Mirror, Mirror hanging on the wall…

In light of another suicide on Clementi train tracks yesterday, maybe this newspaper article (dating a while back) will help the guys over at the SMRT to deter like-minded people.

Thursday, May 11, 2000

MIRRORS ON TRACKS TO FOIL THE SUICIDAL

Tokyo, AFP

Japanese officials plan to put up big mirrors on railway platforms to stop suicidal passengers leaping on to the tracks, East Japan Railway said yesterday. The idea is that people see their reflections in the mirrors and think again, said the railway company which carries a world-record 16 million passengers a day.

“We have been consulting with a number of psychiatrists on how to reduce the number of suicides,” said East Japan Railway (JR East) spokesman Masahiko Horiuchi. “When they see their own reflections in the mirror they come to their senses and this may help us deter suicides.”

To test the theory, the railway will put up one mirror at Tokyo’s central Shinjuku station, which handles on average 756,000 passengers a day, and another in western Tokyo’s Ogikubo station, he said.

The 1.5-by-2.0 metre mirrors will be placed on the opposite side of the tracks in the most popular spot for suicides.

There were 212 suicides at JR East railway stations in the past fiscal year.

“A suicide delays train schedules and it usually takes us 50 minutes to restore the schedules,” said Mr. Horiuchi. “In one incident, it took us three hours to restore train schedules as we searched for a missing head.”

 

On Meritocracy

  

This is a paper that I did a while ago while doing a corporate law course in UBC. Just a few thoughts on meritocracy since this subject is all the rage these days.

  Myth of Meritocracy[1]Meritocracy is a fundamental tenet of our society today. The suffix –cracy suggests a form of government that will be based on merit. It is also a general belief that the best and brightest rise to the top. In this meritocratic society, wealth income and society will be assigned through competition, where ability or merit will determine who will gain the upper hand in society rather than wealth, race or other determinants of social position. Economic mobility is entirely possible if one is ‘made of the right stuff’. This ideology is attractive because it appeals to one’s sense of social justice. It does not subscribe to the patently obvious lie that everyone is born equal with equal opportunities of success but claims that people of equal ability has an equal chance of success. Through this, there is an economic incentive for those who apply themselves and their talents in society. This has been used to justify social inequality by social Darwinists which can be summed up in Ayn Rand’s brittle social philosophy: “Let the strong prevail, and let the weak pay for his weakness.”[2] 

    

 Meritocracy is a myth because it neutralizes two contradictory terms—a sense of social justice (as dictated by ‘merit’) and large economic disparities in society.  This attractive myth perpetuates social inequities by unfairly exalting the rich and unfairly condemning the poor when in reality, social status is determined by class, birth, and wealth. Research on social mobility clearly indicates that all these supposedly neutral criteria that define merit like talent, formal education, and competence favour the children of those who are already privileged in some way.[3] The largest civil engineering company in the world, Bechtel Corporation, is an excellent example of a family business which has been passed down from generation to generation since the 1900s.[4]  

     

     In this age of universal capitalism and consequently of widening economic disparities, this myth has gone a step further. Corporations use ‘Meritocracy’ to rob the poor in the very name of poverty, i.e. because they are poor. It is through the exploitation of labour by the corporations that the economic gap is widened. Capitalism itself is an inverse meritocracy. One only needs to look closer at how capitalism functions—who does the work, who gains the wealth and how that wealth is being accumulated.  In a capitalist society, social advancement is based on the exploitation of the members of society who actually perform the work and who therefore create all value.[5] The myth of meritocracy neutralizes the two diametrical opposites, capitalism and social advancement according to value, or merit.

          If meritocracy was used simply to legitimize the status quo, that would have been questionable enough. However, to use it as a tool to widen economic disparity in a spirit of social Darwinism is simply nauseating. This can be seen where corporations take the wealth from its own employees through pay cuts, lay-offs, and by reducing health care and pensions. In 2002, unemployment rose, profits and stock prices sank, and CEO performance stank, but the executive suite took home bigger paychecks and better retirement goodies. The typical CEO, according to
America’s largest union, received about $8.5 million last year.[6] Fortune looked at a narrower sample, and found the middle-of-the-road chief at the top 100 companies enjoyed a 14 percent pay raise last year, to $13.2 million.[7] These attractive CEO remuneration packages defy rational explanations but this is glossed over by the myth of meritocracy. The social message that wealth is the ultimate measure of personal merit has been portrayed by the well-heeled as a fundamental law of economics. That message is everywhere: radio, television, newspapers and magazines. The bestsellers in the bookstores reassures the common man with rags to riches stories that convince us that CEOs of corporations had humble beginnings and ‘worked their way up’ through the application of certain success principles.[8] This is not to postulate that such stories are fabricated lies, merely that they remain exceptions to the general scheme of things. The corporation remains as an entity that institutionalizes large income disparities which is entrenched in society through the meritocracy myth. Indeed ‘to him who has more, more will be given, and from him who has little, even what he has, will be taken away from him.’[9]

Conceptually, a pure meritocracy is a contradiction in terms. This is because without wealth redistribution, one generation’s successful individuals would become the next generation’s embedded caste, hoarding the wealth they had accumulated. This myth is being endorsed by corporations which impede upward economic mobility. It should be revealed for what it is, a myth that is used by the powerful, elite few to legitimize their status in society.

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[1] See Michael Young,  Rise of the Meritocracy, (Penguin books, 1961) where the term ‘meritocracy’ was first used, in a pejorative sense, in which is set in a dystopian future in which one’s social place is determined by IQ and effort. In the book, this social system eventually leads to a social revolution in which the masses overthrow the elite, who have become arrogant and disconnected from the feelings of the public.

[2] See William Greider in “Greenspan’s Con Job”, The Nation, 22 Mar 2004 issue.

[3] Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr., “The Myth of Meritocracy”,
Sociation Today, North Carolina Sociological Association, Vol 2 No. 1, Spring 2004.

[4] See Bechtel Corporation History in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel.

[5] See the Labour Theory of Value proposed by Karl Marx in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol I. The Process of Capitalist Production. (edited by Frederick Engels), Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1906.

[6] Statistics taken from Executive Paywatch webpage at
America’s Union Movement website at http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/.

[7] Statistics taken from Fortune magazine website at http://money.cnn.com/ magazines/fortune/.

[8] See Singaporean Ismail Gafoor who is the CEO of PropNex, the largest real estate corporation in
Singapore. He is the author of “You can Fly,” Rank books 2005. See also Jack F. Welch Jr, in “Jack: Straight from the Gut”, Warner Books Inc., 2001.

[9] Matthew 25:29, The Holy Bible, New King James Version, 1982 by Thomson Nelson, Inc.

I am restless and there’s this pent up energy that’s been building up inside ever since I last spoke to my friends. About the middle-aged guy who jumped in front of the train tracks to kill himself, that nameless person who had 16 bucks in his wallet and a $37,000 debt, his $8,000 electricity bills and his struggles in his life. He has attained cult status and is an icon now. The icon of the underbelly of Singapore society perhaps, the poor that we conveniently forget or refuse to see or acknowledge. Or deemed as the ’sadder class’. I don’t know.

The outpouring of public sympathy shows that we’re not an uncaring lot, but others raise questions as to why should people donate. He’s a selfish jerk, he let his family be saddled with even more debts of funeral expenses. I mean, please, it’s not cheap to die. You have to have a coffin at least, no? And plus, he stopped the train service. People were delayed in their schedules, it affects others, damn it. Can’t he have died quietly and in anonymity? And his family is rewarded with half a million dollars now, and all for this morally depraved act. Won’t it encourage copycat cases? Won’t it spin off into a series of let’s-all-kill-ourselves-and-our-families-will-stand-to-gain cases? It’s a bad example. So don’t donate. Don’t understand the people who donate, why are they rewarding bad behaviour?

The callousness of it all stunned me. A human life was gone and people were just going on about how in death, he continues to be a burden to society, to his family and so on. I mean, maybe that’s why he decided to off himself. I don’t want to go into the morality of suicide, it is a difficult topic and I don’t like to discuss it. It’s too easy to say that your life is your own and doesn’t affect others so you can off yourself if you feel like it. I do think it’s selfish at the end of the day, but he’s entitled to do it. He should have the right to do it. People affect others no matter what you do, and sometimes it can’t be helped. I sure as hell hope that no one close to me does it, but hey, sometimes things can’t be helped.

What is his family going to do with all that money? Won’t money corrupt these simple folks? What is going to happen now? Will they spend it wisely? Why did they have kids if they know they’re going to go hungry? What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with the people who donate to them? Aren’t we the society that rewards success and slams failure? What’s wrong with us?

 And as we sat there talking about these issues over dinner, I gradually lost my appetite. I don’t feel like putting anything into my mouth, chewing and then swallowing. I was just turned off by how we don’t seem to accept human weakness. That guy is desperate. He’s just desperate, can’t we understand that? Wasn’t it understandable? It depresses me, the whole event, the whole thing, can’t get my mind off it, and don’t want to really talk about it. Just leave him in peace.

On the Death of Habeas Corpus

On Language and Money

Let’s talk about language, as a social divider, a class definer or perhaps just definitive of a person. This is about the battle between Singlish and the Queen’s English. What is it about Singlish that is so bad? Is it the butchered English, the lah’s and leh’s that pepper your average Singaporean conversation? Is it the unintelligible way that some pronounce certain words? But what’s fundamentally wrong with Singlish? Is it because it’s wrong? Wrong, because the proper standard is British English? Well, English is spoken in other countries and it took on different forms– American English, Spanglish and so on. So why is Singlish so wrong and bad?

Commercial viability? Because we want to be understood. Not to each other, we understand each other well enough, ask for your nasi lemak and your teh si go-song and you’ll be understood. So we want to speak well in pure, unadulterated English so as to be understood by the rest of the English speaking world. Cos you know, Singapore is so small, the last thing you want to do is to let it be inward looking and speak its own language. Ooh, the horror.

So they call Singlish degenerate English, sub-standard, tainted and the like. The thing is to speak fluent, unaccented English. The way words are pronounced as shown in the phonetics of the dictionary. The thing is, I don’t think Singlish is sub-standard. Yes, it’s different, and I understand the policy reasons for wanting to eliminate it, but that’s a different question altogether. Singlish is a product of Singapore, the outcome of the mish-mash of various cultures due to the immigrant beginnings of this country. Of course it’s different from your British English, that was spoken with other languages and soon it took on a whole new different form called Singlish. (In personal prop legalese: It remains a mixture, I don’t think English itself has lost its identity in Singlish.) And the thing is, all languages change with time. The English spoken a century ago was quite different from today’s modern usage, just ask any English or English Literature student.

 So why are we unwilling to accept this change as part of our culture? Why are we so adamant that Singlish is bad, sub-standard, intolerable English?

 I think personally, it’s a matter of asthetics. It’s simply because Singlish is jarring to the ears and sounds terrible as spoken by your average ah beng and ah lian on the streets. The upper middle class refuse to acknowledge it as part of the language they speak. No, they speak in pure, untainted English, sometimes with an accent thrown in for good measure. No lehs and lahs for them, thank you very much. And therein lies the class divide. The condescension for Singlish, and perhaps the inability to speak Chinese. Both are trumped as distinctive traits, not just for your ACS/ ACJC students but for the people of a particular social standing.

We’ve all watched My Fair Lady, language barrier within the same language is what separates the rich from the poor. What she spoke was gutter English and she could only transcend that class barrier if she sounds just like them. Maybe we could have an ‘ah lian’ rags to riches story based on that too.

Narcissus reflection in the water

What did he go out to see?

Something spooky lurks under

Ripples in the water, image falters

What did he go out to see?

His life, the whole, its parts asunder

Smiles, the image beckons, welcomes

“Objects in the water are nearer than they seem”

Come, fall, dive over

Past the veil beyond and gather

Grope, feel, touch your way here

And find your face, peace –

The other.

The concept of family is warped. Relatives are just people making more and more claims on me, thinking that I owe them something just because somehow we’re biologically related in some ways. I owe it to them to teach their precious sons and daughters. I owe it to them, as a relative, a cousin and friend, to be paid less because blood runs thicker than water. It is my duty and obligation to see to it that they get good grades. If not, it’s my fucking fault. It doesn’t matter that I’m a student myself, no, I’m a dehumanised machine in charge of churning out grades for your precious offspring. Yes, I do care slightly that my cousins’ grades suck. I do care slightly that you’re not doing well in school. But to say at the end of the day when I asked whether I can drop the assignment, to say that I care more about money than about your so-called family relations, to say that just like that. Well, that is fucking ungrateful. I don’t care whether you’re older than me, to me, respect is not automatically assumed as a matter of age, it is something that you jolly well god-damn earn. You, with your insipid grins and your little, little lives, living vicariously through your children, assuming credit when they do well, and blaming the children themselves when they don’t.

I’m done. Done with the whole lot of them. Parasitic fiends that suck the life force out of me. Get thee away and begone.

Do I say that? Of course not, me being me, I repress and suppress the anger. I smile and do the socially appropriate thing. I don’t apologise, I’m too proud for that, but I assume an apologetic attitude. I smile and act like everything’s fine. I am a situation handler, I can do it. Pretend, act and adopt fucking personas to suit the fucking occasion. No, the concept of family IS warped. So really, stop damaging me already. Just stop. And leave me in peace, alone.