast tea. My mother insisted on adding sugar into my nephew's tea, I said no way, that's so unhealthy and it'll make him fat. Did I stop her from adding sugar to the tea? Yes, but instead I turned to my nephew and said, "the sugar is there, if you want to add it, I won't stop you but I don't think you should as it is not good for your health." So my nephew came to the very sensible solution and said, "how about if I just added a little sugar, so it is just a bit sweet but not too unhealthy?" The boy is intelligent and sensible enough to figure out most things, if only my parents would stop treating him like a complete idiot incapable of exercising any judgement. Heck, he's a lot more intelligent than my parents, thankfully he isn't stupid.

Is it dangerous to allow a young person like my nephew to start questioning authority? I don't think so, you have to look at the context. We live in an age where there are so many corrupt politicians lying to the people, manipulating naive people just for personal gain. And I just have to point out this story to tell you just how idiotic my father is - he showed me this article in the local Singaporean newspaper which was blatantly a piece of pro-PAP propaganda. And I told him, "你知道什么是'假新闻'吗?" (Do you know what is 'fake news'?) And sure enough, my father had absolutely no concept of what 'fake news' was or how it worked - he claimed that if it was printed in a newspaper, then it must be true, otherwise they won't dare to put something like that into print, right? Yeah and you wonder why I get so exasperated and frustrated with my parents. But of course, that's a complete fallacy: newspapers get it wrong time and time again: this could be because of human error or a malicious attempt to mislead the public into believing an alternative version of events (ie. Kellyanne Conway's famous alternative facts) - this is the very essence of fake news. Sure the local media in Singapore is extremely pro-PAP to the point where I don't believe the crap they publish, but the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence: we had so many lies in the run up to the Brexit referendum and in America, they take this whole alternative facts meets fake news bullshit to a whole new level. Let's just take the crowd at President Trump's inauguration for instance, I'll let Randy Rainbow explain this one to you (please click on the link, Blogger won't let me embed the video).

So where does this leave us? Well, I believe there's a happy medium, a sensible compromise between being a robot who blindly submits to authority and an anarchist who rejects any kind of authority. This has little to do with intelligence per se, the fact is intelligence has little to do with good judgement and bad judgement happens when people end up trusting the wrong people in good faith. However, unless someone is given the freedom to make those judgement calls, they will never be able to acquire good judgement - I'm sure you've heard the saying: good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement. In short, that means you shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes because you should treat them as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. I'm just worried that my nephew isn't given the opportunity to make too many mistakes, because the adults in his life are always ready to jump him and stop him before he actually makes a mistake. They do so because they think they're helping my nephew of course and they do genuinely care enough about him to do so, but do they realize that doing this repeatedly (even over something as mundane as the breakfast tea he drinks) is impeding his ability to develop better judgement? Will he end up growing up to be a seemingly intelligent person with really bad judgement, kinda like Jaime Ho - the chief editor who gladly published that awful article by Dr Tan on the CNA website? Oh if I only can help steer my nephew onto the right path away from that predicament!

So you see, it isn't enough to be intelligent - I'm sure someone like Jaime Ho is very intelligent and capable, yet even seemingly highly skilled, intelligent professionals can end up making bad decisions because of poor judgement. What are we teaching our children these days? We pressure them so much to do well in their studies, but it is one thing to learn how to answer questions in an exam (particularly in subjects where there is one 'right answer') - but what about these confusing, imperfect situations in life where there isn't a right or wrong answer, when all you can do is exercise your judgement when dealing with flawed individuals? The thing is that this kind of judgement simply cannot be taught in a classroom by a teacher - instead, it's the only thing you can learn by actually making such judgement calls (right or wrong, good or bad) over and over again until you get good at it. I'll compare it to swimming: I can explain to you exactly how you need to move your body in order to propel yourself forwards whilst staying afloat in the water, we can spend many hours talking about which methods are most efficient but until you actually get into the swimming pool and start trying to swim, you're never going to learn how to actually swim. What do you think? How can we help young Singaporeans learn how to exercise their own judgement call? How did we end up in this situation with highly educated Singaporean professionals with such bad judgement despite not being stupid? Is this something we can fix and if so, how? How did we end up in this situation in the first place? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.