Atlantean Standards (Part II)

In the mighty shadow of legendary Atlantis is a tiny residue named the City of Lions, Sñgapur in the tongue of the Ancients. Today, I sat in Sñgapur along the concrete orchard with Gnomus and we meditated on the perversity of local standards. The once-colonial residents of the residue still have it in their cash-besotted heads that an overseas education at an institute with a Greater Name is always going to be superior.

Sadly, that is a myth in all kinds of cases except perhaps three. The local universities (actually, there are now four of them) are more than adequate for a serviceable education that is of relevance to the region. The only reasons you might profitably 'go overseas' are a) because the life in the metropolis of your destination is significantly more interesting and you will therefore learn more of the kinds of things which interest you and are actually nothing to do with what you are studying; b) because the quality of intellectual stimulation from unusual people and professors is very high, and it actually trickles down (as is not always the case) to the undergraduate population; and c) because you intend to live and work and have your being there, so you are actually halfway through the export process and will only come back (I'm not saying 'come home', note) as an expatriate of your new country.

Even sadder, there is one major reason why people want to 'go overseas', and it has nothing to do with education. In Sñgapur, there is a sizeable proportion of wealthy people who have had the accumulation and/or retention of wealth as one of their main existential pillars. The problem is that if you choose this as an existential pillar, it makes you feel more secure when that pillar is showing. It is hard to live for it (or with it as a given) and not defend its display (or display it as a defence of your existence).

That means, as Gnomus and I have found out to mixed sensations of hilarity and sober melancholy, that people spend money for ostentation's sake. If your education takes place somewhere which requires you to spend 200,000 local thalers, it is far more demonstrative of status than if it takes place here and costs you a tenth of that. Education is one of the few ways that a person can spend ostentatiously and still feel good about it, as well as defend the practice in any of the social circles that 'matter'. (Oddly, giving the same amount — for example, the 180,000 thalers saved — to charity feels wrong to most people here.)

But defences of practice are very strongly and quickly erected. Talk to any of the young people who are victims of this particular ostentation, and they will say, "Overseas education is good for you. You will be less narrow-minded and you will become a more effective human being, able to appreciate more things and understand more about life!"

Bollocks, really. Take a moment to reflect on the logical and empirical reality.

If overseas education (in general principle) is good for you, then the people at your destination should come down to the various states in this region for their education. If they don't, then they are narrow-minded. Hence you will be surrounded by narrow-minded people. Of course, if they all come here, and your friends all go there, then you will be surrounded by the same people that you have been with all along, which is hardly a recipe for learning something new about people.

More to the point, if you believe that people educated in local universities are narrow-minded, then this blog must be written by a singularly narrow-minded person who hangs out with other narrow-minded people (like the Policeman and my own Lady) who have all been educated here. I would love to see a student walk up to Gnomus and accuse him of having too narrow an education. And I would genuinely be glad if a student, after reading every post in this blog, came up to me and said, "Findings-writer, I think your education is narrower than mine." I would learn something new, then.

Why then are people in Sñgapur seen as narrow-minded? Is the writer of this blog an exceptional case?

Let me try to answer these questions in the context of higher education.

In general (and I must stress, IN GENERAL), Sñgapurians are very focussed individuals who don't realise that even when we are being (or trying to be) avant-garde, artistic, creative, iconoclastic (etc, etc), we are still chained by their colonial past and our mercantile ancestry.

When it comes to education, the former makes us tend to rank other cultures tacitly in this order: 1) Western because of the Enlightenment, with Anglo-Americans first because they speak English, the colonial Master-Tongue, and with special dispensations for other Europeans in various areas of snob appeal; 2) Asian because all major civilisations and religions spring from the zone between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Pacific Ocean; 3) others because they are 'other than'. Some will dispute this, but it's quite clear from university choices that we are overwhelmingly Anglophone in higher education because of our common colonial legacy of language. Most often, people here are just bored and want something new. Anything will do.

The latter, our mercantile ancestry and related familial culture makes us tend to evaluate everything in terms of economic factors — the consequent mental ranking does not normally conflict with the other ranking. This is why Sñgapurians are often narrow-minded. A lot of us can't escape our chains. Especially if we are chained by economics (such as government bonds, personal wealth and the need to display it, and the idea of financial value).

Am I an exceptional case? Actually, we are all exceptional cases if we choose to be. It only takes a bit of effort to stop living life as if analysis consists of polling your relatives and friends and favourite websites, and start thinking about who you really are and what you intend to do with your life.

In this post, I have only outlined a general situation. It is not true that all Sñgapurians are like this, or that those who go overseas have no legitimate reason for doing so. Some have very good reasons for doing so; some of them have excellent reasons without even knowing what these might be. Some will gain a lot from an overseas education, even if you exclude the bonuses that a Greater Name education can bring because of the associated memetic payload. It is also true that Sñgapurians can be narrow-minded for many other reasons, sometimes to do with religion or mental capacity.

All that Gnomus and I want is for the students who we taught and who we still teach to be able to choose their course based on firm principles (whether materialist or spiritual or otherwise) and be honest about those principles. If you are bored with being a resident in a residue, say so. If you want the status associated with a Greater Name, say so. That's the least that anyone can ask of you.