Society Snippets - The Apple Tree Metaphor

The Apple Tree Metaphor

There are a lot of rich people in Hong Kong, people who own a number of apartments and can live off the rent with more to spare. Their children are never worried about going hungry of having to find a job with decent salaries, and some may even opt to use their parents' wealth to start lifestyle businesses like funky restaurants or wine trading (so that they and their chums could enjoy the services).

Very much like the libertarian era in the UK during the Thatcher's and Major's reign, these people emphasised that they got rich purely because of their own efforts, enduring their humble childhood and unfavourable environment (compared to Europe and North America), and accumulated wealth bit by it with lots of dramas and ups-and-down along the way, finally amassing the wealth and so they deserve to squander and flaunt however they like. As for their less well-to-do contemporaries and the current young generation, well, they are simply not hard-working enough and so deserve no sympathy, or that they should be thankful for not having to live through the same harsh environment as they had to. This is known as the "Lion Rock Spirit", named after Lion Rock Hill which is at the heart (geographically and culturally) of Hong Kong. There is something not quite right about their attribution of success down to themselves entirely, but explaining is difficult, so I have opted for the "Apple Tree" metaphor.

Once upon a time, there was an apple tree at the top of a hill, which was very hard to reach owing to the steep slopes. The tree was particularly fertile and the crop wasn't particularly high in quality. But gradually, different people in the community started to build roads to reach the hilltop for the apple tree and other reasons, and some experts in agriculture started to experiment on the tree to raise productivity and quality, but again not purely just to reap benefits from this tree. Multiple generations of road builders and agricultural experts worked silently, and they came and went and remained nameless. Then one day, the road was complete and the apple tree bore a beautiful harvest. Some citizens used their own efforts, sweats and tears to race to the top, collect the apples and bring to the market for a bumper sale. Not all apples are equally good and not all apples are low-hanging, and people who had talent in identifying the better from the good and the skilful climbers who could reach for the top were able to get more out of the tree. People who were fast runner could get to the low hanging fruits and still make a fortune, albeit a smaller one as there was more fierce competition. The in-firmed, the road builders and the agricultural experts were too tired or busy and could not collect the apples despite their hard and foundational work. Every year as the apple tree bore fruits, the same ritual repeated itself. But progressively, the wealthier people started to buy tools to reach to the tree faster and climb higher, or developed proprietary knowledge to distinguish the best fruits from the rest. All along, the road builders and agricultural experts were the "silent ones" who were not given any credit or reward, and attempts to give them a share were thwarted with reasons such as "they did not put efforts into harvesting" or "they did not have to go through the same fierce competition and challenges as we had to" or "they had generated no progress in terms of tools, knowledge or practices that resulted in more economic reward". Eventually, the wealthiest even wanted to privatise the ring fence the tree for their own use.

Such is the situation faced by economies which have adopted libertarian mechanism, such as UK, US and Hong Kong. Back then, the societies' inefficiencies might genuinely laid in the harvesting of economic benefits - in the UK, it was the strong labour unions leading to backward practices and refusal to adopt greater automation; in Hong Kong, it might have been the omnipresent corruption and good-old colonial bureaucracy that aimed at taxing the locals out of any domestic and commercial activities. Opening up access and competition would have led to greater incentives to harvest and to build further capabilities to harvest even more.

However, by over-emphasising the inefficiencies at harvesting and over-praising the innovators and entrepreneurs who furthered harvesting techniques, we have given excessive power to the libertarian operators, encouraging them to disregard all others who have paved the way but could not participate in the direct benefit-reaping activities, and those who work silently behind to keep the grounds fertile and productive.

The evidence is not just in the aggressive and unsympathetic stance taken by those who "used their efforts" to build their wealth, and the associated social status and influence awarded to them by the media and the society - a successful venture founder would not just enjoy wealth, but his/her world view and comments would be widely shared and agreed. But more than that, the economies are increasingly tilted towards favouring the "productive" aspects that contribute towards the harvesting of the apple trees, and less and less towards the silent workers who maintain the system and access.

Let's take UK as an example. Over the past decade, social housing and the NHS are increasingly neglected in favour of private housing and healthcare; more and more social housing stocks are privatised without replacement. This is a good "harvesting" technique that translates implicit economic benefits into GDP (hence the harvest), but the social harm it brings are now starting to surface - key workers could not afford to live where they work, and the middle class is paying high taxes but have to endure poor health service as they couldn't afford to go private.

Another UK example is in education - since Blair's government, emphasis on languages, history and arts have been diminishing in favour of the "productive" skills such as mathematics, sciences, engineering and technology. A more assessment-centric and progress-monitoring approach is taken to ensure every schoolchild progresses in attaining those skills along a set path. Doubtless, these skills are important as they could be directly applied in workplaces for high productivity, but history/literature/arts/social studies are important in helping the society find out what's happening and what are the alternatives. They are the silent road builders and agricultural experts in the metaphor, yet they are being scalded and told to join the ranks of harvesters.

There is a second part to this metaphor. With road builders and agricultural experts being told to join the harvesters, the roads become under-repaired and start to crumble, while the tree is getting over-harvested without replenishment and so both quantity and quality start to dwindle. What did the people do? They harvest even more frequently to make up for the reduced stock, and there is now more competition for the harvesters to learn each other's unique techniques so as to out-compete each other. The town started to teach everyone the same skills so as to "upskill" the harvesters, and people who successfully learned the skills and made more wealth (at the expense of the others) were praised even more so that the rest could be motivated in the hope of pulling GDP up.

What does this translate to in the real world? More exploitation, more competition, more pressure at education level, more emphasis on getting "productive" skills, and more disregard towards capabilities that would benefit the society in a less apparent manner. Also, more power appropriated to those "who have made it".

What is the way out? The social trend must shift. When the UK government went into "nationalise" mode, the emphasis was less on wealth creation than on a fair society to shift away the managers vs. worker struggle (and exploitation). It harboured inefficiencies, but it also attempt to harbour the weak so that they could have a fulfilled life. When the UK government transitioned into "privatise and libertarian" mode, the society was encouraged to make and display wealth to spur their neighbours into doing the same. Inefficiencies are bad and if you spot one and correct it, you reap the benefits. If you could offshore some jobs overseas to save money, you take the loot. The poor and the weak need to get stronger so that they can make wealth, the jobs are not there to strangle the wealth-creating corporates and agents. This is the world we are in today.

After "nationalise" and "privatise", what is the next keyword? My current proposition is "mutualise" - the harvesters must become the road builder and the agricultural expert, so that they cannot just take the best and leave the junk to the rest, and that they cannot feel that their aggressive position is justified simply because "they have put in effort to make the wealth". Let road builders become harvester and agricultural experts, let agricultural experts become harvesters and road builders, so that each person is more complete, fulfilled and understand the situation. Otherwise, we will be willing to focus on earning money, getting our children into good schools, but not caring about our lives at a whole, or our children's well being. We are too narrowly focused on a small part, but the wider perspective has come back to haunt us.

Can we materialise this "mutualise" proposition? Not 10 years ago, but maybe yes by now - technology is emerging to allow artificial intelligence to do more on our behalf, there is social media that encourage people to be connected, ways to learn about new skills and knowledge. Why can't we mutualise?

Life snippet - what is a hobby or pastime?

What is a hobby or pastime?

Ever since completing the distance learning MBA last October, voids suddenly opened in my after-work hours and weekend. It's the free time I have always longed for for the 3.5 years while studying, and now I finally get it.

It was great to start with. I could read the books I enjoyed, watch TV without taking note of the clock, and not having to feel stressed over upcoming exams or assignments or study progress. But after around one month, my body started to itch - I need something more than reading books and watching TV or playing video games to fill the void. People usually call these endeavours pastimes or hobbies, but what are they exactly and how do they differ from the other activities?

It's no good thinking in an abstract manner, as I am not trained in that way. So, I have scoped out two other activities to compare against hobbies - namely work and flow. If my hobby is assembling model planes, then a similar work would be assembling toy planes in a factory and a 'flow' is watching a TV programme on model planes or lawn-mowing (something irrelevant to my hobby, something I won't do necessarily). If my hobby is cooking and writing/discovering/comparing blogs and watching food programmes, then work would be cooking in a restaurant or cooking for my in-laws, and 'flow' would be watching other TV programmes or cleaning the bathroom. What makes hobby a hobby, such that I would take up and enjoy, compared to work and flow?

First of all and most importantly, you have the freedom - you can choose to change hobby, add a hobby, or exit a hobby. People get warmer or cooler towards a hobby. But this freedom also applies to altering the scope of your hobby. I have expanded from savoury cooking into desserts and cakes, and at the same time switched from grilled foods towards bean and low/no-meat recipes. When it comes to work or flow, you usually have no choice and the scope is very much scope - you can change jobs, but once entered into a contract you have to do based on the company's needs, not yours.

This leads to the second difference, which is that it matches your capabilities (and corresponding capability gapes) and some of your non-financial-gain desires/goals. Simply having the freedom is insufficient, you must have some interest in it. Personally, I am not a dexter person or someone endowed with artistic skills or creativity, and so I wouldn't have chosen creative writing or drawing as hobbies. However I like trying out new food (and get bored by repeated food) and have quite a sensitive & analytical tastebud, and so I prefer cooking my own food to being simply served food and told to eat up. I am dexter enough to chop, slice and cook, and I also see some capability gaps in terms of types of cooking I can do, and so I am utilising my capabilities to extract fulfilment and at the same time keep me along the path of identifying & filling gaps. On contrary, work and flow doesn't have that freedom to let me match my capabilities and gaps - I may be forced to produce outputs from both my strengths and shortcomings, and the multitude of gaps I am not given an incentive to bridge from my existing capabilities. This exercising of capabilities and gap-bridging do not make me wealthier or help me earn money in spare time, it just makes me better at the hobby over time. Once it is about money (work) or avoiding having to pay (flow), I have little incentive to become better or it has to be a big change in goals to motivate me to edge forward.

This again leads to the third difference, which is that I can control the pace and path. If I tried to bake a cake but failed quite a few times, I can go and find out on forums or new recipes, enrol in a course or simply give up and challenge something else. If I give up now, I can come back later. If I can bake a cake but not that well, I can practise over and over again until I am happy with my capabilities, or sign off that "it's good enough" and move on. For work, there is not such luxury as what you do or learn next is based on what the company needs; for flow, there isn't a pace or path, you simply do and leave.

With the above three differences, the fourth difference is that you want to spend time to perform that hobby, savour the output of that hobby, and take effort in finding out how to better the hobby. For cooking, this means taking the time to cook (and not mind washing up afterwards), trying it out after and sharing it with friends & family, and then evaluating the outcome/going to courses/browsing cookware that may improve performance/watch food programme to find out what to do next. A lot of time and efforts will be expended, but you don't feel it's time and sweat down the drain - the reward in terms of becoming a more confident/richer self and having the output is evident and the driving force. For sports such as rambling, this can mean scaling a harder route in a difficult season; in video games, this is levelling up or being faster in clearing a level or winning in duels. If you land yourself on a nice job, it either means it matches your hobby (partially) or it's a strict 9-to-5 with good remuneration and benefits. For flow, you are required to put some time into it, but you don't really want to do that.

These four differences masks a fifth difference, namely that of having an implicit development path. You may not be aware of it in the form of completing a course and getting a certificate, or getting promoted; instead, you can look back and see the time you put in, the activities you conducted (in performing the hobby or performing the associated activities), what you have outputted and in what way you have become better. Work and flow can provide something similar as you get promoted and become faster at what you have to do, but the path is more externally driven than set by yourself with your own decision points at each critical juncture/turning point.

To summarise as the sixth difference, hobby is all about your own self and being, your inner needs. Through hobbies, you progressively become a more complete & richer person (not in terms of worldly wealth or external accreditation) filled with capabilities, memories and recognitions and that you allow your time to be spent in a worthwhile way that performs this enrichment or fulfilment. Pure work or flow focuses on the tasks and external commitment in exchange for external wealth (or avoid losing external wealth), and minimising time spent on it for the same result is the goal. If you decide to invest extra time in it, it's driven by the external wealth (promotion or getting a better-paid job or avoid having to pay a gardener).

This leads to the seventh differences, which is you control hobby and through that you control your as your self over time. You shape your hobby which then engages you in decisions and actions over time and these shape you as a virtuous (or vicious, if your hobbies are vices) circle. Work and flow can have the same, but it's much harder for you to actively shape - you can change jobs based on your needs, but that is very much dependent on what is on offer in the market, what the new employer agrees to provide (and what they expect from you) and how frequently you can make those life-impacting changes.

Why am I taking time to discuss what hobbies are exactly? Apart from being interested in the topic, I also want to find ways to make work more enjoyable - not becoming hobbies per se (for this may give hobbies a bad name and turn people away from their existing hobbies once they are married with money-earning work) but incorporating elements of hobbies into it as an integral part of work life (not in a specific job or employment environment, but over a person's work life).

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (7)

Can we trust the history we are reading?

After establishing the validity of historical hypotheses and the range of histories now available to read or study into, the logical next step for the author is whether we can trust the historical studies presented by historians.

We now know that for the same history topic, it could be studied in multiple angles and with different target purposes, and so there isn't the "one definitive narrative" for a historical event or topic. However, is it possible to have a timeless conclusion for a specific purpose & angle for a topic? What the author argues, is "no" - when historians look into history, they are bringing their contemporary concerns and questions into the process and thought logics. If there is racial tension in the current world being unfolded in a specific way, these provocations will influence the researcher's angle and analysis, in the hope that historical events could elucidate the path. This is inevitable, and so for the same topic and set of sources, different researchers along the timeline will look at it in different ways and come up with varied conclusions. It doesn't matter how impartial the researchers try to be, it's in the DNA of historical studies.

Having established the inevitable human factor in historical studies, the next logical question is that will the researchers' background affect the macro scope of study? For example, researchers are intellects and middle class, and as such would they be tempted to investigate history to justify their social status and economic benefits such as professors' pay? In theory this is of course possible, but from practical observations the researchers do not appear to be doing that. Despite being middle class, a lot of them championed for the ethnic minority and labour class, and go on to criticise the establishment. This is the result of universities being deliberately maintained crucibles of provocative thoughts, and the dedication of researchers in to finding the impartial truth.

However, this does not mean that the human factors is not affecting the health or dependability of historical studies. Postmodernism grew out of the diminished status of history in the society (although less of a case in academia and universities). They called for history as evidence-based literature and simultaneous validity of a multitude of theories, such that there is no "orthodox narrative" and that readers are free (or forced) to seek professional interpretation of historical events, putting historians back in the centre of historical studies which is required for any interpretation to take place (a bit like dieting). This has damaged the reputation of history as people started to question whether finding the truth about the past was ever possible, and whether the learnings could be genuinely trusted and be significant to our lives today.

Human factor is inevitable and not necessarily skewing history, but how does the identity of the researcher affect the history topic being studied? A school of thought is that a history topic the most valid when studied by someone with direct relationship or experience to it, such as a woman researching on women's history, or an ethnic minority studying into ethnic minority's history. For ancient military history, then they are best studied by retired general who have been through wars. This is an appealing theory and would pass thought experiments, but it's again not true in practice. A lot of middle class white male researchers write far better history on ethnic minority or the working class, defeating the theory comprehensively. Furthermore, the idea of history is that the past events' contexts may be very different from the current events' contexts, e.g. the ethnic minorities' pressure in the past may be different from the current ones, such that the direct experience is more of a constraint or provides false hints. Outsiders studying into a history topic could also bring in fresh thoughts, dimensions and rigour not possible by those bound by their own experience.

What these theories and real experience suggest the need for an all-inclusive society where opportunities thrive - it is one thing to come up with thoughts and reasoning to limit people, and quite another to let experiments take place, let real data gather and then make a conclusion.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (6)

What history should we study?

After defending the importance of historical studies as a whole and the validity of historical theories based on sources, the question now comes to - what facets of history has been studied?

Traditionally, history was about the study of key figures such as kings, nobles and generals. They alone would make history and studying their events alone would be able to map out the historical progress. However, historians increasingly realised that this history contour is effectively political history and should not be confused with the full history - these people might have been a key input in how the society evolved, but there are a lot other human and non-human factors involved in shaping the society. In other words, studying the political history alone is too narrow.

A spin-off of studying key figures is that of national-state-focused history, where the emphasis is on the evolution of a nation state or a group of nation states alone (e.g. Europe). While some arrogant historians dismissed non-Europe or American history as peripheral to the world's progress or that little learning would be obtained, the mainstream historians no longer see it that way, and are ready to seek learning from other countries' history. When studying other countries' history, there is also greater consciousness in not studying from a European or American standpoint, but from the target countries' standpoint, so as to avoid a reincarnation of the arrogance.

But if not political or nation-state history, then what history? Quite a lot to choose from, actually. Social history in studying the masses has become popular, but so has the study of economic history and histories into particular genres such as racial history or gender history. The problem now is that the profession is spoilt for choice, with different angles of study for the same topic with similar source materials.

This flourishing of history means that defining a "snap history" for a particular time period of nation state becomes difficult owing to the multiple angles, and there were attempts to co-ordinate these dimensions through tomes that provide a backbone narrative. They were initially useful, but eventually editing them became time-consuming while they invariably contained lots of personal preferences by the authors - these tomes were not impartial narratives but the authors' own view of the nation state or period, decimating their usefulness as a definitive guide. Renewed attempts were to include various perspectives to provoke readers' thoughts, but a more popular alternative is simply for the readers to select a range of text to form their view of the "real narrative".

As the new angles developed, and married with the post modernist view that history are literary stories based on hypotheses about the past, there is a new trend for historians to mix & match different angles to synthesise new angles. This means more variety and complexity, but should be welcomed.

It is by now very difficult for a generalist historian to emerge, as the angles call for specialisation and different angles may not fit with each other for a person to master both. More collaboration is called for, but that also means a more dynamic environment for history to flourish.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (5)

What should historical studies focus on?

This is an important question, for historians are keen to distance themselves from chroniclers, whose core role is to note down what has happened in each year or month, allowing future studies to be possible. If historians are not chroniclers, then what exactly should historians study?

To the author, the answer is "causes" - what other events or root causes resulted in a historical event taking place. While chroniclers focus on ensuring an event is recorded, historians goes beyond the event and ensure the events are understood. However, this distinguishing feature leads to a number of questions and considerations.

The first question is whether "finding out causes" is really the core role of historians. What's the point of finding out what led to a historical event which is buried in the past? It sounds like a futile, time-wasting activity that would not benefit the present time when making decisions that impacts the future. A modern or postmodernist recommendation would be to focus on "explanations" and "implications", more like the contextual learnings or the results of the events on how the future unfolded. A more social science-focused recommendation is to turn the "cause finding" upside down, from finding out the cause surrounding a historical event to finding out common rules that are validated by a string of historical events, so as to identify theories for immediate use by the present time.

These alternatives are all appealing and worth pursuing, but the value of finding the causes should not be sidelined - to the author, understanding the past would explain the present and enable us to see how the future may unfold. The causes behind key events is a constituent part of out understanding of the past, and therefore justifies efforts being poured in.

Another consideration is that of the variety of narratives (or explanation of causes). A lot of historians are weary of the dominant "master narratives" which were prevalent back in the nationalistic and communist days to drum up patriotism, and are still popular in certain post-colonial countries to maintain national myths for support of present regimes. The favouring of official causes and attempts to eliminate alternative narratives or angles of analysis was harming the reputation of historical studies, and gave ammunition to postmodernists who argued against studying of causes.

The author agreed to the negative impact of "master narratives", but was keen to point out that the masses of modern historians put their efforts into finding out alternative narratives, especially given the current atmosphere of "finding exceptions from the mainstream" as studies deepen. This means that the "master narrative" are constantly being challenges for modifications or re-evaluations by the academic community. Furthermore, alternative or local narratives have long been in existence as fringe movements to counter master narratives, e.g. women and black history amid a male-dominated and white narrative in Europe and North America. As time progressed, these local narratives have stayed strong and form a main branch of historical studies. Contrary to postmodernists' fear, "master narratives" have not crushed the alternatives which are just as important in helping us understand the past.

If we go back to comparing a historian with a chronicler, a postmodernist would usually argue that both are not that different from each other, in that both utilise time periods heavily in their narratives. In the case of chroniclers, all events are recorded against a flowing timeline, while historians would identify events and causes which unfolded before the event, then described the progress of the event, and the post-event impact as time moved away from the event itself.

The author's argument is that while both utilise time periods heavily, the ways in which time was utilised are different. Chroniclers are controlled by the flow of time which occurs at a steady pace, whereas historians control the flow - they could collapse long periods of stable development into a few paragraphs, but then expend vast spaces to explain a very short but critical time period with series of events occurring. Within the same time periods, the level of details could also differ, such as researching into fine details for the key decisions makers, expressing the progress of science and technology in an abstract manner, and portraying the peasants' lives as almost static and unchanged. Same ingredients, different outcomes - chroniclers and historians are not the same.

What makes a cause the true cause? A postmodernist's favourite argument is that the author's context cannot be retrieved from the text, and so all analysis would be futile. This also means there are infinite context in a text rendering analysis meaningless - you can't analyse them all. Also, if there are a few items that could be the causes, which ones would you list as cause and some others as irrelevant? It is a deeply philosophical question, but the implication is that all causal analysis are practically fabrication and forced justification of the historians' personal perception with a veneer of evidence.

This is a complicated argument, but the counter-argument is simpler, as it comes from practical operation of historical studies rather than the philosophical thought experiments. In real life experience, authors' contexts could be inferred from the text and from comparing between texts. It is true that there are multiple contexts from each source and lots of sources need to be studied, but once a research direction has been decided the number of contexts to be considered per source would drastically diminish. This begs the question of the historian's pre-conception having excessive influence, but in the discovery process the sources may suggest that the preconceived direction is poorly supported, prompting a revision of the direction to make the contexts fit. Whether a cause is a cause depends on how much learning or impact it could bring - causes that bring little value to future scenarios of a similar nature or could be validated by similar scenarios in the past are less likely to be a valuable cause than otherwise.

It is easy to argue and come up with counter thought experiments, but it's the practical implementation that busts the myths.

Politics Snippet - granting of happiness to citizens by the state

The granting of happiness to citizens by the state

When washing up the dishes after our Sunday brunch, I suddenly recalled a movie we saw almost 10 years ago - The Pursuit of Happyness. Back then, as a recent university graduate embarking on an exciting career, there were a lot of reminiscence, not least in my pursuit of a decent graduate job offer during my final year in university, and the bright future open to me after securing one. The right to pursue happyness, back then, was a good philosophy and a right to be advocated.

Ten years on, both my wife and I were subjects to a whole host of wide-ranging events, from redundancy through to entrepreneurship and political deterioration in our birthplace. As we experienced these upheavals, our world views matured, and became more sympathetic. Our "middle class upbringing" might have enabled us to access good education followed by a good start in career, but such good lives were far from guaranteed; we are as vulnerable to hard times as much as anyone else. And for people who have landed in hard times or had been born into hard times, why should they be condemned instead of being given resources and opportunities to rise up again? Having the right to pursuit happiness, it now appears, is too simple, sometimes naive.

A compassionate and fair society is insufficient in not stopping people from pursuing opportunities which would give them happiness, satisfaction and fulfilment. It could be argued that for people without access to such opportunities or resources (or means of acquiring resources) to pursue opportunities in front of them, the other side of the coin would be to open up access and equip them with resources. There is nothing wrong with this more encompassing view, but arguably it is still incomplete - this solution still demands citizens to actively (or be forced to) look out for opportunities and capture. For some citizens and for some aspects of life, this is simply not practical.

Let's take two simple examples, namely education and medical care. The right to pursuit happiness would be a free market approach in which the rich people would have access to quality private education, whereas the rest are left with bog-standard or no care. If these situations were to be improved by opening access or equipping people with resources, the government might subsidise bright students from modest background to attend the privileged private schools, or in the case of medical care promoting self-care knowledge or courses to substitute assisted care.

As you can feel, in the first example, the private education community (the schools and the privately-educated families) gains collectively, as they poach the best talents in the state education community, thereby enhancing the results of the private schools and introduces a more synergetic education environment for the fee-paying students. On contrary, the gain of the modest community is individual, as only the lucky few could benefit from quality education and rise through the ranks, while the rest stay in their original modest positions. The state education community would collectively suffer, as the brightest students were lost leading to negative synergies, while the schools become even less appealing as they constantly lose out on league tables and comparison charts.

In the second example, the modest families benefit from more knowledge for better self-care, but medical care is an inherently complex and self-care is only a partial solution. When a young and healthy person falls ill, seeking consultation is not just a technical requirement but also an emotional requirement to be re-assured that nothing serious is lurking behind the milld symptoms. Turning young patients away or giving them appointments that are 3 days later are not just frustrating, but also puts the whole public system to question. How many severe illness cases have missed early diagnosis opportunities? How many people have been forced to take private medical care out of their tight household budgets? You can have as much self-care training as you like, but unless you train everyone to a doctor's or senior nurse's standard, the remaining gap will still be too wide to bridge.

The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human right, but so is a basic level of happiness - good & comprehensive education, medical care that helps citizen to stay healthy and avert long-term ailments (e.g. through healthy eating), just to name a few. The more modest a household is, the fewer automatically opened opportunities and skills are available to their members, and the more efforts they have to put in just to get to the starting point of an opportunity (equipping with resources) and then to cultivate in a number of opportunities to yield some success. Below a certain level of modesty, we may argue that so much efforts would be required for them to pursue the opened opportunities that it ceased to make sense to pursue. The distance between their current position and the access point would take all their remaining energy and financial resources to cover. Why bother?

This is the main difference between the Anglo-Saxon libertarian capitalism and the European social capitalism. In libertarian capitalism, all emphasis is on the availability of opportunities, and people who have "made it" are the role models who should be praised and encouraged to flaunt their wealth as a symbol of success. For the rest who have not "made it", the deal is to open up access to opportunities and resources so that they could also participate in the game. But opportunities are more often than not plentiful, meaning that it's the same set of opportunities and rewards, but many more people competing and losing out. For those who have lost in the pursuit or not joined in the first place, they were deemed "lazy" and not worth any support. A portion of the society gets very happy, another portion is quite happy, the rest unhappy but it's their own fault and not the society's.

The European model of social capitalism, on the other hand, provides not just an opportunity to pursue happiness, but also an opportunity to happiness itself. Education is regarded as a means of generating genuine equality and as such private education is a fringe provision and state education made to be all inclusive and of good quality; the idea of "living wages" also offers citizens who are at a loss some form of happiness before they are clear about what type of happiness they should pursue. People who have pursued happiness are reminded that not everyone is able to make a successful pursuit, whether due to lack of opportunities, lack of availability to start pursuing an open opportunity, or lack of luck in succeeding in the pursuit. As such, the successful people are not encouraged to display their success by showing off, but by caring about those who have not pursued.

Which model is better? Judging by economic success and current source of global growth or advancement, the libertarian model keeps people hungry for success (for the alternative can be quite scary and tragic) which creates multiple "stars" that contribute towards collective success. It is also "cheaper" for the government to run this model as the need to consider what constitutes principle happiness is divested to the individuals and the market and the cost is fully borne by the requestor of service.

However, the flip side is the human cost - for every poor student who was promoted to private schools, there are at least ten who had similar capabilities but simply lost out due to limited availability. And the degree of hostile competition which yielded not collective improvement (vs. healthy competition) means efforts are devoted to zero-sum games instead of mutually beneficial scenarios. The masses who could not weather any failure due to limited resources also lost their social mobility and opportunities to fulfil their ambitions or inherent capabilities, and are forced to sell their labour to the highest bidders instead of having the freedom to pursue genuine happiness.

It's a philosophical question, but personally both of us prefer the social capitalist model. It's more expensive and more complicated to execute, but more people ACTUALLY get to pursue happiness in the end.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (4)

Formulating historical theories from sources

When discussing the considerations regarding sources, it's not the sources' nature that was the focus; the process of utilising sources to create theories was also under scrutiny.

A key distinction the author was keen to make was sources and evidence. While evidence arise from sources, sources do not automatically become evidence. Instead, when a hypothesis is formulated, it needs to be supported by evidence, and sources would then be trawled through to identify the relevant ones that prove or disprove the hypothesis. This gives rise to another question to sources - when do sources become sources rather than staying as snippets of information?

There are historians who argue that all snippets are historical sources waiting to be mentioned. However, another more discerning view is that snippets are abundant, but they do not become sources until they have been identified, discussed and promoted by historians. So snippets would reside in newspapers and archives with no significance or contribution, but once a historian has seen it, decided to consider it and taken efforts in writing it out, then it has formally entered the historical studies arena for future candidacy as evidence or subject of debates.

In the process of using evidence to generate a new historical theory, how true is the post modernist argument of "there is no truth" and "there are multitude styles of creating varying theories from the same evidence, and they can all be valid"? If these arguments are true, then practically all theories are as good as historical literature that carry limited value, and efforts to extract "the right conclusion" are futile.

The authors' counter-argument is the "puzzle theory", in which when a variety sources are used to construct the web of evidence, a picture would emerge which has a limited set of interpretations. The most extreme example would be the Holocaust, which in no way could be argued to be an exaggeration or that it has never existed (as a prolonged massacre). It is possible to extract different theories regarding the rise, the evolution and the driving forces behind the Holocaust based on a similar set of evidence, but they would broadly lie in the same band.

This argument has forced the post-modernist to retreat and claim the "there is no truth" lies in the final interpretation by the readers of the theories presented. When sources are considered and web of evidence has been constructed, the historians are in the process of piecing together valid historical theories and it is OK to be bound by the web of evidence into a band of possible theories. However, as soon as the process of penning down the theories has completed, the process of creating historical studies outcome ceases and the resulting literature becomes open to readers' own interpretation, and in this sense the truth can never be perfectly & comprehensively presented to the readers, and is therefore a literature to the readers in this sense.

The combination of this revised post-modernist view of "historical truth and readers' interpretation" and web of evidence raises a critical question about any arising theory - how can we ensure that they are valid & supported by evidence and could be reasonably challenged? After all, the risk is that the web of evidence is poorly constructed and counter-evidence are omitted by mistake or intentionally, or that the band of possible theories is wrongly attributed and that inherently erroneous theories slipped through the web.

A conventional answer to this is that the academic circle develops and evolves a consensus and act as the gatekeeper against wrong theories or poorly argued theses. But these is not infallible, as demonstrated by the German academia during the Nazi period whose gatekeeping allowed pro-Nazi theories to pass. The scope for collective human error was great.

From the "Abraham case", the author evaluated such a risk from three angles. The first is the challenge from an opposite "meta camp", as a band of possible theories still has 2 or more extremes, and theories raised towards one end would attract criticisms and attempted discreditation from the other ends, but the to-and-fro could help flag up flaws in arguments or evidence gaps, and help to deepen & widen the inspection into the validity of theories. Gatekeeping does not come from consensual view, but opposing views putting a sceptical spin on each others' studies.

Another angle is the strength of the web of evidence - it is inevitable for evidence to carry mistakes & gaps arising from typos, translation differences or missed counter-evidence. It is possible for these mistakes & gaps not to affect the overall validity of the theory, but the more mistakes and gaps found through inspection, the more suspicious the theory becomes. Even if the theory is ultimately valid, the paper should be deemed weak and be rejected.

The third angle is identification of patterns of mistakes at a macro level - analysis logics, data collection methodologies and calculations & attribution. If a researcher deliberately missed out a vast repository of evidence known to be unfavourable to his/her theory, or assumptions behind calculations are too simplistic or plain wrong, or that exceptions are not considered at all, then the theories should again be deemed weak and be rejected.

The process of turning sources into evidence then to validated theories is complex, and further complicated by the risk of mis-interpretation by the reader. However, what becomes clear is the need for rigour at every stage of the process, and subjecting the process and outcomes to hostile inspection at micro and macro levels, instead of having a simple "consensus test". The arguments and challenges should not be feared - they help to force a deep re-think on the linkage between sources, evidence and the theory, and offered an opportunity for theories to be refined into a more robust state. In the same vein, the post-modernist interpretation of history was challenged, and refined into something far more defendable, acceptable and thought-provoking to the overall research community.

Reading Snippet - In Defence of History (3)

The craft of constructing history from base materials

After a discussion of the fads in and the exact nature (science vs. art) of historical studies, the author then turned his attention to how history was constructed from base materials - the sources. This topic spanned across two chapters demonstrating its criticality, and has a hidden agenda as a counter-attack against postmodernist view of history.

History sources are considered from a number of angles. A starting angle is how source data should be viewed - in its purest form as a historical artefact to be judged with its contemporary mindsets and conditions, or with present-day understanding? Both views were presented, but the author favoured the infusion of modern theories and frameworks when utilising sources. After all, this enables historical knowledge and understanding to be built, with sources interacting with latest understanding to create new understanding. In some extreme cases, such as understanding the culture of witches in medieval Europe, the initial framework-setting could be turbo-charged by grafting it on anthropological studies in African religions and cultures, allowing historians to advance rapidly.

Another angle is the possible multitude interpretations regarding each source. Given that the sources were written in the past, there would be words and sentences no longer in circulation, and even those similar to modern-day texts may carry very different meanings. An argument that arises from this is that a modern historian would struggle to decipher the exact meaning of any historical text and construct an "accurate" view from sources, owing to this type of inaccuracy (or inability to assert confidence on any interpretation). The author's counter-argument is that within the same period the words and sentences would carry specific pattern, and a learned historian could start to acquaint with the exact meanings, thereby interpreting with confidence.

The author also revealed the trade of historical sources - contrary to conventional beliefs that the sources are necessarily texts or written accounts, but can be anything left from that period - inscriptions, graffiti, parish records etc. This means even if few texts remained, it is possible to obtain a wealth of sources to developing a historical narration from. Furthermore, there is traditional a distinction between primary sources such as witness' accounts, and secondary sources which are collated texts such as a historian's book. The primary sources carry immense value, but as do the secondary sources which should be studied and subjected to the same type of scrutiny when deriving historical conclusions from primary sources.

After all these considerations regarding sources, here comes the post modernist challenge - there are a lots of snippets and even more that are lost or not present, and the snippets were created in the past with their own initial interpretation, such that the real meanings can never be deciphered correctly. Furthermore, texts are produced with the authors' hidden agenda and consciousness which are never revealed, and once written they are then read in the future without the authors' presence, such that all these contextual information could not be revealed. The argument brought forward by the postmodernist is thus these sources could be combined & interpreted in however many "styles" possible in the absence of such contextual revelations, all of which could make sense and be logical, and it is not possible to distill or argue for the "truth". Even though the historical event has taken place, there would never be enough information to dig it out and all historians' attempts are analogous to historical literature - they are stories based on historical sources, but by no means historical reconstructions. This also implies that no distinction needs to be made between primary and secondary sources - the primacy of primary sources breaks down as truthful interpretation is not possible but only the readers' own indirect interpretation.

To this, the author countered that despite the absence of contextual information of the authors or artefacts creators, the sources could in fact come together to triangulate against each other, from which the sets of theories could be narrowed into a number of feasible sets - the more sources and types of sources, the better the triangulation would work. In regards to the inability to 'read' historical sources, the fact that rules and common meanings could be derived through comparing grammar and conventions across and within periods would break down some of the issues of cross-period interpretation issues. The context of texts is also not completely hidden, as some of those contexts (such as diplomatic documents) are known and a set of valid context would emerge.

In regards to primary sources, it is simply that when a new piece of work is written based on other sources, the sources become important in verifying any claim or analysis made. From this, the distinction between primary and secondary sources become apparent and undeniable.

In a world of rampant with "post truth" and conflicting views (such as investing in countries with known child labour abuse), a post modernist view of "there is no truth" or "no truth could ever be argued or supported" becomes appealing is discrediting any claim of truth or principles which should be abided by (such as human rights). But from this short illustration, it is easy to see that there is really something called "truth" which should be protected and promoted.