“Very fine people on both sides”

One of Donald Trump’s greatest moments came on 15 August 2017, when he was asked for his thoughts on the clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia between Neo-Nazis and normal people. The Donald proceed to stun the world by telling reporters that there were “very fine people on both sides.” The remark stunned the world because this was the leader of the nation that saved the world from the Nazis describing Nazis as very fine people, especially when its questionable if Nazis are people let alone very fine ones.

However, in fairness to Donald Trump, his words were only shocking because of the context in which they were used in. Take out the context and Donald Trump’s words would actually be an ideal of what most civilized societies should be about – very fine people on both sides of any issue. The highlight of what a civilized democracy came int 2008 when John McCain defended and praised his opponent, Barak Obama as a “Decent man, whom I happen to disagree with.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0u3QJrtgEM 

While McCain would lose the election, he has ended up winning in the hearts of people for doing the right things. Instead of trying to divide the nation, he united it and refused to go down the road of playing up to the fears and prejudices of the mob.

Unfortunately, 2008 is something of a memory. From 2016 onwards, the world entered an age of wild populism, which centred on a wonderful concept of blaming your problems on people who cannot fight back. In the words of an American customer at the Bistrot, “There is no neutrality.”

Singapore has seemingly escaped the most extreme forms of populism and in a world where calls for unthinking jingoism have become the norm, Singapore seems like an island of sanity in an insane world.

However, having been around Singapore’s “arty” and “journo” types for a good portion of my functioning life, I would argue that it’s not exactly a case of Singapore avoiding wave of populism that is sweeping the world but more of a case of Singapore’s politicians being more subtle and clever about harnessing the raw emotions of the masses.

The simplest tactic, is to label anyone who publicly questions the established way of doing things as “Anti-Singaporean.” As anyone who works who deals with any form of media will tell you, there is an art form to questioning the system in public without being labeled “Anti-Singaporean” or getting a nasty letter from a politicians solicitors and having your family’s dirty linen rolled in the mud and then washed out in public. The stories of the people who have tried to do it on a regular basis can be found at:

 https://coconuts.co/singapore/features/singaporeans-step-outside-lines-take-center-stage-naysayers-book-club/

In the old days, it was a case of being sued into bankruptcy and facing a number of potential charges on a variety of laws. I’m old enough to remember the General Election of 1997, which was a particularly good one for the ruling party. They managed to reverse a trend of a declining share of the popular vote and won a mere 81 out of 83 seats available in parliament. While a lot of credit was given to generous upgrading programs in the heartland estates, another was to target an unknown politician from the Workers Party called Tang Liang Hong (No relation) by labeling him an “Anti-Christian Chinese Chauvinist.” 

The internet has made things more interesting. Online media sites like the Online Citizen and TRemeritus (as a matter of disclosure, my blog pieces are picked up by TRemeritus) have given a space for alternative voices. However, the ruling party has also found ways to deal with this. Why label anyone “Anti-Singaporean” when you can get someone else to do it for you. It’s especially effective when that person happens to be a Pink Blotchy – the Fawning Follower comes to mind. Unfortunately, Pink Blotchies have a tendency to be listened to, even if they’re speaking gibberish. As a friend of mine noted, otherwise intelligent people actually bought into the arguments of the Fawning Follower on why it was a sign of success to keep dark skinned Asians in cages (ooopps, I mean dormitories) and how the government supported the rule of law by a law on the statute books but not enforcing it.

The Fawning Follower has been a particularly useful pawn in labeling people who disagree with the government as Anti-Singaporean or worse – Traitors. He’s labeled Kristin Han as having “a career in treachery” and his next favourite target is the play write Alfian Sa’at, whom he describes as symbolizing the egotistical rebellion of the no problem generation. 

While Kristin and Alfian have questioned things, neither have done anything that would count as “treachery” by any definition of the word. There is no record of either having said or done anything that called for violence in the streets or for a foreign nation to invade and so on. Neither have been picked up by the Internal Security Department, which would indicate that the government is well aware that the its “critics” are traitors or “anti-Singaporean” or dare I say “rebels” by any definition.

Why do these things when someone else can do them for you? You stay above the fray and the Fawning Follower and his ilk do it for you. So, when the likes of Dr. Tan Meng Wu start talking about how ethnic minorities should be grateful that they can get jobs and send their kids to school, there’s no outrage at the underlying but blatantly racist tones. The trolls have laid the ground work for you and whatever prejudices people might have become justified because, well, a member of the ruling party said so in public and it was OK.

Thankfully there are some signs of progress. I take my hat off to Professor Tommy, one of our most respected diplomats, who has stated that Singapore needs “loving critics.” Professor Koh has argued that as a strong society, Singapore needs to accept a diversity of views. Crushing the views of “loving critics” instead of accommodating them, can be bad.

Mr. Wham spent years campaigning for migrant rights. He was labeled a trouble maker. Well, surprise – surprise, Covid-19 proved Mr. Wham right (1,000 cases a day, contrary to the Following Follower is not success). Had the authorities engaged Mr. Wham earlier, they may have found the problem much earlier and instead of being with the likes of Ukraine on the list of most infected nations, we might be closer to the likes of Hong Kong or Taiwan. 

If there’s anything that we need to move away from in this General Election, it is this automatic, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality. This isn’t about who wins the most seats but whether we can move away from “Me teacher, you student” (or as my mother says “me right, you wrong) mentality in politics and more towards the politics of “You’re a good man that I happen to disagree with.”  

There is a hope for this. Two of Singapore’s better leaders from different sides of political divide have chosen to step out of the ring in this election. Apparently, both men have stated their respect for each other. Here was the message that our former Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong left on his Facebook on veteran opposition leader Low Thia Khiang:

https://mothership.sg/2020/06/goh-chok-tong-low-thia-khiang-retirement/

Mr. Goh was labeled a “seat warmer” for our current Prime Minister. Despite having the pressures of the Old Lee above him and the Current Lee below him, Mr. Goh managed to do a few of his own things (As a long-term resident of Marine Parade, I have Mr. Goh to thank for getting MPs to try and beautify their estates. He was the first one to do so. As a beneficiary of Saudi-Relations and the Indian Business Community, I have to thank Mr. Goh for opening these markets up. – Lee Kuan Yew was quite open in his disdain for India after Indira Gandhi snubbed him). As such, I believe everyone contesting this general election should take note of his words and I think his final gift in politics is showing Singaporeans that it is possible to agree to disagree.  

Good Riddance to an Anachronism

There’s only a day left to the end of Singapore’s circuit breaker and like much of the nation, I’m about to head back to the “normal” life of being in an office. The prospect of going back to an office like existence brings me back to a letter I submitted to the Today Newspaper, which they subsequently rejected.

The letter in question was a response to a commentary by the FT correspondent Lucy Kellaway, who had praised the concept of office and said that we would miss the office when it died. Ms. Kellaway’s commentary can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/covid-19-we-will-miss-office-if-it-dies-it-gives-work-meaning-workplace

I think Ms. Kellaway has hit the nail on the head in her description of offices as social places. Think about it, we spend at least a third of the day in an office and most of the people we probably spend more time with people in the office than we do with our families. Offices are great melting pots and I’m surprised that our social planners seem focused on creating the imaginary “kampong” (Malay for village) experience in housing estates when they should be focusing their efforts on offices. Offices are effectively social places masquerading as work places. My only joy at returning to the office is that I’ll have a reason to leave the house for a few hours each week.

However, with the exception of its social value, I don’t miss the office and I believe that far more can be achieved outside the office. Offices are generally bad for productivity both for the business and the individual.

I have had two stints working in an office and I’ve found that my happiest moments in both stints came from doing task that required me to be outside of an office, even if it was just for 15-minutes. Leaving the office was when I actually did productive and meaningful things. If one looks at the eight hours a day that one is obliged to spend in an office, one has to question how many of those hours are actually spent on doing productive things. Contrary to what you may be told about an office being a place to do work, the truth is that an office is often a place where people indulge in petty power plays and ego building.

The main case against offices is that they are often vanity projects and focus a corporation on paying for the vanity rather than actual work. I think of the common complaint that clients had against advertising agencies, which was they expected 50 cents on the dollar of advertising spend was wasted, they were just not sure which 50-cents was wasted. Big agencies are known for having big offices in the swanky parts of town. Advertising isn’t the only industry where the big players need big offices.

The need for offices, particularly the big ones has made landlords very rich. This is especially true in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, where land is scarce and the service economy is larger than in other parts of Asia. With the exception of Li-Ka-Shing who ventured into ports, telecoms, retail and technology, the great fortunes of Hong Kong and Singapore have predominantly been made from owning office space. Think of Lee Shau Kee of Hendersen Land in Hong Kong and the Ng and Kwek Families on Singapore.

Having worked in liquidations in Singapore in the last five-years, I did notice that the landlord was inevitably one of the largest creditors in most cases and the business that went down was inevitably paying rents that were forming a high percentage of the actual revenue.

Hopefully, the “home-based” work that was forced on us by Covid-19 will get businesses to question the high rents. Why do you need to pay millions a month for office space when the revenue is generated by people working from home? Hopefully land used for office space will be used for more productive things like residential property, hospitals and schools. One should also hope that the tycoons like Lee Shau Kee and the Ng’s of Far East would then focus their money in more productive technology industries.

The other issue that I have with offices is that they encourage tribalism. As was often discussed in anthropology, humans have a tendency to define their identity by finding opposites. In the old days, race and religion were the usual tools of forming identity. These days, its increasingly about profession and being in the right office.

While there is nothing wrong with being a working professional in itself, the problem with offices is that they give you a false sense of the wider world. They encourage you to sort yourself out according to profession (accountants, lawyers, architect, PR professional etc) or by department (finance, marketing, HR etc). You are obliged to spend the day with “your people,” which gives you a sense that your people are the only people around and that only function in a business is yours.

Lucy Kellaway talked of the great office romance, where people fell in love with the people they met at the office. I guess this is to be expected, that one meets a future mate from one’s immediate social circle. However, isn’t that the crux of the problem, that we only meet and mingle with the people from our industry and organization. This is a form of intellectual inbreeding, which like other forms of inbreeding is distinctly unhealthy.

Let’s not mourn the office and celebrate freedom from the right to inbreed with our own kind.