TR EMERITUS

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” (Carl Jung) The Holy Grail of my journey as a blogger is pursuit of the size of our national reserves, which is as mystical as the misty lake in which lay the Excalibur, the stuff of Arthurian tales forever etched in the recesses of memories of schoolboys of my generation. I am taking a breather from some research work to pen this blog on an inconsequential dream, actually banging away on a laptop with a faulty keypad. I spilt some water on it and a few of the buttons aren’t functioning anymore. Necessity is the mother of invention and so I resort to a methodology of copy and paste the dead characters. A poor workman has to learn to live with his tools. Darn it, I now realise my dead button “T” is the most used letter in English alphabet. In younger days on my first visit to London, I purchased a collection of hardcover books, classics that I had intended to read in my golden years. Well, I do admit in part I thought they will look impressive on display bookshelves behind my desk in the study room. There were Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, Water Margin (Chinese classics in English translations as I cannot read original scripts), Readings of Edgar Cayce, and others. Much to my regret, I lost the copy of Cayce’s book on ‘Dreams’ before I had a chance to read it. It would be great to see if this celebrated clairvoyant can make sense of what dreams are all about. Personally, I think dreams come about when our brain does spring cleaning work when we sleep. Our brain has the memory the capacity of a mainframe computer, if not bigger. It is astoundingly huge. To maintain efficiency, it performs the equivalent functions of repartitioning, defragmentation, registry optimisation, etc whilst we sleep. As these bits and bytes of our memories are moved around, we get juxtapositions of broken pieces of visuals which we string into short stories of a dream. We inherit the chromosomes of our parents, which contain traces of their forebears or lineage. Similarly, I posit, we also inherit some memory cells of our lineage. This I think, explains why some people believe they are reincarnations of someone else, and which forms the library from which our dreams are drawn from. I had a vivid dream of an old school chum whom I shall call Seng. This dream was downright mundane if not for the fact the protagonist was someone whom I have never heard from nor heard of for 5 decades since leaving school. I wonder why he should appear in my dream in such a vivid manner. I saw him as in our teenage years, his mannerism, his voice, the way he talked, his gait, his dressing, and his smile, just as if it was yesterday. I thought I blog it for posterity, something to reminisce about and share with my scout brothers. Seng was one of our scout leaders, well-liked and respected. As a senior scout, he was one of the good leaders for the troop. Polite, obliging, responsible and to use a word from today’s vocabulary, inclusive in nature. He was way smarter than I was academically, what with him in the ‘A’ class and me in ‘B’. I was not really close to him to get a sense of his inner feelings. But I had always thought of Seng as one of those likely to reach some level of prominence in life. Much later after school did I learn that English Language was his Waterloo. English was a compulsory subject and his weakness of it averaged his scores down badly in the GCE examination. I also learnt decades later that he had some disagreements with our scout master, the matter of which no one really was privy to. Whatever it was, it seemed so damaging that Seng severed all relationship with the entire scout troop. He simply vanished from our orbit to this day. I wonder how Seng could possibly have an altercation with our scout master who we call Skip, short for skipper. Our beloved Skip was a gentle soul, a teacher with most empathy. He did not run a nanny scout troop. Instead he let the patrol leaders play leadership roles. He kept a watchful eye, helped to liaise with sponsors when needed, and kept out of the way, joining us occasionally to impart some moral wisdom here and there, or introduce some new games..Other school scouts often wonder how we managed to have military tents for camping events, complete with three tonners for transport, courtesy of the British Army. Skip was never interested in his charges acquiring all those scout badges to pin on the chest, like our generals. Whenever we attend campfires, our boys were the most under-decorated scouts present. All we had was just the minimum mandatory ‘tenderfoot’ badge. Instead Skip focused on leadership and basic fun survival skills, taught us to love and respect nature. We learnt how to keep the environment we occupied in much better condition when we leave, long before PAP started those anti-littering and keep the country clean campaigns. Unfortunately, Skip never had the blessings to enjoy his retirement. He was involved in a tragic fatal accident while holidaying in Australia shortly after his retirement. In my dream a few days ago, Seng was sitting on a bench looking for something in his wallet. As I approached him, his mobile rang. Anachronism is something we do not question in dreams. My dream had the feel of late1960s, and Seng had a mobile. He passed his wallet to me to hang on to while he managed the mobile with one hand and rummaged his knapsack for something with the other, then he said "Let’s go", all seemed to be in one single motion. As I too had some stuff to carry and my jean pockets were all full, I placed his mobile in my shirt pocket. Off we went to another place where the dreamscape looked like a park. There we were met by a group of our scout mates. As we engaged in animated chatter, a couple of policemen came up to us to conduct a random check. Except for Seng, all of us showed IDs and satisfied the lawmen. Both Seng and I had forgotten his wallet was with me. With no ID on him, Seng was led away to the police station. Several minutes after the trio departed, I realised the error of my ways. In haste to bring the wallet to Seng, I jostled myself out of dreamland. In the darkness of the night I pondered over a meaningless encounter in a dream which is our personalised matrix. We pursue dreams in our waking hours with busy schedules, building networks, meeting datelines. In sleep, dreams pursue us for purposes we understand not. Carl Jung said: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” For all his prowess at psychoanalysis, I think Jung plays with our mind. Seng, the policemen, whatever, the dream is only actionable for me if I was able to see the 4 digits of the patrol car registration plate that I can bring to the sweepstakes. Baring none, I am just grateful for a metaphysical and ephemeral experience to remember friends whose paths we never have the chance to cross.   Patrick Low * Article first appeared on Down The Rabbit Hole.      Read More →

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.—Immanuel Kant The elected presidency is still seen by some as a form of check on the government. That this is the perception is due to lack of in-depth discussion and debate in Singapore. POFMA (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act) has not helped. In retrospect, a forum I participated in years ago with Mr Lee Kuan Yew is instructive. The link was sent to me a few days ago, the video somehow found its way onto YouTube. There was a briefing held for participants some days before the recording in which the moderators wanted to know the questions we would ask. We were not told what to ask, though some were given guidance on how to sharpen the question. In response to what I would ask, one moderator said that if I used the term ‘sledgehammer’ in my question I could have that coming down on me; the Director Current Affairs who sat behind us suddenly said, “It’s okay, you can ask that.” When the day arrived, I decided to ask my original question and add on what I had not mentioned to the moderators. As we took our seats one chap went on about how he would ask the ‘Old Man’ this and that; when the session began, bravado evaporated, and he asked his question like a schoolboy. There was a hush when LKY entered the set and took his seat. I noticed that his wife was there. She was an unassuming presence, she sat silently behind and at the side of the area of the participants with a security officer nearby. (Later, I discovered that she was there as insurance against any overly impassioned response from LKY during the session.) The entire session went fine and there was no sense of fear, at least to me, among most of the participants. During and after my exchange with LKY, there was no sense of intimidation. In the public arena, if you took him on politically, he responded robustly; that is how it was. Sometimes the responses seemed excessive. But at that forum, I sensed that the man before me had a set of political convictions and commitment to Singapore’s success that I have not come across in anyone, nor ever will. After the recording, the Director asked why I had not engaged LKY further; I replied that I did not want anything that followed to have to be edited out of the final version; he responded, “We would not have done that.” When asked, he explained why Mrs Lee was there. That she was there, quietly in the background throughout the session— I saw then and understand better now—as remarkable: unlike some today who fancy themselves social media stars. These days, an aura of censorship and an amorphous sense of intimidation pervades, but still only a vague semblance to Biden’s nightmarish Disunited States of America. It is usually the case that when some become insecure, tightening of laws occur. It is an ineluctable truth that a centre of gravity in Singapore is missing; it is apparent in a manner that can no longer be hidden. [The video: The Singapore Dream with Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, picture credit: Mai Huy Dung.]   Sanjay Perera *The writer is the founding editor of Philosophers for Change. A related piece, Adam Smith: The moral economy unhijacked. He sometimes writes at The Solemn Investigator of Useless Things.      Read More →

Tharman said today that the Presidential Election must not be a reflection of the General Elections. This statement of Tharman’s is so demonstrative of a Presidential Candidate who is trying to persuade People not to judge him on his record. And he has a long record of 22 years in the government. What you have said and done in the past whilst in Government is surely a good barometer of how much good you can do for the people if you become President. Despite all his protestations that he is independent, his record doesn’t suggest that. What has he to say about Ridout Gate and the Tan Chuan Jin affair? And for that matter,don’t forget that Tharman was in government until 7 July before he resigned from the PAP and as an MP in order to run for President. Surely Singaporeans have the right to know his position on these matters in order to judge whether he has the values they desire in a President? And don’t forget his statement back in 2012 when he said you can buy a HDB flat with a $1000 income per month. Or for that matter his statement made in India that there cannot be a free flow of people. Has that statement held up on CECA? Tharman was an integral part of a government that has made Singapore the most expensive country in the world and one where the majority of Singaporeans felt last year that property had become unaffordable. Many Singaporeans are angry that the good jobs in Singapore are going to foreigners instead of locals. And many Singaporean men,myself included, are outraged that new citizens above 30 do not have to serve National Service when a local Singaporean man has reservist obligations until 40. I had reservist obligations until I was 50. Singaporeans should not be sparing in asking Tharman these many probing questions in judging whether he is a suitable person to be their Head of State. When you are running for the highest office in the land, you have no place to hide on your past record.   Lim Tean      Read More →