务实新加坡应包容更多诗意 Pragmatic Singapore can afford a little poetry

One day in 1964 Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister, looked out of his office in City Hall and was horrified to see several cows grazing outside. A few days later, a lawyer driving on a nearby road hit one of the cows and died. Lee decided to act. Owners of cows and goats were given a few months to pen their animals. Stray beasts would be slaughtered.

1964年的一天，新加坡建国总理李光耀(Lee Kuan Yew)从政府大厦里的办公室向外看去，震惊地发现外面有几头牛在吃草。数天后，在附近一条公路上，一位律师开车撞上一头牛后死亡。李光耀决定采取行动。牛羊养殖者被要求在几个月内把他们的家畜圈养起来。跑出来的家畜将会被宰杀。

The incident is typical of Singapore’s founding father, and of the city state itself, which has mostly eschewed ideology in favour of practical solutions to practical problems. In a chapter on “greening Singapore” in From Third World To First, Lee detailed how he cleaned up unhygienic hawkers’ stalls, led anti-spitting campaigns, banned dangerous fireworks at Chinese lunar new year and started a methodical tree-planting and maintenance effort that has left Singapore one of the greenest cities in the world.

这起事件体现了新加坡国父以及新加坡自身的典型做事风格，这个城市国家基本上抛开意识形态，倾向以务实的态度解决现实问题。在《从第三世界到第一世界》(From Third World to First)中“绿化新加坡”这一章里，李光耀讲述了他是如何清理不卫生的街头小贩，发起反对随地吐痰运动，禁止在中国农历新年燃放危险的烟花爆竹，以及有条不紊地开展植树养护行动——这让新加坡成为全球绿化程度最高的城市之一。

Lee, who died in March aged 91, knew that even centuries of custom could be nudged or bullied out of existence. What comes across most strongly in his memoir is just how practical and non-ideological he was. For Lee, a former socialist who became an enforcer of state-guided capitalism and even more guided democracy, the main preoccupation was not to create a utopian society but rather one that worked and prospered. The “improbable country” he helped build, which this weekend celebrates its 50th anniversary, is above all a pragmatic state. To adapt a phrase coined by Lee, who said the young nation could not afford the luxury of poetry, Singapore is a creation written in prose.

他知道，即便是沿袭了多个世纪的习俗也可能在规劝或强制之下被打破。李光耀于今年3月去世，享年91岁。在他的自传里令人印象最为深刻的是，他是那么的务实和超越意识形态。李光耀曾经是一名社会主义者，后来成为国家指导资本主义乃至指导民主体制的践行者，对他来说，那时的当务之急是让社会运转起来并实现繁荣，而不是建立一个乌托邦式的社会。他帮助建立的“不可能的国家”首先是一个务实的国家——新加坡于8月9日迎来建国50周年纪念日。李光耀曾表示，年轻国家负担不起诗歌的奢侈。套用他的话说，新加坡是用散文写就的。

Its dogged practicality was not typical of the 20th century. At one extreme were totalitarian states, both communist and fascist, that pursued ideology at any — invariably disastrous — cost. At the other were liberal democracies, or “open societies”. Somewhere in the middle were kleptocracies and crony capitalist states. Singapore, along with a few other mostly Asian states, pursued a genuinely national project aimed at lifting the living standards of its people.

它那根深蒂固的务实性在20世纪并不具有代表性。20世纪的一个极端是不惜一切代价（这始终是灾难性的）追求意识形态的极权政府——无论是共产主义还是法西斯主义。另一个极端是自由民主体制，或者叫“开放型社会”。处于中间路线的是窃国政治和裙带资本主义国家。新加坡与其他一些国家（以亚洲国家为主）则推行一种真正的国家方针大计，目标是提升人民的生活水平。

Professor Kishore Mahbubani, of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, says that pragmatism — along with meritocracy and honesty — are the keystones of Singapore’s transformation. In the mid-1960s, when its per capita gross domestic product was $500, he remembers a school feeding programme where he drank milk from a pail using a ladle shared with other children. Today, GDP per capita is $55,000. “Pragmatism is a dirty word to western intellectuals,” he says, but it can be an ethical principle if it improves people’s lives. At its simplest, it means learning from others. Singapore’s administrators scoured the world for practical solutions. They modelled their port on Rotterdam, their army on Israel’s and their government housing schemes on Europe’s.

李光耀公共政策学院(Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy)的马凯硕教授(Kishore Mahbubani)表示，务实主义加上精英政治和诚实是新加坡转变的基石。在新加坡人均GDP只有500美元的上世纪60年代中期，他记得有一项学校食品供应计划，可以让自己和其他孩子一起用一个长柄勺子从桶里舀牛奶喝。现在，新加坡人均GDP达到5.5万美元。他说：“务实主义在西方知识分子眼里是一个贬义词。但如果它改善了民众生活，我们就可以把它作为一个道德准则。简言之，它意味着向别人学习。新加坡政府从全世界寻求务实的解决方案。他们向鹿特丹学习港口管理，向以色列学习治军，向欧洲学习政府住屋项目。”

There has been much debate about whether this small city state holds lessons for bigger countries. In its philosophy of pragmatism it surely does. Even a country of China’s scale, after the change of direction engineered by Deng Xiaoping from 1979, was able to loosen its ideological shackles and pursue more practical policies. Prof Mahbubani argues excessive adherence to ideology is not limited to dictatorships or theocracies. The US refusal to admit it could improve its “disastrous” healthcare service by learning from others is evidence of a blinding ideology, he says. When it comes to gun control, “the US is as un-pragmatic as North Korea”.

关于这个城市小国是否值得较大国家学习，一直存在着很大的争论。就其务实主义哲学来说，当然值得学习。即便像中国这么大的国家，在1979年邓小平设计改革方向之后也能够放松其意识形态桎梏，追求较为务实的政策。马凯硕辩称，过分执着于意识形态的不仅仅是独裁者或者神权政体。他说，美国拒绝承认它可以通过向其他国家学习来改善其“灾难性的”医疗服务，这体现了一种使人盲目的意识形态。就枪支控制而言，“美国和朝鲜一样不务实”。

Pragmatism comes with costs. Insofar as it seeks to shape people’s behaviour and values, it is an ideology in itself. Lee picked bad policies as well as good ones. He encouraged small families and pursued a mild form of eugenics, discouraging less-well-educated couples from having children[HOW?]. Today, Singapore is stuck with a disastrously low birth rate. He also hounded opponents, using libel laws and the courts, to silence critics. The resulting “air-conditioned nation”, in the phrase of Cherian George, a political analyst, purrs like a machine. It also lacks a richness of debate, divergence and dissent.

务实主义并非没有代价。就寻求塑造人民行为和价值观这一点来说，它本身也是一种意识形态。李光耀推行的政策有好有坏。他鼓励人们减少生育，并提倡一定程度的优生，不鼓励教育程度较低的夫妇要小孩。如今新加坡仍困扰于灾难性的低生育率。他还逼迫政敌，利用诽谤法和法庭来让批评者噤声。由此产生的“空调国家”——用政治分析师契连吠治(Cherian George)的话来说——就像一台机器一样轰轰作响。新加坡还极为缺乏辩论、分歧和异见。

Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of Banyan Tree, a hotel company, calls Singapore “first world-minus”. In an extraordinary series of lectures, he asserts the need for a “second act of this great Singapore miracle”. Renewal will mean the development of a more holistic society, where the social, cultural and political realms flourish. It will also mean that the People’s Action party, which has ruled since independence, will have to contemplate ceding power to forces outside its self-ordained priesthood. Mr Ho sees cause for optimism in a young generation that is prepared to question and probe — and one that, above all, believes it has the agency to exact change.

悦榕度假酒店集团(Banyan Tree)董事长何光平(Ho Kwon Ping)将新加坡称为“第一世界-”(first world-minus)。他在精彩的系列演讲中提出，“这个伟大的新加坡奇迹需要进入第二幕”。革新将意味着建设一个更加全面发展的社会，让社会、文化和政治领域蓬勃发展。它也将意味着，自新加坡独立以来一直执政的人民行动党将不得不考虑将权力让与其自封神职体系以外的势力。何光平认为有理由对怀着质疑和探索之心的年轻一代感到乐观——最重要的是，年轻一代相信他们拥有促成改变的力量。

Lee and his generation made Singapore work, and work spectacularly well. What is now needed, in Mr Ho’s phrase, is “a flowering of the Singapore garden”.

李光耀及其同时代人让新加坡运转起来，而且运转得非常好。用何光平的话来说，现在需要的是让“新加坡花园百花盛放”。