Philosophical concepts can help us to understand key historical moments. The storming of Capital Hill in America and the Covid-19 death rates in the West highlight a different balance between "rights" and "responsibilities" when compared to Eastern societies. At the end of the day, the root cause of many of the social and political problems we face is the failure to understand the real meaning of key philosophical concepts. I write these words with some personal satisfaction. Fifty years ago,

more »

... 1971, when I graduated from the University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, some of my friends and family members secretly believed that I had wasted four good years of my life studying useless things. Yet, as recent developments have shown, a failure to understand key philosophical concepts can lead to a large amount of human suffering and social and political turmoil. Two surprising recent negative developments will be studied by historians for decades, if not centuries, to come. The first is the remarkable failure of the most advanced societies in our world, especially the United States and several European Union members, to lower the death rate from Covid-19 in their societies. The second was the storming of the US Capitol on Jan 6. Both these developments are a result of a failure to understand how key philosophical concepts cannot be understood in isolation. Future historians will certainly be astonished to see the great disparity in the death rates from Covid-19 between leading Western societies and East Asian societies. The gap is enormous.