Q. What is the kind of Singapore you hope your grandchildren will inherit?
A. Let's look at Sparta and Athens, two city states in Greek history.
Singapore is like Sparta, where the top students are taken away from their
parents as children and educated. Cohort by cohort, they each select their
own leadership, ultimately electing their own Philosopher King. When I
first read Plato's Republic, I was totally dazzled by the great logic of
this organisational model where the best selects the best. But when I
reached the end of the book, it dawned on me that though the starting point
was meritocracy, the end result was dictatorship and elitism. In the end,
that was how Sparta crumbled. Yet, Athens, a city of philosophers known for
its different schools of thought, survived. What does this tell us about
out-of-bounds markers? So SM Lee has to think very hard what legacy he
wants to leave for Singapore and the type of society he wants to leave
behind. Is it to be a Sparta, a well-organised martial society, but in the
end, very brittle; or an untidy Athens which survived because of its
diversity of thinking? Personally, I believe that Singaporeans are not so
kuai (Hokkien for obedient) as to become a Sparta. This is our saving
grace. As a young senior citizen, I very much hope that Singapore will
survive for a long time, but as an Athens. It is more interesting and worth
living and dying for.
A. Let's look at Sparta and Athens, two city states in Greek history.
Singapore is like Sparta, where the top students are taken away from their
parents as children and educated. Cohort by cohort, they each select their
own leadership, ultimately electing their own Philosopher King. When I
first read Plato's Republic, I was totally dazzled by the great logic of
this organisational model where the best selects the best. But when I
reached the end of the book, it dawned on me that though the starting point
was meritocracy, the end result was dictatorship and elitism. In the end,
that was how Sparta crumbled. Yet, Athens, a city of philosophers known for
its different schools of thought, survived. What does this tell us about
out-of-bounds markers? So SM Lee has to think very hard what legacy he
wants to leave for Singapore and the type of society he wants to leave
behind. Is it to be a Sparta, a well-organised martial society, but in the
end, very brittle; or an untidy Athens which survived because of its
diversity of thinking? Personally, I believe that Singaporeans are not so
kuai (Hokkien for obedient) as to become a Sparta. This is our saving
grace. As a young senior citizen, I very much hope that Singapore will
survive for a long time, but as an Athens. It is more interesting and worth
living and dying for.
