24 September 2004
A statement that MM Lee made needs to be addressed: “I do not believe that if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.”
An environment that promotes diversity offers less boundaries, allows room in developing ideas. The concept of not putting all of one’s eggs in one basket explains why diversity is critical in any dynamic climate.
In the education field; acedamics advocate “all rounded” education over limited ciriculum also suggests that diversity allow humans to explore and seek new experiences that might lead to creation of new ideas and innovation much needed in today’s dynamic environment; requiring dynamic problem solving skills.
Apparently, Singapore’s learned MM has conveniently forgotten about what the ruling party’s economic policies of attracting talents; why would the Singapore govenment want to attract talent from the different fields. Could it be because “foreign talents” are sort after everywhere in the world so Singapore must have them too? Just as other countries who have made used of casinos to attract tourists, Singapore must consider that too?
Or, it could be because Singapore’s education system has failed to produce the necessary “talent” and now she has to look else where for them. Ironically, the Singapore government probably realised that a “diverse” pool of talent are required to provide the much needed “diversity” required for ideas to developed and ultimately offer diverse/different business approaches and developing new products to offer to the world.
An evironment with “diversity” and “competing ideas” can only promote active and vigorous minds challenging every ideas at the same time accepting “diversity” and ultimately people living under such evironment are likely to be trained questioning about issues and practices that may not be relavant under current conditions.
Also, the population may thus accept and live with “diversity” in other aspects such as race, religion, political inclinations so on and so forth; again these issues if not addressed may affect the devleopment and progress of a nation.
Success can be measured in different areas and in varying degrees. For example, the economic success of the US has not lead to similar successes in its social/diplomatic relations with the rest of the world eg. the Third World nations and the middle eastern countries.
How one measures success requires serious thinking.
STEED