Apposition

From the Straits Times Forum page:

"... unemployment rates range from 8 per cent to 12 per cent in many countries with First World Parliaments.

...

"Had we a First World Parliament, would we honestly have got out of the recession as fast? Or would it have seen us still arguing while we slipped into a second recession, let alone got out of the first?"

From Paul Krugman's New York Times column:

"The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

"So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

"The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious."

Library book graffiti and long conversations

Some time ago I borrowed a copy of the book that first introduced the word "meritocracy" to widespread attention, The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033 - an Essay on Education and Equality, by Michael Dunlop Young. As you can tell from the title, it's satire. Young wrote this mock-history to criticize what he saw as the tendency for the educated elite in Britain of his time (the 1960s) to think that their social and economic position were something they deserved because of their hard work and talents alone (hence the "rule of the meritorious"). This simply ignores of course the huge inequalities of opportunity at the time, which still remain with us today. It is not true that someone who is poorer is necessarily less able.

Today people use "meritocracy" as a term of approbation. There seems to be something wholesome and commonsensical about it, but the problem, as Young recognized and satirized, is that it is a moral trap, leading people to a false sense of entitlement and an estrangement from empathy. Not surprising, then, that his book would be popular reading for students.

The copy that I got from the college library turned out to be full of underlinings, circling, and marginal notes. Normally I'm very annoyed by these things. Another book I borrowed recently was full of dog ears, and I spent ten minutes standing in the stacks unfolding every single one of them. However, when I looked closely at the marginalia, I found them to be amusing, even educational.

Some people didn't get that this was satire. There was one set of notes that expressed alarm and dismay of the "how could he say that!" sort. In a different hand on the same pages were notes upon those notes, expressing surprise that the other guy was dense enough to think that this book was 'for real'.

Then I turned to chapter V and the facing blank page was covered in a graffiti 'conversation' of sorts. Given the age of this book copy, successive generations of students over maybe several decades could have been responding to each other in these pages!

In case it's not clear from the picture, here's what the graffiti says, each line being in a different handwriting:

"Hi! You are a member of the upper 5% of the meritocracy!!"

"If you know what I mean"

"Yes, but will that get you into Med School, turkey?"

"Only if your dad's the dean of admissions!"

"Who cares, you're all a bunch of pompous Harvard assholes"

"Trained to be so, of course"

"His Lordship's artificial leg was not to be found"

"The greatest fulfillment lies in submission..."

[arrow to the previous statement] "Hmmm is this female handwriting?"

On the one hand this is a validation of both the Tragedy of the Commons (no one takes care of common property because it belongs to no one person) and the Broken Window theory (that crime proliferates in poorly-maintained neighborhoods because the poor maintenance shows that people don't care enough to protect their property). Once someone started writing in the book, I suppose it was easier for the next guy to forget about the rules.

On the other hand, this shows how little some things change at Harvard - we all still have hang ups about elitism, and are never really comfortable with the H-bomb. Little surprise then that a book about meritocracy should attract so much inline commentary over the years.

Polling day diary

I hear that the civil society group MARUAH is doing a polling day survey to ask Singaporeans whether they felt the polling process to be fair and secure. Voting overseas, though, I've already cast my ballot paper six and a half hours ago, and there's still three more hours before polling opens in Singapore. What was it like? Quite uneventful, actually!

From Boston, I took the bus down yesterday and used the opportunity to meet up with some friends. I stayed overnight with my friend Adi who lives in Brooklyn (that's him on the left)

In the morning I woke up bright and early and we took the subway down. Many of the subway stations outside Manhattan are ground-level and open to the air. Also in need of a new coat of paint...

He got off at his workplace, and I continued down to Manhattan. Along the way had to make a transfer at 14th St Union Square. I like the industrial feel that the girders give the place.

Finally reached 51st St station, got out into the sun and it was a beautiful day outside! Warm, but not hot, sunny, the trees finally turning green, people walking around without being swaddled up in ten layers of wool....

I kept walking and soon found the right street. A bit more and the familiar colors were peeking out between the springtime foliage.

At the polling station I couldn't take any pictures, of course. The process was really swift. I was ushered through a simple metal detector, and then they checked my polling letter and NRIC. I left my jacket and backpack at the coat room, and walked upstairs to a carpeted conference room. Before and after me there were maybe two or three people, but there was no queue and everything was very quick. The staff checked my IC and particulars again, then crossed my name off the register. They gave me a ballot paper, and I asked one of them "so are there are lot of people voting here today?"

"Quite a few," she replied, though she didn't give a number. From the size of the list she had, perhaps a thousand or so could have been registered.

There were three little booths made of cardboard, and in front of it the ballot box, also made of cardboard, sealed except for a slot on top. I crossed the appropriate box, folded it in two, and dropped it into the box. Done!

Walked downstairs, got my jacket and bag, and then went back into the sunshine.

Strolled over to Times Square, and got on the next bus back to Boston. Exam tomorrow, must study!

Thoughts on the Coming Election

This will be the first General Election in Singapore since I turned 21, and I will get to vote as an overseas voter at the consulate in New York. It is certainly not the most convenient situation - it's a five hour bus ride each way between there and Boston, and I was worried that I would have to reschedule an exam depending on when the overseas polling would take place - but I think that it's both my right and duty as a citizen to cast my ballot, given that it's within my means to do so.

Watching the media coverage from afar, mainly through the establishment Straits Times and the 'citizen journalism' portal The Online Citizen, I'm removed from the hustle and bustle of the activity that surrounds the campaigning. I can't attend any rallies, can't see the candidates on their walkabouts, nor can I get a sense of what "the average Singaporean", who doesn't post his thoughts and opinions online, is thinking. This puts me in a position to be what the prime minister would consider to be the ideal voter, who is calm, rational, and unswayed by emotional rhetoric or crowd fervor. At least, this was the reason that the 'cooling off' day was implemented as a pause in campaigning before polling day, to allow voters to reflect 'coolly and calmly' on the issues.

Applause and Embarrassment

Two days ago, I attended a scientific lecture which was open to the public, so there was an audience of a certain kind there, mostly of older, middle-class retirees. The man who introduced the speaker (this was an invited lectureship) walked up to the podium, and as he delivered his opening remarks, a cellphone went off. I think it might have been staged, because he said, snippily, "turn off your effing cell phone!" with a slight hesitation before the key participle of the sentence, to applause from the audience.

My question is: why applaud? There are a few possible reasons:

1. They were glad that it wasn't themselves being rebuked,
   
2. A feeling of self-righteousness, a sense of populist vigilantism - 'finally that guy got what he deserves!' (there's always that guy in every audience),
   
3. Plain schadenfreude at seeing someone else publicly embarrassed,
   
4. Or, a desire to conform with the wishes of and flatter the dominant personality in the room, viz. the person at the podium.
   

In any case, these are not particularly edifying reasons and it hence made me uncomfortable that people are so quick to turn against the nonconformist in their midst, whether for good or bad reasons, when given the appropriate encouragement to do so. I'm flagging this incident in my mind, to remind myself to look out for more on the psychology of crowds.

On Commonplace Books, Index Cards, and Scraps of Paper

The historian Keith Thomas writes about his experience gathering reading notes. There are two kinds of reading: casual and attentive. It is increasingly clear to me that serious, attentive reading requires note-taking, unless one has superhuman memory (Thomas cites the example of Macaulay).

In the one project of historical writing which I've undertaken, I laboriously copied quotes and notes into a single notebook, instead of onto cards and slips, because I had this notion of not wasting paper. Back at home (this was before I owned a laptop) I would transcribe my notes onto a word processor, and when I actually started writing I would cut and paste the individual notes and citations in order before stitching them together with prose and paraphrase. It was both Baroque and Byzantine but it worked. Two observations: the constant re-writing and the necessity to recall where a relevant previous note was within the physical context of the notebook made me more familiar with my material, and without the final cut-and-paste on the computer this project would never have been finished, because I was keen to use every single scrap of information that I found.

The Benefits of a Low Birth Rate

This letter to the Straits Times newspaper has attracted some online comment, mostly negative, among people I know. The writer claims that Singapore's low birth rate is attributable to society valuing career-building over home and family and to women having unreasonably high expectations for the men they'd want to marry (hence delaying marriage and childbirth), resulting in "a nation of 'spoilt princesses' unwilling and unable to handle the rigours of motherhood."

I'm not particularly interested in his characterization of women. What strikes me is that we still believe that a low birth rate among citizens and permanent residents is an impediment to the success of Singapore, an open and cosmopolitan city. The argument often offered for encouraging locals to have more children is that it increases the pool of talent from which the country can draw upon for its endeavors. This notion rides on a whole set of implicit beliefs and even bears some historical baggage.

The one that is in the back of everyone's mind, whether voiced or not, is Lee Kuan Yew's professed belief in some kind of eugenics. He believed that children born to educated, intelligent parents would likewise be more likely to succeed in life, because intelligence or ability is heritable. As a result, policies like the Graduate Mothers Scheme gave incentives for highly-educated women, who were also less likely to get married and have many children, for each child they bore. The declining birth rate is most marked among university graduates and careerists, precisely the kind of people that Singapore believes it needs more of. Hence birth rate anxiety is also class anxiety.

The other assumption is that talent inheres in a more-or-less fixed proportion of society, let us say the top 5% or so. Therefore, to have more talent, one can only increase the total size of society so that we have more people in this upper bracket. If, however, we believe that talent and ability are neither the products of inheritance nor necessarily rare or scarce, we are free to imagine more possibilities for society. I have found, more often than not, that my peers have developed their talents not through sheer innate force of will or genius, but through early influences in their upbringing, through the environment and work ethic which they have been immersed in, and through interactions with the people and resources that they have encountered. That is to say, we are more products of our circumstances than we like to think. Therefore, the reason that 'talent' (or should we instead say: conventional markers of success) is concentrated in a small segment of society does not suggest that true talent is rare. Instead it means that most people do not experience that fortunate confluence of circumstance and motivation that displays one's innate abilities to best advantage.

This explains why a low birth rate can help Singapore. Instead of raising the population to increase the number of 'talents', we should instead focus our efforts on increasing the proportion of high ability within the population size. As for the issue of importing 'foreign talent', which incurs a lot of resentment, I remain agnostic, but observe that poaching from the best that other countries have to offer has been how America, for example, has maintained its technological lead over other countries. The main issue then is that the local population represents a pool of potential talent that should be developed and nurtured fully before we should claim that we need to look outside to find people of ability. The same set of implicit assumptions, and the same refutations of them, applies to that issue too.