The Audacity of Hope

Throughout the two years of the US presidential campaign, I was unwilling to express my support of any candidate. Of course, I was more favorably disposed toward the Democrats. It was only one evening when I was watching a documentary on the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain that I learnt about how Obama had been a community organizer when he first graduated from college. After a few years, though, he began to realize the limits of community organizing. He went on to Harvard Law School, then entered public service.

It piqued my interest in this person, and I wanted to know more about his journey.
I've been quite interested in personal autobiographies of late. Again, I think it's to do with my questions about how my life will look many, many years later. I know that part of who I will be, what I will do, has to do with how I envision it today. So I am looking at people who faced that question many years before I did, and how they answered it. Of course, we all have to find our own answer. But I want to know what motivated them to do what they are doing today, what their journey was like, the kind of experience that contributed to who they are.

I picked up his book "The Audacity of Hope". He espouses on many of his policy ideas in what has been described as his "thesis submission" for the US presidency. What really earned my respect for this next President of the United States, however, was the importance he placed on empathy. He related how he learnt about empathy from his grandfather, who could be a difficult person to live with. And it is this sense of empathy that I get when he describes how he had initiated a self-imposed ban on the practice of letting senators fly on private jets at the cheaper first class commercial rate. He found himself enduring awful traffic to O'Hare, only to find that his flight had been delayed when he arrived. And then a kid spilled orange juice on his shoes. But, as he was waiting in line, a man with Parkinson's came to him and told him that it was probably too late for him, but he hoped Congress would do something about stem cell research so that others would not have to go through what he did. And, in Obama's words, "These are the stories you miss when you fly on private jet."

I was overjoyed when Obama won the presidential elections. Now it remains to be seen whether the ideals he espoused in his book would really take form. He is critical of the "uneven risks and rewards of today's winner-take-all economy", dubbing its philosophy as "You're on your own" rather than "We're all in it together".

He describes George Bush's Ownership Society:

"If you are healthy or wealthy or just plain lucky, then you will become more so. If you are poor or sick or catch a bad break, you will have nobody to look to for help." And he counters, "I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligation of ensuring every American child has a chance for the same success. And perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility... that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes."

When I was in Laos, I had a friend who was studying law at the local university in the city. I met him when he was back in his village for summer. One day, his friend came to inform him that their scholarship allowance was in. Being the city person that I was I thought, "Great!" But my friend did not share my excitement. He had to go to Pakse to obtain it. I was like, "Wow," thinking of the 5-6 hour journey by bus. Yet his concern was not the long journey, rather, he did not have money to go.

At that time, rising oil prices made travel, whether by bus or by boat, a lot more expensive. To travel to Pakse, where I'd passed through on my way to the islands, would cost about 50 000-70 000 Kip (about S$10-S$12). My friend's family grew rice. They had just enough rice to eat, and if they caught some fish, then they could have fish with their rice. My friend had a boat, but it had become so expensive to travel by boat that many boatmen had been put out of a job. Without the scholarship, there was no way he could afford to go to college.

We all hear about stories like that, but for me, having to witness the difficulties faced by my friend really made me juxtapose my life and his, and made me realize that how the way I lived my life involved not only being responsible to myself but also to others. I cannot have my aircon switched on every night whilst the earth gets warmer and oil prices rise, and my friend in Laos can no longer navigate his boat or go to the city because of how the developed world has been purchasing its comforts without giving thought to the consequences of its actions.

I was at my friend's house in Singapore one evening, and we were going out to dinner. I went back to the room to switch off the aircon. My friend commented, "We're just going out for a while."

"Yeah, but we're not using it, so we may as well turn it off."

"It's not going to make a difference anyway. People are not going to change their lifestyles, so why go to that extent?"

True, the earth may get warmer despite our efforts to contain it. The developed world may have become indifferent to change. So what if it's getting warmer/colder? Turn up the aircon, or the heater. The haves have the capacity to hedge from problems in the world, but have-nots cannot. That's not to say that we cannot be responsible to others who have to deal with the consequences of our excess. For me, then, whether or not my attempts at frugality contributes to reducing global warming or rising sea levels, it is a matter of my own conscience that my lifestyle does not deny someone else his basic needs.