Countering Kishore (Intro)

Exactly a year ago, Prof Kishore began a monthly Straits Times column, ‘2014: The Year of Big Ideas’.

I wish to celebrate that occasion and honour him not so much for his self-proclaimed Big Ideas, but for its intent, namely; ‘ideas… to achieve another successful 50 years’. A single article will not do justice. So, we conceive a series of ideas that latch on and mimic his intent to benefit Singapore.

Thinking a lewd

We hope that at the end, readers can compare and contrast our efforts. Meantime, it is necessary to uncover some of the nakedness of his commendable efforts.

As a Prospect Magazine Top 50 Global Thinker, his reputation is already secured. Were he writing for, say, a Philosophy magazine, we’d all be impressed with his ideas that will be realized in a 50-year time frame. But writing for his Singapore audience in a #149 ReportersSansFrontieres-ranked local broadsheet, what’s the point of talking in 50-year broad strokes when most of us will be dead, including himself, to answer for his ideas? Anyone can do that.To bolster our pride, he first rolled out the highly visible events symbolic of our last 50-year achievements; the SEA Games… in the spectacular new stadium in Kallang… the National Art Gallery… to open in 2015… a team of Singaporeans will begin scaling Mount Everest to commemorate Singapore’s 50th anniversary… the first Singaporean to fly into outer space, symbolising the fact that the sky is the limit in the future aspirations for Singapore.Ostentatiously, Prof K did not discuss any one indicator relating to Singapore as ‘One United People regardless of race, language or religion’… the nation’s clear, untainted and overt aspiration recited by every school kidbefore the start of each school day since Aug 1966, on SAF Day, National Day etc – and by everyone when receiving the SG citizenship. That at SG50, the country has never been more polarized was conveniently unaddressed.

A further sad indication of his focus is in the ideas he discussed. Most were practical ones, mind you; car-ownership, transport, housing, expressways…. But nary honest, open discussions about the higher things in life; freedom, dignity, charity, fraternity and the like. His ideas could have done superbly were he thinking of animal welfare in an overcrowded zoo. But for Singaporeans, human beings with spirit if not souls? God help us if that’s the kind of top thinker the Singapore system produces.

Does it not appear that Prof K concerns himself with only the visible, the glitzy; stuff that catches the superficial eye immediately? What about what can only be slowly ascertained, from scratching the surface, from walking the ground instead of discussing over a map, tables, statistics and pie-charts?

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It appears that We the Citizens must do some heavy lifting ourselves and not rely on our elite thinkers pontificating from atop their ivory towers. What we need are Basic Ideas; ‘Basic Ideas with Basal Impact’. Ideas to change our daily lives in the next few years so that we can again reassess to move forward as One United People.

Let’s arouse ourselves from the daze of feeling ‘what with all our expectations long abandon, a future we don’t see our hands in’. Let us consider simpler ideas ‘to build a democratic society based on justice and equality so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation’, not just mostly for the elites and the rich.

For ourselves and our children, we want more of what our hands cannot always touch but what we can grip on to relate to our fellow men, what our eyes can recognize not just see, how our hearts can feel not just throb, how our ears can differentiate not just hear and we can scent, taste of life without eating. In short, things that stir our spirit and soul more than just things that we must own only in exchange for our dollars.