While blogging last night, I had a realization about a fundamental difference between the outlook of America and Americans, and Singapore and Singaporeans. Here, America and Singapore refer to the government in power, and Americans, Singaporeans refer to the people respectively.
I wrote something like this:
i think about why america is the hub of innovation, and i think i can come up with an answer, albeit tentatively. i think about the way americans always look to the future, daring to dream, and sweating it out to make that dream work. in singapore, we can't seem to be able to look at that future on the far horizon, and all that we seem to be able to do is to dwell on the present, to see and react to things as they are, not as what they could be. I think the attitude pervades a huge section of whatever we do - social policies, education policies. We prepare our kids for the future, but that future immediately becomes the present, and so what we have only been able to do is to give them the skills for a possible future, whether it might happen or not. What we should be doing, is to give kids the skills to pursue their future however they want it to be, because the future is NOT what the government think it might be.
So I'm thinking and thinking, and now I see that our perception of the future shapes our present, about what we do now, without ever thinking about the fact that our perceptions could be dead wrong. The future is an expectancy that we create, and it shouldn't be an expectation borne out. If everything were planned out, which things don't, then... it ain't called the future, ain't it?
I don't think this is my most coherent post, but I think I raised some valid questions, about the way we see our future, and how it shapes our policies, and the way we think. I think Americans have the highest number of future-fantasizers (serious ones) per capita. Or people who have the vision and the conviction to imagine a different future than what they've always had, and to work towards that... I think the day will come when people will go to university not thinking about what the future might be when they graduate, but rather, what the skills that the university will give them to CREATE THEIR OWN FUTURE.
Until we do that, that will be the day we stop making economic machines in the machinery of Singapore Inc, and that will be the day when the brain drain might actually reverse.
So I'm thinking and thinking, and now I see that our perception of the future shapes our present, about what we do now, without ever thinking about the fact that our perceptions could be dead wrong. The future is an expectancy that we create, and it shouldn't be an expectation borne out. If everything were planned out, which things don't, then... it ain't called the future, ain't it?
I don't think this is my most coherent post, but I think I raised some valid questions, about the way we see our future, and how it shapes our policies, and the way we think. I think Americans have the highest number of future-fantasizers (serious ones) per capita. Or people who have the vision and the conviction to imagine a different future than what they've always had, and to work towards that... I think the day will come when people will go to university not thinking about what the future might be when they graduate, but rather, what the skills that the university will give them to CREATE THEIR OWN FUTURE.
Until we do that, that will be the day we stop making economic machines in the machinery of Singapore Inc, and that will be the day when the brain drain might actually reverse.
After sleeing for about 6hrs and looking at these again, I am convinced that I am right. That one of the key difference between America and Singapore is that people in America bother to dream, are given the tools to dream, and given the tools to make their dreams come true. In Singapore, people also bother to dream, but they are not given the tools (encouragement, tacit or overt) to develop their dreams, and these dreams die in an environment that is covertly hostile to their dreams. Nor are Singaporeans given the tools to make their dreams come true. This I refer to the education system, that the education system is more like a dream-breaker, in moulding people to think in certain directions only, as opposed to helping the kids with their dreams, or their basic ideas.
Looking back, if I was a purely pragmatic person, I wouldn't have come to USP. It is precisely because that I don't really think like 'normal' people that I choose USP. Oh wells.
But somehow, we are given the tools to make the dreams come true. There are excellent entrepreneurial systems in place that allow people with good ideas to make money 0ut of them. But again, this system is kinda biased towards people with money-making ideas, and is... a kind of anti-emphasis with regards to the thousand other things that people want to do. I want to write for 'fun'. I wonder where the literary networks are. I guess a dance culture is a bit stronger due to popular influence, not to mention songs and songwriting. Those are more developed. But a thinking culture is hard to find in Singapore, and this is one thing that Singapore will have to be develoepd in order to become a truly world-class city full of world-class people, a people who dare to dream really big and act in their own way to get to the place where they want to be.
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