It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain juice to figure out what happens when one takes people from all over the world – Kalimantan brides, Nigerian scam artists, British lager louts, American red necks, Bangladeshi expatriates, Mainland Chinese lamian cooks – and cram them all into a small place bordered by the ECP, PIE and SLE.
How will we ever get along? What are the possible outcomes? Will the good currency win over the bad to produce something exciting?
In truth no one really knows for certain, as a melting pot of people this cacophonous thrown into one small place like this has never really been tried before – where one can even say globalization is made flesh and bone.
I don’t doubt for one moment somewhere along this heady mix many of the problems of the world may even wash up like flotsams to our shores. People after all carry their cultures, histories, religion and gripes with them wherever they go. And to exacerbate matters they also possess multiple identities – that a man may be a heterosexual, stir his coffee anti-clockwise, catholic, liberal, Liverpool supporter, Malaysian and a PR is given – but which one of these aspects which makes up his character swallows up the rest when he decides to call this place home is still a mystery? No one knows.
Here I am reminded not only can a man migrate physically by uprooting himself, but so can his values. Unfortunately, the debate concerning foreign talents fails to register this. Instead the debate is often couched in terms of what is lost against what’s gained. Not only does this make for an unimpressive account. It also skewers how we should make sense of the FT hubris.
Against this backdrop of how we decide whether someone is worthy or unworthy to enter our inner circle. A few broken record set pieces feature in this litany; our way of life, NS, the ties that bind and probably everything that we consider as comfort food, which we are content to lump under the general tag of what it means to be Singaporean.
No one denies these are worthy stuff; probably worth dying for a few times over and genuine even in the way they are often expressed, demonstrated and caressed by every quarter of our society. Not only do these beliefs reflect what we consider to be important, but they also form the main montage that serves to edify and validate many of our assumptions in what it means to be a citizen. That we should find tradition and the past consoling is not surprising. That it’s effective in binding us as a community is certainly a strong impulse that can never be denied.
But it still doesn’t answer the question: why is it so difficult for us to accept foreigners into our fold? What accounts for our reticence? Or inflexibility even in the way that we frequently marginalize the rhetoric of necessity why we should embrace foreigners into our fold?
I am reminded the idea of citizenship will always mean different things to different people. It cannot be pillored. Not even with the most persuasive killer arguments like
“if we don’t accept foreigners into our fold, we will eventually perish like the dodo bird in this age of globalization.”
That it seems real or imagined, doesn’t seem to cut any ice; not to the tea lady in my office or even to many of my colleagues who still harbor deep suspicions about foreigners.
I suspect, the idea of citizenship has something to do with the notion of how one perceives the sense the belonging as something which is closer to faith than a testable logic; for one it’s a concept that doesn’t lend itself very well to the art of gentle persuasion; as what really makes up the sum of these feelings remains perennially difficult, if not impossible to pin down.
I suspect this has alot with the distinction between history and heritage; and how citizenship as a state of mind or school of thought is often closer to the latter.
Unlike history that requires facts to be winnowed to ensure there are scrupulously as close to the truth as possible.
Heritage is the direct opposite. Here there are no pesky historians or archivers sieving through facts to balance the accounts. Infact, it has carte blanche (every right) to side step critical scrutiny – it’s not open to critical challenge. For what makes heritage different from history is it’s intrinsic biasness – whether it’s the right of the English to recount Irish jokes to reinforce the impression everyone in Ireland has an IQ of 5 below idiot; or whether it’s us having the right to look down on Malaysians as a backward people, isn’t really the point here.
My point is, that is the essential purpose of heritage, it’s supposed to bend, exaggerate, confect and embellish the account to produce a story that satisfies our inner craving to feel validated - we need to believe, we are better than those who may come before us; we need to believe they can offer us nothing that we already do not have; we even believe we can wing it alone and like Frank Sinatra, “do it our way.”
My point here is when we speak about citizenship, it is precisely in these terms that we speak of it – not as a historical reference but as something belonging to heritage.
I am not for one moment suggesting it’s bad to take pride in one’s citizenship; or to even insist on one’s right as a citizen. On the contrary, this feeling of sacredness nourishes the whole idea of our sense of belonging. Without it we will all be jelly fish.
Only what must be strenuously brought to bear is. It’s a cause for concern when our sense of belonging becomes bloated and conflated. Pride after all is a double edged sword; nurtured judiciously and wisely, it can certainly nourish the whole idea of what it means to be part of a community giving it a sense of purpose.
Taken too far, it can be corseting, parochial and decadent, trapping us further in a bunker of xenophobia and nationalism.
This it does by narrowing the field of possibilities and distorting our understanding of who is deserving and who is not worthy of entering our inner circle. To me this has to be a disturbing development only because some where down the blind road of nationalism and endless distortion; at some point; reality will have to tragically gives way to free wheeling myth making; instead of seeking out similarities we promote endless differences. Instead of wrestling to wordsmith the narrative of common ground; we hold steadfast to the familiarity of our trench lines and seek out the company of only those who mirror our heritage; objectivity gives way to biasness; truth gives way to endless embellishments; we bask in our false sense of self importance; until finally it becomes almost impossible for us to transform ourselves into the building blocks, components and raw materials for the greatest experiment in human history – where we can mash with others from distant shores in the great hope to produce something worthy, original and beautiful.
Darkness 2005
Commentary by Y2K : There are at least 3 versions of this article – a longer version is published in the Intelligent Singaporean under the heading. “City Living – The Great Experiment.” In APICS, a condensed version carries the title: “The Foreignness of Foreigners.”
This article was written sometime just after the age of the stone; when the French legation accepted an invitation by the confederation to make an opening speech in the Parliament of the brotherhood in the Great Hall. No sooner had the French ambassador begun his speech. He was heckled by the third rowers (the intellectual class) who cited him for his usage of French. They insisted, he should address the house in English. He refused. This diplomatic faux pas was again repeated in what appears to be a tit for tat retaliation when Darkness gave a similar opening speech before the Conseil supérieur (the French Parliament). He too was heckled by the French who perceived this as an open insult. Midway through the speech, Darkness relented and so the rest of speech was made in French satisfying his host.
This was not only a great humiliation for the brotherhood, but many held it against Darkness as a sign, he was not worthy to lead.
However, I am not so sure about this, as there is every indication to suggest this was strategy played out at the highest level. In examining the notes of the speech once given, Darkness writes nine times, “all warfare is based on deception.” To my reading it seems to be a deliberate effort to convince the French he is indeed no threat and content to play the role of the complaint colonial servant. What is worth noting is in the age of stone, the brotherhood had nothing. Often described in derogatory terms as the “wandering people” and “space gypsies.” They were very much beholden to the French as their benefactors and protectors.
In the reign of Pandishah IX, the Emperor of the known universe, demanded that each tribe sent a permanent delegation to the Académie Française (royal court). Many within the brotherhood saw this as an imperialistic attempt by the French to impose their will on them so they resisted in various ways. One of them was by refusing to speak French.
In this essay once written, Darkness is appealing to the space diplomatic corps to relent to these unreasonable demands. He is telling them, let us accept them into our fold. There is much that we can learn from them. We must migrate out of our tribal mentality.
Eventually a contingent was sent to the Academie. Unbeknown to the French, every single one of these diplomats belonged to the elite guard of the brotherhood, the Order of Purple – trained in the secret art of spy craft. They would prove instrumental in burrowing their way into the Royal French court to establish the most influential lobby group in the universe. During this period, the brotherhood amassed all their technology and know how by using these rogue diplomats; they would be charged with bribing and establishing networks within the French scientific community to ensure knowledge of their latest designs and plans. All these would be replicated in the secret mineral rich planet known as Sardonyx located at the edge of the known universe.
In the 50th anniversary of the Pandishah IX, when each tribe was required to sent a token fleet to pay their respects to the Royal creche – the brotherhood rolled out the largest fleet in the known universe, known as “The Fist of God” – this tour de force comprising of nearly 1,000 Liberium class star cruisers and some 3,000 pocket battleships was roughly modeled along the lines of Zeng Hu, “treasure fleet” shocked many and its effects would reverberate across the known universe for years.
As till then many believed the brotherhood were incapable of mastering such technology and were nothing more than mere minions in the game. This episode would not only signify their arrival as a super power in the virtual, but also mark the beginning of the decline of the Academie’s hold on the reign of power in the universe.
2 months after the regatta, the entire French Royal Creche were mysteriously assassinated. Following this incident, brotherhood forces moved into the French court to establish a protectorate to offer protection to it’s sole survivor, the Princess Urillian. Till today no one knows who is responsible for this trecherous act, thought rumors continue to abound.
[This article has been reconstituted by the FILB – The Brotherhood Press 2008]
