TR EMERITUS

To: [email protected] Dear Mr Philip Jeyaretnam We forward you an email from one of us at Civic Advocator. Thank you.   Dear Philip I have just finished reading from cover to cover the book, Make It Right for Singapore, written by your father. I now feel as if he had risen from the grave and gave me a couple of good slaps on my face. I thought you should know this. Mr J B Jeyaretnam is not someone that I do not recognise. I saw him a couple of times outside MRT stations, waving perhaps the book that I have just finished reading, and screaming at the top of his voice things that I could not remember. Naturally, I scurried hastily away from him. Having fed all these years with stuff from The Straits Times, I thought it was smart of me not to go near this man or risk being associated with the guy who was trying to hold on to his dear pant as he contested one defamation suit after another (I am writing this as a figure of speech, and I do not mean Mr Jeyaretnam was not properly attired. I am being extra careful here since I am dealing with a Senior Counsel). I have now read his book of speeches. I thought it would have been better that he pulled me aside then and told me, “Look punk, read my damn book.” I could have then read the book and perhaps found a way to offer him some kind of help. On the other hand, I could have been a coward and just scoot off faster. But Mr Jeyaretnam might not have cornered me in the first place, because perhaps he belonged to a certain breed of gentlemen who would never want to stuff things down others’ throats, unlike the way things are done by some others that we know. Anyway, there is no merit for speculation. It is all water under the bridge now. Read rest of article here  Read More →

This has to a miniskirt, so let’s dive straight in: what happens when you take a word too far? Allow me to paraphrase; what happens when a word goes beyond the ambit of its dictionary meaning? What happens when it’s even used to run everything from schools, hospitals, finance, salaries and even the whole idea of defining personal and organization success? That in a nutshell is the pithy summary of the story that makes up the word: pragmatism. In Detroit, pragmatism is the reason why auto engineers don't design cup holders that get in the way of the gear shift. In Japan it’s the reason why smiling airport security bow as they ask you politely, "do you have a knife?" In Mumbai, it’s the reason why drains don’t have metal gratings as they double as communal latrines. But in Singapore pragmatism is elevated into a theory and science that accounts for why it makes perfect sense to name an orchid after a bloody Burmese general – to justifying sky high ministerial salaries – and even supplying explanations why scrapping the whole idea the opposition and just winging it on one party is the way to go foward – in short pragmatism is the veritable alpha and omega; all arguments begin and end within the length of one word - pragmatism. Like “Om,” – pragmatism stands for mythical wholeness - marvellous completion. It is the sound-symbol for the ultimate reality, that must be and should be – only one problem here. Have you ever considered: how can one word alone turn on the axis of its linchpin to account for such a big chunk of Singaporean life? Is this a form of reductionism? Or does the whole idea of pragmatism really provide us all a coherent basis to move forward intelligently? To be honest with you; I don’t know – unless you’re telling pragmatism is some power word like abracadabra or "take off your bra!" – what has always bugged me about the whole idea of pragmatism especially when its elevated into a governing philosophy is how it manages to elides so much that it's closer to faith, than an operating logic – this requires a suspension of disbelief - it’s not whether it really works, but its because you don’t know whether it works; that’s why you continue to believe it must be working – that idea has to be a powerful astringent; it's one that even the marketing manifesto leverages on regularly to sell us stuff that we don’t need – faith that something can work believe it or not can sell anything under the sun – that accounts for why women regularly spend a large chunk of their salaries on moisturizing cream where the only active ingredient seems to be water; that's why thousands of fat people slurpge out on Calvin Klein underwear - its a way of buying a six pack on the cheap. My point is simply this; that's the problem when you take a word too far; all too often it suffers from the elusion of brevity – and instead of being something premised on a collective commitment, it becomes something fuzzy, like Reiki crystals, vodoo and feng shui - for one you can’t even reference it against a comparable body of knowledge and assure yourself that you’re even on the right track – neither can you subject it some litmus test to corroborate whether you’re gainfully pragmatic or just going around in circles - seems to me at least, when you peer closer at what really makes up the guts of the whole idea of pragmatic movement -  there's nothing there – the box is empty! And that could be why pragmatism as a philosophy is so malleable and elastic that it can accommodate a whole range of mind boggling discordant ideas and still manage to come up tops – everything from throw away morality to plug and play ethics is good to go – as one of the problems with pragmatism is it refuses to draw a clear line or even take a clear position on anything - as long as it serves some cloudy interests, it's ready to go – and why is that so bad? – because I cannot think of a lousier way to make meaningful progress - I don't doubt, pragmatism could be great way to manage girls (that's why I am so pragmatic about love that I only date level headed girls - they make astonishingly stable platforms for me to put my tiger beer and peanuts on when I am watching football on my telly); but where the imperative is to carve out really meaningful road maps like human decency, integrity, honesty, empathy and self-sacrifice one can never run away from using the underpinning of principles - there's simply no way to short cut it. All too often, the very people who elevate pragmatism to a moral or philosophical science do so because they claim the end justifies the means – that has to be very disturbing, because when you consider that great ideals and even timeless philosophies are usually never based on expediency or trade off calculation and instead are fleshed out in whole principles and not the vignettes of one or two words – that should prompt us all to ask why? Why for example did the founding fathers of the bill of rights; even bother to wake early one July morning, don on their wigs and sharpen to their quills to struggle to articulate “the rights of man?” Why didn’t they just say; cinciah lah the government of the day can do anything it wants, providing the trade off and cost benefit calculations justifies it? Why did they even deliberately built in checks and balances to ensure that the executive, legislature and judiciary can never color or alter the fundamental rights which were deemed sacred even if the cost benefit calculations favors them to do so? Why did they make it so difficult and even impossible in certain cases for the executive to tamper with these indelible rights by struggling to put them into clear and concise principles? Why did they struggle so hard to articulate a limited number of fundamental principles and enshrine them above the pragmatic judgment of politicians and businessmen?  Could it be - even it the age of candle power and ivory dentures - these founding fathers had the wisdom to realize what the history of man has shown itself to be all too true -  man being man - will always be pragmatic - and there lies the real danger that we all need to be mindful of when we fashion a God out of a word, that we may even place it above principles of equal worth and dignity of all human beings.    Do feel free to correct for spelling and grammar   Darkness 2009   [The Brotherhood Press 2009]  Read More →

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