The Balakrishnan Covfefe Part 2.

 

When I look at what I call “mic-gate” in parliament, between MPs Vivian and See Leng, I think about human foibles. Are we really all good or all bad, or a hybrid? Are we as Rousseauians would say, naturally peaceful, or as Hobbesians would say, naturally violent? 

Professor Richard Wrangham would call this the Goodness Paradox, and he wrote a whole book about it. If you fast forward to the concluding chapter of the book, this is how he ends the debate: -

“The paradox is resolved if we recognise that human nature is a chimera. The Chimera, in classical mythology, was a creature with a body of a goat and the head of a lion. It was neither one thing nor the other, it was both. The thesis of this book is that, with respect to our tendency for aggression, a human being is both a goat and a lion.”

I guess, ministers or otherwise, we are chimerical by nature, part-goat, part-lion. And the human variety is more about the human range than human nature. Most leaders are more lion than goat, and their followers are, well, vice versa. That seems to be the order of things in a hierarchical society. 

And we often look up to some leaders as heroes, drawimg inspiration from them, in words and actions. But, we often forget their human side, for the human foibles come in ranges too. Some are just more well domesticated by the pen of parliament, while others less so in the privacy of their own home.

Should we see more clearly this domesticated and wild side of our leaders, we ought to be more slow to hero-worship them, because hero-worship is no more than the superficial understanding of the part-goat, part-lion nature in all of us.

Some years back, there was an article by Michael Skapinker about heroes. It is entitled “We should not invest too much hope in our heroes”. The article spoke about three problems with regarding people as heroes. 

The first is what I have written above: We are humans beings. 

Our weakness are not non-existent. They are just not picked up by the social mic, so to speak. And trust me, given the right combustible mix, namely, power, sex and/or money, a majority of us may come undone.

Second, it is about lifting the carpet to reveal the cracks. Michael wrote that “(the heroes’) prominence invites greater scrutiny of their pasts”. 

Indeed anonymity hides not just our identity, but our past. But once the hero steps into the limelight, his/her flaws and past are duly illuminated and unduly magnified. 

The third problem about exalting heroes is that “behaviour is situational”. This is so true, as mic-gate shows. 

Michael wrote: “We have no idea how new responsibilities and situations are going to change people. We have little idea how they would change us...Most people promoted to a management job discover that leadership turns out to be more tedious, complicated and difficult than they thought.”

Alas, how often is this narrative read out to us: a hero-leader starts a revolution to topple a corrupt dictator only to discover that when confronted with the same realities of power the previous dictator faced, the hero himself struggles to not end up becoming the tyrant he once overthrew. Many times, the struggle is lost.

So, instead of putting our hope on the idea of a hero, Michael suggests that we ask a different question: -

“What did I learn from some of the people I admire?” 

This avoids the tendency to see those we admire as infallible, and put their humanity in the proper context. While they are not perfect, they however have their defining moments. These defining moments (arising out of their struggle) form the lessons we can learn from. 

For Aung Sun Suu Kyi, it was decades of standing up against the military junta; her failure to stand up to the Rohingya crisis notwithstanding. For Churchill, when he confronted Hitler’s Germany in WWII; his white-people supremacist views notwithstanding. And even for Mother Teresa, its her lifetime mission of mercy in the streets of Calcutta; her struggles with searing doubts notwithstanding. 

They are not perfect but what they do, the passion and courage they put into it, comes closest to the perfection that we strive for in our own life. So, emulation, yes; but worship, well, take a few notches down please. 

And talking about behaviour being situational, here is a young lady that turned her most dire situation around. She like many others are so-called the unsung heroes we often overlook. This is Ms Zulayqha Zulkifli’s story, and three years ago, she was featured in ST, reported by Cara Wong. She was then only 24. And I find this is the best way to end this post. 

In 2010, amidst a messy divorce, Ms Zulayqha’s father lost his job as a technician. She was only 16 then. He then sold their 4-room flat at Henderson Crescent a year later. 

The whole family went to live with a relative after that. When tension rose between the two families, Ms Zulayqha and her three siblings were made to sleep “at stone tables in the void deck instead.” 

She recalled: “We took turns to stay awake to keep each other safe. We didn’t have time to be sad or pity ourselves. Life went on. We were just trying to survive each day.” 

They eventually found a temporary roof over their head while they waited for a rental unit. When Ms Zulayqha was 22, she faced another hardship. Her mother packed her belonging and left them. She left without any explanation. A week later, she found that her mother had suffered from a stroke and left to recuperate on her own. 

Ms Zulayqha was clearly disappointed but she said: “We’d has been through so much together and we thought that we’d always have each other’s backs. But as much as I wanted to be angry, I kept thinking that I’d gone through so much hardship already, why should I give up now?”

And she didn’t. She fought back. Her defining moments came when she scored As in her N-level exams, entered ITE and scored As again and was awarded the Howe Yoon Chong PSA scholarship. 

At Nanyang Poly, she was awarded the LKY scholarship to encourage upgrading while she studied for her diploma in social sciences.

Ms Zulayqha is now a social work associate with the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore, and “is studying part-time for a bachelor’s degree in social work at SUSS.”

She said: “We like to think that we are very unfortunate to be in our situation, but it’s only through volunteering and helping others that I realise there are so many others out there who are in worse situations.”

Her siblings are doing well too. Her younger brother is a chef’s associate at a restaurant, her younger sister works for security firm Certis Cisco and her older brother is in his final year at NTU. Ms Zulayqha puts it best in her own words: -

“Perseverance is a very important value that you have to acquire. Through perseverance, we are able to get through all the challenging obstacles ahead of us. It can be demoralising, having to wait for things to get better. But we should grit our teeth, move forward with a positive mindset, and just keep counting the blessings and achievements we have attained every day.”

A life like that is heroic in many ways. And whether we are up there as ministers or the hoi polloi below, her words and life inspire deeply. 

The reality is, the hero in us does not come in brochured image of a knight in shining armor emerging out of the glorious horizon to save the day. 

Most times, if not all the time, it comes from a heart that never stop hoping, never stop fighting and never stop believing. It is doing the most ordinary with perseverance, passion and hope that we make those moments extraordinary, and our life inspirational.

 

The Balakrishnan Covfefe - Part 1

 

It was a good debate. Thrashing out issues about foreign talent, Ceca, PMEs & PMETs, and job competition and future. They are heartland issues and grounded in the livelihood of many Singaporeans. 

But, amidst the debate between MP Tan See Leng and PSP Leong Mun Wai, there was a minor distraction yesterday. You can call it the Trump’s equivalent of a Covfefe, when MP Tan did not just leave the parliamentary table, he also left the mic on. 

Unfortunately for Minister Vivian Balakrishnan (“Vivian”), the mic captured this: “he’s illiterate...Seriously, how did he get into RI?...must have been a lousy school.” At this point, it seems like Minister Tan joined in too. He said: “I’m from Monk’s hill.” 

Well, what can be implied in that short exchange between the ministers is this: “How can someone from RI not get it? I’m from Monk’s hill, and I got it.”

Vivian immediately apologised for that remark. In his Facebook post, he said: “I called Mr Leong Mun Wai today to apologise for my private comments to a colleague in Parliament yesterday. I disagree with him on the issue but I should not have said what I said. Mr Leong has accepted my apology.” Integrity restored? 

Alas, modern technology had left hardly any room for privacy and the clatters of conscience. It goes further in fact. It has flushed out our most intimate thoughts, frustrations and prejudices, just as what the scripture had said: “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

But before you take this as an indictment of Vivian (or Tan), let me confess too that I had on some occasions caught myself muttering under my breath similar sentiments as Vivian’s or Tan’s. 

Sometimes, a situation becomes so intolerable or ludicrous, from one’s point of view, that you catch yourself, quite unwittingly, making snide and demeaning remarks, which admittedly, are made out in jest, but leaves a bad taste behind. A regrettable utterance of instinctual unthinking?

At other times, the emboldenment comes when you are in a group, and you want to fit in, or win some brownie points. This is the crowd effect, and if you are in a Man U game, and sitting by the side of the reds in old Trafford, you often catch yourself saying and agreeing with belittling and demeaning expressions you will never be caught for in a different context, like in a woman’s Bible study group or in a wake. 

It is again quite similar to the demeaning things Trump said about women and he excused it as boys’ locker-room bantering. However, I caveat that Trump takes such unthinking chatters to a whole new level, and his actions speak for itself. That topic is for another day. 

And this also reminds me of the many levels or sincerity of a Freudian slip. In the book, Everybody lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, he noticed that in a large dataset of typos, many of us see a person walking down a street and describe him as a “penistrian”. 

Yes, you heard it right - penis-trian. That was a typo...of course? Because, clearly, it is “pedestrian“ misspelt. But, for some of us, is it really about the misspelling? Is this then a case of “out of the abundance of the heart...”?

Well, all I can say is that the mic might catch your tongue hanging loose, but it is big data online that catches you with your pants down. In absolute anonymity, we are as transparent as a plain glass window just kleenex’d. Privacy flushes out all that system’s junk or filth. But sometimes, it is necessary for us to confront ourselves and then commit to a path of innermost spring cleaning. 

In any event, this is what author Seth wrote: -

“At Google, major decisions are based on only a tiny sampling of all their data. You don’t always need a ton of data to find important insights. You need the right data. A major reason that Google searches are so valuable is not that there are so many of them; it is that people are so honest in them.”

“People lie to friends, lovers, doctors, surveys, and themselves. But on Google they might share embarrassing information about, among other things, their sexless marriages, their mental health issues, their insecurities, and their animosity towards black people.” 

(You shall know the truth, and it is found online? It is like a global Catholic Confession Booth, but the difference (or problem) is that it stops at confession). 

So, for the ministers in parliament yesterday, well, I believe that short exchange is similar to locker room bantering, but made in bad taste, and it shows the imperfection of humanity as a whole. We all have our biases, and elitist inclination, expressed in other ways. Some of us are just more discreet about it than others, because human relationships sometimes bring out the worst in us. Mind you, we are all arrogant in our own ways, some are just more self-righteous about it than others. 

And Vivian will have to live with that, because the mic never forgets. It is also a good lesson in eating the humble pie, cold. I still can taste mine years ago. 

Yet, most of us, if not all of us, can quietly identify with his Covfefe, and loosening that grip on the stone meant for casting is good for the soul, especially since the man has apologised and his apology generously accepted. 

So this is a good lesson for all. A lesson in controlling the tongue. But I suspect, even a rudder sometimes turns the wrong way, because we are only human after all. 

And for many of us, especially me, we just have to make a long detour back on the straight and narrow, and bear the mistake, like a blistering ulcer in the mouth and a discipline whip to the heart.