One of the things that Singaporeans take great pride in, is the fact that we’re an exceedingly “practical” people. We like to think of ourselves as a people who live in “reality” and we tend to “poo-poo” those whom we deem as “dreamers.” This is very obvious when you look at our voting choices. We may bitch and moan about the PAP but when push comes to shove, we keep them snuggly where they are because by and large they’ve kept life comfortable. I think of one of our former presidents who reminded us that we need to look at the “office as it is.”
In a way, I am exceedingly grateful that Singaporeans have this mindset. I like to think that part of our prosperity has been down to the fact that our people have a tremendous amount of common sense, which drives us to do things like to go to work and to send our kids to school. We are a people with an uncanny ability to know the things are good for us no matter how much initial pain that might cause us.
However, there are two key problems with that mindset. The most obvious is the fact that we’ve been blessed with semi-decent political leadership. Say what you like about our late founding Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his successors, but they managed to get most things right. I never tire of saying this but Singapore is so many ways is what a country should be – rich, clean, green and safe. I, for example, don’t worry about things happening to my 20-year old daughter when she comes home late at night. As an Englishman once said to me, “I find Singapore exceedingly free because it’s safe – safety is freedom.”
The people running Singapore have on the whole been benevolent and competent and the reality they have created is once again, likewise. A “practical” person in this respect merely has to fit into the system to do relatively well. Go to school, go get a job and hey, before you know it, you’ll have a valuable property.
However, what happens when the people in charge have become less competent or less benevolent. What happens is that they create a reality that suites them and them alone. A practical person adapts to it and he or she keeps adapting to the reality that is created by the people in charge, who don’t give a shit about anything else except about creating a reality that suites only them.
In Singapore, we have the perfect example of that across the causeway. They had a political party and political system that worked on a system of patronage and a system where it was understood that only people of a certain ethnic group where supposed to benefit from the system. Everyone excepted it until the people in charge decided to get a little bit greedy and exploited the weaknesses in the system until the reality became such that it was unbearable for the majority of people. Many of my Malaysian friends have stated that one of the greatest things about the 2018 election was the fact that people came together as “Malaysians” rather than Malay, Chinese and Indian.
This leads to the second point – there is no progress, be it political, scientific or economic without some sort of idealism or rather the ability to see the world as it “could” be rather than what it is.
I got to admit; I was a horrible Singaporean when I was in university. I thought my more idealistic brethren in the halls of college. I mean, I couldn’t understand why people complained about capitalism, a system that had benefited my little nation. I’m told that this is a phase that Western university students go through and they change once the reality of the working world sets in.
After nearly two-decades of living in a prosperous, practical East Asian society, I’m inclined to relook at that. While, there’s lots to be said for accepting reality as it is, there is a danger in that you become so accepting of reality that you forget that it can be changed for the better.
I think of my former client, General Electric Commercial Finance, part of General Electric, which was founded by Thomas Edison, the man who invented the light bulb. Perhaps Edison was not the idealist in the sense of my fellow Goldsmith’s students. However, he had the ability to see the world with lighting that that wasn’t dependent on individual fires – hence the electric light bulb and many other such products.
In a way, I am exceedingly grateful that Singaporeans have this mindset. I like to think that part of our prosperity has been down to the fact that our people have a tremendous amount of common sense, which drives us to do things like to go to work and to send our kids to school. We are a people with an uncanny ability to know the things are good for us no matter how much initial pain that might cause us.
However, there are two key problems with that mindset. The most obvious is the fact that we’ve been blessed with semi-decent political leadership. Say what you like about our late founding Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his successors, but they managed to get most things right. I never tire of saying this but Singapore is so many ways is what a country should be – rich, clean, green and safe. I, for example, don’t worry about things happening to my 20-year old daughter when she comes home late at night. As an Englishman once said to me, “I find Singapore exceedingly free because it’s safe – safety is freedom.”
The people running Singapore have on the whole been benevolent and competent and the reality they have created is once again, likewise. A “practical” person in this respect merely has to fit into the system to do relatively well. Go to school, go get a job and hey, before you know it, you’ll have a valuable property.
However, what happens when the people in charge have become less competent or less benevolent. What happens is that they create a reality that suites them and them alone. A practical person adapts to it and he or she keeps adapting to the reality that is created by the people in charge, who don’t give a shit about anything else except about creating a reality that suites only them.
In Singapore, we have the perfect example of that across the causeway. They had a political party and political system that worked on a system of patronage and a system where it was understood that only people of a certain ethnic group where supposed to benefit from the system. Everyone excepted it until the people in charge decided to get a little bit greedy and exploited the weaknesses in the system until the reality became such that it was unbearable for the majority of people. Many of my Malaysian friends have stated that one of the greatest things about the 2018 election was the fact that people came together as “Malaysians” rather than Malay, Chinese and Indian.
This leads to the second point – there is no progress, be it political, scientific or economic without some sort of idealism or rather the ability to see the world as it “could” be rather than what it is.
I got to admit; I was a horrible Singaporean when I was in university. I thought my more idealistic brethren in the halls of college. I mean, I couldn’t understand why people complained about capitalism, a system that had benefited my little nation. I’m told that this is a phase that Western university students go through and they change once the reality of the working world sets in.
After nearly two-decades of living in a prosperous, practical East Asian society, I’m inclined to relook at that. While, there’s lots to be said for accepting reality as it is, there is a danger in that you become so accepting of reality that you forget that it can be changed for the better.
I think of my former client, General Electric Commercial Finance, part of General Electric, which was founded by Thomas Edison, the man who invented the light bulb. Perhaps Edison was not the idealist in the sense of my fellow Goldsmith’s students. However, he had the ability to see the world with lighting that that wasn’t dependent on individual fires – hence the electric light bulb and many other such products.
The two richest men in the world, namely Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates didn’t except life as it is. Bill Gates could see a world where there would be a computer on every desk – hence Microsoft. I’m old enough to remember failing computer studies miserably because to turn on a computer required some scientific knowledge. Now, I push a few buttons and the computer is an essential part of modern living. Bill Gates saw the world as it could be and changed our reality and so made a fortune.
The same is true of Jeff Bezos, who saw us being able to buy and sell things without having to leave our bedrooms, when the reality at the time was shopping meant getting out of the house to visit a physical store.
Blind idealism without reality isn’t good. The world is filled with great dreams that never get turned into reality or people who are visionary but can’t even walk of the house dressed. However, there’s another extreme, people who are so focused on living in the world as it is that they get trapped by it and never progress. I like advertising great, Bill Bernbach who called “creativity – the most practical tool a businessman can employ.” I would argue that “Idealism” a greater tool.
You need the people who can execute but you also need the people who can dream. Dreamers who have their feet on the ground, do exceedingly well (I think of the guys at Polaris, who revered Arun Jain for this ability to dream and yet is a humble and down to earth person). There are also people who are great dreamers and recognize they’re no good at the execution part, so they team up with the people who are (Richard Branson comes to mind). Idealism needs practicality to be turned into reality – but practicality without idealism can be unpractical.
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