LKY: The Red Box and Passion

First thing my kids remarked when they saw this red box was, they have something like this for PM Hacker in, "Yes, Prime Minister". I told them we inherited our system from the British. If it was helpful we keep it, no need reinvent the wheel.

Heng Swee Keat story of this red box was an interesting read. Coming after reading too much about LKY that it is starting to weary me, my thoughts are straying to other matters. I was surprised where they were leading me.

This man was as obsessed as Paul of Tarsus.

Now Paul lived and died nearly two thousand years ago. It is hard to piece together his passion and hard work. Myths surrounding the man also made it doubly hard to understand him, but as lots of information about LKY begun to appear, I thought I was beginning to understand Paul better.

Paul was obsessed with his relationship with Jesus whom he never met in this life. So he directed his passion toward what is closest to his new Lord: the community of believers which became the Church.

Few Christians treasure and invest themselves to know their Lord. They usually jumped into it in many lazy ways to many to enumerate. So they don't get rewarded.

My children told me how Newton obsessed himself with natural philosophy and was amply rewarded. Darwin obsessed over nature and so figured out the process of natural selection.

Occasionally we have seen Paul again in the likes some Christian saints down the centuries and closest to our times Mother Teresa. Yet none was as manifold as the original Paul. If we can't have Paul, any that approximates him is good enough. Ditto LKY.

Where to find the next LKY? He or she is someone as obsessed with Singapore at the original was.

We can only look for him or her, more likely he or she will surface without our looking. Don't bother looking at anyone in our present parliament. Just like the Dalai Lama, the successor do not make its entrance until the incumbent has left.

Were Christians as obsessed with their Lord as Lee Kuan Yew was with Singapore, but Christians love to look in all the wrong places, and act as they please. What relationship? what way of the Cross? Jesus is best as Santa Claus or counselor and problem solver. It is always about them and not their Lord.

What if we do not have another LKY? We will have to make do wishfully trading one giant CPU for many smaller in a massively parallel processing configuration. The magic sauce is the software that connect these processors. Perhaps that is the way to go. We have to build that software. LKY tried but doesn't look like he succeeded. At least I think he bought us time.

Like Paul, the man was selfless. Paul was often misunderstood and the same fate befalls LKY. I don't understand him either. On the other hand now that he is gone, I can see him as long as I am in Singapore looking out of any window.

We will never understand him and in time he will be mythologized. He expected scholars to study him and I sincerely hope they do as the Americans are still studying their founding fathers.