Do the Heather Chua test !

As a further elaboration of my last post, I think that once we go beyond our anger with the Foreign Talent policy, Singaporeans will need to deal with a very socially stratified nation over the next 100 years.

After Independence, Singaporeans collectively decided on meritocracy and pragmatism as our core philosophy, inadvertently but voluntarily, we have also started a very aggressive eugenics program which was made even worse when we account for the effects of globalization.

The effects on the ground is for everybody to observe. Increasingly, we are marrying within our class divisions :

Admin Service Scholar marry Admin Service Scholar
Goldman Sachs marry McKinsey
Lawyer marry Doctor
Engineer marry Accountant
Technician marry Clerk
Hawker marry Shop Assistant

This phenomenon is called Assortative Mating and is currently taking place in all developed countries.

Within generations, children will not only inherit the parent's wealth, they will also inherit their's parent's genetic potential. In 100 years, we will become a caste-based society. You might be categorized on the geo-location where you come from, District 10 being where the 160 IQ upper caste folks who live who will attend the best schools in Singapore.

In this post, I will not debate the morality of this phenomenon.

I want to offer a mental experiment or a sociological tool to detect class differences in society, I call this the Heather Chua test :

Imagine if a troll like Heather Chua were to make a statement sharing her distaste for  marriage between two people of Class A and Class B.

a) If Heather Chua's action angers you, then there is certainly a class division which already exists, but society may not want to acknowledge it based on political correctness. The division already exists but is sub-consious.

eg. The original posts is a marriage between RGS and ITE. It angered everyone. There is a class division between RGS and ITE but Singaporeans don't want to acknowledge it due to political incorrectness.

b) If Heather Chua's action does not being anger but  mild amusement, then, there is no class division.

eg. If the marriage is between someone from Swiss Cottage Secondary School and Bukit Panjang Government High, then the reaction will be mild amusement as there is no class  division between alumni of more or less equal status.

The Heather Chua test is a useful tool because we can detect cracks in Singapore society. The political left will use it as a weapon to destroy meritocracy. The political right may use it to form lasting family unions. Trolls in the future will find new ways to enrage readers by applying the test on racial divides or even gender.

Once we understand which caste or division we belong to, we can get into the next phase, on how we cope with the caste based society.

This I will share with you in my next blog post.