[ANN]Discovering future of Singapore

"The History Of Singapore," Discovery Channel`s new three-hour documentary, ends with an intriguing thought: is Singapore in 2005 going back to the past in some ways? As the republic seeks to remake itself, it once again has to rely on its own wits, to find new ways to eke out a living - just as it did decades ago.

The old certainty of steady foreign investment centered on manufacturing has been recalibrated. The emphasis has moved to renewed industries like tourism and new role models like digital animation expert Nickson Fong.

After 40 years of predictable growth that could be projected neatly in linear models, the world has changed. China`s factories and India`s service centers have thrown some old value propositions out the window. Hence the shifting of gears from integrated circuits to integrated resorts.

With the passing of the old paradigm of prosperity, hinged on a clockwork workforce of almost robotic automation, the economy is being recast. And with it has come a return to a society slightly more tolerant of human weaknesses, as in the old Singapore. A narcotic like opium is still outlawed, as Australia was reminded starkly these past weeks, but in gambling, chap ji kee is being upgraded to casinos. This aside, there are other, less obvious ways in which the Lion City should go back to an earlier time, but is not doing so fast enough or well enough.

Let`s just discuss one - the need to embrace the value of the arts. There was a time when Singapore was a ground-breaking city for the arts. Just think of Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling in literature, or Chen Chong Swee and Chen Wen Hsi in painting.

What is needed now is the same spirit of deep appreciation of artistic talent and the creativity only possible with an artistic outlook on life. But this is still not given the space and succor it requires to flourish.

Even in a universally promoted, politically safe medium like music, there is still a tendency to cling to foreign talents like Singapore-born pianist Melvyn Tan, who is now British, to make up for what is lacking at home.

In the Discovery program, a civil servant interviewee was quoted explaining the "secret" of Singapore`s success since the 1960s, extolling engineering and science and dismissing "less useful" subjects like literature.

Sadly, this old mindset is still prevalent in high places, sometimes where one would not expect to find it.

Once, speaking at a forum overseas, I tried to suggest that Singapore should do more to nurture the arts.

But a senior government representative who was also on the panel attacked this point, saying, "We can`t all become poets, or Singapore will go down the drain." I was taken aback. This well-known person, trained in the humanities, should not have been so well-converted to the dominant mindset of economic development to the extent of disparaging the arts.

I never said "everyone" should become poets, only that there should be just a little more understanding of what the arts can contribute. But the big problem with the engineering mindset is the tendency to see things in terms of zero or 100 percent, all or nothing.

Seeing things in stark black or white creates many problems, such as denying the Japanese musician Kitaro entry to Singapore in the 1970s because of his long hair. Today, celebrating the pony-tailed Nickson Fong shows how history`s wheel has turned. But hairstyle is superficial. Black-and-white disdain for the arts still runs deep.

And the detractors cannot appreciate how the arts nurture the ability to be comfortable with things being grey - which equips one to continually invent ways of doing things amid uncertainties and paradoxes. This is the new versatility crucial to the new economy.

Do not be fooled by all the lip service. Many policymakers with the old mindset are still in authority. They fail to realize that the new economic activities require an artistic sensibility - digital media and animation, film, tourism, internet-related businesses, tourism, travel, hospitality, education, entertainment, creative and service industries, just to name a few.

Even factory and lab R&D, as scientific as you can get, profit from a dose of the artistic mentality in imagining possibilities and seeing contradictory connections. The last thing we need now is the engineer`s rigid mode of thinking in terms of mechanical input/output, plus/minus.

As the Discovery Channel documentary showed, the best of Singapore`s development has been driven by a level of control that facilitates, rather than frustrates, a freer spirit of openness. In the longer story of Singapore, the engineering mentality might turn out to be just a footnote of history.

Koh Buck Song is the author and editor of 13 books, most recently "How Not To Make Money." - Ed.

By Koh Buck Song The Straits Times / Asia News Network