Transcription
What I'm hearing from the book is that cut the people some slack. Don't be so uptight. Some things can let go, let go. Ah.
We live in a society where people do have different belief systems. There is variation in what people want. People don't all want the same things. Inequality is partly about how people face very different conditions to meet quite similar needs. There is something about the broader environment that shapes everybody's lives.
Welcome back to Choose with TFC. I'm your host Reggie, aka your chief financial coconut. And today we have yet another I know I always say it's interesting, okay, but that is that is the my job, right? Every every episode have to be interesting. Always looking for new ideas, new angles, new content. So today I'm in studio with a legend, okay? She wrote the best seller 8 years ago and this year when she released her new book, the old book also become best seller, right?
[laughter]
Not many people like that, right? And so I am very very excited to be in studio with Yo-Yo Yen, author of This is What Inequality Looks Like and her new book Unease. Yeah, can I pass that? Promotion [laughter] done. Thank you very much, Reggie. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me back. For for our audience that somehow still don't know you, although the episode went very viral, you know, like could you just introduce yourself, introduce your work?
My name is Teo You Yenn. I'm a sociologist. I'm associate professor at Nanyang Technological University and I'm also director for the Center for the Study of Social Inequality.
That's like the new thing, right?
Yes, it is a center I just started with my colleague Shannon Ang.
Okay.
Just one year. We're still Still figuring out. Still paddling the boat out of
[laughter]
So there's no like out into open waters very [clears throat] gradually. Is there like a like a mandate of some sort or like What are you trying to do?
Yeah, our our broad goal is this that we think there are a lot of interesting academics doing work on inequality in Singapore across different disciplines. Myself and Shannon are from sociology, but we have colleagues from economics, from psychology, from public policy, from education, from city planning. We have a range of people in Singapore actually doing work on inequality, and we think it is a good time to bring people together a bit more so that we can learn about each other's work across disciplines and amplify each other's work. So, the one of the purposes of the center is really to bring people together, you know, lead to collaborations leading to more sort of helping each other, pushing each other's work a bit further. And also because we're very interested in publicly oriented work. The center also wants to encourage and build more capacity for doing publicly oriented social science.
Okay, okay. So, on why do you think that is the right time now? And what does publicly oriented work mean?
[laughter] [gasps]
Publicly oriented social science means I guess I should back up and say I think public universities are very important spaces where the public public resources are directed into both education as well as research. And in the humanities and social science in particular, a lot of the research we do actually relates to ordinary people's needs, ordinary people's interests, ordinary people's problems, right? And there is a lot of research that I think can be quite helpful for answering maybe questions people have or for helping people engage more in kind of the the broader process of of of thinking about problems or of making decisions. But to do that, the public has to have access to information and to knowledge. And academics have to play a role in in doing that, in bringing their research, you know, out into the public. In in sort of thinking about their research in those terms so that they do research that addresses the public's problems, but also then after they do the research to bring it back to the public and and use that, you know, use use use results from research, you know, to open up space for conversation.
Mhm. Recently, I think there's a little bit more of I mean like writing a book that reaches a end audience that's not academically trained, essentially is a big part of spreading these messages, right?
Yeah, I think it's one of the roles, you know, I think people um doing different kinds of research, not every kind of research lends itself well to a book, right? A book A book is a particular kind of medium, a particular kind of format. I'm not saying everybody needs to write books, but it so happens for for the topic I work on and for the things I like to do and the way I like to write, I have found that it seems to be a medium that works for me and I love to write. I mean, I'm still a bit surprised, but very grateful that so many people want to read my work.
There is a certain way of writing, right? That I think because previously I only read one book, right? So I was like, "Okay, this is a good quite well written for
[laughter]
a very heavy topic." I I could kind of understand, but then now I read the second so okay, there's a style. I slowly see the style.
think so?
Yeah, there is there is a style. So
What what do you think is the style?
it's that whole ability to capture a little bit of what your interviewees are telling you, but then elaborate it in a way that I can kind of understand without adding too much of the technical jargons, right? So, it does feel like sometimes I'm talking to you, sometimes I'm like the person next to you listening to the interviewee. That has been a consistent theme. Although, I was hoping for more graphs and like diagrams, [laughter] you know? But, but it's a Not my forte. That one's not my forte.
different different beast altogether. So, yeah, maybe give me a bit of a color and flavor. And then there are a lot of stuff we'll talk about the book and some of the the ideas I would like to ask you in after reading the book, but I think it's it's right to start with why why unease, right? Like why this book?
Yeah, yeah. So, in in scholarly research actually a lot of times we when we when we do one project, that project leads to the next project. Another way of saying that is to say sometimes you do one project and you finish up and then already you see all the legs. So, in some ways this book is born out of the legs of my last book.
[laughter]
Or my last two books. I actually before this is what inequality looks like, I wrote a an academic book, yeah? Yeah. Um, and so with this is what inequality looks like as as you know, but maybe I should say it in, you know, we shouldn't presume everybody has read it, right?
Although, she's a best seller, no?
[laughter]
But, um Apparently, one of the best selling non-fiction category. Nobody has beat this, okay? That that book was a series of essays I wrote, you know, that was based on research I did, what's called ethnographic research. I I did these observations in a number of low-income communities, low-income households. So, the book that project when I started was a project trying to understand what is poverty in Singapore, how should we think about it, what is the experience of poverty in Singapore. But, in academic work a lot of times even before you you write a book, right? You give talks, uh you write short pieces. Uh, in my case I also wrote some op-eds based on that work. And after I did based on the kind of responses I got, I saw that uh I saw two things. One is that I saw that there was quite a lot of public interest on it, that people were quite perplexed, maybe, to hear that there is poverty in Singapore, and quite perplexed, and uh sometimes a bit upset with what I was saying about what I was seeing. But clearly, there was a kind of interest, yeah? Maybe similar to what you said earlier before we started recording, that there is a certain kind of intrigue about this topic that is a little bit invisible. So, I saw interest. Secondly, however, I saw that there was a way in which it was very easy to park the topic like an aside, like it's peripheral to the bigger Singapore story. It's an exceptional story, yeah? And so, I felt like if I only wrote a book that focused only on on poverty, I would be perpetuating that problem of kind of making it seem as if it is a problem of a very small group only, and we can quarantine it from the rest from thinking about our broader society. So, I decided to write a book called This Is What Inequality Looks Like, right? And I insisted that we have to think about poverty and inequality simultaneously. And the way I did it was actually I brought in my own experience and my own voice as a juxtaposition. My own experience as a as a professor, right? As a sort of more class privileged person, because I could see that that the difference between my life and the lives of the people I was doing research on was part of the same system. And I wanted to use that comparison to draw out what are the features of this system, right? But even as I'm doing that, I knew that that was a lack, meaning that it would be better if I have more data about the middle class and about the upper middle class, yeah? That could allow me to make the comparisons even more systematically and concretely. So, even as I was wrapping up that book, I was already starting research for this one, which is really a cross-class comparison. Now, uh I don't know I mean I I think I'm a bit I'm slightly extra in the way
[laughter]
I I tend to
Fairly extra like
Yeah, I I I'm slightly extra in the way I tend to like to also then make different turns after I've started on something, right? I chase the thing down and I think I have a certain thing I'm looking for, but then when I find something different, I want to chase that and try and figure that out. So, what happened was that I thought I would probably write a book straight up just compare the class A, B, C, right? But what I ended up finding was a there's something interesting going on where across class lines, you can see quite a lot of shared things as well. You can see a lot of similarities, and you can see a lot of a similar kind of angst, anxiety, insecurity, and in the end what I end up calling unease, sort of distilling into this concept called unease. And I explain in the book, you know, especially later part of the book, why this term in particular and all that, which I maybe I won't go into right away. But the point is to say that this book is very much about trying to figure out how inequality is something that affects everybody. It affects people differently, but there's also a commonality in terms of the unease we feel collectively. And I hope to further what I started last time that I feel I didn't do a good enough job, which is to which is to convince people we should all pay attention to inequality because we are all embedded in this system, we are all entangled in this problem, and so it belongs to all of us to try to resolve.
[music]
Hey, welcome to the Financial Coconut Podcast Network. I'm your host Reggie, aka your chief financial coconut. And if you're loving what we're creating here, like, share, subscribe, share with your loved ones, comment in the comment section below, and yeah, we'll see you for great content on Cheers with TFC.
[music]
Fair, fair. I get it. And And I was I was saying to you, like, when I read This is What Inequality Looks Like, it didn't feel like I was a outsider looking at at this, you know? But when I read Unease, I was like, yeah, I'm very uneasy, you know? Like like I got a lot to say, you know? I was very riled up. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is true. And
[snorts]
And be before you launch the book, we we did an episode earlier talking about why Singaporeans are so anxious, you know? I I used the word anxiety, right? Like because I mean, we we do the personal finance, you know, uh uh space, right? And objectively, when a lot of our listeners come tell us, you know, like, we are this, this, this, in my head it's like, you're okay, what? You know, you're fine. But then they have a very deep sense of anxiety that I couldn't quite pinpoint. Because if it was one person, you could probably use the psychoanalysis method, oh, dramatic childhood, blah blah blah blah blah blah, right? You could kind of Whether you believe in that doesn't matter, right? But But there is a method to the madness, you know, from that. But across the board, they could come from every levels or class of society, and they all had this like, you know, maybe I could do better, maybe there's this, what about this, what about that? So when I read it, right, I was like, mm, okay, this girl is getting at something.
[laughter]
Do you feel Do you feel like I explained it? But like did Did you feel like you understood it better? I feel like I I got a better hold on some of these things, but we're still not quite there yet. right? Right? I still have more work to do, [laughter] I guess. Yeah, yeah, you can keep working. Don't retire, you know? But but but I would love for you to share a little bit more on some of this I mean, you you use a technical word called structural conditions, right? Because as a sociologist, you look at the whole structure, right? So So why are we so you know let me just use the word unease.
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of the book is trying to show kind of the relationship between structure and culture. And maybe you know, I should sort of break that down a little bit also, right? So as a sociologist, sometimes I'm glad to see the word structure circulating and sometimes I'm a bit like, oh, maybe we throw the word out too much without actually properly talking about what it means. Yeah, so I should do my job and
[laughter]
Work harder. Work [snorts] harder.
Yeah, work I should work harder and sort of unpack the
[laughter]
But one of the big contributions of sociology, I think, is to try to think about problems not as the problem of the individual, but to sort of zoom out and see beyond the individual and to see what are the conditions an individual faces in their lives that shapes how they see the world, how they relate to it, and how they behave in it, right? In some ways. And not just individuals, but groups. Yeah, we're very interested also in social phenomena, not just in individual behaviors, right? But social phenomenon. How do these patterns of behaviors come about? Yeah. And to say that there are structural conditions is to say that there are things like rules and institutions and regulations that shape the rhythm and texture of our lives. So one example is that uh school, for example, really shapes the everyday rhythm and time use of a student's life. And that regardless of the the content of what's inside their heads, yeah, their bodies have to move through space in a particular way every single day, right? Because those are the rules and those are the those are the institutional setup, yeah, that structures their lives. And you could not easily say, "Well, then, you know, if this doesn't suit a child, they don't have to go to school." Because of course there are also laws, for good reason, there are laws, you know, requiring parents to ensure that their children are in school by the age of seven, you know, and and so that's another kind of structural condition that we have to face, right? So maybe in this example you can already hear structure is not always a bad thing, yeah? And whenever we say, "Oh, it's structure," it doesn't mean it's not meant to say structure is bad or structural conditions are bad. It's just to in indicate that individuals don't have complete freedom in terms of choosing what they want to do, yeah? And again, that is not a completely bad thing. But I do think that when sociologists are critical of structural conditions, usually it's for two reasons. One is that we can see the ways in which they constrain people to such an extent that people cannot exercise agency, meaning they cannot do what they think is right or they they do not they do not have enough range of options to live as sort of complete persons with a, you know, and with a range of different tastes and preferences. We think of structural conditions as problematic when they constrain people too much, when they prevent people from having a sense that they can have control over their lives, that they can have agency, and that they have enough of a range of options so that they can, you know, live the way they want to live, be they want be the way they want to be. I think the critique is not that people should have complete freedom, but the critique is that when conditions are overly constraining, they really sort of restrict people's mastery over their own lives.
But but that is ideological, right? On some on some levels, right? It's a It's a ideology of what is the ideal society, right? I think there's there's a bit of
mean the critique of structure is is ideological?
No, I'm not saying the critique of structure is ideological. I said the the debate between between structure and freedom, you know, that that is a ideology and that's a like a wider philosophical idea of what is a good society.
so. I suppose so. Like how How much freedom is right? How much is right? Yes. How much is
How much is good, right? So so and [clears throat] that's a that's a whole other discussion, right? But but I think in in the book you you Of course I cannot tell you everything because you need to buy it, right?
[laughter]
I'll borrow from the library.
library. All the books that are sold in Singapore whatever have some copies at NLB. That's a requirement.
NLB has been super good to to for supporting my last book. Yeah, they have like 300 copies of the ebook. Yeah. Really? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Please borrow from the library. So yeah, to tell the center into whatever there was there was what you were trying to jab at in the book, right? The the center story is essentially education, right? And this like trope of a casual parent. Right? Because I I think you're probably trying to find a place to land like how do I start to talk about this message? And then I I think I went around and then eventually how I saw you was like there's this this your center character is this casual parent and it's set in a context of the education system, you know, in Singapore and how then parents build their lives around the education system, of course they by extension build their kids lives around the education system, right? And then you of course you went on to talk about all these different class things, which we'll go there later, you know, but I would like to get a sense of based on what you just said about structural conditions. What do you think is causing this whole situation? I'll take a jab at some of these things, right? Like what is causing this thing and and what's so problematic about it?
Yeah, yeah. So I mean this is this is indeed difficult to kind of summarize quickly, right? But let me try. I think it's very interesting to me that you say that the gasu parent is the central trope, huh? And I think that that's important to point out. It's it's not a central character, right? It's a central trope, which means that there is a story I'm trying to unpack. That part of what I'm trying to do is that there is this stereotype, there is this caricature
[laughter]
of the gasu parent. And everyone is a variant of it.
Yeah, and everyone is everyone who's a parent is some variant of it. [laughter] Uh and it's such a powerful story that whether you're a parent or not, whether you care to be a parent or not, you know this story.
[laughter]
It is that's the intelligence of the writing, right? The story was the one that kind of held it all together.
Yeah, oh interesting interesting you pointing out that out. And so um I think as a sociologist that's also a big part of my task is to try to identify, you know, what are what are some of the key common sense ideas that kind of living in our society really taking on a life of their [laughter] own. And how will I look at it and say not that it's wrong, but look there other ways to look at this character, right? And I I try to approach it by really listening to what parents are saying, the way they talk about themselves as parents, but also the way they refer to their childhoods, the way they refer to their own work, the way they refer to money, the way they refer to the future and what they hope for their children's future. And I try to use all of that to kind of contextualize how the casual parent is made, not born. I try to show again and emphasize when people become parents, it's not as if they have a clean slate of like, oh, let me decide. 1 2 3, this is these are the three ways in which I want to be a parent. They're already entering into in some ways a kind of script with certain pathways on the sand already made and certain expectations from both people near to them, but also from institutions that they're embedded in, whether it's uh institutions of work or school. They're already embedded in them, right? And so, there's already a logic that they're embedded in that is not so easy to transcend. There's a game already at play and you are entering into it. So, what's so problematic about this game? There is the obvious cost to individual persons in terms of what they have to give up of themselves, of their own aspirations, what they have to give up in terms of their own needs when they are parents. There's also cost to children and our youth in terms of the kinds of ways they are seen by society, the ways they are seen by their families or parents and the expectations on them, I think is also fairly harsh. And I this other thing that I talk about that I think is a little bit more abstract that I'm taking a risk on in in this book is to talk also about what it means about our shared values. The basic argument here is that the way we actually live in an everyday way is our values. It is our culture. You cannot say we believe this thing, but we're doing this other thing and the belief is the culture. No, no. And the way we are represents a lot of our shared habits, our shared virtues, our shared practices, our shared values ultimately.
it can be more on the nose.
[laughter]
Can be more on the nose because in the book she did she did talk about how as a society we proclaim that we are pro-family, you know, that the whole the whole shenanigans and all the all the stories we sell ourselves, you know, is a happy family walking in the park, you know, that that whole that whole bit that I do think most people subscribe to in their minds, but then I think what you were trying to set out is that but they don't actually live that life that they're sold.
Yeah, I mean the critique is very much a critique on social policy. You know, as a scholar a big part of my job is to try to look at the big picture of things over time and the big picture of things in terms of not just on the surface level, what is the claim or what is the rhetoric? What is the thing that is proclaimed as the aim, right? My job is to go below that to see what are the kind of fundamental beliefs that seem to be underpinning the policy regime, yeah? And over time, given that we have a very active set of very active policy environment in the sense that they're often a lot of new schemes and often a lot of new activities, right? Given all that, what stays constant in terms of the principles? And so the book tries to lead the reader through that gradually. I mean, you're making fun of me for being maybe right now not as direct as
[laughter]
I am in the writing. Um but I'm not trying to avoid it, actually. It's just that the book is a very specific vehicle. The kind of vehicle it is is that it's a very slow-moving vehicle.
[laughter]
There's chapter one, and there's the next thing, and then it kind of builds like that. That's right. It's not rapid fire. Actually, um you know, when we're talking like that in conversation, a lot of things are very ephemeral, right? They will They will just go by like that and very quickly. And but when I put things down in writing, they will stay around for a long time, right? So, when I'm writing, I'm I'm thinking partly of that that that whatever claims I make, I do my best to make sure the claim is a level at exactly the right pitch so that it has durability as the world changes around it, right? The book has to it should not be outdated immediately, even if on the surface level certain things change, right? There has to be deeper things embedded in that. The other way I think about the writing process, changing metaphors now, no longer vehicles, is that I think I'm guiding people through a long hike. Through this long hike, I want them to experience many things in the hike. Yeah, I want them to hear things. I want them to hear the sounds of the birds. I want them to see the leaves or the flowers or whatever. But it's also up to them. I'm not in their heads to see what they see, right? My My role is as a guide. So, that when we get to some kind of destination where there is maybe a different as maybe as a mountaintop and there's a big open view, because of that experience of walking with me that whole way, what they experience at the end is ah, okay, I get it. What I see here is the combination of all the things I've experienced on the way there, right? So, that's why it's it's hard to give the kind of TLDR and the like this is the main argument to it because it is is almost like in temperament is against what I try to do in the book. So I'm not trying to avoid answering the question. It's more that I hope I hope because my my Primary medium is
My primary medium is writing. [laughter]
the book and join me on that process, right?
Okay, okay. Anyway, book sales don't make much money on that. Please borrow from library. That's all. No, I'm not trying Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. [laughter] It's not about that. It's not about that. I I I I understand what what you're saying. Like there's a whole journey that you you take the people on. So maybe this is my read of the the book, right? Of course there's all that like sociological ideas and all the all the theories and academic, you know, elements of it. Definitely more than the previous book. But how I read it was the state tells us that this is or at least society has this idea of a good life in Singapore, right? Parent parent or not. Of course the the parent is a central story here, but I see this idea projected across all mediums of life or facets of life, right? So there is what we deem as the good life, you know, um could be part messaging, part internalization, part culture, whatever la. Everything jumbled together in our head with this idea of this is the good life. But then in practice, we are far from that, you know, and doesn't matter how much money you are making, you're still quite far from that idea of a good life. People are for lack of a better way to put it scrambling for the next thing, right? Whether they're scrambling for time, scrambling for money, trying to move around just so that they they keep up and stay relevant, you know, within their community. Of course still hoping that they meet their ideal life. Right? And in the middle comes the policies, right? And what I'm hearing from the book is that cut the people's some slack, lah.
[laughter]
Don't so uptight, lah. Something can let go, let go, lah. Is that a fair statement?
I think it's
a simplified statement? I mean, I I think that's definitely a valid way to look at it. We live in a society where people do have different belief systems. They There is variation in what people want. People don't all want the same things. And all of us, of course, go through life and at different times in life we want different things. And within a family, there are people with different interests. It's not as if the whole family and all everybody's family Every family member is situated exactly the right place the same place, right? In terms of what they want and need. And so, the broader environment needs to be one where there are what I call enabling conditions. And enabling conditions do not mean that you direct people to all the same things at the same at this point in life, you These are the things you need to do, and here are the conditions to let you do it. It's more that at each point there needs to be some leeway so that people can make a range of different decisions, precisely because we live in a diverse society and people have different needs. Again, this does not mean there should be infinite choice for people at at all times, but I think the conditions we currently face are such that there is not enough of that range, and there are not enough uh enabling conditions so that people can make those choices.
Fair. Fair. Fair. And And you can't help yourself with inequality, right? So, like like at the uh the later part of I I thought it was a good time to to bring this, right? Which is even in in the later part of the book, you brought in the class ideas.
Yeah. And what I think what you were trying to go at is doesn't matter which class you are at, you know, the working class, the middle class, the middle upper class. Of course, the upper class probably has a very different game, which is not addressed in in in the book, right? But, [snorts] doesn't matter which class you're at, based on what have you just said, you share the same set of problems just projected in different ways.
Mhm. Because you have varying conditions of time and money. But, everyone is equally at unease and and and all that, right? So, could you elaborate a little bit?
Yeah. So, I really wanted to try to get this issue of inequality slightly differently than the way I got at it in the last book. And the way I got at it in the last book was a bit more straightforward, which is inequality is partly about how people face very different conditions to meet quite similar needs, right? That people have unequal resources, people have basically unequal levels of money to address a lot of their needs, or unequal levels of cultural resources, knowledge, or social networks to meet their needs. And that is in some ways the most straightforward way of approaching the inequality issue. The most straightforward of understanding it. And the more intuitive way, I think, way of understanding it. And it remains important. I should emphasize it remains important to keep our eye on that. But, doing this project, I also then decided I need to somehow also paint a picture of how inequality is a broad provides a context. So, I landed on this idea of inequality as context. And what I mean by that is that inequality pervades when in unequal societies, there is something about the broader environment that shapes everybody's lives. Okay? And I tried to concretize it by thinking about how competition and hierarchy and sorting and a sense of differential worth, that these things kind of permeate our everyday lives, becomes very salient. Now, the word salient means becomes very like top of consciousness. Yeah, like it's it's right there. Every time you you think about your kid and how they're doing, you're thinking about it relative to their peers. And every time you are thinking, for that matter, about yourself and how you're doing, yeah, you you can't help but think of yourself relative to your co-workers or or your your colleagues or your classmates from before, whatever. And this is not an accident or part of our heads. It's because they are built into our systems. So, for example, even as a university professor, I say even as because I think a lot of people know students are in some ways they are graded on on this kind of like
[laughter]
There's a curve, there's a curve, right? Not everybody can have A's, you know, there's a spread, whatever. Everybody knows that about students.
phenomenon is bell curve god, right? Do you know about this social phenomenon?
[laughter]
And people pray to the bell curve. I mean, it's so terrible. We laugh, but it's because we're anxious, right?
I know. Yes. Yeah. But university professors are similarly graded. We are also graded on a curve, you know? And so, it's not that it's in my mind that I'm competitive, you know? It's very much in my yearly appraisal [laughter] that requires me to abide by this logic. And I think that when you have a very when you live in a highly unequal society, that competition also means you're very aware that falling or being lower, the cost of that are high. Meaning, being a lower grade means something about your salary, right? It means something about your chances of promotion. And so, the stakes are high. The risk of falling is actually probably in every society, right? But the risk the the cost of that fall are higher when you are in a more unequal situation. And so when people think about their kids, I think a lot of parents don't like this for their children. A lot of parents express feeling sorry for their children at very young ages. They are already compelled to play this very competitive game, but they also feel like if I don't do my best maximize whatever resources I have, then if my kid really somehow falls below everybody else, it's my fault. And so to be a good parent means you just have to try your best to help them, you know, stay at least in the game. And and I in the book I think you try to set up a few different characters across the social class to talk about how they react to this situations, right?
Yeah. So that one we're not spoiling you, okay?
[laughter]
Because there's I got a lot of questions I want to I want to ask, but but just when you were talking about that, right? I think it it brought to mind about the wage work structure, right? Because appraisal I think in most people's adult lives, the primary appraisal is your management, right? And because Singaporeans are so in this like wage work situation. I know wage work is a technical term, right? Just most mean you work a working professional. What job lot then you go to management they will evaluate appraise you, right? Whether you're doing well, affects your bonus, affects your promotion, affects your prospects. I wanted to bring out that this phenomenon is reverse reversing itself into the family. I don't know if you've heard of this thing, but there are people that are organizing like appraisal amongst the family. Ah. Yeah. Say more. All right, right. So like I've I've heard people, especially amongst you know, our listeners and a a of the working professionals, they take the same way of appraising back into the family where they talk to their partners, they talk to their kids.
Right. They set KPIs, you know, and and
Right. Even to their helper. I have a good friend of mine who actually set KPI for the helper and said that if you do well, I will give you, you know, salary increment. And I'm like, this is crazy. I mean, everything now is being measured. Everything now is being appraised. How can you not be anxious?
I mean, a lot of scholars have written about kind of the basically the marketization of all aspects of life, right? Including, I mean, the family we often think of as as a very intimate, private part of our lives and it including that. And certainly when I spoke to parents, some of that language also seeped in, right? Like outsourcing parts of parenting that I do not want. That is a kind of certain kind of market language. Or looking at the ROI.
And even you used it in the book. Because you can't help it, right? Like that that kind of term, everyone gets it.
right. Using the ROI, using ROI, what is the return on investment on this on this tuition or on this enrichment? So, it's definitely seeped into our everyday life. And I think that it is not always a problem. Having some kind of system where there is clarity on how we're doing that helps us in some way strengthen our capacities and capabilities. I'm not against that, but I do think that when we try to reduce everything to that, that is when there is a problem. And we try when we try to reduce a lot of different kinds of aspects of our life to things that we can only measure through numbers. I think that that is very problematic. Because in fact, life is quite a complex thing. And the way we can understand the world is quite a complex thing. When we are in a hurry and we want to try to reduce everything to
[laughter]
like, if I cannot see this in number terms, I cannot understand it. If I cannot see this in number terms, it is not data, it is not information, it is not anything I can respond to. Then I think that is a real problem because it necessarily means that a lot of the complexities of lives, including relationships, including things like community, all of these things that cannot be easily reduced to numerical measurements, we then think not worthy. Not no value. If I cannot put a number, means no value.
The fact that people talking about their anxiety and their displeasures and people are talking about how something is not quite right. Before my book, I think on your show, you know, you've been talking about this. This is why this book resonates with you, right? It's because been I think it means that there is there is a broad recognition that something is not quite right when we when we reduce life to to these very narrow ways of looking at things. I'm glad you said it on the financial coconut.
[laughter]
No, because I I have been observing a situation where when everything is reduced to numbers, I have people in the comment section or I have people talking and saying like, you know, it's not worth my time. It's not But when I evaluate them as a I mean, I probably I mean, I shouldn't be evaluating you, but for me as a just trying to understand them, I was like, maybe you need more friends. You know, you don't need more money.
Ah, I see. I see. I see. I see. You're not you're not like like Okay, everyone is is constantly seeking the life they love, right? And in the process, you are in a flustered situation that you're all over the place. You're like, oh, is it here? Is it there? You know, you're all over. So, it becomes a bit reductionist where everything is just the numbers. So, okay, what's your magical number, right? You get this number, your life will be sorted. Fire, you're done, right? So, so that's kind of how a lot of people talk about it. And like I said like like you've said, I I don't think it's totally wrong. It's It helps with you know, having a clear goal. You know, let's let's go with that. But, sometimes I just want to tell some of the listeners or the people that I've met, right? Hey, maybe you your problem is not so much the money problem, you know? The the numbers are for you are adding up. You know, and you just need a bit more time. You you'll get there. But, the struggles that you have to live between you and the good life that you define, you know, and probably perfumed by societal expectations
[laughter]
is it's not about more money. Yeah, so I mean, the last thing you said, perfumed by societal expectations, right? I think it's quite important. How do we know what is of value? We can't answer that question without people around us. We are social creatures, and what is of value to us as individuals, even if we sometimes think it's just about me. I make my own decisions. We're wrong. It's just not true.
[laughter]
Because we are social creatures.
most definitive answer.
Yeah. Yeah. We're wrong. It's just wrong. IT'S JUST WRONG.
[laughter]
I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T REGRET THAT.
[laughter]
THAT'S GOING VIRAL. BUT, it's it's We are so much of how we see our own value, right? Depends on how others value us. This is not something we should reject. It is a beautiful thing that we are embedded in society. It is a beautiful thing that we are connected to other human beings. But, I do think that if as a society, the dominant values of that society are such that, you know, the money and how much money you have puts you on a very high status, or how much decision-making power you have in an organization or in a country puts you at high status, then I think it if if we have those very narrow sort of ideas about value and when all the things that people do that is so important, caring, care labor of others, if we say because there's no All right.
ROI on that, we don't know how to make sense of it and we don't value it. I think as a society we we really lose out, right? I mean, that's a loss for all of us because in fact all of us need care. If we're sitting here as adults who have survived childhood and are in adulthood, we've been cared for. When we are adults, you're still young, I'm middle-age, right? We probably will care for others. We are caring for others. If we're all when we're all if we're lucky, people will care for us, right? Care is such important part of what it is to be human. And if we say oh, because we we cannot put a number on it and because our society is so obsessed with putting [laughter] numbers on everything, then we and we cannot value this thing, uh I think we're all we're all poorer for it. So, maybe let's take the conversation even higher into some of the big
We're we're going up the mountain.
up the mountain, [laughter] right? It's also got steps on that. Yeah, going up the mountain, right? So, I I in in in your book closer to the end, you also elaborate on this part about agency, right? Like people um so, there's this uh structural situation, you know, structural forces, but there's also like your personal agency and it's like they kind of always in tussle, right? You can you can do stuff, right? You can do stuff, but there there's some structures around.
[snorts]
the better you understand the structures, of course, I I hope that you can then um be better at at achieving whatever you want to achieve, right? It's kind of It's kind of the dynamics. But one part of how Singaporeans are managing this unease and all these problems and intensity with having kids and all that. It's just not having kids. Like
Yeah. I would like to hear your point of view because I've talked to so many people. They look good. They look happy. And they look successful in their career. Then they all have kids. And I think that it's in some ways their agency, right? Like they have made a decision because I want to achieve ABC. And because to achieve ABCDE is too much, I will drop D and E. Right? And And that could mean whatever. And in in in this case, the phenomenon is TFR going down. Right? What do you think of that?
I think that people's decisions around having kids are probably quite complicated. Yeah. And there is an element of well, here here is how I will There's There's some straightforward
A layer of how I will answer it as an individual is because I want to do ABCDE and this doesn't fit in. But I think this is not the complete story, right? Because the person, each any given individual telling that story, of course, is focused on their individual story then. But what they're informed by is this larger context.
I'm glad you bring this up because and I'm glad you said what you said about how you reacted to this book because on the surface this book talks about parents, right? But you're reacting not from that perspective.
>> Don't I don't have any ounce question about parents.
>> Yeah. Sorry, Anna. She can go another show and talk about the parent stuff. [laughter] No, I'm very glad. I'm very glad because this is not I intend for this book to be beyond beyond that, right? It's very important. Parents are very important part of the the concrete story I tell, but I'm very glad that you picked up on the fact that it's not just a story about parents, right? And this indicates, circling back to your question about people who talk about not wanting children, right? That, um, no matter who you are in this society, you are quite you're you're embedded within this culture that I describe.
>> [laughter]
>> You could be reacting on the other side, but it's still this basis.
>> You could be, you know, I have had young people read the book and tell me, "Oh, then then they also understand their own upbringing, maybe, or they understand their parents differently, right? Or they understand maybe older cousins or older siblings or aunts and uncles through this perspective differently, right? I feel like if you grow up in Singapore, you can probably see elements of this culture even before I've told you about it in this way. Even when people talk about their decisions as individuals and they're focused just on telling that story, you know, you you have to keep in mind that they are making those decisions in this context.
None of my work is meant to really be sort of like I I'm not one of the scholars who wants to end up saying, "Yeah, people should have children and people should marry." This is not I really believe that people should make to should have the freedom to make the choices that fulfill their needs, whatever those needs may be, and that we should be in a place where people can make a range of decisions. But when you see these broader patterns where there is so much talk of pro-family and yet people really are in fact avoiding family formation, then you know something is wrong.
The way I approached this book is to not take as a starting point that the pro-family regime that this is a pro-family place and we have Asian values, blah blah blah. All of those things that actually continue to keep popping up in student essays if it is a fact. This is starting point where pro-family plays therefore blah blah blah and then don't need to unpack. Yeah, we have Asian values therefore blah blah blah. And my starting point is a very different one. My starting point is to look to say look we've seen a continuous drop in the fertility rate since 1975, the year I was born was the last time.
>> [laughter]
>> You're the last replacement batch. And and this is despite I guess 40 years of pronatalist policies, yeah, since the mid-80s. This means that the pronatalist policies, the pro-family regime in general, but the pronatalist policies in particular should be approached as like oh, there are some spectacular failures in policy here.
>> [laughter]
>> Right? Fair. And and and therefore if you start from that point, I think you will look at it differently. Very differently.
>> Look at it differently. Because our goal is to.
>> Then there is a puzzle here. There is a puzzle here to unpack. Right? And and then you will take seriously, you know, you will take seriously what kind of pro-family regime is this really? Yeah, and that's what I try to do in the book, right? Is to kind of look at that very carefully. Yeah, and and kind of uh take it apart, you know, step by step by step by step. Because and and I say that step by step by step because that's very important. Because we we so easily accept this as common sense already, it does take some time to properly kind of unpack it. Right? It's not it's not intuitive. It's not intuitive at all. Yeah. Yeah.
Interesting because yeah, it didn't dawn on me that yeah, you have decades of student essays to read.
>> [laughter]
>> You could have seen like yeah, this thing keep popping up, but like you know.
>> I mean, I've started telling students, "Please do not. Just please don't start essays."
>> Asian values. Yeah. No, I mean, you can, but you you cannot put it there as if because I put this here, it's like an amulet.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> [laughter]
>> I don't need to do anything more. [laughter] It's a it's a self-evident fact. It is not. It is not at all. Yeah. Yeah.
I I I get it. And and I I have I have so many things I want to ask you, but.
>> [laughter]
>> but I think this is a a good space, a good space. So, may- maybe maybe last last question for you because you you did talk a little bit about the pronatalist policies or you know, some of these or some of these like Asian values, pro-family and all that, right? So, I think a lot of you know, thought leaders or academic academic policy makers, they they all have some thoughts on like what is good, right? So, maybe from from your point of view, like what what are some of these maybe sacred cows or people who use sacred cows, right? Or like what are some of these things that I think we really need to go beyond if we want to actually solve all these things.
>> Yeah, since we've talked about value earlier, or the the value of people or the value of activities, I think that we need to have a much more genuine quest. And we need to take seriously, you know, how we will properly value all aspects of what it is to be a life in the world and a human and living in society. That goes beyond the way we have done value. Often times, I find when I come to the end of a piece of writing, what I want to do is to say, "We need to open the space up for dialogue to more people than are in dialogue." That too many of the decisions that are made in our country, too much of who sets the standards for what is good or not good or valuable or not valuable are made by too small a group of people. And that part of the reason we have such narrow definitions is is precisely because those definitions do not necessarily represent the interest of a broad swath of ordinary members of the public. And so I think that part of it is also about process. It's not just about like what is the good society, but also about how will we how will we create a process in which more people can be part of the process of asking that question of what is a good society. Like how it's very important to break the monopoly of of that of the spaces of the capacity. So the hike thing is very good, right? Because the purpose of a hike is not just to get to the point. The whole journey matters. It's not just the end point, you know, and then take pictures and go home. I hope.
>> [laughter]
>> Daka. Yeah, it shouldn't be. I have so much more I wanted to talk, [laughter] but it's okay. I I think we did a good one, right? So but I'm sure our audience have a lot more that they would love to ask, you know, or after they read they may have a lot of thoughts. Where is a good place to connect? Is it your email or you know, like.
>> Oh, yes, I can always be found on my university email address. Ethos Books, my publisher, is organizing a bunch of other events. Follow Ethos Books.
>> [laughter]
>> And they will publicize various things. Okay, okay. You don't talk about your IG, is it?
>> [laughter]
>> I'm not really active.
>> She's not She tried it out. She tried it. I'm not really active. I mean, I I am on Instagram. You can follow [laughter] me, but not very much is happening. I mean, I I like to recommend books to people, but other than that, I don't do much.
>> Oh yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your time. I hope you enjoy today's episode. If you love what we do, head over to the financialcoconut.com to put your email address. I know that today I asked you to do a lot of things. Okay, your your kids are your priority, okay? Just go and do the book, [snorts] you know, but if you want to stay connected, go to our website, put your email address so that we can reach out to you and write out the algorithm when we need to. Okay? So, with that, thank you all. We'll see you next week. Meanwhile, take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.