Change Before You Have To In Asian Context

The firefighter who took the unconventional approach by pre-preemptively clearing the bushes and waited out in there from the sweeping forest fires remained one of the few survivors, despite encouraging his team members to do the same but no one heeded his advice as its not the standard operation procedures then in the 1949s. On the hindsight, many still clung on to their heavy-duty gears in evacuation either due to lack of rehearsal or they stubbornly regarded them as professional symbolic in their noble firefighting duties otherwise they could’ve had a 20% higher chance of staying alive due to lighter weight for speedier escape from the scorching and deadly fires. The priority of self-preservation should had preceded any other causes and sometime drastic measures are needed.

Likewise for Microsoft which at once was handicapped by its own success of principally anchoring future growth around window operation system but had managed to pivot out of their comfort zone to cloud and software as a service dismantling the over bearing burden taking advantage of the inherent digital salable network effects with increasing efficiency and momentum as they gain customers and entrenching their hold on the economy at an unprecedented speed often becoming destructive innovative crossing to other industries; for example, the new entrants of delivery and ride hailing  platforms crossing into financial segment leveraging on their massive pre-existing database; hardware and operating system integrator exploring into electrical autonomous auto business and so on mostly leveraging on the primary trends: digital transformation and cloud computing, and the future of communication, entertainment, commerce, and work.

In other words, one needs to constantly reinvent and transform even it means defying the mainstream practices on individuals, national and organizations levels.

I‘m not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.–Derek Jarman

Individual Level If you are just a drop in the Mississippi river, being different and individualistic wont collectively change the course of the current but that shouldn’t hold one back for being innovative, transformative and willingness of just doing it. Some native Indian and Chinese have been oblivious to their inherent inclination for the natural individualistic innovation of being outspoken and exploring into uncharted water in the larger communities and undermining the will of the individuals as the overall systems of social institutions are not catered nor its ready for these breakthrough as these are simply out of the comfort zone of the ruling institutions. Therefore, it’s not unsurprising many who are venturing and individualistic in nature had largely thrive in United State predominantly in technological fields but not in their unforgiving home states for fear of being ostracized with adverse consequences for themselves and their loves one. United state is unique not having the legacy of historical baggage as the European settlers came to North America in the 17th century to craft a new order of the ages, absorbing talents and bright individuals from all over the worlds and value individualistic with corresponding incentives and rewards on a broader level.

Good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.— Martin Luther King, Jr.

National level The drastic innovations are becoming increasingly diverse across all region even as they still being dominated by US. With the widespread fake news that devalued the importance of the mRNA technology as a consequence of confirmation biases ignoring the facts these biological advances had been largely funded by private equities for decades primary seeking alternative remedies to fight cancers and thanks to the advance computing power where the modification can be achieved digitally instead of the legacy painstaking analogue method of culturing on the conventional vaccine type we are beginning to see the light at the end of the COIVD-19 pandemic with these innovative mRNA base vaccines which was developed with unprecedented speed. These radical breakthroughs would not had been possible in equivalent powerful countries like China or Europe as there weren’t similar mechanism where private players invested in a range of potential life science start-ups in anticipation of astronomical returns even among them many would had failed to bear fruits.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I’ve started seeing it everywhere.—Jon Ronson

The inherent culture has inhibited Chinese individualistic and creativity, self-fulfilled Chinese belief and increased the risk of falling behind from others and It has also undermined the 40 over  years of economic progress that had transformed China, probably the few best ever decades of relative prosperity and good lives from the past 1000 or more years.  As western region especially in US where strategic creativity thrive with individualism which has been another undeniable impact – an innovative of culture and a nurturing ambient for start up to raise funding and venturing new and drastic solutions simply unparalleled to other part of the world except maybe the state of Israel with many successful private spin offs from the military intelligent.

Corporate level The Chinese is more worried by the educational privatization threat and losing the much sought after data those local gigantic super apps had gathered to foreign operators than it has ever been and had mandated multiple compliance orders to the private companies, however such intervention burdens the future, as government expands and legislate more state driven propaganda on private entities, it also tightens its grip on the economy, prohibiting the enterprising elements for maximizing returns with creativity and transformative measures. Although with some restraints and common understanding, innovative between corporations may not be all that bad, instead of choosing side and endangering relationship, it could actually help to generate competition and consumers would had had more choices and alternatives. Having the advantages of setting the standards become predominantly critical and keeping a strategic heads up from one competitor could also means life and death of a business. Recent tussle with newspaper medium with the social media platforms over the lost of advertising revenue is just another example of destructive innovation and as a result, some government like Singapore had resorted to making their mainstream newspaper into not-for-profit entity to support quality journalism while others will be at the mercy for market force.

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.—Martin Buber

In summary, the biggest problem is not to let people accept new mindset, but to let them forget the old ones, this suggests that the phenomena may have multiple causes, uncertainty avoidance could be one contributing factor, particularly in light of the sharp increase in psychological distress amid the tragedy of the pandemic. History, after all, is the story of mankind and new trends may herald changing times. Individual and collective’s philosophies, religiosity, educational achievement and level of indulgence would have a high dependency prediction can an individual or society as a whole take the plunge with blinding faith of drastic measures to beat the odds to stay relevant, so next time if someone advice you to join him to clear the bushes by pre-preemptively remove the fuels that the raging fires feed on so you can remain there and wait it out knowing that outrunning is next to impossible, “Why not, Let’s do it” will be the reply following your instincts despite the herd is heading to the other way.

No Life Lived Successfully Can be Lived Perfectly in Asia

Ideally, success is really nothing more than the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. This means that any person who knows what they are doing and where they are going is a success. Any person with a goal towards which they are working is a successful person. It’s the state or condition of meeting a defined range of expectations and It may be viewed as the opposite of failure. One person might consider a success what another person considers a failure especially in different cultural context. Being successful had different meaning very much depending on one’s race, gender, religion and country of residence and can be generally categorized for a better grasp on the success we are all inspired and encourage to pursue.

“you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” — Peter Drucker 

One can’t know whether one is successful or not unless success is defined and tracked, and the goalposts can’t keep on moving. Unsurprisingly, values are defining what it means to be successful and one’s race and culture had an indisputable and overwhelming influence on them as everyone live within one own circle of influences and rarely cross over to different social hierarchy levels, one simply can’t escape the role of own cultural affiliation on the meaning of success despite heavily influenced by the contemporary portrayed western values through the extensive coverage of movies, drama, songs, news media and so on which emphasize on human rights, individualism and democracy although to certain extent remained as propaganda and not reflecting 100% the true reality. This article explores the cultural influence on definition of success on birth-rate, education attainment and general level of happiness

[The World Bank report] makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not. Groups of people develop different characteristics when they have evolved for thousands of years separately. Genetics and history interact …—LKY–1994 interview with Foreign Affairs

Declining Birth-rate Despite Having Higher Income Young families are facing a perfect storm fueled by the economic impacts of the pandemic, increased competition in the reforming and tightening labor market, as well as eroding sense of contentment to have more children which are the direct economical and psychological decision citing the exorbitant cost of raising them as the legitimate reasons despite most are having higher disposable income as compare to their parents one generation ago. The poorer tend to have more offspring not because their children are cheaper to raise, but its primary due to striving to have higher chance of one of their many children can escalate up the stagnant social mobility and lift the whole family up toward prosperity which had the highest priority for them. Last and not least, but not irrelevant, governing authorities didn’t want to hear about problems that the free market can’t solve as world’s birth rate declined as the poorest people were lifted out of poverty and as a result, the Rich didn’t have enough to sustain, and the Poor had too many to support.

“The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.”  — Billy Graham, evangelist

Nothing better exemplifies the gaping divide in Singapore than the latest dwindling birth rate from the 2020 census, unsurprisingly the Chinese and Indian races that primarily focuses on monetary performance had 50% lower birth rate compare to Malay and although it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the race relationship in Asia isn’t as bad as we thought; it’s much more complicated, Malay race and culture had primary differentiating definition of success apart from the mainstream key parameters. A religious and duty fulfilling individual who is responsible to his own family whom regard children as God given properties exercises minimum restraint on number of descendants, he is regarded as a successful man in his community whereas all others fall into the more broader criteria of mainly being pragmatic and materialistic achievement orientated; someone who is staying in high end properties, drives a continental car and travel for leisure frequently and having their children attending premium private schools with eye catching uniforms where all their neighbors can see would not consider the number of offspring as part of their Key Performance Indicators. In other words, fertility rate had everything to do with the values and lesser on the cost of raising them.

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.—Chuck Swindoll

Increasingly Competitive in Academic Attainment On the other hand, China recent clamping down on private tuition business had far-reaching consequences; Chinese Hans in general are obsessed with tangible achievements with the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence, beginning with the overzealous pursuit of children education probably due to the genetic DNA but its more related to the overall competitive environment with limited resources something that the past extensive hardships over few thousand years had conditioned. Although gaining an advantage over others from early age is becoming an increasingly expensive privilege often requiring supports and services that, whether provided at state operated education institutions or in a private schooling, can overwhelm all but the wealthiest parents. Most are obsessed with sending the children to private educational entities even when its beyond their financial means. That has intangible benefits and it’s leverage-able for parent. Educational reforms to date has not removed the economic benefits of premium academic qualification or changed the fact that we are a social species competing with each other for accessibility of scarcity in housing, jobs or even mates.  Similar narratives are playing out at other cities as there are 100 million Chinese ethnicity residing outside of China. Some of the mainstream races like Indian, Korean and Vietnamese are all having the similar tendency of placing overwhelming resource on educations.

 “If You are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people” – Chinese Proverb 

Asian treated academic attainment as key successful parameters but produced least amount of noble price winners. For majority, higher education as simply the key balancing instruments for higher social mobility rather than a place for the genuinely academic incline to pursue academic excellent. As a result, Taiwan, Singapore and Korea become one of the best educated, most disciplined and most self-reliant populations in the world to earn a decent living amid the global competition and technological advances.

Hedonistic Adaptation Effects on Level of Happiness Hedonistic adaptation refers to the notion that after positive events, and a subsequent increase in positive feelings, people return to a relatively stable, baseline level of affect. In other word the level of happiness is simply comparative, everyone knows but we still fall prey into the subconscious adjustment on the moving targets, the material attainment had a diminishing return once the basic fundamental sustenance had been taken care of. Although happiness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment, it is generally linked to experiencing more positive feelings than negative in the ratio of 5 to 1, we need to allocate 5 incidents of enlightenment to equalize 1 negative event due to our hunter gather’s inclination of lost aversion bias.  Happiness consisted of three major elements; physiological pleasure, meaningful life with value and purposes, engagement with commitment and participation in different area of life at varying stages of one life span usually in relation with families, friends and communities.

I wish everyone could become rich and famous so they could realize it’s not the answer – Jim Carrey

In summary, we can take advantage of this pandemic induced disruptions which had swept across all spectrum of our modern day living to align our definition of success which undeniably depending on who you are;  instead of struggling to make meaningful successful a reality with the unattainable key performance indexes as It’s much easier to embrace the relative successful criteria, even if it means fewer “like” and fewer moments of superior complexities over the neighbors on the already overburdened social media envies. Having personal pre-written scripts on acknowledging and endorsement of living a successful life helps too. In a nutshell, the culture is something one acts upon the respective social institutions, something most of us pick up while growing up on the norms and standards and so long we we are aware of them and strive toward these cultural and communities defining goals we can safely declare we are already living a successful despite imperfect lives.

The Butterfly Effects in Singapore Amid Covid 19 Pandemic

The risk-averse culture here proves costly in recent incidents involving illegal KTV activities reflected the desperate pleas for work particularly for industries decimated by this crisis; night life, entertainment, aviation, gyms and tourism. These are businesses and people desperate to resume earning an income for sustenance despite hefty supporting resources the relevant authority had arranged since the start of the ravaging outbreak in early 2020.

“Change before you have to.”– Jack Welch

Ironically, what the Government struggled to encourage employers for years was achieved in mere weeks by the pandemic. On the one hand, local authority is embracing shifts bringing forth more online initiatives as part of the social distancing and movement control measures in a bid to manage the ravaging outbreak. But on the other, it’s seeking to resuscitate the badly affected sectors. Ultimately surviving and even thriving these new arrangement in the long haul may require we to preemptively transform our mindsets.

“you can’t manage what you can’t measure”– Peter Drucker

On a hindsight. these KTV lounges which have pivoted to operate as food and beverage establishments was not surprising had become the latest growing Covid 19 clusters due to the exact nature of the business, the operators and the accommodating foreign hostesses (aka butterfly) blatantly flaunted the safe distancing measures mingling with the clients and ended up in the internal media headlines had indeed highlighted the following phenomena which wasn’t unique to Singapore but across all other cities.

“the people who are going to cheat, going to do illegal things, will do them anyway. They will use lounges, flats, warehouses, various places”—Law minister

Life finds a way –By Dr. Ian Malcolm. In what must be unprecedented across all segment history, the pre-established protocols was transformed, the sudden supply destruction caused by the pandemic but not on the demand side, perhaps it was even being made exuberant with the prolong periodic highly disruptive lock down in varying degrees as these are highly lucrative business involving alcoholic beverages and variety of vices, higher risk is always associated with greater probability of higher return, the relevant  foreign hostesses earn an exceptionally higher incomes as they had sacrificed their ultimate youth, pride and ego and taken up the probably most difficult jobs putting themselves at harm ways for potential abuses and exploitation for the love of their own families back home among other personal reasons and truly deserve our respects as they are after all making a honest living catering to the insatiable and pent-up demands in the service industry.

“You don’t need to teach a young crocodile to swim.”– Singapore Proverb

In fact, being rather pragmatic and practical, pre-pandemic arrangement was in placed to accommodate for this area of nightlife industries like the legalized brothers in specified locations which had effectively remained closed until now, in risking of them going underground instead, perhaps some control measures should be in place like mandatory mask wearing during the interaction like what was implemented for the re-opened massage therapy or having the COVID-19 ART negative and vaccinated passport as prerequisite in equivalent premises.

“Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.”― Hunter S. Thompson

Pandemic fatigue— Experts flag pandemic fatigue, resulting in increase in tolerance of taking risks. Changing rules of social engagement across the communities are shifting the norms magnifies fault lines in the society, and we need to be clear-eyed about this dream scenario where everyone is contended with the restrictions in every aspects of their lifestyle, not to mentioned many were physically separated from their families and more with their income being severely affected.

As when people get tired of the pandemic measures and become less likely to follow public health practices or simply begin to drown out those messages resulted in burnout  due to prolonged period of time without clear timeline and endgame and often presents itself as feeling restless, irritable, lacking motivation, and difficulty concentrating on tasks and these fatigue had eventually led to customers knowingly violated the mandatory temperature screening, identity reporting when they patronize these establishments getting their ration of fix of thrill, excitement and having primitive desires fulfilled exposing themselves and their love one to the risks of contracting the dreaded viruses, being vaccinated or not. This had triggered all 3 elements of AOJ; Ability to visit, Opportunity as these KTV are open for business despite illegally, Jeopardy as many of the patrons and service providers haven’t been fully vaccinated and remain unmasked most of the time especially they usually go in group and under the influence of alcohols.

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.“—Charles Mackay

Human nature prevails Multiple researches confirmed that the loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity, many had the sense of depression suddenly swells up within with the daily video call with the loves one ever since the start of the pandemic as many were physically separated from their loves one due to the border control. Although local authority is pragmatic enough to manage it rather than blanket clamping down and has disproved predictions of full compliance for the repeated restriction measures, the clamor for normalcy is being reflected worldwide, as some countries are being toppled with protests and others in a last-ditch effort to save their economy and polls with expedited vaccination initiatives as a prerequisite to remove the costly safe distancing, lock down and business shut down measures.

“But it’s still the only place to get a decent meal” – Groucho Marx.

In summary, either the metaverse which is a massively virtual world experienced in the first person by users equipped with augmented reality technology which can replace a desirable physical vibrant community; how people behave, their personalities, likes and dislikes, gait, eye movement and even emotional states or some kind of hybrid is made available maybe even having options to have access to virtual colorful butterflies. The physical Butterfly effect will continue to challenge the society not exclusive to Singapore, these restrictive measure risks disincentive effects for productive and reasonable but predictable behaviors in all social institutions and is gravely politically unpopular and everyone is looking forward to the day one can go back to the pre-pandemic lifestyles with minimum caveats. The reality is one many are unwilling to face: Covid is here to stay, variants will come and go and life must go on.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/police-raid-154-establishments-including-unlicensed-ktv-style-outlets-in-a

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/uncovering-the-ktv-butterfly-effect-in-singapore-as-covid-19-cluster-grows-to-88-cases