Why morality matters?

Why morality matters? Why do I even bother?

Why can't a married man cheat and keep a mistress on the side? Why can't a woman lie to get her way? Why can't I enrich myself financially without worrying about how my actions may hurt others? 

Why is a stranger who needs help a brother or sister of mine? Why should I be an honest loser when it would clearly be more rewarding to be a dishonest winner? 

If everybody is doing it and getting away with it, why can't I do the same and get away with it? 

Why morality matters? Why do I even bother?

Well, if anything, morality matters. I say this not because Big Daddy up there is watching. I say this not because it feels just right. And I say this not because vices always pay homage to virtues. 

Morality matters because it is personal to me. I am married with three young kids. I have a career of helping people with their legal issues. I am a friend to a handful of them. I am a colleague and an employee. I am a husband to my wife and a father to my children. I am a son, a brother and a citizen of a state. I am accountable to all of them. 

That accountability compels me to act within boundaries defined by time-and-tested moral values. 

No doubt, I can perform those roles just as well even if I only pay lip service to these values, and live my life as if they do not apply to me. Or maybe be selective about them whenever it is convenient? Let me stretch this further. 

I can be furtive about my transgressions. I can be discreet about my indiscretions. No one will ever find out. I can outdo, outplay and outwit the whistle blowers (that is, for as long as the credulous allow me to, as many rich and corrupt people have gone to their graves with personal welfare unscathed and reputation intact). 

Well, I can always be a step ahead of the rules, the law and even my conscience. By then, wouldn’t my conscience be my most abiding partner in the most unvirtuous? 

I can live a double life, upholding a double standard, keeping a deft balance of my double minds. In short, I can still be accountable to all of them even if I am not accountable to myself. 

The temptation is no doubt irresistible; some may even say that I am beyond foolish to reject the blue pill (a life of unimaginable bliss and fortune) instead of biting the red pill (knowing the harsh reality of life). 

But herein lies a danger when morality turns over. It is a very thin red line and once I cross it, I will lose myself. I will enter a world whereby I am no longer the master of my fate. 

In fact, I have to share it with something unwittingly groomed within me. Something that demands its fair share from me. Something that grows bigger each passing day. 

But this partnership plays an insidious game on me. And it remains gentlemanly about it. 

It will make me feel as if I am in control. It will give me this illusion of power. It will make all I want readily within my reach and it will ensure that my lust for them grows far beyond my understanding of it. 

This game that this partnership has to offer will not cease until it elevates me to a point where I am empowered by this impervious sense of invincibility, even to a point when I feel I am god. 

Of course, this enthronement will not be announced publicly, and will even be denied openly. But it will no doubt be relished and nursed quietly within. 

At this point, at this switch of the bait, the gentleman becomes the rogue and the puppet becomes the puppet master. And I, once the hunter, will become the hunted in the same way that the stalker becomes the prey. 

Once I lose my conscience or sell it away to the highest bidder, I will lose what it means to live without envy, what it means to love without conditions, what it means to tell the truth at all costs without shame, and what it means to give without expectation. 

Alas, by then, my hope will be in how to make more, much more. My integrity will be in keeping promises that I will benefit most at the expense of others. And my gratitude will be reserved only for myself, for living a life I am proud of, that is, a life played by my own rules with no or little regards for family, friends and community. 

My humanity will progressively be indistinguishable from my inhumanity. I will live with the orgy of conflicts and the demons in my mind will make my pillow hard, my dreams desperate and my sleep restless. 

I can imagine my conscience as the canary of the coalmine in my spirit. Once the canary dies, my inner world will collapse without any warning. And I will never know about it because a dead canary makes no noise. 

I will be lost yet never knowing why. I will be broken yet thinking that all‘s well. I will be tormented yet unable to relieve the pain. I will be constantly shifting in the shadows of deceit, avoiding the light of truth that shines through the cracks of my many varied and confounding personas. 

So, why morality matters? Why do I even bother? It matters because I cannot be perfect and the next best thing to perfection is to live a life that pays tribute to timeless moral values. 

For this reason, my moral boundary ought to always be a progress towards something good and worthy and not a constant escape from something dark and unwieldy, thereby never finding rest, contentment and peace. 

I believe that living with a moral conscience and applying it when duty calls will not guarantee me riches; neither gold nor silver. It will not bestow unto me worldly power nor elevate me to fame at the finest hour. 

I may even live an ordinary life by jealously guarding my integrity, and even be mocked and dismissed for being a loser, a prude, a coward or an underachiever. 

But still, I strive for the road less travelled. It is a road that avoids the many things that this world has to offer. It is a road that refuses to bargain off what truly matters in this life at a price I cannot afford or bear to pay if I earnestly treasure the things that money cannot buy.

There will therefore be many moral pitfalls on the road that challenges and tempts me to choose between two opposing values. And when the time comes for me to choose, I shall consciously choose what is right and live with its consequences regardless because choosing otherwise will only mean that my humanity is for sale. 

No doubt, if I had been less inflexible and more compromising, I may be enriched at the appropriate juncture. I may even live an easy and charmed life thereafter. 

But then, I will forever be a slave to riches, fame and power. I will never know what it means to be free. And never knowing freedom is never knowing what it means to be me. 

And if character is what I do when I think no one is looking, then let me always be reminded to do right with my loved ones, my friends my community and my conscience, so that whether in the light or in darkness, they will know that I am largely one and the same. 

(Photo credit to dirty duck restaurant in Bali, Ubud, and to also remind me that taking life less seriously matters too).

Clean wage, Clean Government, missed opportunity?

We should just let it go, let it go. It has been frozen for years, and now the Auditor-General's Office (AGO) is thawing it.

Come August this year, charging teachers for parking fees will melt into reality and they can expect to pay either a monthly or annual sum for occupied spaces in schools.

However, letting it go or otherwise, MP Seah Kian Peng had recently raised the issue again in Parliament.

He said: "For too long, we have made decisions based more on an economic compass, as if the use of one dollar has the moral equivalence of the loss of another...It is time we recognise money is merely a proxy for value, and at times, a very bad one."

MP Ong Ye Kung's reply to MP Seah is simple. It is about equalizing the civil service. It is about fairness to all. It is about "cleanliness".

He first talked about teachers being flagged by the AGO "for going against the civil service's policy of paying clean wages," that is, wages with no hidden benefits. In other words, he is saying that the government shouldn't "subsidise" teachers with free parking.

And then, he put the matter to fiscal rest when he said: "This finding went against years of MOE practice. Yet, we have to respect our internal system of checks and balances. We cannot pick and choose which (AGO) finding to address or comply with - we take them all seriously. This is about upholding the value of self-discipline."

Now, to be fair to Ong, at one point of his speech, he did resonate with MP Seah's POV when he said that "governance and running a public service system is not always about taking a purist market approach."

Ong added: "Perhaps for the same reason, for a long time, we didn't charge parking for teachers in schools and servicemen in camps".

At this point, I wonder, what Ong meant by "perhaps for the same reason, for a long time, we didn't charge parking for teachers in schools and servicemen in camps"? And this is to be read with: "this finding (that is, AOG's unclean wage) went against years of MOE practice (that is, allowing for free parking)"?

It is tempting to ask: How did MOE (and our servicemen) get away with it for so long? More relevantly, why did they get away with it for that long? What then broke the camel's back of the AGO to finally put a stop to it and charge teachers for parking?

If "governance and running a public service system is not always about taking a purist market approach," a noble sentiment which MP Seah shares, why change now?

Are we then returning to a purist market approach by charging teachers after a long respite, because our government can't stand the cognitive dissonance on the economic front and therefore has come to their dollar and senses?

I ask this because, admittedly, if it has been going on for years, if not decades, for our teachers and servicemen, then it is invariably entrenched, even silently accepted by the majority at large.

So, considering human nature, uprooting it now would surely disrupt expectations, to put it mildly. And it has indeed ruffled many feathers according to the last survey on the social media landscape.

Many are not happy about it, and MP Seah must have felt the anguish on the ground to deem it fit to have the issue canvassed in Parliament.

Yet, Ong came forward to justify the charges as about "upholding the value of self-discipline".

Are they then going to instill further self-discipline by charging servicemen (which they are doing for some camps now), parliamentarians, ministers and volunteers during meet-the-people sessions?

In the end, this is Singapore. This is how the government rolls. This is what Ong calls a clean government.

And in his own words in "defending the clean wage policy as a moral idea," Ong said that "all public servants subscribe to it", adding: "This is one of our core practices to ensure a clean government.

Well, just for corniness sake, it is also a fine city.

But levity aside, I always thought that when a politician answers another in parliament, and if it is a good and sensible answer, it leaves one with less questions than before. It also leaves one thinking about why he had asked the question in the first place.

However, when Ong defended the clean wage policy as a moral idea in Parliament, somehow, it left more questions for me than before. It also made me want to repeat my question I'd asked in the first place (because I don't think he got the point).

I mean, how is returning to a presumably purist economic approach as manifested in the carpark charges for teachers this August considered "a moral idea"?

At best, it is amoral, or a neutral point. As Professor Sandel puts it: "Explaining how markets work is central subject of economics. So why has economics failed to provide a convincing basis for deciding what should, and what should not, be up for sale (or whether teachers or servicemen should or should not be charged for parking)?"

To that, he said: "The reason lies in the conception of economics as a value-neutral science of human behaviour and social choice."

That's the essence of MP Seah's point, which Ong had curiously overlooked.

And if the moral element here is about fairness to all, that is, across-the-board treatment, then it is a slippery slope because the benefits, monetary and/or otherwise, that ministers get - starting with their astronomical paycheck and the other perks enjoyed by them - far outweigh the take home pay of the majority by a considerably unbridgeable margin.

Fairness to all is a parliamentary ideal that once the well-endowed parliamentarians step out of parliament becomes a reality gap that our highly unequal society is hard pressed to bridge.

In other words, one man's clean wages is another man's perception of dirty wages.

Having said that, personally, I don't think Ong even answered (or addressed) MP Seah's concerns directly, or specifically.

You see, it seems to me to be quite obvious that AGO is doing its job to use a fine-toothed comb to scour the nooks and crannies of society to see whether they have left anything out for fair and expedient extraction of revenues. That is their technocratic job to be carried out with exactitude, I fully understand it.

Just as no one is left behind, so no one is left unaccounted for (for economic rent-extracting purposes of course).

But MP Seah's point goes further and deeper than that. In Parliament, he called for a rethink on the role of “economic reasoning” in policymaking here.

To flesh it out fully here, his point is about the larger picture, and not just about some issue of self-discipline (or for that matter, about free parking specifically).

In other words, "in the broader front," as reported, "Mr Seah urged the Ministry of Finance to lead a “reform”, and bring about “an explicit recognition (in the Government) of the limits of price, cost and expenditure as a proxy for value, and to allow for greater use of discretion by public officers in recognising moral reasoning as a legitimate form of argumentation”".

It bears repeating that MP Seah "stressed that his call was “not an appeal to populism”. Rather, it is an appeal to the ideas of justice and community that have informed Singapore policy making at the start of our journey 53 years ago.""

And "instead of taking the “cheap, efficient and quick” approach," he added. "Singapore has to look at what is “fair, just and right” in order to truly tackle inequality and other national issues.""

“We must… make (the) language of morality our vernacular in policy matters. It is time we recognise that money is merely a proxy for value, and at times, a very bad one," so rallied MP Seah.

I believe all that had unfortunately flew pass Ong when he replied in what I felt was a non-sequitur manner about AGO's enforcing internal checks and balances and emphasising that the issue is about self-discipline.

Alas, maybe the real issue is more about more self-reflection?

It is said that the eagle who flies high in the sky does not worry about crossing the river below.

Applying this metaphor here, I think MP Seah was taking the bird's eye view of things in the long run of how our government ought to build trust and confidence and close the income and social divide more effectively.

But Ong seems to me to have let a good point slipped by in Parliament by contending with the technocratic struggle to cross the "checks and balances" river on a purely economic approach by not directly addressing the issue at large.

Personally, and this has to be said, the issue is not just about charging teachers or servicemen for parking.

It really goes beyond that to what growth is our government going for or pursuing, that is, is it about putting a price on every nook and cranny spaces in Singapore so as to extract a pound of economic value in order to put more into the nation's already overflowing reserves, or is it about taking the high road to a more compassionate, humane, sustainable and trust-engendering society along the line of what MP Seah has said, that is, "to rethink the role of the market and of economic reasoning."

For there is a saying that we ought to treat everyone the same by treating everyone differently (because of the different stations, growth and fortune in life).

Alas, in Singapore, it seems like we treat some people differently by paying lip service to treating everyone the same. And this is sadly the result of the ever widening income and social divide between the elitist section of society and the rest of the population. Cheerz.

Repentance: the loneliest road.

In the light of MP David Ong's fall, here is my reflection on true repentance that lasts for a lifetime and more. Only time will tell...

 

Repentance. He takes the loneliest road. It is a fraught road, loaded and spirit-sapping. It is a road that will lead him to confront himself, his mistakes. It is an emotional juggernaut from his past. A phantom menace. There is no greater struggle for him. There is no tougher fight. The die has been cast. He has chosen to do this.  To turn away, for good.

He has made up his mind. His past will not show mercy because it is a showdown that will determine who lives and who dies. It is a battle royale of self against self. A cremation awaits. But who will survive this internal fight?

It is a struggle for survival and rulership between his past and his future. And it all depends on what his present self does now. There is no time more urgent than the present. He knows it. He will have to face it. His future depends on it.

No one can help him - at least not in the way that help is defined when self confronts self, when the little David of his present confronts the Goliath of his past. Well-wishing, oral encouragements and other social supports can only go so far. Their effectiveness is limited.

In the loneliest fight of his life, repentance demands that he make up his mind when no one sees, hears or is present. He is literally locked in an island in a world of his own past temptations.

For all practical purposes, the fight is his alone because his past self knows him too well. He knows his buttons. He knows his triggers. He has pushed it so many times before in the past, and without fail, the bidder does as he pleases. It is the piper who calls the tune and the past self has called it every time he played it.

Repentance therefore calls for extraordinary resolve and extraordinary resolve calls for extraordinary focus and consistency. It is definitely not a showdown to chat up, call for a truce, or reach a compromise. Nothing short of a death is needed because repentance demands an enduring clean break, not an interim one.

Neither is it an accommodation nor an adaptation. There is no peaceful co-existence with his past self. He knows he is in too deep to expect his past self to want to retire as the tail while his present and future self becomes the head. His past self has too much leverage over him to accept subordination over domination, and resignation over manipulation.

He knows viscerally that repentance is not just a change of mind. It is a change of heart, will and life. His future cannot be tethered to a past whose only goal is to seek full control. And his fight depends wholly on the resolve of his present self to prevent that eventuality from surfacing at all cost.

He has to literally burn the bridges after crossing it for the last time. He will not go back. He cannot afford to go back, not even for a visit or a peek. The pleasure that his past self offers would have too much of a hold or sway over him. And anything short of burning the bridges would mean that he risks treading in a minefield of self-entrapment set by his past self. A careless step would mean a fall so bad that he will be lost beyond redemption.

For he did not set his mind, soul and heart on repentance just so that he - in a moment of sentimentality - returns to the source of his agony all over again. There is no memorial service for his dead self.

So, repentance is indeed the loneliest road he will ever take. He knows there is no other way. The grief, the hurts and the disappointments have all pushed him to the edge of the cliff. And to tempt himself with the idea with this lure - "one last time for old time's sake" - would only confirm his indentured bondage to his past and to a future he will not have a stake in.

No doubt there is no perfect repentance except death but then, in a world of perfection, where's the need for repentance then?

So his decision and the many decisions after that is a laden one, a heavy one. They come with a price. He pays it forward every time he makes a choice to go forward and never look back. And as he walks with a steely heart towards enduring change, the siren voices of his past will become fainter and fainter. Its hold over him will be reduced to an obnoxious taunt instead of an obsessive haunt - a mere bugbear instead of the grip of a bear-trap.

There will of course come a time when he will look back from where he stands. But it is not to long for the life he had wholeheartedly abandoned. No way Hosea. It is to quietly celebrate the distance he had gained over the long journey he has taken towards a repentance that comes closest to the perfection the world will ever come to know. Cheerz.

Why morality matters...

Why morality matters? Why do I even bother? Why can't a married man cheat and keep a mistress on the side? Why can't a woman lie to get her way? Why can't I enrich myself financially without worrying about how my actions may hurt others? Why should I lend a helping hand and be inconvenient, get left behind or feel embarrassed? Why should I be an honest loser when I can easily be a dishonest winner and get away with it? If everybody is doing it and gets away with it, why can't I do the same and get away with it? Why morality matters? Why do I even bother?

Apart from religion, the atheist's value system or the evolutionary theory that theorizes that our human survival/thriving depends more on an altruistic society than one of crooks and free-loaders, do I really need to live morally? Or ought I live morally? How does it benefit me to live within my moral conscience?

Well, if anything, morality matters. I say this not because big daddy is watching. I say this not because it feels just right. I say this not because vices always pay homage to virtues. I say this not because virtues are endearing and vices are frowned upon. And neither do I say this because I have thus far kept my hands and nose clean. Far from it actually.

Morality matters because it is personal to me. I am married with three young children. I have a career of helping people with their legal issues. I am a close friend to a handful of friends. I am a colleague and an employee. I am a husband to my wife and a father to my children. I am a son, a brother and a citizen of a democratic nation. I am therefore accountable to all of them.

No doubt, I can perform those roles just as well even if I’d only pay lip service to morality and live my life as if it doesn’t apply to me. I can be furtive about my flirtations, discreet about my indiscretions and deceptive about my duplicity. No one will ever find out. I can outdo, outplay and outwit the whistle blowers. I can always be a step ahead of the rules, the law and even my conscience. I can be living a double life, upholding a double standard and maintaining a crafty balance of my double-mindedness. In short, I can still be accountable to all of them even if I am not accountable to myself. I can gag up my conscience, anesthetize the cognitive dissonance and remain in a blissful state of willful blindness. No one would be the wiser. Indeed, my tempter may be my choir and my adviser.

But herein lies a danger when morality turns over. It is a very thin line and once I cross it, I will lose myself in it. I will enter a world whereby I am no longer the decider of my life. In fact, I have to share it with something outside of myself. Something that demands its fair share from me. Something that grows bigger each day.

But this partnership, however unearthy, plays an insidious game with me. And it remains gentlemanly about it. It will make me feel as if I am in control. It will give me this illusion of power. It will make all I want readily within my reach and it will ensure that my lust for them grows far beyond my understanding of it. This game that this partnership has to offer will not cease until it elevates me to a point where I am empowered by this impervious sense of invincibility. At this point, at this turn of event, the gentleman becomes the rogue and the puppet becomes the puppet master. And I, once the hunter, will become the hunted in the same way that the stalker becomes the prey.

Once I lose my conscience or sell it away to the highest bidder, I will lose what it means to live without envy, to love without conditions, and to give without expectations. My humanity will be indistinguishable from my inhumanity. I will live with the dichotomy of conflicts and the demons in my mind will make my pillow hard, my dreams desperate and my sleep restless.

I imagine my conscience as the canary of the mines in my spirit. Once the canary dies, my inner world will collapse without any warning. And I will never know about it because a dead canary makes no noise. I will be lost yet never knowing why. I will be broken yet pretending that all’s swell. I will be tormented yet unable to relieve the pain. I will be constantly shifting in the shadows of deceit, avoiding the light of truth that shines through the cracks of my many varied personas.

So, why morality matters? Why do I even bother? Why should I give a second look? It matters because I cannot be perfect. So, the next best thing to perfection is to live a life pursuing incorruption. I believe that living with a moral conscience and applying it when the time comes will not guarantee me riches. Neither gold nor silver. It will not bestow unto me power nor elevate me to fame at the finest hour. I may even live an ordinary life and possibly be mocked and dismissed for being a loser, a coward or an underachiever.

But still I prefer the road less travelled. It is a road that eschews the many apocryphal things this world has to offer. It is a road that refuses to bargain off what truly matters in this life at a price I cannot afford to pay if I earnestly treasure the things that money cannot buy. There will therefore be many fork in the road that challenges me to choose between two opposing values; one questionable and the other irreproachable. And when the time comes for me to choose, I shall consciously choose what is right and live with its consequences nevertheless because choosing otherwise will only mean that my humanity is for sale. And it is for sale to the highest bidder.

No doubt I may be enriched beyond my wildest imagination. I may even live an easy life thereafter. But I will forever be a slave to riches, fame and power because I have lost the values to resist them. More importantly, I will never know what it means to be free. And never knowing freedom is never knowing what it means to be me. Cheerz.