He Ting Ru shares reflections after lunch with academics: ‘Is it really so bad to have so much heart?’

SINGAPORE: On Monday (July 6), the Workers’ Party’s He Ting Ru posted a photo of herself and GE2025 candidate Michael Thng at a meal with sociologist Teo You Yenn and Professor Walid Jumblatt Abdullah. 

Ms He, who has been a Member of Parliament for Sengkang since 2020, clarified that the meeting was not a political one, but rather, an opportunity for the four of them to thoughtfully discuss Singapore’s society and future.

She began her post by writing that she had read Assoc Prof Teo’s book, This Is What Inequality Looks Like, in 2020, during the lockdown for the Covid-19 pandemic, adding that she had always wanted to find out the thought processes of the academic whose book had brought the problem of inequality in Singapore to the fore, and which had been a massive bestseller to boot.

Some of the themes of the 2018 book resonated with how Ms He has felt since she began to volunteer with the WP’s Meet-the-People Sessions in 2011, including what living in a meritocratic society means for each Singaporean, since the concept can perhaps clash with whether or not “a deserving poor” exists.

As someone who had returned to Singapore at that point after being away for around a decade for her career, Ms He began to see how easy it is to reduce people to statistics or problems to be solved, instead of realising how complex life actually is.

She added that in the attempt to find solutions, “something often felt missing: almost as if we have, through our nation’s short history, become distinctly uncomfortable with messiness — even ugliness — of what it means to be human. That mess is something to be tamed, to be solved: this way chaos lies.”

When Prof Walid arranged for the lunch meeting, Ms He, and presumably, Mr Thng, who had started volunteering with the WP at the same time she did, also read Assoc Prof Teo’s latest book, Unease.

She added that at the lunch, they spoke on a number of topics, but what struck her was that the four of them, who are similar in age and educational backgrounds, “were still finding our own means of adding our voices to the collective conversation to shape our country.”

Moreover, each recognised how privileged they’ve been.

Ms He then went on to ask how each person can keep an “understanding and acceptance of the messiness that is an essential part to our very humanity,” as well as how not to jump to conclusions when seeing someone have a meal with opposition party members.

She also wondered why, after having been taught as children that friends don’t have to agree with each other on everything, “have we lost the ability to accept this as we grow into adulthood and especially once we stray into the political sphere here?”

To end her post, she wrote, “As it stands, it has always been our hope and belief that we need a country that is resilient and robust enough to accept that association does not always mean taking sides, and that we learn how to bring on board disagreements to better shape our path forward. The voices and ideas collected in Unease are part of the messy but colourful fabric of our nation, and need to have their part in our collective wisdom and story going forward. And should the charge be made of being just another bunch of ‘bleeding heart liberals’, is it really so bad to have so much heart?” /TISG

Read also: ‘She’s an inspiration,’ Singaporeans say of WP MP He Ting Ru