INCOMPLETE INDUCTION AND MISLEADING METAPHORS

18 June 1996

If the views of the junior college students who 
questioned the legitimacy of national service 
are a guide, the alienation arising from some 
young Singaporeans' disenchantment with their 
personal economic prospects has the potential to 
pose a severe problem. The establishment has 
reacted to the revelation of economic pessimism 
by arguing that regional economic opportunities 
create grounds for optimism rather than 
pessimism. Although the response is reasonable, 
I doubt it solves the problem.

As a practical matter, the establishment's 
advice to go regional resonates only with 
entrepreneurial individuals. As entrepreneurs 
are a minority in any society, the reality is 
that a large majority of young Singaporeans will 
not be in a position to grasp the putative 
regional economic opportunities. Telling non-
entrepreneurs that their economic desires will 
be met by their becoming entrepreneurs is 
patently inadequate.

It is imperative, therefore, that Singapore 
retains the loyalty of young Singaporeans even 
if their economic expectations are disappointed. 
In this respect, Lee Chau Min has correctly 
identified the problem as self-centredness 
('Singapore is my home, I will stay and defend 
it', Forum, 7 June 1996). Mr Lee quoted United 
States President John F. Kennedy: Ask not what 
your country can do for you, but what you can do 
for your country. Like most slogans, Kennedy's 
famous line is too general to tell us what to do 
in a specific situation. Crucially, it does not 
say who decides what citizens should do for 
their country. The Vietnam war protests 
demonstrated the importance of civil society in 
providing channels for moral conscience to 
infuse politics. It also showed that political 
authorities have no right to our unconditional 
obedience.

Mr Lee's appeal to patriotism is well-meant but 
off the mark, for the self-centredness of his 
peers is not entirely a moral defect of their 
own making. It is also a pragmatic response to a 
polity that lacks a strong civil society to 
mediate between the official sphere and the 
private spheres of ordinary Singaporeans. The 
weakness of civil society bodes ill for a 
country in which the official sphere is 
perceived as a remote elite preserve. Absent an 
autonomous civil society, ordinary Singaporeans, 
who are unable or unwilling to join the official 
sphere, are obliged to retreat into their 
private spheres. Outside quadrennial voting, 
there is little chance of participating in the 
political life of our country. In any case, we 
are positively discouraged from political 
activity. How then can we feel a sense of 
political belonging? It is revealing that 
'owning a stake' in Singaporean political 
discourse refers to material possessions rather 
than political empowerment. Why, then, the 
surprise when some young Singaporeans turn out 
to be loyal to their private economic prospects 
only?

Unfortunately, the establishment appears unable 
to shake its mindset that economic rewards will 
solve what is essentially a problem of political 
alienation. In his column, Editor Leslie Fong 
argued that a meritocratic system and a level 
playing field will ensure that deserving 
individuals float to the top 'in the Darwinian 
shakeout' ('Never allow social alienation to set 
in', Thinking Aloud, 8 June 1996). This, 
incidentally, is scant comfort to those who 
remain at the bottom. In fact, his social 
Darwinian metaphor, implying natural selection, 
is wrong.

Natural selection governs the evolutionary 
success of animal species because their limited 
ability to alter their natural environment 
forces them to adapt instead. In contrast, a 
meritocratic system is an artificial, social 
construction. Merit is a meaningless concept 
unless we specify the criteria by which it is 
assessed. Insofar as societies rank abilities 
differently, there are different meritocracies. 
The real issue, then, is the particular 
meritocratic model, not whether we should have a 
realistic, meritocratic, society or an utopian, 
egalitarian, one.

Mr Fong's faith in genetic determinism in social 
success is conclusively refuted by the numerous 
instances of mentally or morally deficient 
individuals who have risen to high positions. As 
one wit put it, scum rises to the top, too.

The implication is that success cannot be 
explained without reference to social factors. 
Mr Fong's casual assumption that the social 
process of selecting successful individuals is 
natural violates common sense by denying the 
role of choice in the criteria for success. For 
example, is there any natural justification for 
a selection system predicated on an obsessive 
ranking of human beings and educational 
institutions according to their academic 
performance? This is not a theoretical question, 
but one of practical import whose answer is a 
large factor in determining the distribution of 
Singapore's educational resources.

The realisation that the social conditions 
governing success or failure result from 
political choices is the first step towards a 
dynamic response to assure an equitable social 
order. It is only when we can choose that we 
cease to be mere objects of politics and become 
subjects participating in our own right as 
citizens. Towards this end, the growth of a 
strong, autonomous civil society is 
indispensable to facilitate deeper political 
participation and, through that, political 
belonging. In its absence, the trend towards 
self-centredness and political alienation in 
young Singaporeans is likely to accelerate.