NOVEMBER 23 — Another evening, another rain shower, another traffic jam from Sunway to Songkhla. That’s our Malaysian highway. All it takes is one driver stopping his car to stare at the clouds, and what do we get? A 10-kilometre parking lot.
Our roads can’t deal with disorder. One disruption, a few “shocks” and the whole thing grinds to a halt. Let’s call this the Highway Syndrome.
It applies to many of our school students. One unexpected twist to the exam question? Panic stations. How many of our multiple-A students can handle basic work projects or tasks? None of us would be able to if we’ve been brought up to associate excellence with regurgitating textbook answers.
Same thing with corporate brands. It takes a lifetime to build a popular brand name, and just one controversy to tear it down. Think Andersen Consulting. Think Volkswagen. Even Cadbury.
What else is bad at handling disruption or disorder? Meetings. You need a venue, the right people to attend and an agenda. Remove any of these elements and the meeting suffers.
In a personal context, the Highway Syndrome is especially strong if you’re the kind of person who needs to maintain a “top-class” social status 24/7. This means you always need to say the right thing, be seen with the right people, appear to “know it all” (or be “appropriately” humble or poh-lite) and buy the (usually expensive) things which are seen as bestowing class.
Most importantly, you need to know whose ass must be regularly kissed, and be updated if those same two cheeks have fallen off the popularity radar. This is why you needn’t envy VIPs or celebrities.
Most of the time it’s just too much trouble. One wrong move and his elevated reputation plunges. One careless word — or an uncontrolled fart — and she’s exposed for the mortal she is.
The alternative to the Highway Syndrome is what I call the Hydra Syndrome. Chop off one head of this bad-ass dragon and two heads grow from that severed stump. Imagine that. It’s like if one stretch of the LDP starts crawling, another two roads automatically open.
The hydra is mythical, of course, but there are many contemporary proxies for it. Think Uber — our local taxi drivers can fight it all they want, they can’t win.
Because the more you try to stamp out a mobile high-touch virtual organisation offering luxury transport services, the more you feed its popularity. Might as well try to smear a rock star’s name by secretly filming his sex life — you’ll just be pumping up his album sales.
The same applies to desire. Instil the desire to learn in our kids, and they’ll amaze (and scare) you with what they can do. Give the rakyat a strong desire for political change and there won’t be enough prison cells in Kamunting and water-cannons in KL. And need I say anything about sexual desire? Go ahead—try stopping that.
And whatever my complaints about Lee Kuan Yew and Tun Mahathir Mohamad I can’t deny these two folks are more Hydra than Highway. Both of them grew stronger with adversity.
Compare their way of politics with, say, Kofi Annan’s or — even worse — Pak Lah’s. The latter two seem able to only function in fair weather. The late Mr Lee? He wasn’t happy unless he was pissed off.
What about Malaysian kids? Do they approximate a tight road at rush hour which can’t deal with shocks or a ferocious multi-headed beast who wants you to strike?
I claim that our children will be more Highway-like if:
* They’re pressured to succeed in everything and are always being compared with other kids (the problem of over-protective and over-demanding parents) (see Note 1)
* They are given creature comforts on a regular basis, and don’t hang around with children from less privileged families (the problem of pampering, making them believe that their Asian Food Channel-like lifestyle is “normal.”)
* They don’t involve themselves in team-based projects, hands-on assignments, community work, etc. (How else are they going to learn to deal and work with other people and their emotions?) (see Note 2)
These are clear recipes for a highway disaster. A few unexpected shocks or disorderly events, and our kids will crumble.
How do we develop the Hydra mentality in our kids? Reversing the above would help. Another general tip is to make them forget about success for a while… and teach them to deal with failure.
And what’s the best way for children — for adults, even — to learn how to handle failure or negative feedback? They need deep and diverse involvement in the thick of human life. They need to feel and be aware of the strong emotions which can grip them. They need to see and experience loss, helplessness, pain — all of which inspires them to realize that they need patience, they need people. They need to trust.
When our children begin to encounter the sheer vulnerability that characterizes our world, and to quit trying to be “in control” all the time? Alas. You can strike them down — they’ll bounce back even stronger.
Note 1: Perhaps the biggest problem with traditional school systems is the culture of norm-based assessment i.e. we always want to know who scored the “top” in the class. The very element of comparison produces the urge to succeed vis-à-vis another person (pure Highway mentality) as opposed to bettering our own past performance (the way of the Hydra).
Note 2: Maybe Asian parents need to seriously consider variations on the “gap year.” What could happen if we force our school kids to do nothing but serve other people and learn from other communities? If nothing else, this could reinforce the point that exams aren’t everything.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
