I have seen the future, and it is pretty creepy

From Down Under I crossed the equator and am now Up Over in Singapore. The Lion City, as they call it, is a pint-size city state, perhaps a quarter of a Rhode Island but don’t hold me to it. It is an economic dynamo, one of the “Asian Tigers” along with Taiwan, Hong Kong and a few others (any Google monkeys out there care to help out?) The population of 4.6 million is mostly ethnic Chinese, with a minority of Malays and Indians, and a handful of former European colonists and their progeny who don’t seem to know when to go home.

In a few short decades Singapore is said to have made an amazing leap from third world to first, from rickshaws to monorails. I don’t know that this quite captures it since Singapore doesn’t feel like any first world place I’ve ever been. It’s a sort of over-scaled post-modern future world theme park of a place. As though it blew right through first world to something else entirely and we need a new term. There’s a lot to admire in Singapore, and some things to make one feel uneasy.

The Singapore city center is a sea of skyscrapers and immense shopping complexes, many named for sponsoring corporate giants. Everything is connected by underpasses, overpasses, and more escalators than I thought existed on the planet. LCD screens and neon are everywhere, computerized voices talk to you from all sides, a hyper-efficient bus and subway system runs throughout. The subway, called the MRT, is the sleekest I’ve seen with whisper quiet trains, a magnetic fare card you just wave, and helpful signs and maps everywhere. The streets are meticulously marked, with huge LCD screens reminding you to have a nice day, and you are never far from a public restroom or bench. Everything is insanely efficient and absolutely nothing is ever out of order.

Beyond efficiency, the place is pretty. There are extensive public parks between the skyscrapers. The architecture is innovative and sometimes interesting. The harbor and river from an attractive setting for open air restaurants and bars. The streets and highways are lined with lush plantings. Public art – murals, mosaics, fountains and sculpture -- is everywhere. I went on a walking tour of the old harbor district that was cleverly illustrated with life-size bronze figures– coolies unloading bullock carts, money lenders on the docks, street urchins diving into the river, and so on.

The thing about Singapore that I just couldn’t get over was how clean it is. As an experiment I timed five minutes of random strolling before finding a piece of litter. I was there for the Chinese New Year celebration with a parade and hundreds of thousands of spectators. Moments after it ended the cleaning trucks came by to sweep the streets. But so well trained are the Singaporeans that I didn’t see anything on the streets worth cleaning.

It’s clearly a hardworking city, but there is nothing grim about it. Leisure activities of choice seem to be primarily of shopping and eating, and opportunities for both are everywhere. For fun and games there is an extensive recreation complex on the offshore island of Sentosa, reachable by road, ferry, cable car and monorail, that offers all manner of theme-park-esque amusements. The people are polite and most speak some English. Crime in is minimal, the streets are safe at all hours, and violence hardly known. Public housing is readily available and people can buy their flats and become homeowners. Amid all this modernity the cultural roots still show through. The Chinese, Indian and Malay strands seem firmly represented in food, clothing, shopping and arts. Skyscrapers aren’t built until they are certified as having correct feng shui and fortune tellers and herbal remedies cooexist amid the modern stores and malls.

So what is the catch? I’m not sure there is one. A typical criticism you hear of Singapore is that it achieves its spic and span prosperity with draconian laws. There are harsh fines for littering and chewing gum is illegal. Well, at the risk of forfeiting my ACLU membership, is that so terrible? What civil liberty is exercised by throwing trash on the street or scrawling graffiti on a public wall? I suppose that a right to chew gum might be found in a constitutional penumbra somewhere, but I can’t say I miss the wads of gum stuck to the underside of every horizontal surface. They have the death penalty for drug dealers, and you can certainly dispute that, but with a history of crippling drug addiction going back to the opium dens I can’t argue with harsh punishment for drug trafficking. To the extent they have managed to virtually eliminate illegal drug use, isn’t that more humane than the US’ confused approach with a huge prison population held for minor drug offenses Singapore doesn’t feel like a police state; you don’t see armed men on the street, though with Singaporean efficiency, I expect they see all that goes on through video cameras. Yes, there is something nannyish, if not ominous, about a government that posts signs by urinals reminding people not to puddle. Still, you appreciate the lack of floor puddles.

“What gives, Walkabout?” I hear you cry. “We look to you as a noble defender of freedom and civil liberties, even though you have never really done anything beyond make small annual contributions to organizations that pester you sufficiently by mail. Yet here you are, making apologies for what appears to be a Nazi Disneyland.” And you make a valid point, at least as to my nobility. But it is more complicated than that. I don’t think that disorder equates to freedom or that order is by any means its enemy. I’d go so far as to say assert that disorder more frequently results in loss of freedoms (cases look at Weimer Germany, Russia in the ‘90s, and post 9/11 America). People will choose orderly tyranny over chaotic freedom so best not to give them that choice. It is illusory to depend on governmental incompetence to safeguard freedom. The Soviet government was generally incompetent, but that didn’t stop the KGB from being a first rate secret police. About the only thing Saddam Hussein was any good at was suppressing his people. I’m not defending the state of civil liberties in Singapore – I don’t know enough to comment. I’m just saying that I don’t see where hefty fines for littering abridges any personal freedoms worth preserving.

The criticism of Singapore that for me sinks a little deeper is more of an aesthetic than a political one. All of this cleanliness, order and efficiency has a sort of sterility to it. It is like living inside a shopping mall. Everything seems designed by neutral passionless corporations to be pleasant, productive and profitable. Your local main street, if you are lucky enough to still have a real one, isn’t necessarily as clean, orderly or efficient. Some of the shop owners don’t keep their sidewalks clean, the food in the local restaurant may not be as consistently edible as Olive Garden, the stores may not be as well stocked or the prices as low as at Best Buy. But the stores are owned and run by real people who hopefully care about their customers and products, not just employees following a script written in Bentonville Arkansas, or wherever. And while the result may sometimes be poor, it may also be excellent. And the overall experience is far more human and satisfying.

A good illustration is the new Singapore National Museum. They took an old colonial building and gutted it, adding cavernous glass atriums. They must have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it, as well as a bunch of slickly packaged 360 degree movies, slide shows and displays on Singapore history, food, art and so on. All these were connected with the ubiquitous escalators going every which way and a bizarre mag card access system you need to swipe to get into each room. You are also given a personal video walkman “companion” to guide you.

The problem is it was all ghastly. They had managed to sandblast away any history in the original building and produce an empty glass box. It looked like the product of a faceless committee that had surveyed national museums around the world, found out what was most popular, and then awarded contacts to local marketing companies to put together flashy films or displays. It was one of the more boring and depressing places I’ve been. And this is their place to show visitors what their country is all about!

So my basic criticism is of the corporate mentality permeating the place. Corporations can be real good at running profitable businesses. They can put together neat and tidy and profitable shopping malls and office towers, but they fall short on tasks requiring creativity and inspiration and where that is needed what they produce is often hollow. The best corporations recognize this as a challenge and look for ways to free up the creativity of their employees. But it is a challenge, since the essence of a corporation is that you are responsible up the chain and ultimately will be judged not on creativity but on measurable contributions to the bottom line. We certainly have plenty of this attitude in the US. Singapore just seems to have gone a bit further down that road and may show us where we are heading. And that is responsible both for the enviable economic success of the place and the feeling of unease it leaves me with.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

Note to Self –

Self, this post is long and tedious. It lacks the crisp wit we strive for. Where is the irony? The tortured logic, paradox and self-referential maze that characterize a good Walkabout post are entirely missing. As is the schizoid trick where we create a foil to argue both sides of an issue. (Well, actually there is a bit of that in the 7^th paragraph. Quite right, sorry, and also in this Note, now that I mention it.) Also, we never get around to abusing our sub-sentient scum of a readership. This is definitely not a candidate for the ‘best of the Walkabout Blog’ reruns we will post over the Summer. Most importantly, remember to delete this Note when we post to the blog! I mean the entire Note, not just the