From Idiot To Intelligensia

Ok. Started with the intention of a short entry, but it ended up quite some length and somwhat rambling.

Was reading Michael Moore's 'Idiot Nation', and he was listing all the examples of how the Americans can be termed as 'ill-informed', and how today they can send an equally ill-informed' person to be master of the White House.

Interesting, because the other day, I was just sharing with some of my students and friends about how much the world today is ruled by the 'tyranny' of the uninformed/ill-informed majority. Just look at Taiwan politics today - and their people accept that. Many a time, it is precisely because the less informed or unread people cannot comprehend or envision the logic and argument, that the intelligensia or governing body has to give in to irrational demands. It is really not how intelligent or good you are, but how persuasive and appropriate you are, when it comes to policy implementation.

And this is only gona get worse. The number of people doing real self-edifying reading is really on the descent these decades. The number of people who can hold real intellectual discourse in conversation or in the written form is also going down. Even the most popular blogs are those which are abrupt and hurried in their at times incomplete sentences. When people have nothing really serious, weighty or intelligent to nourish their minds, what then is there to really debate or hold discourse about?

Even in Singapore, the Melvyn Tan episode with all the forum letters and reponses indicates the relatively low level of knowledge the population has of NS and the arts career in the past, as well as the lack of true rational and logical thinking. More shocking is how the agency concerned was somehow 'forced' by the ill-informed public outcry to take a less then enlightened stand.

Frankly, it is mainly the system's fault in this case - for not having provisions for really talented performers. Truly, the opportunity will not wait for the man. The man's fingers and art is more valuable to our nation than doing physical activity. Soft power is equally, if not more, important then mere brute force in advancing our nation's influence and cause. I fully agree with what MM LKY said about a particular aspect of censorship the other day, that for him personally it's 'to hell with it', and yet the middle and lower management will never bother to question or think until you tell them the law's changed. Well, with the new Singapore Arts School coming up, it's perhaps time for the govt agencies to really start revising and reviewing the NS categories. It will be a joke if all our carefully nurtured arts talents never manage to reach the international stage because their upcoming opportunities, platforms and careers are curtailed by NS. Worse, their fingers are made inagile by NS.

Well, so there ... the intelligensia of the Age of Enlightenment, the Romantic Period, and even up to the Post Colonial Period, is on its way out in many developed countries. And that can be the beginning of a developed country's decline. A country stops being great when its people stop being knowledgeable, stop being aware of things beyond themselves, and stop questioning and debating higher issues. It gets into serious trouble when its people are easily swayed by simplistic viewpoints that hinge on prejudice, bias, half-knowledge and rhetoric. That's why education is so important today, and not just in school, but through all contemporary aspects of media for the general population, to create a nation of intelligensia for tomorrow.