4 ms·
> mandate out for people to be more "creative" A tough sell in a place where the possession of even a tiny amount of marijuana is punishable by caning and long
by thoward 11y ago
> mandate out for people to be more "creative"
A tough sell in a place where the possession of even a tiny amount of marijuana is punishable by caning and long imprisonment.
- amazon_not 11y agoPray tell, what does drug usage have to do with creativity?
- Avshalom 11y agoCausality? unknown. Correlation? strong.
- thoward 11y agoNot exactly my point, and I won't go there. I don't know enough about drugs to comment. Smart, creative people are, by and large, allergic to authoritarianism. Draconian rules around possession of soft drugs like cannabis are useful proxies for measuring a state's authoritarianism.
- caskance 11y agoYour logic sounds backwards to me. Restrictions breed creativity as people do their best to work around or within those restrictions. I would expect a government that is trying to encourage its citizens to be more creative to have draconian and arbitrary laws.
- twic 11y agoIn Singapore's case, we don't need proxies - we can look directly at how the authorities respond to speech which tests the boundaries of dissent and taboo. Which they generally do with rapid and thorough censorship. One of the things i found interesting about Singapore's censorship is that it's completely open. It is not itself secret, or a taboo subject. When i was there, i stumbled across an exhibition by local artists that was all about a major obscenity/censorship case in the 1980s that had had a big impact on the artistic community. The exhibition was in a public gallery, and i think had even been supported with public funds.
- ValentineC 11y agoThere's a lot of self-censorship going on from both Singapore's journalists and its people [1], mostly because there's a culture of fear. Have a look at this recent case where a teen blogger was jailed for making offensive remarks against Christianity, and for circulating obscene imagery. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OB_marker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OB_marker [2] http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/teen-blogger-amos-yee/1841236.html http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/teen-blogger-a...
- woah 11y agoLots of creative people like to use drugs. By prohibiting it, you take them out of the talent pool. Look at how many movies, ads, and interface mockups have clocks set to 4:20.
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y agoNo you don't. They are still there except they don't use drugs. If people leave Singapore, it's probably for education or work. I highly doubt people are leaving because they have easier access to drugs in other countries.
- dublinclontarf 11y agoDisney land with the death penalty.
- markdown 11y agoFunnily enough, you're probably be safer on the streets of Singapore than you'd be in any Disneyland in the US. And both places have the death penalty.