“Some are born great,
some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them”, so said the
great bard, William Shakespeare.
In today’s liberal
world, it is increasingly difficult to claim greatness as a birthright. Even
those born into political or business families cannot claim an inalienable
right to be the heir.
Greatness is a state
that one has to strive for. It requires a rare combination of intellect, ambition,
determination. To achieve greatness, one needs ideas, and to believe deeply
that these can change the world for the better, and then have the skill and
will to convince others to make the change happen.
Over the year end
period, we had our annual family vacation. This time in South England where we
saw for the first time the Stonehenge. Stonehenge’s purpose remain a mystery today.
It was truly an engineering feat and the monumental effort to construct it must
signify its importance. Like many iconic buildings in the world today,
Stonehenge in the ancient world (and in the modern too) must have impressed all
who saw it and endowed on its owners/managers a sense of the extraordinary.
This in turn must have given these owners/managers an additional store of
political capital to lead.
Photo Credit: Chris Grayling
But then how did they
lead? Did their society flourish (economically, socially, culturally)?
Throughout the trip, J
shared his idea for a Utopian society founded on the good of mankind that lived
beyond the material and economic dictates. I had the same notions (though much
more undeveloped than his) when I was a teenager who had just left Malacca to
Singapore and dreaming on bigger things to come.
As time passed, I
became less idealistic. Like many other dreamers, I have succumbed to the
pattern so eloquently expressed by David Lloyd George, “a young man who isn’t a
socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head”.
Then again, I lived
through the most peaceful times the world (esp. in my part) has known for centuries.
More people (in relative and of course absolute terms) have been brought out of
poverty and into better health than ever before. The standard of living
everywhere is higher where a rural villager in Borneo has access to water and
power better than a Londoner in the 15th century.
However, times are
changing. Populations are declining. Age expectancy is rising. Technology is winning.
Jobs are losing. Skill requirements are changing. Education is waning.
J is right. It is time
to reinvent the state, and I wish him all the best in doing so. I only ask that
he does this with an openness to other ideas, to develop his thoughts
comprehensively so others may understand and then to use the right combination
of charm, logic and argument to make them believe and then to act.
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