Splitting Singapore government into 5 to increase complexity and generate creativity to avert a “slow-motion collapse”
Following similar thoughts I have shared about the need to increase both structural and behavioural complexities in order to evolve or adapt to thrive in an earlier post, this interview with Professor Tay Kheng Soon, widely regarded as both a charismatic figure, and an outspoken protagonist of Singaporean and international architecture, and comprehensivist (in the Buckminster Fuller sense) further reinforces what seems to me a universal law of evolution. To those who have crossed paths with Singapore, I recommend that you read the interview in its entirety because it covers wide ranging issues facing Singapore from the 60s to the future and I am sure you would thank me for it. To others who don’t care much about the tiny red dot, I am going to highlight some of his brilliant thoughts that we can all learn something about from the perspective of complexity science below.
He began with a fundamental characteristic of complex systems, ie the interaction of many parts in an ecosystem.
You cannot see anything in isolation. Everything is related to everything else. So it’s a whole interconnected web of issues, and as you follow the logic of anything, it inevitably expands into a whole network of interconnected matters — politics, economics, the environment, people, education. It’s the huge web of life, isn’t it?
And their evolution or emergence as a whole.
The shaping and forming of an environment in which human capabilities can emerge. That is the most important thing.
The Engine of Complexity: Evolution as Computation?
Architecture is only a small part of that. The big part of that is the human settlement itself. The human settlement must be conceived of not as a well-functioning mechanism, as it is now, but to be conceived of as a living organism. The highest form of living organism is the human body. Why is it high functioning? It’s because it has an extensive nervous system along which huge amounts of information and stimulus are processed, which enables the human being to be highly responsive and creative.
Evolution happens when …
So when children, in their very important formative years, live close to where the social actions are, the cultural activities, the civic functions, the commercial goings-on, they become much smarter.
And…
So what it means is that, when you introduce to the central nervous system a housing estate, it means that the schools must be stretched out along the nervous system, which connects all the civic and the cultural functions along which, as people go about the routines of their everyday life, they will bump into each other, learn new things and increase their intelligence.
Decentralisation, self-organisation, diversity or heterogeneity in complex systems…
Now, the elitist model that we have, which is part of Lee Kuan Yew’s “Hard Truths”, is that in order to keep this country intact, you need centralised power. Centralised power means with all the intention of what they call inclusiveness and all those motherhood statements.
But centralisation is by definition, exclusivism, right? The future of Singapore means, if you want to have increased participation, you must decentralise. Take the Swiss model, divide Singapore into five parts. Turn the five community development councils into governments! So, we have five governments in Singapore, with one central government — the Swiss canton system. And let them compete with each other.
One intervention Singapore government has made to steer its evolution…But can it go one step further?
Well, the issue of diversity is even more important in a small unified state like Singapore because, the biggest problem in Singapore is human resource development. Kuan Yew has always lamented the fact that we don’t have enough talent because our population is small. Therefore we need a lot of foreign talent. I agree with him; we do need foreign talent to some extent. But, more importantly, we need to develop local talent.
Epigenetics, which is the new science that has been around for the last 15 years, is a very important contribution to genetic thinking. Epigenetics is a part of the human genome that switches on or off various genomic capacities, and this switching on and off in epigenetics is conditioned by the environment. Therefore, there is an interconnection between how you plan your physical environment and how you run the society and how the individual develops.
That means the hardware and the software that will switch on or switch off various kinds of capacities is important. My argument is that we’re not switching on enough of our creative capacities.
That’s the point, five constituencies, five separate governments — we must do that! That is the future of Singapore, provided we dare to move in that direction. But this is where Lee Kuan Yew has made, to me, the greatest error. Because, it is logical in his point of view, that the selection of leaders cannot rely on idealism because idealism is unreliable. Secondly, unless you pay people highly — you pay able people very highly — you will lose them. That’s the formula.
The above is the main learning point of this post — complexity can be a strength rather than a weakness.
We need, at this point, particularly because the global economy is in a shaky situation, a really robust culture that is able to liberate the suppressed capabilities in our own people. It should not be limited by size or genetics. If we do create that kind of environment, we will produce incredibly savvy and capable people without which we would not be able to deal with the unpredictable and difficult situations that the global situation will throw at us. So, this is our fundamental challenge.
Yes, a complex system is also an adaptive one.
Next, he is suggesting there is a need for a more dramatic change in which a system transition from chaos to order …
We need a system revolution, right? Where the revolution is going to come from — it’s going to come from crisis. Crisis is opportunity. Things don’t change if there’s no crisis. So, I think that the global economy is going to hit us, because the Singapore economy is based entirely on export; because the domestic economy is minuscule. Therefore, we need to face this fact, and we have to start early to prepare our people and to prepare our capabilities for the inevitable.
The inevitable is that the global system is already in a state of what I would describe as “slow-motion collapse”. The problem with a slow-motion collapse is that we always tend to defer the issue. When Lee Kuan Yew and his group of pioneer leaders faced the sudden collapse in 1965 of the divorce or expulsion from Malaysia, it was a crisis that hit everybody. And therefore, that crisis gave the pioneer leadership group the opportunity to define a new future.
The problem is that global crisis now doesn’t come like that. It’s insidious. It’s creeping and people can always excuse themselves and say: “Yes we need to change, but in good time.” I am sorry. Don’t have “good time”. We have to change now.
Complacency or order will lead to disorder and chaos — another fundamental characteristic of a complex system due to either endogenous or exogenous stimuli.
Therefore, the concept of the nervous system is an important means of organising physical social space whereby as people go about the routines of everyday life, they naturally come in contact. The key means is for the schools to be the natural social nexus. Once students become involved in the daily life or the activities of the community, a natural cohesiveness arise. Moreover, the kids will not only be book smart they will be life smart as well.
Finally, he again emphasize his point about making the social connections stronger to improve creativity and life in general.
But how do we sense where such a social complex system is heading and how can we intervene to attempt steer it in the desired direction? Collective or perhaps network intelligence seems to offer a glimpse of hope. Lets discuss further here.
