22 Jul 2007, ST
Generation aXed
By Cheong Suk-Wai
THERE are conversations and there are conversations, but a chat I had with a virtual stranger over lunch recently just about takes the cake.
All I will say of my lunchmate, whom I was meeting for work, is that he is quintessentially a gentleman, and a hugely successful one at that, as far as education and material pursuits go.
After talking shop for a few minutes, apropos of nothing, he launched into his theory of how health services everywhere were buckling under a barrage of diseased patients because those with weak genes - ergo, those more susceptible to diseases - were continuing to procreate.
Nothing wrong with that view, you might think, except that his idea of weak genes were the blue-collar folk among us, or 'labourers' as he called them. 'Labourers,' he said, 'keep passing on their weak genes because they tend to have many children.'
I fairly choked on my fish porridge.
Now I don't know what he made of me, but my stunned silence throughout his tirade did not mean I agreed with it.
In fact, I was biting my tongue because I knew of at least two sons of menial labourers - my uncles - who are now professors in universities overseas and whose offspring - my cousins, nieces and nephews - are bankers in New York and Sydney, surgeons in Glasgow and Melbourne, and lawyers in London and Toronto.
And what of the scores of hard-luck immigrants, with the proverbial two cents in their pockets, who washed up on Singapore's shores and turned it into Metropolis Extraordinaire today?
What would he make of me, the granddaughter of labourers?
If I had met my lunchmate 10 years ago, I might have had a few choice things to say to him.
But time and tribulation have taught me that the best response to such head-scratching pronouncements is to say what you know in the very pit of your gut to be right and real.
And you have to say it with much care for the person's feelings, because his view could be just as valid and, well, he is human after all.
So I asked him, gently and innocent-like: 'What would a world with only strong and smart people be like?
'What would competition be like when there are only good genes to compete against other good genes?'
'A world of smart, strong people,' he started to say but, perhaps sensing that I remained unconvinced, fell silent.
As my father likes to remind me, a world where everyone was gentle and good would be a very dull one indeed.
Life is, after all, a big test, and how would we be able to tell good from bad, if there were nothing bad to compare good against?
And what would the value of goodness be if goodness was a given?
I AM no expert on how genes, strong or weak, determine strength and intelligence, but Canadian psychology professor Steven Pinker is.
Prof Pinker, who wrote the clear and wise book, The Blank Slate (2003), told me in a chat not so long ago that science today has shown that nature, not nurture, maketh the man.
That means who you are depends on the bundle of genes you get, so no one is born pure of mind and heart, to be corrupted later by culture and circumstance.
Still, he stressed: 'By the way, intelligence is not the only morally desirable trait. A person with a high IQ would have little if he did not also have common sense, compassion and credibility.'
Touche.
In The Blank Slate, he tells of the time when Nobel Laureate George Wald, an American biochemist famous for decrying the Vietnam War publicly, was asked to donate his semen to a sperm bank for Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
Prof Wald said: 'If you want sperm that produces Nobel Prize winners, you should be contacting people like my father, a poor immigrant tailor.
'What have my sperm given to the world? Two guitarists!'
As Prof Pinker pointed out in my chat with him, strong genes or weak genes, you can always choose how you behave because 'genes do not pull your muscles every which way'.
THERE is much to be said about struggling against one's nature to be better - and having the hunger to stick it out.
In my younger sister's case, the hunger is literal.
The other day, after telling her about my 'strong gene, weak gene' lunch, I asked what she was doing for food these days, remembering that, as a factory clerk, she would live on bread and Milo for weeks so she could save for her dreams long overshadowed by my supposed achievements.
Well, having ventured out of our small town to live out her dreams in Kuala Lumpur in recent months, she is baulking at the high cost of living there.
She's cramped into a small university-sponsored flat with eight other women, with no fridge for the fresh milk she loves. I wanted to buy her one, but she said no, there are enough petty politics from eight strangers under one roof.
Conscious of not drawing a salary at the moment, she assured me she was well, then said: 'I like chappati with dhal best, but I have to think twice about buying two, because it's now RM1.50 (66 Singapore cents) for just one chappati with curry.'
The bun I was snacking on amid all this suddenly tasted tinny on my tongue.
So, even as my sister counts her chappatis, I pray that she may find a good and kind man she can have many happy babies with - strong and weak genes be damned.
Generation aXed
By Cheong Suk-Wai
THERE are conversations and there are conversations, but a chat I had with a virtual stranger over lunch recently just about takes the cake.
All I will say of my lunchmate, whom I was meeting for work, is that he is quintessentially a gentleman, and a hugely successful one at that, as far as education and material pursuits go.
After talking shop for a few minutes, apropos of nothing, he launched into his theory of how health services everywhere were buckling under a barrage of diseased patients because those with weak genes - ergo, those more susceptible to diseases - were continuing to procreate.
Nothing wrong with that view, you might think, except that his idea of weak genes were the blue-collar folk among us, or 'labourers' as he called them. 'Labourers,' he said, 'keep passing on their weak genes because they tend to have many children.'
I fairly choked on my fish porridge.
Now I don't know what he made of me, but my stunned silence throughout his tirade did not mean I agreed with it.
In fact, I was biting my tongue because I knew of at least two sons of menial labourers - my uncles - who are now professors in universities overseas and whose offspring - my cousins, nieces and nephews - are bankers in New York and Sydney, surgeons in Glasgow and Melbourne, and lawyers in London and Toronto.
And what of the scores of hard-luck immigrants, with the proverbial two cents in their pockets, who washed up on Singapore's shores and turned it into Metropolis Extraordinaire today?
What would he make of me, the granddaughter of labourers?
If I had met my lunchmate 10 years ago, I might have had a few choice things to say to him.
But time and tribulation have taught me that the best response to such head-scratching pronouncements is to say what you know in the very pit of your gut to be right and real.
And you have to say it with much care for the person's feelings, because his view could be just as valid and, well, he is human after all.
So I asked him, gently and innocent-like: 'What would a world with only strong and smart people be like?
'What would competition be like when there are only good genes to compete against other good genes?'
'A world of smart, strong people,' he started to say but, perhaps sensing that I remained unconvinced, fell silent.
As my father likes to remind me, a world where everyone was gentle and good would be a very dull one indeed.
Life is, after all, a big test, and how would we be able to tell good from bad, if there were nothing bad to compare good against?
And what would the value of goodness be if goodness was a given?
I AM no expert on how genes, strong or weak, determine strength and intelligence, but Canadian psychology professor Steven Pinker is.
Prof Pinker, who wrote the clear and wise book, The Blank Slate (2003), told me in a chat not so long ago that science today has shown that nature, not nurture, maketh the man.
That means who you are depends on the bundle of genes you get, so no one is born pure of mind and heart, to be corrupted later by culture and circumstance.
Still, he stressed: 'By the way, intelligence is not the only morally desirable trait. A person with a high IQ would have little if he did not also have common sense, compassion and credibility.'
Touche.
In The Blank Slate, he tells of the time when Nobel Laureate George Wald, an American biochemist famous for decrying the Vietnam War publicly, was asked to donate his semen to a sperm bank for Nobel Prize-winning scientists.
Prof Wald said: 'If you want sperm that produces Nobel Prize winners, you should be contacting people like my father, a poor immigrant tailor.
'What have my sperm given to the world? Two guitarists!'
As Prof Pinker pointed out in my chat with him, strong genes or weak genes, you can always choose how you behave because 'genes do not pull your muscles every which way'.
THERE is much to be said about struggling against one's nature to be better - and having the hunger to stick it out.
In my younger sister's case, the hunger is literal.
The other day, after telling her about my 'strong gene, weak gene' lunch, I asked what she was doing for food these days, remembering that, as a factory clerk, she would live on bread and Milo for weeks so she could save for her dreams long overshadowed by my supposed achievements.
Well, having ventured out of our small town to live out her dreams in Kuala Lumpur in recent months, she is baulking at the high cost of living there.
She's cramped into a small university-sponsored flat with eight other women, with no fridge for the fresh milk she loves. I wanted to buy her one, but she said no, there are enough petty politics from eight strangers under one roof.
Conscious of not drawing a salary at the moment, she assured me she was well, then said: 'I like chappati with dhal best, but I have to think twice about buying two, because it's now RM1.50 (66 Singapore cents) for just one chappati with curry.'
The bun I was snacking on amid all this suddenly tasted tinny on my tongue.
So, even as my sister counts her chappatis, I pray that she may find a good and kind man she can have many happy babies with - strong and weak genes be damned.
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