#ideadiary

[thelittlevillager]

Grit Book Summary - part 1

[thelittlevillager]

Grit Book Summary - part 2

[stopwater49]

Some thoughts that might be useful for my future works

I dreamed that I died

the world inside a mirror

It's like the time moving backward

[thelittlevillager]

Dealing with an Ambiguous World

Quotes/Learning Points/Reflections from the book titled ‘Dealing with an Ambiguous World’, written by Bilahari Kausakan, who is a former Ambassador of Singapore

Lecture 1: An Age Without Definition

There was an ‘order’ during the Cold War, but the post-Cold War order is more uncertain - G20? BRICS? America? G0? China?

America tried to lead but has not done well, especially after the Iraq invasion that shook confidence in American leadership. China is still uncertain about their current power status -  after all, China dream does not mean China plan.

Just because the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Cold War happened at the same time does not mean that the two are related. Rather, Soviet Union’s internal struggles resulted in the implosion. This does not mean that America necessarily “won” the Cold War. 

Lecture 2: US-China Relations: Groping Towards a New Modus Vivendi

China regards itself as the centre of the universe. As such, unlike the US that is an “inclusive” superpower, China is an “exclusive” superpower that considers itself superior to others, making it harder for other countries to accept China as a superpower. China does not demand universality in its values, unlike the West and the spread of democracy in developing countries. 

US and China both consider themselves exceptional countries, but the conclusion they draw are different. America is an inclusive culture that wants everyone to become like it and believes that the world would be a better place if this were so. 

China has an exclusive culture that rejects the notion that anyone could become like China as impossibly pretentious. To China, the best others can do is humbly acknowledge China’s superiority and the sooner we do so the better for everyone. 

The attitude that China is entitled to have its superiority acknowledged and that failure to do so can only be done to recalcitrance or ill-intention is why (Kausikan) thinks China will always suffer a deficit in soft power and evoke resentment. 

CCP’s rule used to be justified by class struggle (against capitalism and Kuomintang beliefs) but after China became capitalist (i.e. embraced market economy), nationalism became primary source of credibility. 

China as a victim state:

Passive aggressive

What are the real intentions?

False dilemma of ‘agree with China’ or ‘be against China’, the latter of which is ‘unwise’

US-China strategic mistrust is due to Chinese suspicion that US wants to change the system/rules of the game and US suspicion that China wants to replace regional hegemony. Not a clash of civilisations; Not a Cold War --> China accepts the Western system as it grew within the system; and China and US have an economically symbiotic relationship. 

Lecture 3: ASEAN & US-China Competition in Southeast Asia

The interests of major powers have always intersected in Southeast Asia, which was once dubbed the Balkans of Asia. 

Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) does not include major powers, unlike ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) that includes the major powers. So long as ZOPFAN with its implicit premise that regional problems should be dealt with only be regional states remained the only official ASEAN security concept, it gave our neighbours a political lever to use if they wished to pressure us for whatever reason. The fundamental purpose of ARF is to entrench this shift in how regional security is conceptualised and to encourage and legitimise the interest of major powers in Southeast Asian security. Created by sovereign choice of all ASEAN members who have, again by their sovereign choice, invited all the major powers to discuss regional security and other issues affecting Southeast Asia. This was a shift from ZOPFAN. 

For Singapore, the most crucial balance was not against communism or any major powers but the balance which supplements our own national efforts to maintain deterrence in our immediate neighbourhood and keeps our neighbours honest. 

American and Chinese interests in the South China Sea are not symmetrical. the South China Sea is more important to China than to the US. The South China Sea is a ‘core interest’ and the ‘foundation of the party’s governance’. The US defines its interest in terms of upholding international law and Freedom of Navigation. These are important interests but not on the same level as the basic underlying Chinese interest. Freedom of Navigation and the integrity of international law are certainly not existential interests threatening the survival of the American system. 

Dealing with US-China competition is different but at least leaves open the possibility of manoeuvre. Dealing with US-China agreement - an implicit de facto agreement if not an explicit de jure agreement - may be even more uncomfortable . There will be less room to move and when major powers strike a deal, they generally try to make lesser beings pay the price. 

If China has a responsibility to constantly reassure the small countries on its periphery, the US as an ‘offshore balancer’ has a parallel responsibility and a more complex one. To the countries of Southeast Asia, the American porridge is always going to be too hot or too cold; countries will always fear the US entangling them it is quarrels with rivals or being left to deal with other major powers without adequate support. It will be difficult for the US to persuade us that the porridge is just right. Such are the burdens a Great Power must shoulder. 

Cambodia Crisis: It was never in ASEAN’s power to resolve the Cambodian crisis. The Cambodian crisis was essentially a Sino-Soviet proxy fight. These are big powers - ASEAN’s role was to prevent the rest of the world accepting Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia as a fait accompli. Te proposal that ASEAN put forward was meant to be rejected by Vietnam so it made Vietnam look bad. So that ASEAN could go to the UN and tell them “look we made an eight point proposal and they rejected it”. 

Lecture 4: The Myth of Universality: The Geopolitics of Human Rights

Myth of Universality: The assumption that when we speak about rights or democracy we will always mean the same thing just because we use the same words and that the same words will always be applicable in the same way everywhere. 

Yale-NUS students protesting Singapore’s LGBT stance presented by Ambassador Chan Heng Chee in Singapore’s Second Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva: The value of a liberal education is to instil openness to other views even if you do not agree to them.

But the problem in this case is: did Singapore show this same openness to the Yale-NUS students/the wider Singapore public? There was no reference to the actual LGBT group, yet the stance was taken was assumed to be “Singapore’s stance”.

Isaiah Berlin: There is not one Good but many conceptions of the Good, each of which may have its own validity but which are not necessarily reconcilable or capable of simultaneous realisations. If there is not only one Good but many Goods which are irreconcilable, then we must either impose our concept of the Good by force, or moderate our own ideas to minimise friction and seek some modus vivendi between different conceptions of the Good in order to lessen the probability of conflict. As Isaiah Berlin said in his famous lecture ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’: “Freedom for the pike is death to the minnows: the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others”. 

Human rights have historically been rights held by the individual against an overly powerful state; democracy as a means of taming the Leviathan. But what if Leviathan is now metamorphosing into Gulliver held down by myriad silken threads of Rights?

Consensus and common space are always tentative and in constant renegotiation. It is the fundamental purpose of politics and government to hold the ring as neutral arbiter and to maintain whatever consensus and common space may pertain at that point of time, if necessary by the exercise of the coercive powers that are the legitimate monopoly of the state, including the pre-emptive or prophylactic exercise of such powers. This is a particularly urgent function of the state at a time when few countries are homogenous, when multiculturalism frowns upon attempts to homogenise a country and identity politics is spreading. 

Lecture 5: Can Singapore Cope?

Singapore: To be relevant, we have to be extraordinarily successful. 

All domestic agencies now have to engage internationally. There is no important policy domain that is now entirely ‘domestic’. The only question is the degree to which an issue is ‘international’.

[thelittlevillager]

Incomplete Urbanism: A Critical Urban Strategy for Emerging Economies by William SW Lim

Quotes from William Lim’s book

The challenge today is whether we can create and maintain assets for the future or recklessly consume assets of the future with disastrous consequences. It is in this context that current res-tructuring towards global sustainability must be examined. They can be achieved by accepting three key ideological re-ordering of priorities. 

1. Firstly, we must shift from a culture of consumerism to a culture of sustainability. Consumerism is not just about how money is spent. It is a deep-seated psychological condition of addiction not unlike drugs and alcoholism. 

In the West and Japan today, many are suffering from prolonged economic distress and income insecurity. These factors act like shock therapy contesting against wasteful consumption. 

Attraction to consumerism in emerging economies needs to be moderated, as available resources should be directed towards the provision of basic services and infrastructure as well as improvement in environmental quality and essential welfare facilities for everyone. 

2. It is essential to introduce critical new spatial arrangements and urban strategies in the context of grassroots globalisation and widespread application of digital networks. 

The younger generation is not opting to operate independently, while plugged into extensive digital network relationships with their counterparts. Cheaper rental offices with flexible spaces located in unstructured informal environments and in close proximity with each other is obviously the preferred option. This emergent unregulated spatial arrangement will be conducive to innovative startup experiments, including a whole range of creative and artistic activities, spontaneous events and grassroots celebrations. 

The primacy of high-rise dominated financial urban centres is eroding with increasing pace. In smaller cities, this destructive urban instrument of tabula rasa will be challenged or even abandoned. 

3. Lastly, we used to locate people in the centre of development, which means making progress equitable to reduce income gap and to improve spatial justice while enabling people to be active participants in the process of rapid social, economic and political changes. 

We need to create a post-consumer culture. A culture where the goal is not only to get people to consume less, but to create new values and lifestyles, strengthen bonding with families and friends, and find space in their lives for being engaged citizens. 

---

Our challenge is to maintain historical continuity of our cities and to restructure them through an evolving process of integrating the past, present and future. Traditions and the creative present are not opposed. But a vital part of the cultural regenerative process and dynamic continuity in remembering is through a deep commitment in interdisciplinary understanding to uncover and apply the cultural essence and rootedness towards a new creative contemporariness. Remember - constructing the new is always an act of destruction. The present indiscriminate urban destruction or worse, the application of tabula rasa solution of complete eradication must be contested. 

[thelittlevillager]

How Democracy Dies

Quotes from the article that appeared in The Economist, 16th June 2018

In mature democracies such as America, strong checks and balances constrain even the most power-hungry president. In immature democracies, such institutions are weaker, so a strongman can undermine them quickly, often without much fuss. That is why the most worrying deterioration, going by both the number of countries and the speed of retreat, is in the fragile, young democracies of the emerging world. From Venezuela to Hungary, these reversals reveal striking similarities. That suggests reasons for optimism - as well as lessons for the West. 

Put crudely, newish democracies are typically dismantled in four stages:

1. First comes a genuine popular grievance with the status quo and often, with the liberal elites who are in charge

e.g. Hungarians were buffeted by the financial crisis and then terrified by the hordes of Syrian refugees passing through en route to Germany

e.g. Turkey’s pious Muslim majority felt sidelined by secular elites

2. Second, would-be strongmen identify enemies for angry voters to blame.

e.g. Mr Putin talks of a Western conspiracy to humiliate Russia

e.g. President Nicolas Maduro blames America for Venezuela’s troubles

e.g. Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, blames George Sorros for his country’s problems

3. Third, having won power by exploiting fear or discontent, strongmen chisel away at a free press, an impartial justice system and other institutions that form the ‘liberal’ part of liberal democracy - all in the name of thwarting the enemies of the people. They accuse honest judges of malfeasance and replace them with stooges, or unleash tax inspection on independent television stations and force their owners to sell. 

This is the stage of ‘illiberal democracy’, where individual rights and the rule of law are undermined, but strongmen can still pretend to be democratic since they win free-ish elections. 

4. Eventually, in stage 4, the erosion of liberal institutions leads to the death of democracy in all but name. Neutral election monitors are muzzled; opposition candidates are locked up; districts gerrymandered; constitutions altered; and, in extreme cases, legislation emasculated. 

[thelittlevillager]

Understanding the Quality of Life of Seniors by NCSS

Done by the Research team at the National Council of Social Services

Principles of Social Sector

Person-Centred -  Operates on the belief that an individual has the capacity to understand, articulate and work through problems as well as making decisions on how to overcome them

Eco-System - Addressing individuals holistically also means seeing them as connected to different contexts that mutually influence each other, and which impacts every aspect of an individual’s life - an ecosystem comprising caregivers and family, community and under society. In practice, this means that understanding the needs of seniors necessitates taking into account their interactions with the eco-system, to work towards a more holistic understanding and solution creation. 

Quality of Life - Taking a multi-faceted approach to individual well-being, a key goal is to ensure that individuals’ quality of life is optimised in the form of a core set of diverse, essential needs to be met. These needs are evaluated from the individuals’ own point of view, which gives credence to people’s own awareness of what they need. 

WHO’s Quality of Life Definition:

An individual’s perception of their position in life in the context of their culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns. 

Criteria of QoL:

1. Physical:

Pain and Discomfort

Energy and Fatigue

Sleep and Rest

2. Level of Independence

Mobility

Activities of Daily Living

Dependence on Medical Treatment/Medication

Work Capacity

3. Social Relationships

Personal Relationships

Social Support

Sexual Activity

4. Environment

Safety and Support

Home Environment

Financial Adequacy

Health and Social Care

Opportunities to Acquire New Info and Skills

Recreation and Leisure

Physical Environment

Transport

5. Psychological

Positive Feelings

Thinking, Learning, Memory and Concentration

Self-Esteem

Body Image and Appearance

Negative Feelings

6. Personal Beliefs

Personal Beliefs, Spirituality/Religion

[thelittlevillager]

Favourite End-of-Life Quotes

Today is my last day of internship, during which I researched on end-of-life policies in Singapore. Through the research, I found some intriguing/interesting/thought-provoking/touching quotes that kept me going. 

Here are my favourite ones...

“Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.” Kubler Ross

“How you die is the most important thing you ever do. It’s the exit, the final scene of the glorious epic of your life. It’s the third act, and, you know, everything builds up to the third act.” Timothy Leary

“Life is pleasant, death is peaceful. It’s the transition that is troublesome.” Isaac Asimov

“We all come into life as roughly the same squalling bunch of possibilities, but by the time we take leave of it, most of us are marked by loves and losses, triumphs and defeats that will make each death, like the life that preceded it, entirely unique.

If we consider each glade of beech trees in the autumn, we know that every leaf will fall, but how each falls will be the result of its previous season. Each tree has been subject to particular conditions of drought and inundation. Each leaf, while genetically identical to others on the same tree, has been formed in circumstances of sunshine and shade that, by definition, no other leaf could have shared. It will fade and dry into a certain shape, be marked with distinctive colours, and, on falling, be caught in a million contingencies, as does each human life and death.” Soskice

And finally the classic poem about death...

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in fright, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.