Staying ahead

Well this weekend is definitely one of the most fruitful one that I have, in the knowledge aspect. I was watching a few episodes on a documentary on how Spain, Portugal (Yes, it was a superpower before), Holland, Great Britain, France and Germany actually become a superpower. As I always advocated, there are a lot of lessons to be learnt in history. Now some of you may say that history is boring, what has the past got anything to do with us? I tell u, there is a lot. Chinese have a saying, the "chariot in front serves as an example." The history serves as a mirror for all of us. It let us know what would happen to us if we continue on this particular path.

History is boring because many people cannot relate what they have learnt as lessons in life and the school system makes it worse by making students memorise all the stupid dates. Of course those dates does not add value to anyone learning history. It just add unnecessary burden to people learning history. It is what happened and how it happened that are more important when we are learning history.

Anyway, how those countries that I mentioned above became superpower is very different, but after watching half of the series, I realise something. It is because they are risk takers and they value knowledge very much. They dare to venture out or maybe to put it in a correct picture is their strong desire for greater wealth turn them into risk takers. Now, this is not an example of "money is the root of all evil". Who dare to tell me they are not seekers of greater wealth? If they are, do they dare to announce it, make a video of themselves and post it on Youtube? I dare him to do it. Most people choose to just stay in their comfort zone and do nothing of their desire for greater wealth, while a minority step up and do something about it and a minority of the minority that step up, succeeded.

Most of these superpowers took risk and in the end they are rewarded with wealth that is beyond their imagination, but they did not practice wealth management :P , thus most of these countries deteriorated. They would have been more powerful than what they are now if they did.

Countries like Great Britain and Germany value knowledge and innovation a lot thus they were able to tap on the trends during the Industrial Revolution again creating immense wealth for themselves. There was a time when the output from Germany actually exceeded Great Britain before and it is because they value education a lot, they provided free education to many children and did not restrict research in universities, and best thing is the govt provides all kind of material support to the universities which explain there are a lot of Nobel Prize Winners in Germany with Einstein being the most prominent of them all.

Reflecting these two characteristics onto Singapore, we can see where we are heading into. I hope our country's leaders is well-versed with history and looking at our education system.....

I strongly recommend the series to everyone. There are a lot of lessons to be learn which we can apply into life and business, a pity it is in Chinese though so only those that understand Mandarin can watch it. But hei this is the internet age. You can read up on these countries' history on Wikipedia!

Cheers!