Striking a balance between Good Traditional Values and Creativity
November 23rd, 2008 by ALVIN SOONG
I was reading this Chinese article with the Minister BG George Yeo, dated 16th Nov.
It talks about his advocate on retaining tradtional good values, and historical sites and about the good values in Confucianism.To retain the sites is a good form of reminder to the next generations of the hardship and good value of predecessors who have brought Singapore and China to the present stage with their hardwork and good traditional values.
However at the same time, he said we should not be shackled by only traditional views, but also learn to assimilate it with changes and creativity to move with the society forward. It is not just the culture but also the spirit we should captivate. Then we should improvise with creativity to be more prosperous and be a smarter, more gracious society.
He relish on one of the days when he was at one of the visit to a historical town in China, he witnessed neon lights and bright commercial lightings and said to himself, “How can this be allowed?” Then he remembered that the Chinese had moved forward in the past decades assimilating the western and eastern culture. Singaporeans on the other hand tends to be more tradtional than the Chinese counterparts and we got to learn from them.Looking back, it was just like eons ago, when the Europeans first came to New York and criticised on their American culture, but now America is so prosperous. We Singaporeans got to open up and learn from the Chinese culture too
On the positive side, he noted that Singaporeans are known to be hardy since as a small country we can improve so fast within decades and not lose our identity. This is something that the Chinese counterparts can learn also from us.
On 18th Nov Thinkpoints, I also read on Chinese farmers moving to towns and instead of ownership of lands, have learnt to corporatise their lands to private companies to get annual dividends and shares of the company, in exchange for better technology to get better yield. This is breakthrough of older views where one should own just the land. It is a win-win situation and one that we should learn of balancing good traditional values and creativity.
