Singapore
Just around the corner, over at 3 Quarks Daily, Eric Feigenbaum has a fascinating article about Singapore: Lessons From Singapore: If You Can’t Think Because You Can’t Chew, Try A Bannana:
When I tell someone I lived in Singapore, the most common response is some variation of, “Singapore – isn’t that where it’s illegal to chew gum?”
I know a Greek couple who refuses to visit Singapore because they feel the rules are too strict and inhumane. I don’t think they know what all the rules are – but in a country that still has strong opposition to helmet laws, I suppose restrictions on chewing gum and urinating in public seem fascist.
So, no – it’s not illegal to chew gum in Singapore. It was from 1992 to 2004. Although you do have to show identification and be entered into a log at any store in which you buy gum – and the gum has to be certified to have dental value. So, it’s not exactly a chew-as-you-please policy either.
Later:
When Singapore became independent in 1965 it was a nation of migrants from the Malay Peninsula and immigrants mostly from China and Tamilnadu, India – three very different cultures that had come to coexist within a British open-port city. But co-existence and integration are two different things and the need to convert everyone into Singaporeans meant closer cooperation was needed. The problem was each culture had habits that bothered the others – including spitting and public urination.
Moreover, Singapore’s nascent leadership was also concerned about public health. Living one degree north of the equator comes with significant vulnerability to disease. Simple actions like flushing toilets, washing hands and again – not spitting – could help reduce disease transmission in a place where typhoid, yellow fever and hepatitis once ran rampant – not to mention insect-borne diseases like malaria and dengue.
Singaporean leaders quickly learned fines and enforcement got stronger results than public service announcements. Plain-clothes officers would walk around giving citations requiring fines – and often steep ones. During the chewing gum ban, a first offense could cost S$2,000 and after three citations, each offense could cost S$10,000.
Of course, we can all appreciate clean sidewalks and pleasant public restrooms. But what does this kind of enforcing do to a culture?
Then, after quoting an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, Feigenbaum observes:
In other words, Singapore sees virtue in putting the whole before the individual. The welfare of the majority relies on individuals reasonably curbing their behaviors to create a better environment. Naturally, that means a loss of some degree of personal freedom. But if the trade-off is that shoppers can’t bring home their incredibly pungent (to me nauseating) durian fruit on the public subway, but thousands of riders don’t suffer for the needs of a few fruit enthusiasts – is that a loss? In my home state of California, you can’t smoke a cigarette on a public bus. Is that so different?
Feigenbaum finishes the article with more examples.
I made a rather long comment which I’ve placed in the next section.
* * * * *
The colonists who created the United States were culturally homogeneous. Over time, however, the nation’s developmental dynamics produced the cultural heterogeneity that’s at the root of our current crisis.
The United States of America (unravelling)
A very interesting article, indeed. I’m not at all sure what to make of it. I’m wondering what would happen if the “Singapore principle” where applied in America. What do I mean? You say:
When Singapore became independent in 1965 it was a nation of migrants from the Malay Peninsula and immigrants mostly from China and Tamilnadu, India – three very different cultures that had come to coexist within a British open-port city. But co-existence and integration are two different things and the need to convert everyone into Singaporeans meant closer cooperation was needed. The problem was each culture had habits that bothered the others – including spitting and public urination.
Solution: Enact laws that impose severe punishments for what seem like minor offenses when taken individually. Justify this by reference to Collectivism.
What’s going on in America right now? Well, for the last several decades we’ve been admitting immigrants from a wide variety of places and making America’s bounty available [to them]. A lot of people are unhappy about that and we’ve now got a government that’s trying to put a stop to that. But that’s not really what I’m talking about.
That same government has just told Harvard that it cannot enroll foreign students. That eliminates, I believe, perhaps a quarter of Harvard’s student body. That’s not good for Harvard, and it’s a disaster for those students, who now either have to find someplace else to go to school in the US or leave the country. [See this piece Steven Pinker just published: Harvard Derangement Syndrome.]
What’s the government’s problem with Harvard? They say antisemitism and DEI. I’m dismayed at the resurgence of antisemitism we’ve seen in America in the past several years, especially after Israel’s response to the awful Palestinian massacre of Israelis. But I flat-out don’t believe that the Trump administration is really concerned about that. It’s a convenient cover. The same with DEI. I think some DEI policies, at Harvard and elsewhere, are absurd and destructive. But on the whole less absurd and destructive than what the Trump administration is attempting to do to Harvard and other top-tier schools. It’s beginning to look like they’re going to do permanent damage to the country’s ability to conduct scientific research. Is that what they’re really after? Not quite, but it’s closer to the mark, I believe.
I do believe the problem is cultural coherence. But the problem originates, not because America has been cobbled together out of disparate groups of people, like Singapore, though there is a bit of that. The colonists who originally formed the nation were a fairly homogeneous group. But over time, through its own dynamics, that nation has developed a culturally heterogeneous population. And it’s that internally-generated heterogeneity that’s at the root of our current situation. Trump has managed to take a bunch of groups who feel that their needs and desires have been neglected and from that cobble together a political coalition willing to support him in his efforts to force the country to conform to his values.
What a mess.
I don’t know what your intentions were in writing this really very good piece, but I don’t think you were trying to produce an indirect justification for Trump and his apparatchiks and acolytes. For that matter, I don’t quite know why I’m writing this somewhat weird comment.
What a mess.
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