The tactless Sim Ann's joke

Sim Ann's shows her inexperience and insensitivity posting something like this on her facebook page. Don't you know that words often carry baggage? You are a smart woman, a President's scholar and winner of the PM's book prize.What happened?

The unstated and primary purpose of the National Conversation is to allow young neophyte highfliers like her to learn the ropes quickly. She will learn and also grow to understand more deeply what it is to be kind and to love. You don't "do or show a little more love or kindness" which is how character education is taught in our schools. That never worked, it only create the appearance of virtue. It is hypocritical. You only get it right if it comes from inside you.

Good and sincere politicians sooner or later must discover that if you have to tell a lie (the hazards of a life in politics), be prepared to live the lie such that it is no longer a lie. You can start with "doing kindness and love" but take that as the first step to eventually opening your heart to kindness and love. With time but not practice (that's hypocrisy and insincerity) the heart changes.

Now removed from the present toxic milieu, the joke is actually quite funny. Problem is that you just cannot divorce them from its context. It would be meaningless. Therefore the only time this joke is publicly safe is when those who cow-peh and cow-bu are frowned upon by most of society. They are spoilt. Unfortunately people now have many valid reasons to cow-peh and cow-bu. Just name one: the frequent trains break downs. Indeed Sim Ann has a long journey herself to learn to love and be kind.

You don't do love, you learn to love. You see love in action somewhere, hopefully at home and then you catch it. It is all learning by catching. The best way to get that is to be loved first and then somehow you are able to pass the love on. You can quicken the learning not by repaying love but by paying forward.

It is politically expedient to fake love and kindness through duty and discipline, but that is foolish. This government tend to be expedient than substantial over matters that are more spiritual or intangible. A related and more concrete example is religious and racial harmony. I worry that we have been faking it. Perhaps that's why LKY said we cannot have a non-Chinese PM for a very long time. The Americans take the bulls by its horns; very messy but with less hypocrisy. The product of that is the black President Obama.

If you fake it, i.e, you are insincere, people can sense it even if most cannot articulate it. The absence of light giving penetrating words versus heat from cow-pehs provides the fakers the space to continue being willfully blind. Nevertheless the leaders will eventually get it but often when it is too late.

Now if looking yourself in the mirror is too unbearable, just watch the hypocrisy of the CCP leaders in China. They professed to love and care for the people but in return they are hated more and more over time.   Leaders who had raised the standard of living of the Chinese that no emperor before had even come close.