The Essentials Of Life And Where Do We Go From Here

We have done right on many counts of our governance. We have focussed very intensely on the primary and basic concerns of education, health, housing , employment and retirement. We have also forged a pluralistic yet united nation of a cosmopolitan mix. We have always never taken this for granted. We have also cultivated a strong military to safe-guard our national sovereignty.

With pluralism, we have seen the cross-fertilisation of many religions, cultures and particularly food. Our cuisines must be one of the most diverse and mixed that anyone has only to visit us to sample the world culinary smorgasbord.

We have also concentrated on our economy as this is the engine to drive growth which in turn fuels our other domestic needs for developing our infrastructure. We have adopted an open economy and the multi-nationals have come and transferred their expertise.

It is now time to move on, to be in higher-value scientific, technological , commercial and financial industries.

Perhaps even to move on to my Free and Natural Economy (aka Banana and free-loading economies) which I have explicated in my earlier blogs.

Much of our fundamentals are in place and the seedbed has been laid and solidified. What we need now is to layer on the other bedrocks of our society for us to leap ahead.

In education, we must move towards a more inquiry-based, scientific-oriented and knowledge-intensive curriculum which will inspire and churn out a new generation of international scientists and researchers. They will invent medicine for both old and new diseases, make our life more bearable in old age and create new industries around science and technology.

They will eliminate poverty, diseases and save the earth from environmental damage. They will mimick nature more and more in their production methods and products. They will help save and preserve all the existing and endangered species of plants and animals on earth.

They will demystify and unravel more of the scientific mysteries currently surrounding us. They will bridge our understanding more of ourselves and all of earth itself.

We must also aspire towards the arts, humanities and the social sciences as much as we do the biological and material sciences. We want to produce the next international best-seller science-fiction writer, fiction writer or popular science writer. A futurist and thinker.

Space exploration once thought unimaginable has happened. Even Aldous Huxley's Brave New World has predicted correctly some instances of its futurology.

I can see the region being a magnet for more anthropological research as South-east Asia must surely have within it its own treasure trove of geneticism, anthropo-paleontology, history and biologism. In fact I think our reserve must be open to scientists for their field-work and data collection on our distinctive flora and fauna.

Culturally, we have to leverage on our unique blend of racial, religious and linguistic mix to produce new and exciting food, performing and visual arts and language. This in turn will engender ideas for industry in new products and innovations.

Apart from driving the economy, people will need that extra space for themselves to pursue their own interests in the arts and sciences. Their economic activity must be closely tied to meaning in their lives, in their areas of passion , their intellectual, phenomenological and kinaethestic stimulation. After all we manifest intelligence in more than one way and we want to be able to optimise that in ways we can express it in.

We can only do that if there are new channels for us to divert our passions to. For sure I am not going to be teaching in any commercial or public school anytime soon as they are staid and hackneyed. I want to explore new avenues like in science, research and the liberal arts.

This must surely be Francis Fukuyama's precept in the Last Man whose spread of excellence will be in diverse fields : sports, arts and education for example.

We have most of our hardware in place. What we need is more software and operating system. It is people at the heart of all the things we do and thus the economy must centre on this. After all the economy caters to the needs and desires of the masses, does it not?

If there should be potentialities for conflict and grievances, it will be the blackhole of administration, huge income disparities, elitism, fair play, a level playing field, employment issues, jobs (or lack of jobs) , retirement, healthcare, sufficient amenities for recreation, quality and costs of living.

We must seriously address many of our current systems and practices to evaluate their impact, relevance, soundness, failings and disconnect in some instances.

In fact as I see it, Singapore's natural competitive advantages have always been its people and its land. We could have been the exotic Hawaii of the South Pacific or the Monte Carlo of the West Riveria, counting on our reserve and natural surrounds for tourism, idyllic frolicks and resort living.

We should have exported our intellectual capital in the arts, the sciences and the humanities, leveraging on our cosmopolite, a fusion of pluralistic diversity racially, culturally, linguistically and religiously. The thinkers, writers, performers, chefs and scientists.

This is how I see us moving on from here.