I was brainstorming one of the worst titles an author could come up with for a philosophical piece of work with a friend and we settled on something that can piss off a significant part of the ethnic Chinese population. The working title he came out with was "Confucius is a bastard." We were, of course, being deliberately immature. At that time, we did not work out the central thesis of the work, and we settled on some small-time critique of Confucius' love for ritual and music. Little would I know that cultural anthropologist would complete the task for us. Before you read the rest of the article, I strongly suggest that you follow this link and read this article on involution. Involution is a powerful idea that should animate all Singaporeans. It is the concept that encapsulates the problem that plagues all Confucian societies. There comes a point in a Confucian society,...