30 posts tagged “asian democracy”

Quite a few Chinese singaporeans are going on about becoming ‘2^nd’ and ‘3^rd’ class singaporeans in the face of ‘foreign talent’.  Where does that place Malay and Indian singaporeans then?  4^th and 5^th class perhaps?  This basically serves as evidence of my observation in the past that Chinese singaporeans deem an event a non-event until it is they whom are at the receiving end.  Such is expected of a people whom have, albeit unwitting, taken cultural and political fascism as the norm in the course of associating the idea of the ‘majority’ with ‘race’ as opposed to ‘nationality’.  In this context, their gross hypocrisy is quite understandable, albeit unconscionable.

Complete article may be found at according2ed.com

ed

 

Firstly, let me say that we cannot actually state that the states of Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and China are Confucian in its entirety or in essence.  It would be more accurate to say that these states are a combination of Confucianism, Legalism, and Taoism.  In fact, it could easily be argued that these states give Confucius a bad name.  I suppose people tend to think these states as Confucian not because they truly are, but because people like to think that they are identifying with the ideas of a person as opposed to an ideology that is relatively apart from them so that they, as persons, can identify with the life or perspectives of another individual – Confucius.  Something like, if another lauded person can do it, so can we.  Ideas in themselves seem to be alien to people unless they can be encapsulated in a person in itself.  I suppose this in way shows that people tend to be more subjective instead of objective.  Following the teachings of another Chinese person – Confucius – also aids in reinforcing the feel-good-factor that is cultural and racial pride.

 

So, getting back to the issue, it would be more accurate to term the states of Singapore and China as Legalist as it is this perspective that determines which aspects of Confucianism is appreciated and allowed influence. 

 

 

Legalism

 

In its fundaments, comprises 3 main principles.

 

Fa (Law or Principle) : That all are equal before the law, and the law should be strongly enforced.  Focus is on punishing those who break the law and reward those who abide by them.  The law replaces all other standards of right and wrong.

 

Shu (Method or Tactic) : the employment of secret methods and tactics to ensure that others don’t take control of the state.  The true motivations of the ruler is not to be made public and that ‘getting ahead’ can only be achieved by the people in simply following the law(which can be appreciated as the ‘rewards’ part of Fa.

 

Shi (Legitimacy, Power, or Charisma) : Focus is on the ruler’s position to analyse and study trends and facts for the maintenance of his position.

 

According to the teachings of Han Fei – whose ideas were adopted from the Qin period onward (221b.c.),

 

Human beings are selfish and deemed to respond mainly to reward and punishment;

 

That reward and punishment are the main tools of government;

 

Good government requires the employment of law, power, statecraft;

 

Clear and well-defined law replaces the moral norm and serve as the standard of behaviour;

 

Political power is to be held by the ruler and not shared with the aristocracy or ministers;

 

That order is achieved when names correspond with reality (what Confucius termed, ‘Cheng Ming’ or the ‘rectification of names’ where people abide by their defined roles in society.);

 

That governance of a people must lead to the people’s internalisation of the perspectives of the government.

 

*

 

Basically, Legalism recognises the ruler and the law as the supreme arbiters of popular reason and not the inverse.  In other words, popular intellectual individualism is frowned upon.  Also, by assuming that human beings are selfish and always work toward their own interests at the expense of all, authority is geared toward ensuring that this does not lead to chaos but is regulated.  This is not purposed to get rid of selfishness, but to restrain its socially-destructive potentials.  Paradoxically, whilst it seeks to restrain it, it also validates it by accommodating it thus, and hence desensitizes the people to the idea of exploitation in itself and renders them amenable to an authority that gain at the expense of the people whilst the people do similarly to each other within ‘legal’ means.  When one looks at the ‘Confucian’ states such as those mentioned, one might began to appreciate that Legalism serves as the foundation determining the space that is accorded the superstructure of Confucianism.

 

 

Confucianism

 

Han Fei took issue with Confucianism in that it placed relatively too much emphasis on personal morality.  However, the reason why Confucianism could still be adapted to the overall Legalist culture is that when it was passed through the filter of Legalism, what remained could serve to reinforce Legalism.  Consider the following,

 

Xiao (Filial Piety) : the cultivated feeling toward one’s parents;

 

Di (brotherly love or respect) : the cultivated feeling toward one’s contemporaries;

 

Zhong (loyalty) : the cultivated feeling toward one’s superiors, lords, emperors, employers, one’s country;

 

Li (rituals, rites, proprieties) : behavioural norms where one’s ‘cultivated feelings’ are expressed;

 

Yi (righteousness, proper character) : expressing one’s cultivated feeling at the right times and right places;

 

Junzi (superior or perfect person) : refers to the person who has been maximally developed in all of the above.

 

 

If Han Fei took issue with Confucian thought, it is because he was ambiguous about the locality of control.  On the one hand, Confucius would place the responsibility of education on ‘sage-teachers’, but on the other hand, he would laud the position of the ruler as one who would lead the people by example and morality whilst the people knew their place in relation to the ruler. 

 

Additionally, Confucius did not recognise humans as naturally selfish people.

 

“A superior person is conscious of, and receptive to Yi, but a petty person is conscious of and receptive to gains.” (IV, 16)

 

If one was to pass Legalism through the filter of this Confucian perspective, then it undermines the capitalist-value of the Legalist perspective that seeks to order society hierarchically, recognise selfishness and exploitation as natural, and attempts to regulate it.  Such a perspective would naturally lead people to question after what ought to be the rightful content of Yi if a ruler was to ‘gain’ at the expense of the people, or the people of each other.  In fact, if one was to take this perspective along with the exhortation, “What you don’t want yourself, don’t do to others”, and use it as the overaching filter to determine what elements of Legalism are to be accepted, Confucian states might very well have become socialist states honouring the principle of egalitarianism and empathy without rulers being able to profit greatly at the expense of the people.  That, obviously, is not the case when one looks at, for instance, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore.

 

And Confucius also frowns on capital punishment as well,

 

“Why is there a need of capital punishment in your government?  If you set your mind toward morality, your people will become moral.  The character of the ruler is like the wind, and that of the people, grass.  The grass bends when the wind blows upon it.” (XII, 19)

 

Yes.  Like Han Fei, Confucius too places moral development in the hands of the ruler.  But unlike Han Fei, he views authority as a sort of sage-ruler who places love and empathy as the guiding principles for the development of the people’s constitution. 

 

However, where Confucius undoes himself and plays himself into the hands of the Legalists is in his division between the people and the state. 

 

“Let the lord be the lord, the minister be a minister, the father be a father, and the son be a son.” (XIII, 11)

 

As espoused in ‘the rectification of names’, or cheng ming, everyone had their place in society and the people had the responsibility of abiding by the moral precepts of the ruler. 

 

In this, Confucius effectively undermined the significance popular intellectual individualism and its serving as a check on the ruler should he be less than Confucian in his ‘human-hearted’ morality.  ‘Names’ had to be ‘rectified’ till it was internalised.  In other words, people had to be taught their place till they reflexively abided by it.  So, Confucius’ rhetoric on ‘human-heartedness’(ren) or ‘love’ and empathy becomes little more than the said rhetoric as he places too much hope in a ruler being moral.  Whilst I believe that Confucius had good intentions and was quite the ‘human-hearted’ person himself, he failed to see the interrelationships between his various exhortations and how one might undo the other.  He developed a system of conformity within a state that had yet to attain perfect status through his 6 principles for social behaviour.  On the one hand, he ‘advised’ morality amongst the leadership, but ‘told’ the people to abide by their relatively lower status.

 

In the Confucian system of good governance, ‘human-heartedness’ or ‘love’, lay at its centre, but he placed the ruler as the supreme ruling body.  Therefore, when we fuse Legalism and Confucianism, it could be easily argued that the Legalist view of things is not anti-love or anti-ren as the ‘regulation’ of exploitation and selfishness was the best act of ‘love’ that could be accorded a people whom are deemed to be ‘naturally selfish’.  Of course, this is a perversion of Confucius’ belief that humans are capable of empathetic and egalitarian love and are therefore not naturally selfish.  But where we have an overarching conception that people are naturally selfish, empathetic and egalitarian love can easily be twisted to mean, ‘whilst you’re naturally as selfish a bastard as I am, let’s do our best to ensure that we can carry on co-existing in respect of each other’s selfish natures by regulating our exploitation of each other.”  That is when the ‘law of the jungle’ is ‘civilised and a ‘dog eat dog’ world is afforded no alternative reality.

 

 

Hence

 

We can say that Confucian states are not truly Confucian in ‘human-hearted’ character, but ‘human-hearted’ in accordance with Legalist perspectives.  We can also say that it is only those ‘Legalist’ principles of Confucianism that can be viewed as ‘Legalist’ when taken out of a Confucian context, that is being applied in ‘Confucian’ states. 

 

Confucian perspectives that viewed the family as the beginnings of moral education by its practice and appreciation of Li (rites rituals, proprieties that recognises the value of the preceding principles of Xiao, Di and Zhong) can be said to have served the Legalists well in directing their attention to the need to maintain elitist hegemony from the ‘ground-up’.  In this context, the Qin dynasty could be seen as a crass application of Legalism whilst the following Han recognised the symbiotic value of Confucianism and Legalism in delivering Legalist ends. 

 

“When the personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated; when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world.  From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all must regard cultivation of the personal life as the root or foundation.”

 

When one takes this together with,

 

1. that everyone had to recognise their place in the socio-political scheme of things through the ‘rectification of names’

 

2. that human-heartedness and love ought to rule the vision of the ruler

 

3. that Confucius provides a well-articulated and systematic system whereby order and subservience may be engendered and maintained amongst the people as illustrated in the 6 principles without any item serving to empower the people to check on the practice of ‘human-heartedness’ in the ruler,

 

We can began to appreciate how Legalism could still find a place for, or required Confucian input.  Legalism’s central focus is on the maintenance of leadership, whilst Confucius’ focus is on preparing the people for it – whilst his egalitarian and empathetic perspectives are conveniently ignored or given an alternative meaning within the Legalist paradigm.  With this combination, Confucius’ ideal government of ‘wu-wei’ or ‘non-action’ could be delivered.  In this scenario, Confucius advises the government to lead by moral examples and education as opposed to legislation and enforcement via punishment.  A sage-ruler governs with morality instead of law or power.  Overtime, the people are supposed to internalise these and regulate themselves.  This principle, when fused with Legalism’s focus on power, delivers a population that abides by a morality internalised through familial and social experiences after it has been successfully reinforced amongst the population through the exertion of law and power.  This is where Chinese culture comes in as the greatest mechanism for socialisation as it is a product of 2 millennia of Legalist enforcement and reinforcement.  That is why Chinese culture might be the choice of alternatives in states desiring authoritarianism as the choice of control as it can deliver wu-wei with great speed with its host of perspectives, rules, symbolism, rituals, etc, that prepares the mind to accept authoritarianism as the natural order of things whilst the population are rendered bereft of the persona it takes to deem anything amiss.

 

It is no accident that in Singapore, for instance, employers look for employees whom can be ‘controlled’ – with intelligence taking a second place; people view political activists as ‘trouble-makers’; argument and logic is deemed to be ‘twisting words’; people who can argue logically are derided as people who ‘only know how to talk’; questioning the status quo is discounted with an ‘its like that one lahhh’ (that’s the way it is); in inquiries between a customer and a company, questioning after the justice of their acts are abruptly discounted with, ‘its company policy’;  salespersons promote a product with an ‘its good because its popular’ whilst knowing little about its features; tend to make sense of a phenomena from its most obvious features so that they can act immediately as opposed to having to think about it beyond the obvious – which illustrates the popular penchant to acting immediately as can be expected from those whom are inclined to act upon instructions as opposed to critical thought;  and so on and so forth.

 

In this, the final aims of Confucianism, where governance can largely be based on wu-wei is realised with the aid of a self-regulation amongst a people that is also based on popular ‘non-action’ when it comes to politics.  And this too delivers another aim of Confucianism, that of peace and harmony.  Where Confucius might stop to wonder if this is based on an empathetic society, the Legalist step in to focus the people on ‘peace and harmony’ as an end itself.   One of the maxims of Legalism is, “When the epoch changed, Legalism is the act of following all laws.”…And Confucianism is harnessed to bind the people in those perspectival proprieties required to deliver their subservience when ‘the epoch changes’.

 

Personally, I’d prefer a Confucian state where Legalist perspectives are weeded out of Confucianism as opposed to the inverse.

 

 

 

according2,

 

 

ed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much has been said of the success ‘Confucianism’ has delivered to the peoples of Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and so on.

 

But little has been said of the meaning of ‘success’ delivered by Confucianism.  This simply means that with particular developmental approaches, a people will be reared to view ‘success’ in varying ways.  The question this begs is, if Confucian-style development delivers the maximal development of humanity, or if the maximal development of humanity is deemed to be achieved by a minimalistically developed people.

 

The Meaning of Success in Confucian States

 

I’ve often thought that in my critique of ‘Confucianism’, I was simultaneously, and unwittingly, criticising Capitalism.   I have come across academics whom have viewed ‘Confucianism’ and the ‘Protestant work ethic’ as similar.  I have to agree.  Both facilitate the capitalist ethos of self-aggrandizement via exploitation and mutual antagonism – as opposed to the socialist ethos of collective-aggrandizement via collaboration and mutual empathy (the ‘13^th commandment’ of Jesus, or one exhortation of Confucius, best describes the socialist stance – Love thy neighbour as thyself/What you don’t want yourself, don’t do to others). 

 

From the empathetic viewpoint, ‘Confucianism’ requires the underdevelopment of a people intellectually, perspectivally and empathetically of a people for ‘success’ to be associated simply with economic affluence.  It requires that a people be self-absorbed, depoliticised, and focused on consumerism, and to circumvent the economic pressures of the government, to avail themselves of opportunism and view each other antagonistically in competitive terms.  This could be seen as a refinement of the ‘divide and rule’ approach whereby a government divides a people along ethnic/religious/etc lines and keep them mutually antagonistic and competitive so as to allay any collaborative propensity on their part to empathetically take on the government as a whole.  Here, it is at an individual vs. individual level – and this also founds the basis upon which it is practiced at group levels, i.e. race.  This tends to undermine any faith the people might have in each other as everyone else mirrors oneself in apathy and self-absorption.  For instance, the I’ve personally heard Indians say, ‘What can we do?  It’s a Chinese country’, and the Chinese, ‘You cannot trust anyone.’ 

 

In such a milieu, there is a gross disbelief in the potential of each other to be a part of the solution as opposed to them being a part of the problem.  It is no wonder that people in such a milieu tend to mindlessly follow their respective leaders with little question or challenge coming from within the ranks.  There is a pervasive, ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mentality that in effect leads to the discounting of opposition or critique within the party, be it in the opposition or propositional camps.  Paradoxically, this is a case of attempting to undermine authoritarianism by succumbing to it.  (that is why, for instance, through dynasty after dynasty, political system after political system, China saw little movement away from authoritarianism.)

 

This is also mirrored in the socio-economic milieu where there is little regard for the interests of others as they are not ‘us’ or ‘me’.  Queue-cutting; misinformation in sales transactions; barging against each other as they jostle to get on and off trains; intrusive behaviour on the roads; disinterest in human rights or international affairs not pertaining to one’s interests; discussions by bloggers being centred around the pronouncements of prominent figures as opposed to each other; apathy in the face of the marginalised; amongst a host of others are manifestations of an overarching perspective devaluing the significance of the individual and evidences abject mutual and popular alienation.  Complementing this is the discounting of difference and viewing divergence from the norm as ‘trouble-making’.  Hence, not only are other individuals discounted for not being oneself, but the significance of individuality as well. 

 

It is within this context that the meaning of ‘success’ takes its meaning.  The failure of popular political activism leaves people little choice but to ‘do one’s best within a bad situation’.  From this emerge those coping and compensatory mechanisms that began to comprise ‘culture’.  And from this point on, a ‘bad situation’ is not taken to refer to the consequences of popular political depoliticisation, but to the failure of an individual to do one’s best, or simply ‘bad luck’.  That is why, for instance, there is an overly pronounced focus on symbols and rituals of luck in ‘Chinese’ culture.  Just the merest allusion to ‘luck’ imbues a phenomenon with luck.  The number ‘8’, because it sounds like or alludes to ‘luck’ in some Chinese languages is deemed to be of great value and high prices are charged for items which figure it.  Not too long ago, huge sums of money was spent to reorientate the ‘singapore flyer’ – singapore’s copy of the London Eye – to make it more friendly to the luck-inducing elements of nature as espoused by feng shui.  In this act is not necessarily seen the government’s belief in the value of feng shui, but an effort to keep the people focused on vicarious means for enhancing one’s fortune and fate as opposed to the government themselves.  (whilst reinforcing amongst the populace of the significance of the relative significance of Chinese culture whilst equating the idea of the ‘majority’ with ‘race’, along with the relative insignificance of difference.)  Let me put it this way, the more time spent on the pew, the less the time spent at the foot of, or on, political podiums without. 

 

Singapore Flyer Flying High with Feng Shui (source, singaporeflyer.com)

 

“SINGAPORE, 28 July 2008 - The World’s Largest Giant Observation Wheel Spins In New Direction To Bring Fortune To Singapore. 

The Giant Observation Wheel’s initial modus operandus – showcasing to visitors, first, Singapore’s financial centre before descending with panoramic views of eastern Singapore – drew observations from feng shui geomancers that the Flyer was taking fortune and ‘qi’ (energy) away from the country and turning its back from ready fortune – the financial centre.

Motivated by ancient Chinese philosopy of feng shui – a belief of arranging elements of the environment to promote fortune and well-being – the 165-metre-tall modern technological wonder has embarked on a directional change since July 28, much to the delight of feng shui experts.

On the new direction, Mr. Florian Bollen, Chairman of Singapore Flyer said, “It bodes well to move towards the money centre, as a number of feng shui masters had approached us to say that the Flyer is on the perfect site to pick up the good qi (energy) flowing into Singapore, but it was going in the wrong direction. The feng shui aspect of this is very important. We are told that it is much better now because we are going towards the financial centre and collecting fortune.”

 

 

In addition to this, the practice of pushing each other aside on the eve of the Chinese New Year to be the first to get one’s joss stick into the temple urn (whilst I was shooting the event this year, I couldn’t help but smile at the significance of the crowd-control host shouting out over the megaphone at the stroke of midnight, ‘Happy New Year! Happy New Year!  Don’t push! Don’t push! Happy New Year! Happy New Year!’ as people began to shout out and push against each other to stab their respective joss sticks into the temple urn.); gambling on New Year’s Eve and on the following days; evidences a people whom are pit against each other.

 

 

From these instances, we can begin to understand the meaning of ‘success’ in ‘Confucian’ societies.  It means the ability to get ahead despite each other and to value it on the basis of being able to do so despite each other.  When I asked my Chinese in-law, Wendy, why those who wanted to buy the flat I was living in constantly tried to bargain the price down below the market-value whilst getting us to throw in as much of the items in the house as possible to the point of ludicrousness, she said, ‘if they don’t feel that they chia (eat) you, they don’t feel full’.  When my Chinese brother-in-law spoke about his experiences in China vs. India, he remarked that whilst the traffic in India was chaotic, it still flowed smoothly, but in China, he said, there were more traffic jams.  When I asked him why, he said, ‘Chinese mentality mahhh (‘mahhh’, suffix used in statements by the Chinese to stress a point.  As the Chinese language controls intonation in the pronunciation of words as each of 4 sounds gives a word a different meaning, additional suffixes like ‘mahhh’, ‘hor’, ‘ha’, ‘lah’, ‘lor’, etc, are produced to give more intonational expression.  Being averse to difference, this is one of the reasons why they find the Tamil language funny because the intonation is embedded in the sentence itself without such suffixes.). If we cannot move ahead, we will make sure you also cannot move.’(Melvin has always struck me as very different from most singaporeans for his quick-wittedness, critical mindedness, and being able to study things from different angles.)  I was quite surprised at this observations and put it down to bias of some sort.  But another Chinese friend and old army-buddy of mine, Yeo, confirmed this as well.  I remain ambivalent about this and will have to experience it for myself. 

 

When we extricate the value of empathy, we are immediately focused on the value of the self that is simultaneously devalued once made bereft of empathy.  In my advice to my acquaintances in singapore who want to be better thinkers, artists, photographers, etc, I tell them, ‘if you want to do well in these, learn to care.  Because in learning to care for others, your senses are drawn to the myriad and multifarious details that comprise the ever-changing and relatively distinctive interests of others, and the interrelationships between them.  Then, when you are able to perform this task well and with little effort, you will be able to accelerate in your ventures in other arenas that will certainly pose less variables and interrelationships.  You will be able to advance far quicker and be afforded insights that will be denied the self-absorbed.’   Hence, in a state where apathy is culturalised through the time and tides of history, we can be certain that more in-depth appreciation of reality will be compromised and people will be focused on self-interests and the superficial – shopping, eating – and turn it into a ‘national pastime’.   

 

Success in such a state of affairs will be dual in value.  As success is valued in terms of being able to avail oneself of materialistic and superficial phenomena, the ‘success’ of a government will be dependent on its being able to deliver a milieu wherein this can be pursued.  Higher questions on the meaning of life’, the significance of the human being and her/is potentials, the meaning of meaning, the value of value, and an all-round metaphysical appreciation and dissection of reality is deemed irrelevant.  Such things are deemed to be ‘talking cock’ (talking rubbish) and focus is accepting reality and jostling against each other and atop each other to attain ‘success’. 

 

In a sense, I have not simply described life in a ‘Confucian’ state, but in a capitalist one.  This puts ‘Confucian’ states in an extremely advantageous position when it comes to life within a capitalist milieu that strives for the reduction of people to mere apathetic, subjective and non-cogitating consumers.  We could say that they have been successfully and historically adapted for life in such a socio-economic and global milieu and this, in essence, lies behind the ‘miraculous’ ‘success’ of ‘Confucian’ economies such as that of China and Singapore.  They have gone past the ‘chaotic’ periods of western history that ensued and ensues in the conflict between the boss and the worker and have learnt to value themselves as consumers who desire nothing but a milieu and government that would enable them to do nothing but that.  ‘Humanity’ means nothing but that.  ‘Self-regulation’ means nothing but the effort to ensure a goodness-of-fit between one’s persona and a consumerist society.  That is why they cannot understand the value of free speech, demonstrations, agitating for the rights of others, equality, amongst others, and are not disinclined to shrug it off as simply, ‘western democracy’ as opposed to an ‘asian one’.  They predictably cannot appreciate that to care and agitate for the interests of another is actually an attempt to value difference and the potentials of that difference to enable us to appreciate aspects of our persona that our own culture or position will disable us from appreciating.  For them, there is no other persona than an apathetic and self-absorbed one.  And in that, they are certainly well-prepared to take on the current global socio-economic milieu.

 

In this, the ‘Confucian’ state is not a Confucian one.  For in this persona we see the Legalist word made flesh through the medium of a culture borne of popular political failure – “When the epoch changed, Legalism is the act of following all laws.”  Pair this with the view that humanity is intrinsically selfish, which simply serves to validate self-absorption as the norm – and which is antithetical to Confucius’ stance – elitism is validated, and elitist aspirations are popularised. 

 

‘Success’ is not determined by one’s humanity, empathy, critical mindedness, aesthetic propensities, and any other feature that argues for our difference form the non-human animal kingdom, but in being able to be the top-dog in a dog-eat-dog world.

according2,

ed

 

“

If we can’t recognise the greatest of evils in its foetal stage, we can’t be blamed for not appreciating its adolescence.  And that is how we become the fault lines from whence emerge much evil in all its mature glory.

 

 

In China’s calling the land of the Uyghur, Xinjiang, we can detect its monocultural stance.  There is no recognition of the significance of the cultural and historical significance of the Uyghur in such a name.  The name takes its meaning purely from its relation to China, as in simply being a ‘new territory’ of, and therefore, for China.  A simple acquisition and nothing besides.  Hence, marginalisation can be expected. 

 

And China is not the first to do that either. 

 

Just look up the history of city or state names beginning with ‘New’.    For instance, when the Dutch controlled the ‘New York’ of today, it was called, ‘New Amsterdam’, and with other native ‘american’ territories, its totality was called ‘New Netherlands’.  When the British too it thereafter, ‘New Amsterdam’ was renamed, ‘New York’, after York in the north of England.  And there is ‘Australia’, which comes from the Latin, ‘Australis’, meaning ‘south’ where it could just as well be ‘north’. 

 

With the self-aggrandizing acquisitive impulse well-established in the subconscious mind of humanity, it is not surprising that an ‘other’ is appreciated only in relation to a relatively powerful self, and in that, the other is discounted significantly.  Hence, it is not surprising that China would discount the Uyghur, like the Americans discounted the indigenous people of the land now known as ‘America’, or the western colonialists discounted the aboriginals, amongst others – with dire consequences for all indigenous inhabitants.

 

But why go so far into history.  Look at women taking on their husbands’ names upon marriage.  Or how about how corporations, with names like Sony, or Creative, or Apple, or Microsoft, that in effect becomes the surname of its employees, and as evidenced by employees relinquishing their intellectual property rights to the company even if the said company continues to profit from their ideas and work long after the retrenchment of employees – as did appropriately surnamed women give up their wealth to men in the past.

 

The price paid for not noticing these seemingly innocuous instances of greater evils comes in the form of our being oblivious to its growth.

 

Now whilst most of the Chinese I have met here (9 out of 10) would appreciate the perspective above as reason enough to not do anything about it as its pervasiveness would be seen as proof of its naturalness and immutability, through the oft-heard discounting phrase, 'Aiyah, everywhere also like that one lah!' (that's the way it is everywhere)

(a perspective which is founded on a learnt and imposed penchant for conformism, and which produces other byproductive tendencies such as ‘catering to the majority’, ‘going with the popular’, ‘valuing by prominence’, ‘going by tradition’, ‘valuing by numbers’, ‘following the crowd’, and, in this context, ‘attributing naturalness by pervasiveness’ – which is why I view multiculturalism as a panacea for much evil),

I would see it as a call for the masses to begin to uproot ‘New Territories’ in its most subtle manifestations as mentioned above so that our sight can be honed for the prevention of and contention with evils in all its developmental stages.  Perspectival oversights are founded on the least of oversights.  If we can’t recognise the greatest of evils in its foetal stage, we can’t be blamed for not appreciating its adolescence.  And that is how we become the fault lines from whence emerge much evil in all its mature glory.

 

It’s your call.

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

“

Too often, we have used the selfsame standards by which we are judged and marginalised to judge and separate.  Too often, whilst insecurely fixated on the shared history of an insulated past, we have abjured the sharing of the history of the globalised present.    

~ ed

 

The Uyghur and the Chinese – in brief

The Uyghur (pronounced, ‘wee-ghur’) are Muslims.  Their languages are related to Turkish and they commonly regard themselves as central Asians.  Given their biological lineage, they may be considered, ‘Indo-Europeans’.

The region, known as Xinjiang, or ‘new territories’, was completely absorbed into China in 1949 by the ‘communist’ leadership of the newly formed state.

Beijing’s main concern with the Uyghur is with their desire to form a separate state - which is spearheaded by the East Turkestan Independence movement.  Since, 11/9, China has been attempting to portray their separatist body as being affiliated with al-Qaeda to justify global silence in the face of their actions against them.

The grievance of the Uyghur is founded on Chinese attempts to curtail their religious, commercial and cultural activities whilst importing ‘Han Chinese’ into Xinjiang.  Whilst the population of the Han Chinese in the region in 1949 was 6%, it rose to 40% by the year 2000.  This, exacerbated by Chinese economic marginalisation, served to found the basis for the separatist initiative.

 

Ed’s take on the matter

“

My heart goes out to not only the Uyghur, but the 'Han Chinese' as well, as the latter are victims of the Chinese government's monocultural stand on things that sees the 'Han Chinese' defending themselves against the consequences.

~ ed 

Just as I do not support the separation of ‘Pakistan’ from India; or the past exclusion of the British from India, amongst other colonial states; or the formation of a separate Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka; or the eviction of the Jews from Palestine and vice versa, I cannot support Uyghur separation from China despite the fascism of the latter.

 

What China needs to do is to make a break with its age-old ‘middle kingdom’ perspective and seek to embrace difference for a change – perhaps, besides bringing in ‘foreign talent’ for the IT industry, they could consider bringing in cultural theorists from nations with histories of multiculturalism and whom can be of aid in helping China transition from the Third to the First World of multiculturalism.  The separation of the Uyghur from China would, in essence, be a validation of cultural fascism.  It is most unfortunate that cultural fascism is often unwittingly utilised as a response to cultural fascism.  In the past, amongst a host of other instances, we saw the Indians evicting the British on the grounds of them being ‘foreign’ – which was a thoroughly un-Indian thing to do given their history of accommodating difference;  Malcolm X liked his coffee ‘black’ and had initially called for black separation from the whites – till he very wisely changed his mind after his universalist experience in Mecca whilst on pilgrimage; we saw some Arab nations wanting to ‘push the Israelis into the sea’ after the west illegitimately handed over Palestinian lands to the Jews; and we saw Pakistan being formed along religious lines.  Too often, we have used the selfsame standards by which we are judged and marginalised to judge and separate.  Too often, whilst fixated on the shared history of an insulated past, we have abjured the sharing of the history of the present.  In this, we feed the generic notion that if we aren’t similar, we can’t live together in respect of difference, and in hope for mutual integration and accommodation.

 

But, I have to add, we cannot view both defensive and offensive cultural fascism as equal lest this detracts us from appreciating the root cause of the problem.  The fascism of the Uyghur can be perceived as self-defensive fascism as opposed to China’s offensive brand of fascism that seeks to dilute the culture of another whilst simultaneously lauding its own, and whilst doing similarly with the ethnic make-up of the region with the importation of ‘Han Chinese’ – just as it is doing with Tibet with the traditional aid of the apathetic acquiescence of a population accustomed to tragically taking pride in following the lead of the few.  In that, my heart goes out to not only the Uyghur, but the 'Han Chinese' as well, as the latter are victims of the Chinese government's monocultural stand on things that sees the 'Han Chinese' defending themselves against its consequences. 

 

I suppose, if one was to go back into history, and acknowledge the fact that the China that Shih Huang Ti ‘united’ was only a fraction of the size of the China of today, and that for China to occupy the lands that is now perceived to be ‘China’ by its inhabitants and the global populace, it can only be due to the success of its authorities in the imposition of cultural fascism on newly acquired territories in the historical past.  Unfortunately, since there is already a perceived racial division in China, instead of incorporating the new into the identity of ‘Han Chinese’, we might just see a perpetuation of their marginalisation on the basis of ethnic difference.  And with the underdevelopment of a people that ensues with such marginalisation, their incorporation into a thus created ‘superior race’ of people would be forestalled.

 

China ought to utilise this opportunity to include difference, just as it has an opportunity to do so with Tibet.  What the west is doing politically via, amongst others, the European Union, China can do culturally.  But, given an extremely ingrained view borne of two millennia of practice - that difference signals the weakness of the government, or that it threatens the political longevity of the party in power - it would predictably not have formed the formulae necessary to contend with difference and avoid eradicating or discounting difference reflexively.  Just because monoculturalism had been paired with a ‘united’ nation-state of China for over 2000 years, it ought not to be perceived as the only means via which it may be delivered.  In truth, whilst monoculturalism can deliver stability, it will inevitably deliver perspectival docility as well – one of the reasons why India is at the forefront of the IT industry and not China.  Whilst difference may be more difficult to manage, it can deliver far more than that which is (easy to manage).  And if difference is difficult to manage, it just serves to indicate that the rules and perspectives one utilises to make sense of things has yet to undergo a change that would render it easy to manage.

 

Hence, after 2000 years of perspectival stability, I won’t be surprised if China views difference as ‘chaotic’ or ‘cannot be controlled’.  In that, it is not that difference is ‘chaotic’ or ‘cannot be controlled’, but a history that is used to assimilating or marginalising difference, as opposed to accommodating it, would necessarily render them perspectivally disabled when it comes to contending with difference as the learning curve is greater with accommodation as opposed to assimilation.  And when one fuses this with the phenomenon of ‘cultural pride’, it can render the authority and population resistant to the influence of ‘foreigners’ in this respect or anything that is not competition-based.  I can quite understand that, as those who fall prey to cultural pride will frequently only adopt the ways of others when it can feed this cultural pride.  And in that, it will generally only be in terms of competition or the adoption of recuperative or compensatory elements of other cultures – such as pop culture.

 

So how long are the Uyghur supposed to put up with this offensive brand of cultural and political fascism? 

 

I can’t answer that. 

But I can say that the world, by standing by and allowing this to take place, as it did in Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, Palestine, amongst others, is that which significantly contributes to the basis upon which separatism emerges.  And when this happens, given that the fragmentation of the world via nation-states is perceived to be a good, they tend to stand by and do nothing as one state, amongst a fraternity of states, steps in with guns-blazing to prevent its dissolution - for to support the dissolution of one state is to unwittingly afford a thumbs-up to separatist tendencies amongst its respective populations. 

 

I suppose the world’s apathy in the face of cultural fascism in Xinjiang can, in part, be put down to their waiting for the situation to resolve itself as it had in the historical past when states were relatively insulated and cultural pogroms could be conducted without global scrutiny.  In other words, if China has a problem with its Uyghur population, it is not because it is a new problem but because it cannot do what it does without the world noticing it ‘real time’.  As I had stated above, when we see a large population who perceive themselves as, for instance, one race and abiding by one culture, it can either be due to cultural fascism in the past that has been concluded successfully, or because people of relatively undeveloped cultures have been exposed to a relatively developed one. i.e. the nomadic Mongols largely adopting Chinese culture during the Yuan dynasty.  Hence, the rest of the world’s elite might be waiting for the Tibet and Xinjiang situation to peter out with time as it had with other parts of China in the past. 

 

And let us not forget that western nation-states with their allegedly different ‘French’, ‘English’, ‘Germans’, etc, were created through a similar fashion. (ref. Benedict Anderson’s, ‘The Imagined State’).  So perhaps, under the guise of respecting the sovereignty of another state by not ‘interfering in internal affairs’, the world is sitting by and hoping that the Chinese would be able to quietly assimilate new lands and peoples into their state.  Unfortunately, this hope is scuppered by the Chinese doing unto the Uyghur that which was done unto the Jews by the Nazis – minus the extermination camps – and in full view of the world wide web of humanity. I suppose the western population is subconsciously aware that a pogrom is a pogrom, be it racial or cultural given their experience with Nazism.  Except that since a cultural pogrom is not as overtly destructive, they are empathetically disabled from doing anything significant about it – which indicates a deficiency in their perspective that compromises empathy in such a manner.

 

It is about time that the world takes a serious view of cultural pogroms so that violent tendencies, as manifested in the Uyghur separatist tendencies, or that of the Tamil Tigers, or that of the Hezbollah or Hamas, or IRA in the past, can be countered in its pre-conceptional stage. 

 

I cannot, because of the world’s failure to do this, move on to support separatist tendencies.  That is compensation for not doing the right thing earlier.  In that, greater evils may be unleashed as the developmental trajectory of humanity has its launching point permanently positioned where further along its development, other evils inevitably arise.  Hence, what we can do is to put pressure on the elite of the world to do the right thing despite more accessible separatist or assimilationist solutions that simply makes two wrongs of a wrong. 

And let's not forget Tibet

 

Ed

 

 

 

This article is an attempt to answer Simsplace.vox.com's question, "How can a booklet promoting inter-racial harmony claim to do so when it only illustrates 2 of the 4 local languages." which he put to me last night over a cup of cheap tea before we headed down to the pub.

It comes across as a Chinese state that is being magnanimous enough to include others.  In that, it does not contradict their promotion of ‘racial harmony’ but rather enhances it....if one was to take the present as the starting point of history that is.

 

But,

 

Let’s put it this way.  If I was to migrate, for instance, to Hong Kong, which has historically been a Chinese state, I am not going to take offence at not being represented in media broadcasts, in parliament, in various media, amongst a host of others.  I would try my best to survive given whatever opportunities that come my way or which is not perceived to a 'Chinese industry'.  And if I am given additional rights, I would be thankful whilst not seeking to have full equality in all forms of representation though I would still expect basic rights of citizenship.  So, for instance, if I don’t see members of ‘my’ ‘racial’ group being represented in ads, the television, etc, I wouldn’t really mind.  But this would not be my approach if I perceive this country as mine, or myself as equal to all in all respects, or where I equate 'majority' with 'nationality' and nothing besides. 

That is the essential difference between being perceived and perceiving oneself as a ‘minority of foreign origins’ even though one might have shared nationality, and the perception that you are a part of the majority by virtue of nationality despite origins.  If one perceives oneself in the former light, than most non-legal rights become ‘privilege’ and an illustration of the ‘magnanimity’ of the majority.  However, the inverse is true if you perceive yourself in the latter light.  In the case of the UK, the Asians moved from the first to the second and now may even, at times, be overrepresented in various parts of the social experience.  However, given that a significant number of the British population perceive themselves and each other as ‘British’, ‘race’ becomes less a formula for distinguishing one from another.  In this, the United Kingdom may be perceived as truly culturally magnanimous as they were originally a ‘white’ country which has included ‘others’ to the point that the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is generally perceived to refer to British nationals and foreigners.

In the local situation, one is detracted from the fact that Singapore moved from a Malay country; then to a multiracial one; and then to a Chinese one with the government stating that Singapore must always have a Chinese majority.  More than 3 decades have passed since this approach was taken and many non-Chinese locals have moved from seeing this as ‘Multiracial Singapore’, to ‘a country with a Chinese majority’, and then to ‘a Chinese country’ - as indicated in my personal conversations in the course of 30 years.

Moving 30 or so years into the present, when people are accustomed to this and view it as 'a Chinese country', the 'Chinese' can then move to 'include' the thus created 'others' or what I would term, 'citizens of foreign origin', and then come across as being magnanimous. In this, the 'others' are disabled from seeking those rights that people who deem the country to be theirs would - as, for instance, an Indian might in India. Anything that is given to them is hence perceived as a 'gift' as opposed to a 'right'.  I do recall my taking to task the now-defunct site, 'Singaporeans for Democracy'(sfd) for making their site available only in Mandarin and English.  Their response was, 'we cannot please everyone', and 'why do you think you deserve special  treatment', or something to that effect.  In that, we can detect the notion that I am elucidating upon here. 

When the country is perceived in such a manner, opposition by those who view themselves as 'others' is reduced and Singapore as a 'Chinese state’ is perpetuated as people who don't view this as their state, given a hierarchical definition of a nation along racial lines, will generally tend to make do with what they are given as opposed to seeking equality in non-legal rights - not unlike the varying expectations of a member of the family as opposed to a tenant. Cultural magnanimity under such conditions turns 'rights' into a 'privilege' or something 'minorities' ought to be 'grateful for' or wait a few decades for.

Whether it is intentional or not, the consequences are as I have stated. It is in this light that a Malay finally becoming a general, or the Indians finally getting their own channel, can be seen as a gift from a people whose country they are inhabiting.

It is a paradox whereby a Chinese state, by including 'others' in a 'secondary' way after the 'others' have been taught to see themselves as a 'minority', and moved from seeing Singapore as a country with 'a Chinese majority' to 'a Chinese country', can hence maintain itself as a Chinese state in perpetuity wherein 'minorities' will not seek for more than 2nd place in everything as do minorities in, for instance, China or Hong Kong.  This, of course, gives a whole other meaning to the term, 'meritocracy'.

A final point supporting this perspective is that in the past, Malay was given primacy in symbolic form given that Singapore was once largely inhabited by Malays and can be perceived as, originally, a Malay country. Now, in these examples, we are seeing Chinese characters being placed even above English. And we see such tendencies in manifesting itself in various forms online as evidenced in the 'sgblogawards.omy.sg' site, in singaporedaily.net's 'daily chiobu', in the Social Democratic Party placing options for viewing their site in different languages in respect of racial numerousness, or the Worker’s Party doing similarly on their banner.  It is a pervasive phenomenon indicating Singapore in transition.  

Amongst a host of other examples, the booklet above is the most significant example of this transition as it simultaneously does indeed promote racial harmony, whilst impressing upon all that it is to take place within the auspices of one predominant culture and with one predominant race.   In this, less will be expected by 'minorities' who perceive this as a 'Chinese country' and, as a result, as 'citizens of foreign origin'.  Hence, we can plausibly state, in the light of these phenomena, that one is being included, not as an equal, but as a 'minority'.  And given this, they will take their 'rightful place' as do minorities in countries whose histories they were not a part of.

I'm not saying that this is right or wrong. It's just a simple sociological analysis which I’m quite certain nobody in this country will appreciate to this degree, or care about enough to afford it any appreciation.

 

 

Ed

postscript:  This article, amongst all others, is not constructed to 'incite racial hatred', but for the purpose of undermining the conditions for its emergence, or those conditions that might negatively affect any group's sense of self-efficacy.  That is what ought to be expected of anyone who cares for the whole as opposed to the part.  That, in essence, is that which underlies the Confucian, ren (jen), or 'human-heartedness'.

 

 

"The attitude to the space programme in China is a little bit like the attitude towards space exploration in the western world in the 1960s," says Kevin Fong, an expert in space medicine at University College London. "There's a deep fervour among their university kids for space technology. The main difference between China and America now is that China can just do something - they don't need to ask permission or go through a democratic process and get the budget approved."

Why the next man on the moon will be Chinese – the Guardian

 

“

Well, I suppose it is easy to institute a Nike-ian (Just Do It) culture of 'just do as you're told', as it is in Asian 'democracies', when the intellectual aid of the masses has already been garnered through 'chaotic' western democracies.  In that, the non-chaotic vicarious experience of the west enables a shortcut past thought in the east.

~ ed

 

I have no doubt that the next man on the moon will be Chinese.  Just as the collapse of the Roman Empire saw the Church attempting to usurp its stature, the nation-state thereafter, and Hitler thereafter – with Roman, Catholic, Citizen and Aryan serving as synonyms embodying efforts to be ‘the chosen ones’- the rise of the Asian Democracy will require one amongst its aspirants to show the west that they can match them in their own game.  And with this, they will be able to say, ‘we may have a different kind of democracy and version of ‘humanity’, but since we can do as much as you, we are as good as you.’  The ‘Asian Democracy’ is waiting for just such an opportunity to complete its argument for a dual universe of two different species of humanity.  And with that, China and the Chinese Diaspora can finally relieve itself of the abject feeling of inferiority and cultural doubt they have felt ever since the west carved up China in their colonial ‘scramble for concessions’.   They will again be reunited with the age-old conception of themselves as ‘the middle kingdom’ (which is a translation of the Chinese word for ‘China’) bringing about mass cultural and racial identification for the purpose of the instantly gratifying ‘feel good’ high it delivers.  Just as the Roman empire was later split into two with ‘2 Romes’ in the form of the western ‘Rome’ and the eastern ‘Byzantium’, we will again see this split with ‘2 Romes’ in the form of Washington and Beijing. (Hmm..and some monkeys still believe that we are living in ‘modern’ times’.)  And America will cease to be ‘the greatest nation on earth’ to being ‘the greatest nation amongst western or western style democracies’ whilst China takes on the rubric of ‘the greatest nation of ‘Asian’ or ‘Asian’-style democracies.’

 

But whilst China will be able to deliver the superficial result of western civilisation, by bypassing democratic procedures and excluding the people in idea-generation and decision-making, it will further reinforce the basis upon which its population will remain as perspectivally stifled as it has been since 221 B.C., and which saw them playing merely the role of brawn, opportunists despite human welfare, copy cats, and the appropriators of foreign intellectual capital, when they opened up to the global economy.  That’s what the ‘don’t question and do as you’re told’ mentality always produces.  If it produces intellectual ineptitude within the parent-child relationship, there is no reason why this won’t be replicated on a national scale.  But, no matter, as the virtue of evil lies in its innovative ability to circumvent the consequences of itself.  Hence, for instance, whilst the west, with its ‘chaotic’ democracy produced great minds, the Asian democracy will simply appropriate the companies wherein capitalism condemns it to be interned under threat of oblivion and starvation.  And if it is able to deliver the same economic ‘affluence’ despite mass intellectual ineptitude, it will be perceived as equal in value – whilst reinforcing the notion that ‘affluence’ means nothing other than economic affluence as opposed to an intellectual one.

 

Whilst many would certainly compare China to India, and further reinforce the basis upon which Indians, with their acutely honed critical faculty, a faculty which is discounted in Asian democracies as ‘talking/questioning/complaining to much’, are marginalised, what is missed by fixation on the end result is that which it takes to widen the intellectual horizon far more than the narrow mind can deliver.  India, like the west, tends to include the masses in idea and decision-generation.  Whilst, in the short-term, it can lead to a stuttered move forward, it serves as the breeding ground for minds that can add on greater value to a project in the course of its realisation that can deliver far more than can otherwise be conceptualised.  Through the inclusion of the masses, the collective self-worth is validated. 

 

Like I said in a lecture (I call it a ‘lecture’ because people here generally have nothing to add to my perspectives by way of ideas or questions) to an acquaintance in conversation over my usual cheap cup of tea, the value of India lies in the intellectual propensities that are honed in the course of a stuttered development.  India was never a singular state, never had one ‘universal emperor’, no one single source of enlightenment, no one culture, no one religion, no one language, and no one God.  It takes a mind that is trained to believe that all that one sees is all that exists to produce the perspectival ineptitude it takes to mistake this for ‘chaos’.  Rather, it serves as the valuable ‘stutter’ that elongates thought prior to speech and action.  And in this, the self-worth of many is validated to the point that the collective intellectual produce supersedes that of just one ‘universal emperor’ flanked by yes-persons in the Land of Nod. 

 

Thus, when one finally gets in her/is word in after a long drawn and seemingly tedious stutter, it is usually of enlightening proportions as opposed to the reflexive ejaculation of one who says the first thing that comes to mind.   If we apply the phrase, ‘think before you speak’ within a social context, the ‘think’ component is an analogous reference to ‘including the people in the thinking and decision-making process’.  The act will be more refined thereafter.  But when we abide by a, ‘don’t talk so much and just do it’, approach, it means, ‘let us think and the rest of you just do as we say’.  In this, the potential result of many minds is discounted for the immediate actions of the few, or forces one to simply imitate those from more inclusive or ‘chaotic’ milieux.  And in this, the people will be underdeveloped enough to confuse that which is delivered by the few minds as the best that can be delivered simply because they are no better to know better.  Given the context within which such ‘laudable’ achievement is produced, it wouldn’t be far from the truth. 

 

So whilst China, as opposed to India or many other western states, will probably be the first to put a person on the moon after the other ‘Rome’, and whilst many will see this as the anointment and reinstatement of the ‘Holy Eastern Roman Emperor’ with Beijing taking the place of Byzantium, they will thus be detracted from the fact that it is an imitation brought about as a consequence of not stuttering their progress by popular inclusion, and through that, perhaps going where no westerner has ever laid a footprint before. 

 

However, it is not that the west won’t be undone by this either.  In the competition that will ensue between the 2 Romes, the west, and the rest of the world, will be fixated on how the Chinese were able to deliver the affluence that took the west a few thousand years of ‘stuttered’ development to deliver.  In that, they will unwittingly fixate the masses on economic affluence as opposed to the intellectual affluence that founded western intellectual progress.  And as this is already underway through the professionalisation of the populace in the west that renders the people quite capable in their economic and reproductive functions, but intellectually decrepit, it won’t be too long before the west and all who still mindlessly adopt their pop culture and economic ethos, become little more than Asian democracies themselves.  The Asian democracy will serve as the personification of ‘fast-track meritocracy’.  This, upon scrutiny, will mean, making your persona as little as possible so that little can be appreciated as much.  And all the great philosophers of the west and India will be reincarnated as mere milestones along a ‘progressive’ route 66 which they never intended.

 

Hence, in this small step for wo/mankind that China will undoubtedly make in the not too distant future, humankind will take a monumental leap backward.

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

 

“In a final, desperate push to lobby for an ASEAN Human Rights Body (AHRB) with teeth, over 200 civil society organisations, activists and academics have dispatched a letter to the high-profile committee drafting the terms of reference (ToR) of the rights body to make it an "effective" mechanism.”

IPSnews

 

“ 

When we seek to integrate the good, the bad and the ugly, as it is in the ‘Asian’ context, compromise becomes the greater good that in effect evicts good and leads to the rule of the compromise that is ‘bad’.  This is the dark side of inclusivity.

~ ed

 

“

On the one hand, ‘in respect of the differences in culture’, one might think it reasonable to say to the west, this is our culture, so we’ll handle it with our own human rights body.  Once this rationale is accepted, one could then say to the west and their own, that ‘in respect of differences in culture’, we have our own version of human rights to complement our version of the human being, so we’ll handle it our way. 

In the acceptance of the former, the latter is validated.

~ ed

 

“

Differences in culture have as much to do with human rights as the attempt by a culture to train the people to forgo it with a ‘different’ conception of themselves.

~ ed

 

.

 

The idea of an ‘Asian Human Rights body’ is a remarkable move indeed!  I cannot but admire its initiators for thinking up, albeit unwitting, one of these final and decisive steps toward the initiation of the phenomenon of the ‘Asian Democracy’ that has been a few decades in the making.  Whilst some activists are quite thrilled about this and are seeking to critique and improve it, I’d say that this step, instead of being one toward democracy, is yet another decisive step away from it.

 

I’ll explain.

 

As I have already stated in previous articles on the phenomenon of the ‘Asian democracy’, it is a movement that,

 

Firstly, seeks to distinguish itself from the western idea of a democracy and the kind of human, and human development, that it takes to appreciate it - for the purpose of protecting the interests of the elite which are always under scrutiny in the west due to the populace’s understanding of their humanity and ensuing human rights. 

 

Secondly, it seeks to protect itself from western critique by way of having it viewed on both sides of the divide as a critique of their culture and hence, nothing less than a cultural imposition.  In other words, the basic thesis is, ‘you have your brand of human nature, and we have ours, so don’t get colonial on me and bugger off’.

 

Thirdly, to indicate that an ‘Asian democracy’ is not antipathetic to human rights - as this will certainly stir up empathetic concern and ire in the west - in the course of redefining what it means to ‘be an asian human’ amongst its populace, it will have to put in place an ‘Asian human rights body’ to protect the rights of the ‘Asian democratic’ version of the human – just as we might have the SPCA for non-human animals. (one could say that whilst the SPCA was formed to protect animals, it was also based on, and served to perpetuate, the notion that we are ‘different’ from them and thus left alone the basis upon which arose problems that environmentalists are now attempting to resolve.)  In this, they are saying, ‘your version of humanity has its version of rights, and our version has its own. So don’t talk to me about your western brand of ‘concern’ and bugger off.’

 

Regionalising Disaffection

 

“According to the draft document, the long-standing tradition of non-interference will stand. Some of the stated principles in the document called for "non-interference in the internal affairs of Asean member states", as well as respecting "the right of every member state to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion and coercion".” – The Nation

 

This situation is not unlike the attempt to represent the workers via a ‘union’ that is more in union with the government than with the workers, and to develop the workers to think and feel that it is union enough given their culturally unique persona.  I suspect that it as an attempt to redirect local disaffection from ‘western’ human rights bodies to localised ones, whilst hoping to keep the west silent on these issues as ‘we Asians’ are already doing something to address the concerns of ‘our brand of humanity’.  To enable local disaffection to flow to the west would surely keep alive the notion that there is no difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ and thus lead to the demands for conformity to their standards of human rights.  Hence, localization would be a significant step toward regionalising human rights and the type of human it takes to confuse little for much.  If this isn’t the case, then there should be no plausible reason for a localised body – unless the intent is to localise human nature given the ‘us vs. them’ discourse that has been quite pervasive the past two decades.

 

Additionally, the existence of nations such as Myanmar, amongst others, within this scheme of things is most opportune as it will enable the ASEAN ministers to seek a ‘compromise’ in its human rights constitution that will further weaken the standing of the regional body and strengthen their own positions.  When we seek to integrate the good, the bad and the ugly, as it is in the ‘Asian’ context, compromise becomes the greater good that in effect evicts good and leads to the rule of the compromise that is ‘bad’.  This is the dark side of inclusivity.  This will only serve to further the distinction between the ‘Asian’ and the ‘western’ because in the latter, the trend is generally in terms of assimilating ‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly’ as opposed to seeking a compromise between them. And unlike the west, in much of s.e.Asia, we are not mediating between extremely human rights conscious states and those that aren't, or extremely empathetic people and apathetic ones.  Rather, the inverse is true as people and governments generally mirror each other in their self-absorption and racialised view of reality.  Hence, what we're going to get can be something that is essentially very different from what was produced in the west. But as western critique in this matter might again be alleged to be a cultural imposition of colonial proportions, the different character of the AHRB that is thus created will further found the ‘we are we and the west is the west’ argument.   

 

This will serve to further strengthen the s.e.Asian stance against the west in their calls to ‘not interfere in internal affairs’.  We thus have two levels of internal protection here – the local and regional, aka, the pill and the diaphragm.  So we have a whole barrage of arguments against western ‘interference’ such as, ‘it is our internal affair’(the pill), and now, ‘it is our internal regional affair’ (the diaphragm), complemented by, ‘your critique of us is cultural imposition’, ‘we Asians are different’, ‘we need to be inclusive and therefore need to compromise between the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in our region which leads to the difference in our human rights constitutions’, etc, etc.  All these different perspectives are mutually supportive and seeks to cover various loopholes that might be used by the west to ‘impose their culture’.  I would really be interested to see how the west is going to counter this given their desire to appear culturally magnanimous as a compensation for their cultural fascism in the colonial era.

 

Asianspeak

 

We must keep in mind that the west is quite cowed by the argument of s.e.Asian ‘intellectuals’ that their views are a cultural and racist imposition.  With the addition of a localised human rights body, they will also be able to reinforce the former by implying that there is a difference, not only between the western idea of the human and ensuing human rights, but due to this difference, an ensuing difference when it comes to the idea of ‘concern’, ‘compassion’ and ‘empathy’.  A whole vocabulary is being redefined to fit this new brand of humanity that is emerging in this part of the world.  And in this, it is most probably going to serve to found similar exclusive sentiments in other parts of the world.  If language is an aid to imagination, then in this, it can serve to incorporate it.  This, by the way, is not the first of the attempts to split the human atom but a latter attempt to find one half of it a new host.  The issue is close to conclusion.

 

Globalising Empathy

 

For myself, instead of seeking to improve-via-critique the ‘Asian human rights body’, I would be completely against its formation.  When you localise a human rights body, it can be because the local culture needs consideration of its cultural milieu in the implementation of a singular universal perspective.  However, when it is set up within an overarching milieu wherein the divisive ‘Asian democratic’ discourse and perspective is becoming increasingly pervasive in the polity and popular, it can be perceived as nothing more than an attempt to contradistinguish the ‘Asian’ persona from the ‘west’ and then bring about an ‘appropriate’ rule.  In this, the ‘Asian’ persona will generally include the Chinese and Muslim personas – both, traditionally, have been quite exclusive – and it must be noted that the inclusive Indian mindset has been left out in both cultural milieux as it would be generally difficult to contend with or integrate the product of an antithetical 2000 year old democratic culture. (i.e. Indians ‘talk to much’, ‘question too much’, ‘complain too much’, ‘argue too much’ with ‘too much’ being determined by it being valued against a subservient or traditionalist status quo.)  Thus, this exclusive tendency could be exploited by anyone in this region to push forth the ‘Asian democratic’ project.  However, it must be stated that the Muslim persona is not, in its most essential form, exclusive, as their faith embodies a universalism that is not as pronounced in other faiths.  However, given the siege mentality that has been brought about amongst the global Muslim population, thanks to the agenda of the western elite, division would not be too far from the thus created Muslim imagination – though I personally believe that the purpose of Islam is to teach humanity the virtue of global unity…but that is another topic.

 

In activists’ attempts to improve this body, what will happen is that whilst they are at it over the years to come, much will be done to continue the redefinition of the ‘Asian’ persona to the point that these ‘activists’ popular support will wane in tandem with the ‘Asianising’ of their own views – especially since it is already the case with many ‘activists’ being verifiably monocultural populists themselves.  In this, we can say that the incorporation of the Asian oppositional movements into this mindset is that which now sees the founding of an Asian Human Rights body.  There are no significant movements of thought that contradict this mindset in this region.  We must not forget that many of these ‘activists’ are strongly acculturalised to identify with ‘their own race’ and ‘their own culture’ and would naturally fall for this ploy as it is founded on the selfsame perspectival basis which they themselves are products of.  (India is one of the few states in this region that is relatively further from cultural fascism than most.)  And with economic success, its value is attached to the culture and race thus further grounding such notions.

 

Hence, we could plausibly argue that all the ‘activists’ whom are attempting to improve this body are illustrating their own subconscious appreciation of the illusory difference between the west and themselves when it comes to human rights even whilst attempting to make it similar to that of the west.  What a remarkable paradox that, in its root, has the acute potential of undoing the best of intentions.  With this foundational perspectival flaw in place, all other victories will be enjoyed in the shadow of their own gradually and graduated underdeveloped ignorance and ‘difference’.  If not, like myself, they would be unequivocally against its formation as this is a significant milestone in the general effort to distinguish between ‘them’ and ‘us’ when it comes to the fundamentals of human identity, potentials, self-perceptions and rights.  These ‘activists’ are thus a part of an attempt to create two universes when it comes to human identity, and all that it takes to make the most out of the human being for the interests of the few as opposed to the interests of all.  I’m not saying that we should simply follow the west, we could, for instance, have Asian representatives in western human rights bodies so firstly, we can recognise and impart the recognition that we are one when it comes to our humanity and ensuing rights.  Secondly, in such a union, we would be able to impart our culturally learnt perspectives to the west for the improvement of human rights bodies located in the west.  If we take a divisive course, this will further the ‘Asian democratic’ project whose consequences ‘activists’ here are fond of bemoaning on the one hand, but constantly and ignorantly reinforce on the other.

 

If racialism recognises that though we are equal, we must be separate because of differences, than this ‘culturalism’ implies as much.  Amongst others, this is founded on the fascist undertones of just about all anti-colonial movements in the past century or so.  When the west fell for that, they set the stage for the emergence of, amongst others, the ‘Asian democratic’ phenomenon.  But that is another, albeit related, topic.

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

Why is it that many people laud the achievements of one man – Lee Kuan Yew – in what he accomplished through Singapore, and yet accord so much significance to numerical superiority with regards to ‘race’?  If Lee is anything, he is a testament to the value of a single individual as opposed to numbers.

 

Most people mistakenly believe in the fantastical notion that Singapore is a ‘little dot’ that comprises only 4 or 5 million inhabitants.  Yes, perhaps it is, when it comes to geographical population and in terms of direct contribution to the development of the economy.  But it is most certainly a fallacy when it comes to indirect and even more significant contribution to the economy and all round development of society.

 

“…But we already have a new Middle Kingdom now. During Lee Kuan Yew's triumphant visit to Malaysia he made it known to the Malaysian supplicants that Singapore regards the lands within 6000 miles radius of Singapore as its hinterland. This includes Beijing and Tokyo and of course Malaysia.

Of course this self-deluding perception places Singapore at the centre of a vast region. It is therefore the latter day Middle Kingdom. The rest are peripheral and are there to serve the interest of this somewhat tiny Middle Kingdom.” – Mahathir Muhammad, former PM of Malaysia source

 

Lee recently stated that much of the land within a 6000 mile radius surrounding Singapore is its ‘hinterland’.  Well, I don’t know what he truly meant with that statement, but on the surface, I would agree with Lee with regards to Singapore’s potential to serve as the centre.  Not in the political sense, and not in terms of Singapore determining the culture of the surrounding regions, but in terms of its serving as the culmination of all these nations if particular conditions are realised first.

 

The ‘conditions’ I speak of is the valuation of all cultures drawn from the ancient civilisations of the Malays, the Chinese, and the Indians equitably and despite the childish notion of the significance of mere numbers.  If this is realised, then Singapore’s population, perspectivally speaking, moves from a mere 4-5 million to billions.  The ‘hinterland’ that is China, India, Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo, amongst others, will become exactly that given that the smallest ‘little dot’ that brings together all these civilisations will simultaneously serve as the ‘heartland’ drawing from its ventricular conduits the wisdom and knowledge of the ages of these disparate states of mind.  In this, the minds of the people will span from the mouth of the Hwang Ho to the highest pinnacles of the Himalayas and all that falls betwixt as it becomes a true child of the ancient civilisations of south-east Asia.

 

It is in this perspective that Singapore, the smallest state in south-east Asia, can serve as an example of how much can be achieved given the fusion of 3 millennia of history through its population of Malays, Indians, and Chinese.  That is the unstated and unrealised ‘natural resource’ that it has always had but which has been completely untapped.  In this, the ‘hinterland’ of Singapore spans not only a paltry 6000 miles or so, but 3000 years of space and time.  It is a grand experiment that can serve as a testament to how much can be achieved within a ‘dot’ of a space given a population of billions flooding it with ideas and perspectives that has taken millennia to develop.

 

This is why the racialisation of politics and society is nothing but near-sighted and cataractual.  When, amongst many other instances, we place Chinese characters over Malay and Indian words in signs; when we place these words in an order which appreciates the significance of numbers; when we celebrate the festivities of a ‘majority’ with much pomp in central locations as opposed to those of ‘minorities’; when we underrepresent or misrepresent ‘minorities’; when we state that Singapore must always have a Chinese majority; when we say that Singapore is not ‘ready for a Prime Minister’ who is non-Chinese; when we favour mainland Chinese over others when it comes to immigration policies; when we forbid people of one ethnic group from studying the language of another; we do a monumental disservice to the potentials of this country to serve as the heartland of south-east Asia and a perspectival fusion house that can serve as a shining light to all around us within and beyond 6000 miles, and far beyond into a radius spanning the future of human history.  Every single individual, when allowed to fully develop and respect her/imself and her practiced culture, can potentially contribute to the whole the work and perspectives of millions spanning 3000 or more years.  It is in this that a single Malay or Indian or Chinese, upon learning from one or all of these cultures is imbued with the perspectives of millions.  And in this, lies the fallacy of the mere numerical superiority of any ‘race’.

 

But in discounting various civilisations through mere force of numbers, the meaning of a ‘hinterland’ that served as the ‘parent’ will take on a whole different meaning and the arrogant child will perceive itself as the centre of civilisation as opposed to its product.  It will perceive itself as the first cause as opposed to a product.  And this is when what Mahathir says will come true as a product of various cultures seeks to discount all except one for the sake of a few over all.  For when we discount difference and the significance of the contribution of all despite numbers, and seek the coalescence of similar others, it is easy to think ourselves as superior on the basis of numbers alone paired with our ignorance of the IQ that comes with the CQ (cultural quotient) of another despite their numbers. 

 

It is time that Singapore is rid of the childish valuation of society by (R)NQ - that is Numerical Quotient on the basis of ‘race’ – and matures to appreciating the value of CQ - that is Cultural Quotient despite numbers - so that it might bypass its current monocultural route and achieve its alternative destiny and potential as a true heartland of south-east Asia as opposed to being reduced to a mere ‘asian democracy’ that places NQ over CQ and reduces the IQ of the entire population. 

 

Hence, in what I call, an essentialist perspective, we can truly say that Singapore will never have an Indian, Malay, or Chinese majority given its potential to serve as the heartland of the ancient civilisations that these peoples are drawn from, but which has thus far been incarcerated within the mausoleum of monoculturalism.

 

Ignore this perspective if you will, but it will certainly be to your detriment - as it already is - despite your not being trained to recognise the consequences that are ever-present.  Remember, what you have is the parentage of the ancient 'hinterland' of the Malays, Indians and Chinese, and which is their gift to you.  What you make of it is your gift to them.  They deserve nothing less. 

 

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

What’s this ‘interference in internal affairs’ that the plebs keep going on about with regards to Lee’s visit to Malaysia and his comments on their local situation?

 

When ‘foreigners’ criticise the singaporean government on their undemocratic or inhumane actions, the local population is tri-divided between those whom opine that these ‘foreigners ought to mind their own business’; those who welcome ‘foreign interference’ with regards to the said issue; and the larger population who are too preoccupied with ‘4D’ (lottery results) to thus not bother to develop the ability to have an opinion.  When his Lordship, the former PM Lee, now turned ‘Minister Mentor’ in singapore’s official ‘House of Lords’, goes to Malaysia and comments on local socio-political phenomena, some amongst the opposition wonder why he’s ‘interfering in the other nation’s internal affairs’. 

 

When the government wanted to introduce the American, Michael Fay, to the searing side of the cane for vandalism, American remonstrations were taken as ‘foreign interference’ and thus reason enough to discount all reasonable arguments against it.  When the government wanted to have a drug-carrier from Vietnam strangled for his efforts in the local prison, ‘foreign’ critique on humanitarian grounds were rejected as reason enough.  I recall a local taxi driver at that time stating, ‘How dare they interfere!  He broke our law!  So he must be punished!’  He wasn’t interested in the sociological or psychological basis which we contribute to for the emergence of crime, or the definition of ‘punishment’.  And when he said that the poor boy deserved it, well, that was the final straw for me, and I told him that if taxi-driving was all he ever did as opposed to thinking, empathizing and engaging in personal studies, he should leave the opining to adults.’  As I’ve been saying to ‘professionals’ around me for a couple of years now, ‘your success in being able to feed, clothe, house, and reproduce yourself in the course of a 5 minute effort during ad-breaks does not render the relatively expert opinions out there to ‘opinion’ simply because you can open your mouth and say ‘ahhh’.

 

Anyway, ‘foreign interference’ is an archaic concept and could only exist up to the midst of the colonial era.  With the League of Nations, and then the United Nations, international economic groups, multinational corporations, the UN Security Council, the World Bank, amongst a host of others, ‘foreign interference’ has long been a reality.  Culture is one of the last arenas wherein ‘sovereignty’ is exercised so that people the world over might remain fragmented enough for the international bodies mentioned above to do their best for the transnational elite.  So, in this context, ‘foreign interference’ is synonymous with ‘foreign cultural imposition’.  I suppose, where a people are acutely acculturalised, as it is the case in ‘asian democracies’, the people become obtuse enough to overstate the language of ‘foreign interference’, whilst the culture serves as ‘stored value’ in a cultural mindset that automatically discounts ‘foreign’ information real-time unless it fits well with the perspectival status quo. 

 

What goes unrealized is that the objective consideration of issues requires the definition of ‘irrelevance’ to be confined to variables that aren’t relevant to the issue at hand.  When ‘irrelevance’ is identified in terms of sentience, that fundamentally evicts objectivity from the consideration of issues and opens up a continuum of relevance and irrelevance based on perceptions of who has a right to an opinion and who doesn’t.  When this happens, the powers that be will only have to tweak the ‘perceptions’ variable via a whole host of indoctrinational means and methods that are at their disposal in order to dictate, within the collective subconscious, the degree of reason that can rule any debate.  When this nonsensical ‘us vs. them’ dichotomy is allowed predominance over pure reason, ‘us’ becomes ‘reason’ enough.  Hence, you’ll soon find, as it has already been the case for quite a while now, that the ‘us vs. them’ can take on a whole range of variations, be it, ‘us’ the men despite women; ‘us’ the race-based majority despite the thus-defined minority; ‘us’ the able-bodied despite the physically/etc-challenged; ‘us’ the ‘gays’ despite individual rights movements; ‘us’ the opposition despite those who seek to improve the opposition via critique; ‘us’ the wealthy despite you peasants; and the list can go on beyond the thousand-word limit I’ve imposed on this perspective. 

 

‘Interference’ is a rude interjection in what one has no reason to involve oneself in.  For myself, ‘interference’ ceases to be so when one has reason enough to involve oneself in another’s affairs simply because one is capable of reasoning.  This gives us enough ‘reasonable doubt’ to acquit on the charge of ‘interference’.

 

For myself, the only ‘us’ I’m partial to is, on a time-based continuum, the ‘us’ as we are now, and the ‘them’ we can be in the future if we appreciate reason in itself despite the illusory sense of familialarity we have been indoctrinated to confine within self-serving borders. 

 

 

Ed