Reading and Writing

Once upon a time, people were used to writing on the Internet rather than posting pictures. That was a long time ago- about 20 years ago at least. Then the Iphone changed everything.

Writing has a place in this world beside photos and videos. Writing and reading is like watching foreign art film, you know that is beautiful in spite of you not knowing what they are talking because it fires the neocortex of your brain- the rational part of your brain. The effect is not instantaneous but if you have patience, the payoff is cathartic. Let us see what photos and videos does to you and how does it differ from reading/writing, and really eventually convincing you that reading and writing is worth your effort.

Writing is not instantaneous. It does not come from the limbic part of your brain where all innate fears and desires reside. That means that it does not immediately satisfies the most primitive part of brain. It requires you to use the neocortex of your brain to edit and to articulate your thoughts into intelligible language. But when you are able to connect the dots from disparate parts of your brain, that is where the satisfaction resides. It means when the brain is firing away, the satisfaction is not like satisfying your hunger or thirst but more of a lingering effect of a aromatic coffee. It is control coupled with desire to form a structure that communicates not just to yourself but others.

You can build empires in your head with writing which is something what videos and photos cannot do. It is because that part of your brain is pure chaos. Dionysius run riot while we watch videos and photos. This is because we satisfying are an hunger, a thirst. It is purely biological. We are satisfying an innate desire for pure emotions, the emotional need to identify with others, to form an social and emotional connection. It is embedded deep down in our primitive limbic brain.

But when engage in reading or writing, we are engaging our neocortex of our brain- which was developed later in our evolution. The rational part of brain. In order to articulate our deep-down desires and fears, we need to engage our rational side to bring structure to our otherwise chaotic and disparate primitive desires and fears and not rational thoughts. 

And when we form structure to our chaos, that is when we are able to connect the dots to these dormant fears and desires. We can discover the "why" question. Why do we fear rats or cockroaches and for myself, heights. Thats when your full brain is firing away. Apollo will bring order to the chaos and thats when that lingering satisfaction occurs 

Thats when an aromatic cup of coffee satisfies the thirst and the brain.

And thats why we should read and write, beside consuming the incessant videos recommended by Facebook and Youtube.

Give to Take more

 It has been more than one year since I have written my last post. Now that I have been married and have my own family now, my creative energies have been placed on the backburner. There re much more different priorities and it set me thinking on one issue and that is: why do we exist?

It is a big question for everyone but I am like everyone else has been evolving everyday. We seek meaning in our lives everyday, everyday that we lived aimlessly is a life lived wasted. So let us talk about what life is about and what does meaning means to everyone of us. Lastly how we can lead a meaningful life.

Let us talk in first person now, life is not just about Maslow's hierarchy of needs where first seek to fulfill our basic needs before seeking self-actualization eventually. Long are the days where our life is " short, brutish and nasty." Though there are of some of us who actually have problems meeting our basic meets, even in the developing world, hunger and thirst are quite rare with rapid production of food to meet the world's food needs. 

What we want in life is life lived in colour and not in black and white. We seek friends and family to catch up. We work in jobs that requires us to expand our mental capacity and not just done in rote. Ultimately what we want in life is a life that is "lived" and not "lived". We live in the now and not in the past or in the future and definitely not vicariously.

Meaning in this sense, means to be social, to be creative and to be in a community. We look for connections and look for feedback on how to live a "good" life. Another loaded word. On what is a good life, is we are at one with the community and the community is at one with you.

For myself, I seek meaning through seeking the truth. I am curious about how the world works and how to crack the code on how to live a "good" life. I am at one with the community because it gives me a feedback on to lead a "good life" and I can contribute to this community further. When the community thrive, I thrive with it as well. Likewise, when I thrive, the community thrives as well because I can contribute and form a virtuous cycle. Meaning comes in the form of all the social bonds that I forged while I work towards this "good life".

The "good life" is not just about giving, it is also about taking. It is about giving so that we can take more. The ego cannot survive without the "ideal/superego" and "infantile desires" working in tandem.

Some see this as a tension, I see this as a virtuous cycle. We wish to have more but we are blunted by our selfless streak. This is not a choice between the two but a counterpoint played against one another to play a piece of beautiful music.

Earlier in the post, I wrote that I can be prescriptive on how to live a meaningful life. I lied and that is the whole point. Had I not enticed you to read on, would you have continued to read on. Now having read this short post, do you know how to lead a meaningful live. I bet you do now.

Merry Christmas.

Eugene

CPF Life- Retirement in Singapore- How Risky is it?

I was reading an article on Financial Times and it was stating that pension payments are falling as bond yields are falling. This is simply because bonds no longer provides a simple matching for the pensions liabilities as bond yields begin to fall to below zero.

In Singapore as bond yields begin to fall, it dawned on me how then does the Singapore government guarantees the pension payment to us -using our CPF- which effectively our pension or retirement scheme. They would not be able to use our CPF contributions to purchase bonds upon retirement to match our retirement needs as yields is now close to zero. [ just to be sure, 10 year SGS bond yields is 1.8% as of writing ( 17/11/2019]  This means that upon retirement, the government would not be able to purchase a government bond and pay you the interest payment as your monthly payout while protecting the principal. This means that the Singapore government would have to take on additional risk to pay you your monthly payouts on your CPF retirement scheme. My question is that how then does the Singapore government is able to do that for you without jeopardizing our retirement money? It is my belief that the Singapore is taking too much risk in their portfolio to guarantee their monthly payouts for you.

In this article, I will define what is retirement for you and how much money is required for you to retire. Secondly I will explain how does the government grow your retirement for you and pay you your retirement payouts and lastly propose what the government can do to protect their money without risking your retirement money.

What is Retirement?

What does retirement means to you? It can be relaxing on a beach day in and day out without worrying about money running out. Or it can mean covering just the basic necessities without worrying like food, clothing or shelter- or just to survive. I would define retirement as having a decent standard of living while living your post-working years out. That would mean the basics as well as some measure of frills such as a short trip overseas twice a year.

In Singapore, a recent article in Strait Times state that at $1,379 per month would suffice in Singapore to fulfill the definition above.  And that is a constant amount without taking consideration of inflation every year.

If you have the full retirement amount sum (FRS) or $176,000 if you are turning 55 in 2019, you get payouts of about $ 1350 to $1450 per month on the standard plan.

How does the government guarantee the retirement amount every year

You have been accumulating your CPF contribution since the first day that you are working. When you reach to age 55 or 65, you magically want to get some money out or suddenly you have monthly payouts when CPF asked you to do so. How then can the government guarantee that?

Based on numbers above, if you choose the standard plan, your yearly payout is ($1400 x 12= $16800) on a lump sum payment of $ 176,000 which is a payout of 9.5% payout on an average life expectancy of 85 years or a 20 year payout life. The total sum comes up $336,000 or 1.9 times principal sum. How then does government guarantee you that when SGS bond yields is 1.8%. Even when compounded- the returns is only 42% after a 20 year period!! This means that CPF cannot invest your principal upon reaching 65 in Singapore government bond to guarantee you the money.

If they were to pursue this strategy, you would have to make up the shortfall themselves.

When you contribute to your CPF, they would have to reinvest the money while you were working so that they can pay you when you stop working. But you have to bear in mind that you would have to pay an interest of up to 5% on your CPF balances while also guaranteeing your retirement.

The government would have to give your money to various sovereign wealth funds that we have and also their own government income to pay you these amounts.

Recently the government have announced the Net Investment Returns Framework to ensure that the government can fund themselves. What this means is that the government is spending your future reserves to fund themselves and on their nation. And this future reserves is invested in equities, risky assets which sometimes returns are not guranteed. And this includes your CPF contribution.

They invest in private equity, risky debt, real estate and other risky assets in order to ensure that they have funds to pay you and other government expenses.

This article is not about how to run a sovereign wealth funds or raising taxes to fund our expenses so I will not go there.

But suffice to say that we have to savvy and sophisticated enough in the financial markets to ensure that the song continues to be played in Singapore. Now do you realize that our CPF funds are actually built on a house of cards.

How then can we protect ourselves?

The sovereign wealth funds have been effective in running our money on our behalf. Generating out sized returns over the years to ensure that we do not need to raise excessive taxes to fund ourselves.

I would suggest that the government stop subsidizing our retirement and allow our populace to plan retirements for themselves. Right now, based on records, the government is ensuring our retirements so long as we keep working during our working lives. I would suggest, half the amount that the government provide for retirement and allow the population to have better control over their retirements.

There would be people who fall through the cracks, these are people who need the subsidies and not everyone.

In this way, we can potentially reduced our tax burden and building for the future rather than subsidizing the middle class.

Similarly, in this way, we can build up our private financial markets, allowing for our population to participate in more entrepreneurial ventures.

Admittedly, this would be a hard sell to the electorate who have been so used to subsidized retirement. But this is a bitter pill, I feel worth taking. This would move the needle in the trajectory of our nation rather than little incremental changes.

In sum, I have highlighted how much risk the Singapore government have taken in our investment portfolio to ensure the population's financial security. And I would hope that the government would release the tight leash that they have over the electorate's purse strings.

What is a good country

Today, I had a strange thought about running a country. It is not about me running a country per se but rather my thoughts about how a country or even any organization should be run.

Very often, we start from what the objectives of an organization should be run. But many a times, we run the risk of being narrow-minded of defining what a "good" country or organization is.

There are myriad number of divergent interests within a country that defining what is a "good" country is highly contentious. Different people have different opinions on what a "good" country is and sometimes, some appears more logical than other's and other's more idealistic but many if articulated correctly each have their valid points. For example, in pursuit of democratic principles, some may have run afoul with more authoritative regimes. While on one end, one may complained of oppression, meanwhile on the other end, the state will state that they were being treasonous. Havng said that, this is not a piece on which type of regime is better but rather trying to explain that both sides have their story.

At the risk of trying to sounding in support of oppressive regime, sometimes, democracy is not the be all and end all of all political aspirations. Democracies is simply a means of which accomplish several political ends rather than an political end itself. If democracies does certain things, I am pretty sure that even states and governments will give the people some power.

Then very often, we will quote North Korea as an example of an oppressive regime which makes servants out of their own people. Now even North Korea is opening up given the recent developments. Perhaps we know too little of the hermit country to comment that the people are not happy, or wants what everyone else is having. China with it's powerful Internet control, does not have widespread demonstrations for democratic reforms given its exposure to the outside world. I wonder what makes you think that every North Korean feel that they were "oppressed"

And of course authoritarian regimes is never welcomed but what we view as authoritarian might be viewed as protecting national values or being patriotic to other's. Which means that there is section of people whom still views such actions benignly or even positively.

I am not in support of oppressive or authoritarian regimes that much is clear but sometimes, some "democratic" supporters feel every act that restrict them by the state as "oppressive" and they feel that they were victimized even if they know they were doing something illegal. Some people even feel that the laws were made to control them and not to regulate everyone but just applied to them

There are many ways by which a country is run and that is what a democracy is made of. If a country is run by a group of "enlightened" people, wouldnt that run afoul with democratic principles.

Sometimes, supposed authoritarian regimes practiced democratic principles, they talk to various interest groups of people, forms committees and action groups with divergent interests and take action. Just that they don't vote formally!!

True governance does not come from a system but rather the people, no system is better than a united group of enlightened, intelligent and motivated people.

People find a way, not the system.

System is malleable but the man stands upright.

Inequality

I have written on so many different themes and subjects on this blog that it is difficult to really ascertain where all my interests lie.

But I believed that beneath all these writings, there is an overiding thread. That is the belief in social justice. It is my belief that every man needs to succeed to its best ability and unhindered by social obstacles that prevents him/her from fulfilling his/her best potential. It is just in this world that everyone is accorded to his needs and merits.

Therefore I discovered that I get enraged whenever I feel that certain segments of people are treated unfairly and not given the sufficient opportunity to succeed in life.

It is therefore that I feel inequality is a subject that I would like focused on in the future. Not just economic inequality, but social inequalities and power inequalities. All these various inequalities are intertwined together and have made poverty, the "untouchables" a reality of life.

Economic inequality is not just a function of "have" versus the "have-nots". It is also how society ascribe status to each segment of people that perpetuate this order. It is also power relationships in society seeking to perpetuate this order rather than trying to make this an "equal" and "just" society.

It must be said that I am never against the rich or the elite but rather how some have succeeded by leveraging on this unequal relationships. This is not to say the rich does not merit their status but rather how some may have "abuse" their status at the expense of other segments of society.

There are some of us who say that these people have gotten to their position by the virtue of their intelligence, hard work and dedication. They did not break any law and neither did they do anything "wrong" or "illegal" to get where they are.

But what they never realise is that they have not done anything "illegal" but in my opinion, in certain circumstances, they have done "socially unjust tasks" to ensure that they get to the top.

Take for example, it is never "wrong" in fraternizing with "rich", "powerful" and "elite" in getting what they want, but they have done in a manner which their "interest" are taken care of and not because they want to influence decisions to help the "weak" in society. These are socially "unjust" acts where they swing decisions to their favour over other segments of society which does not have access to these decision makers.

Resource-poor individuals and organizations might not have the ability to influence these decisions as they do not have access to the major decision makers.

It is quite unfortunate that the plight of the "have-nots" continue to be neglected because structurally, they are denied from having their voices being heard.

It is therefore from this on that I have decided to focus on inequality in society as this will never go away.

 

Worthiness and Worthlessness

"Tactics in conversation- After a conversation with a person one is best pleased with him when one had had an opportunity of exhibiting one's intelligence and amiability in all its glory. Shrewd people who wish to impress a person favourably make use of this circumstance, they provide him with the best opportunities for making a good joke, and so on in conversation. An amusing conversation might be imagined between two very shrewd persons, each wishing to impress the other favourably, and therefore each throwing to the other the finest chances in conversation, which neither of them accepted, so that the conversation might turn out spiritless and unattractive  because each assigned to the other the opportunity of being witty and charming."

Frederich Nietzsche, Human all too Human

"To injure and to be injured- It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg for forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character. The person injured, however, if he does not wish to be considered inhuman, must forgive, his enjoyment of the other's humiliation is insignificant on account of this constraint."

Frederich Nietzsche, Human all too Human

The above are two excerpts from Nietzsche's thoughts on man in society. It talks about human relations and human emotions. The above hits home on people whom have negative view on human to human relations but claimed to live positive and force giving life.

The above assumes that all emotions are merely constructed and cannot transpire without human instrumental agency. This means that all our actions are directed only for their interest and emotions are merely a protection of self-interest and self-worth.

I used to have this idea that humans- both man and woman are capable of altruistic or at least spontaneous emotions. I have began to question this idea recently. I have began to suspect and realise that some sections of society subscribe to this idea of all actions merely reflections of rational and self-interested thinking.

The idea that self-worth is based on an actual debasement of the "other" was an idea I have thought on an intellectual level but never experienced viscerally. It had occurred to me that some people really have that idea and it was an idea that they had hidden covertly behind many cloaks.

What type of cloaks that one might ask? They have hidden behind the cloaks talked about above. Behind the idea of human courtesies, decencies and last bastion of human discrimination behind the conscious mind. Discriminatory words are never exchanged and they are taboo and against human decency. Discrimination is based merely the conscious actions differentiating one from the other class or segment or category. It is politically incorrect to even mention the idea of any form of prejudice and yet it cannot be proven. This is because no correspondence was written, no words were exchanged and yet the invisible prejudice exist within society.

Differentiation were based on your self-worth and how well you reflect these class and stratum differences. Even if you belong to a lower grade, you must reflect your "class actions" otherwise, you would lose your self worth within your class and even within the wider society.

Based on the above excerpts, it is based on the ability to how well you reflect your "worthiness" and ironically "worthlessness" to the gaze.

Take for example, a blue collar worker inability to demonstrate his low status such as an "penchant" for junk food, "obesity" and uncontrollable urge for not "controlling" his human tics is a reflection of his status as a person who is workhorse and one who does the "grunt" work. The lack of ability to demonstrate this traits runs the risk of losing the status as such hence his livelihood even.

Therefore related to the above excerpt, the lack of ability to demonstrate his debasement to his more "superior" white collar workers show his hostility towards them. Their self-worth is based on their ability to inflict injury to their more sedentary and "nerdy" white collar colleagues by showing their machoism. Hence if one has a faithful deference to "management" white collar workers, it is a mere demonstration of weakness rather than a strength in spirit and human character. This is accepted from both sides, even from the white-collar workers.

This instrumental view on human action and behaviour is very telling once you see from the eyes of their self-interest and self-directed interested behaviour. In fact, class and strata differences are differentiated on their ability to reflect their self-worth or even worthlessness.

Their idea of identity is tied to power and influence they have over each other. The inability to coerce the other party's acknowledgement is a demonstration of weakness and is therefore essential to their identity.

It is therefore paradoxical that on both sides of the parties, they are essentially locking themselves into the identity closets and throwing away their key.

Clever and even brilliant to the way that the system is maintained but it is really at the altar of what makes a human that such differences and differentiation can be maintained.

Losing a job

Today, my company asked me to go. They could sense my displeasure with my work there and have decided to let me go.

Normally and in most instances, I would be very depressed and upset about losing my job.

But through this ordeal, I found it heartening to be surrounded by people who were supportive and loving in spite of my setbacks.

My wife has been a pillar of strength as usual and my mom, for once, did not reprimand me for losing my job. In fact they seem relieved that I got rid of such bad company in the office.

Although, it was depressing to lose a job but all these little things made my day and at the end of the day, I felt much lighter rather than heavier.