In response to comments 091105

Thanks chelsea5manutd0, gf971 and anonymous for your comments. Very much appreciated. :) The following are some of my responses.

To chelsea5manutd0:
I kinda object to singaporeans being called a 'breed'. Like sheep and cows and all. Argh. Makes me think that in the future, we and our descendents will somehow be genetically modified products eventually.

I have also some queries about Singapore's so-called conservative heartland. Is Singapore really that conservative? yawning bread has suggested from his observations that heartlanders can be actually be quite liberal. My family has the characteristics of a heartlander family but has proven to be rather liberal in some respects. Do we think that the majority of Singaporeans are conservative, simply because the government and the press tells us that this is the case? Have we actually questioned this 'fact'? Have heartlanders actually considered their stance on political and social issues, or have they simply taken what the government, the press and religious institutions have told them (ref Judith Butler's performativity)? What if certain decision-makers, as yawning bread has also seemed to suggest, see the heartlanders as conservative, simply because these leaders are themselves conservative, and see what they want to see? What if the heartlanders, then hearing from the government, the press and the religious institutions, take up a conservative stance simply because they think other heartlanders are conservative or that the definition of heartlander is to be conservative (i.e. sheep mentality)? Of course, I may also just be seeing some heartlanders as liberal-ish because I may be predisposed to think and feel so.

I also kinda rebel against the idea that the academically less successful Singaporeans see or resort to liberalism as more of an escapist rebellion than an embrace of cultural diversity. Is this really true? This idea actually strikes me as vaguely paternalistic and presumptious. Does chelsea5manutd1 mean that the lesser educated are more likely to be escapists and are also less capable of embracing cultural diversity?

While I agree that polarization of liberalism and conservatism, especially to the degree experienced in Iran and France, is not to be desired, I feel that at the moment, there is very little risk of political unrest (to the extent present in France or Iran) or uncontainable liberal anarchy in Singapore. Singapore is not a predominantly single religion conservative state like Iran is. Neither does Singapore’s liberalism go quite as far as that in France. Therefore, I am of the opinion that invoking Iran and France smacks of scare mongering. Also, I am not quite sure whether the France riots can be attributed solely, if at all, to liberalism.

I agree that there should be an awareness of the majoritarian position, if it can actually be credibly determined. There should not be an imposition of the majoritarian / ‘majoritarian’ view. Swamping the populace with waves of propaganda-ish majoritarianism through the media and an education system incapable of allowing for questioning would probably count as an imposition.

I guess as chelsea5manutd0 said, independent learning may be dependent on the individual. But if there isn’t really time nor space to reflect, then positive independent learning might not actually take place, can it? As anonymous would probably agree, bottom up initiative can hardly be expected to flourish if sheep have to keep jumping through hoops.

I have certainly not said that liberalism is a prerequisite to independent learning.

I have no idea what ‘the ability to process the extent to which Singapore's education system allows independent space to learn is itself a derivative of the methods and planes of instruction in which Singapore's education is conducted and shaped’ means exactly. In fact, I’m afraid I was a bit lost throughout the last part of Chelsea5manutd1's last paragraph. Too chunky lar. Having broken down that paragraph into bite sized bits, dense little me has some inkling now. I would therefore once again like to question how the inclination of the individual collective is determined. Are heartlanders really conservative, or are they 'conservative' simply because we like to think of them and talk of them as such? Does the position of 'heartlander', a concept conjured to facilitate understanding of the sweep and nuances of Singapore society, in being at one end of a possibly false or over-simplified dichotomy, somehow cause us to mispresent the positions of constituent individuals?

To gf971:
'Or in a archetypally Singaporean fashion, maybe they will get some civil servants and politicians to think about that point and write several papers before arriving at an indistinct conclusion...'

... gf971, you are one naughty boy. :)