Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Kung May Katas, Pigain Mo Pa (An Advent Message)

Wrong timing minsan ang mag-rant habang nagsasaya ang lahat ngayong magsisimula ang Simbang Gabi, pero baka lang sakaling may maibahagi ako sa iyo.

Hindi ako makikipaglokohan: nakakapagod magsulat. Nakakapagod magtrabaho. Nakakapagod kumita. Nakakapagod maging mabuting tao. Nakakapagod magmahal. Nakakapagod mabuhay.

Pero for the purposes of illustration, tignan natin ang pagsusulat.

May mga pagkakataon sa buhay na para bang akala mo napakadali magsulat ng mga dapat sabihin tungkol sa mga ganitong isyu, suliranin, gawain. Minsan pagkatapos mo magbasa ng isang libro (o maraming libro kung ganoon ka talaga kahardcore) bigla ka na lang susuka ng isang malupit na perspektiba pagkatapos mo nguyain ang sari-saring ideya. Para kang siyang-siyang ngumuya ng bubblegum at pagkatapos idudura mo sa kalsada. (Wala naman tayo sa Singapore e: palusutin niyo muna ang imaheng ito.) Nguni't di katulad ng bubblegum na pagkatapos mong idura ay pagalitan ka ng iyong nanay sa pagkakalat, ang pagdura ng mga ideya ay papalakpakan at hahangaan ng makakarinig at magkakainteres sa sinasabi mo.

Pero meron nga noong mga pagkakataon na iyon na parang ang pakiramdam mo masyadong effort, masyadong masakit, masyadong nakakapagod at para bang nakakasawa na ang magsulat, magsalita, mag-isip. Na nakakasawa nang isipin ang mga bagay-bagay na palagay mo alam mo na pero sa totoo lang ay wala ka pa talagang kaaalam-alam. Parang iyong usapan ni Aslan at ni Prinsipe Caspian:

Welcome, Prince,” said Aslan. “Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?”
“I — I don’t think I do, Sir,” said Caspian. “I’m only a kid.”
“Good,” said Aslan. “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not.

The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian (1951)
Ch. 15 : Aslan Makes A Door In The Air


Kaya naman, sabi nga nating mga responsableng mag-aaral na naniniwala sa bilin ni nanay: "bago mo gawin ang isang bagay pakaisipin mo muna ng isang libong ulit." Pero tinatawag tayo ng pagkakataon. Hinihingi sa atin na maging palaisip at marunong umunawa sa mga galaw at kilos ng panahon. Kalaban natin ang oras at mga lakas na lagpas sa ating kakayanang pigilian, at ang magagawa lang natin ay harapin ang hamon at lagpasan ang kanilang daluyong. Parang sabi na ng aking hinahangaang dating guide (alam ko hindi, sakyan niyo na muna) na si RJ Ledesma: "Arguing with your fiancée is like arguing with a force of nature. You cannot stop a force of nature, you can only brace yourself for it, and hope that you can escape with all your organs functioning." Kaya madalas, pipiliin na lang nating kumilos nang hindi pinag-iisipan. Kailangan kumilos: kailangan muna nating iligtas ang ating mga sarili, saka na lang tayo maglinis ng kalat kung saka-sakaling mayroon. At madalas nga, meron. Maraming kakalat-kalat na mga bangkay na inanod kung hindi natin itinapon sa baha, ipinain sa trahedya.

Pero itatanong mo: e paano nga? Hindi na nga natin kayang makapaghanda para sa mga suliraning hinaharap natin sa araw-araw, tapos sasabihin mo kung susundin na lang ang puso pagpalo ng sitwasyon, sasablay talaga tayo. E ano talaga ang magagawa pa natin? Isipin mo yun: "hindi natin kayang makapaghanda." SINONG UGOK ANG NAGTURO SA IYO NIYAN? Hindi lahat ng bagay ay hindi pwedeng paghandaan: hindi lahat ng bagay ay nasa kamay ni Fortuna o ng kapalaran. Bilin ng politiko-historyador na si Niccolo Machiavelli: "Hindi pwedeng itanggi ang ating malayang pag-amin. Kahit nasa kamay ng kapalaran ang kalahati ating mga ginagawa, binibigyan pa rin nito tayo ng kakayanang ayusin ang isang kalahati pa." Kaya ano ang gagawin? Maging laging handa. Laong-Laan, sabi nga ni Jose Rizal. Ever ready, parang baterya. Mabilis pa sa alas kwatro.

Kaya nga lang, minsan may mga bagay na kinatatamaran nating gawin hindi dahil hindi natin alam na ito ang tama. Hindi dahil takot tayo sa kawalang-katiyakan. Hindi dahil hindi tayo nakapaghanda. Hindi dahil nanghihina ka. Hindi dahil wala nang halaga ang ginagawa mo. Minsan, tinatabangan ka nga lang talaga. Minsan, hindi mo magawa ang dapat gawin hindi dahil tamad ka, kundi nga dahil sa tagal mo nang ginagawa ito, nakakasawa na ring gawin ito. Nakakapagod na nga talaga. Kumbaga, sa sobrang tagal mo nang ginagawa ito na paulit-ulit, nakakaburyong na. Parang kanta ng APO Hiking Society (at ni-revive ng Silent Sanctuary):

At kahit na anong gawin
Di mo na mapilit at madaya
Aminin sa sarili mo
Na wala ka nang mabubuga
Parang 'sang kandila na nagdadala
Ng ilaw at liwanag
Nauubos rin sa magdamag


Isipin mo: napakahirap ba talagang ipasa ang isang RH Bill na nagbibigay naman ng espasyo sa paniniwala ng marami at walang pilitan sa paggawa nito? Napakahirap ba talaga para sa isang Kongreso na gumawa ng mga batas na makakatulong para sa kanilang constituency at sambayanan kesa magpumilit magsulong ng mga isyung kagaya ng mga lintik na scandal? Napakahirap ba talaga para sa isang Korte Suprema na maintindihang inuuna dapat ang pagkilala sa demokratikong pagpapahalaga kaysa sa proseso, lalo't malinaw namang nailagay ni Montesquieu na "But though the tribunals ought not to be fixed, the judgments ought; and to such a degree as to be ever conformable to the letter of the law. Were they to be the private opinion of the judge, people would then live in society, without exactly knowing the nature of their obligations." Napakahirap ba talaga para sa atin maging maunawain sa katotohanang posibleng parehong biktima rin si Hubert Webb kung paanong nabiktima si Lauro Vizconde ng pasikut-sikot ng ating hudikaturang hindi na maunawaan ng karaniwang mamamayan dala ng pagkubkob dito ng mga "technical experts?" Napakahirap ba talagang magets na ang kasalanan ni Hayden Kho ay hindi lang ang pagtalusira sa privacy ng mga babaeng binalahura niya kundi ang mismong pambabalahura sa mga babaeng ito labas sa matinong konsepto ng relasyon?

Nakakapagod. Ang sakit sa ulo. Kaya minsan mas ok pa sa atin ang magpasarap. Minsan mas mabuti pa ang magpasarap. Minsan mas ok pa ang magrelax sa ating mga private spaces at mag-chill. Nakakapagod ang mundo. Alalahanin muna natin ang sarili natin.

Walang problema dun, kailangan iyon. Pero ang tanong: lalabas ka ba uli? Magpapagod ka ba uli?

At siguro, iyon ang magandang mensahe ng Pasko para sa atin. Kung saka-sakaling namimigay sa inyo ng mga Eucahalette sa inyong parokya ang Word & Life Publications, maganda yung pagninilay na tinanong sa atin ni Jess P. Balon nitong nakaraang Gaudete Sunday: ang mensahe sa atin ay "magalak." Paano tayo magagalak habang nakikita nating maraming suliranin sa lipunang ating ginagalawan, kung sira ang mga buhay at mga pangarap ng mga tao sa paligid natin? Ang pagkagalak na ito, sa kabila ng ating kinamihasnan, ay hindi dapat matapos sa pagsasaya lamang. Kailangan niyang tumuloy sa pangangarap para sa isang bagong mundo. Isang lipunang makatarungan kung saan ang lahat ay may espasyo ang lahat para maging masaya. Isang mundong si Inang Maria mismo ang naging propeta sa pamamagitan ng Magnificat (at kelan ka nga ba huling nakapakinig na si Maria ay isang rebolusyonaryo?):

Dinadakila ng aking kaluluwa ang Panginoon,
At nagalak ang aking espiritu sa Dios na aking Tagapagligtas.
Sapagka't nilingap niya ang kababaan ng kaniyang alipin.
Sapagka't, narito, mula ngayon ay tatawagin akong mapalad ng lahat ng maghahalihaliling lahi.
Sapagka't ginawan ako ng Makapangyarihan ng mga dakilang bagay; At banal ang kaniyang pangalan.
At ang kaniyang awa ay sa mga lahi't lahi, sa nangatatakot sa kaniya.
Siya'y nagpakita ng lakas ng kaniyang bisig; Isinambulat niya ang mga palalo sa paggunamgunam ng kanilang puso.
Ibinaba niya ang mga prinsipe sa mga luklukan nila, At itinaas ang mga may mababang kalagayan.
Binusog niya ang nangagugutom ng mabubuting bagay; At pinaalis niya ang mayayaman, na walang anoman.
Tumulong siya sa Israel na kaniyang alipin, Upang maalaala niya ang awa
(Gaya ng sinabi niya sa ating mga magulang) Kay Abraham at sa kaniyang binhi magpakailan man.

Yes, alam ko, mga mambabasa, si P. Luis David, S.J. ang unang nagsabi nito. Siyempre ikakalat ko na rin para naman mapilitan siya mag-reinvent ng mga bagong leksyon. Matyagan niyo't lalabas to sa Simbang Gabi niya sa Dec. 22.

So, ano pa ba ang pwedeng sabihin ng isang pagod, wasak, nauubusan ng pag-asa at nagdududang nilalang na kagaya ko sa iyo? Ganyan talaga ang buhay: isang laban. Tuloy lang ang buhay. May pag-asa.

(だ)ってばよ!

Makaubos

(Orihinal na naipaskil Biyernes, Disyembre 10, 2010, ng 10:19 n.g.)

Isang tulang naisulat matapos pagmasdan ang ngumingiting silay ng buwan na nagpapanginig sa laman.

Tila ka isang multo.
Nguni't hindi katulad ng mga multong bigla na lamang sumusulpot
Nakatitig sa akin gamit ang mga matang tinatanglaw ang apoy ng poot.
Hindi ka katulad ng mga multo ng aming angkan
Na nagpaparamdam gamit ang mga alaalang iniwan nila noong sila'y nabubuhay.
Hindi ka katulad ng mga multo ng baliw na lungsod
Sumusulpot, nananakot, naghihimagsik, nagpupumilit muling mabuhay
Sa ilalim ng mga ilaw dagitab ng isang mundong mas patay pa sa kanya.

Tila ka isang multo.
Nguni't hindi katulad ng mga multo ng aking kabataan
Na nakikita ko sa pananakot ng aking mga magulang
Ukol sa mga Bumbay, mga pulis, mga security guard, mga Intsik.
Hindi katulad ng isang taong grasang ibinabalala sa aki'y nangangagat
At kakapit nang walang likat
Hanggang hindi ko siya nabibigyan ng barya.
Hindi ka katulad ng mga babaeng multong lumulutang sa karimlan
Na sumisigaw ng dugo't katarungan
Matapos iwan ng mga minamahal at mga gumahasa.
Hindi ka katulad nila.

Ikaw ang multong nabubuhay.
Ang multong hindi nalalaman na siya'y patungo nang walang hanggan
Kahit umiiral pa sa kanyang sariling lunan.
Ikaw ang multong likha ko
Nguni't hindi ko talaga likha
Sapagka't kung akin talagang gawa
Ay magagawa ko ring masira.
Ikaw ang multong patuloy na nananahan sa gunita
Sapagka't ikaw ay hindi ko magawang mayakap
Kahit posible naman ang magkadaupang-palad.
Ikaw ang multong laging bumabalik sa tainga ang bungisngis
Kahit na ang bulong mo'y hangin na ang uminis.
Ikaw ang multong nahihimlay ng payapa
At natitiyak kong anghel ka ngang talaga.

Nguni't sa tuwing maglalakad sa gabing pusikit
Sa gunita'y hindi mapigilang maramdaman ang sakit
Pagka't ang pangangarap sa iyong pagbabalik
Nagbibigay lang sa akin ng kaunting ulik-ulik.

Kaya narito, ang pluma ay muling nananahimik
Dahil ang panginginig sa iyong pagbabalik
Upang ang kaluluwang sawi'y muling mahindik
Ay nagdudulot sa aking mag-ulik-ulik
At mawalang-saysay ang lahat ng aking titik.

Eat! Restaurant
64 E, Calzada Esteban Abada
10:09 ng gabi.

Bakit "Bakit"?

(Orihinal na naisulat Miyerkules, Disyembre 1, 2010, ng 10:08 n.u.; mula sa isang panukalang tema ni Ka-Tamang Henrey Benitez)

Nakakapagod rin minsan magpaliwanag.

Madalas nating pinag-uusapan kung ano ang sanhi at bunga ng mga bagay-bagay sa paligid natin. Kung bakit hindi puwedeng "basta" na lamang ang katanggap-tanggap na paliwanag; siyempre, alam mo namang pagdating sa "basta," mayroon nang panganib ng pagkatapos ng pag-uusap. Katulad ng pinagmamalaki nating slogan ng Love Radio na "Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan?", nasa panganib ng pagsasabi ng "basta" ang posibilidad na hindi na natin pag-iisipan ang ginagawa natin dala marahil ng pananabik, pagmamadali, pagnanasang makatapos, karuwagan, pagkatakaw, pagkasakim. Minsan kapag sinasabi na nating "basta", ipinagpapalagay nating hindi na natin kailangang ipaliwanag dahil ang akala natin alam na ng kausap natin. Alam na dahil naranasan na. Alam na dahil kasama natin siya sa dating karanasan. Alam na dahil pareho ng pinagdadaanan. Alam na dahil pareho ang pinag-uusapan at layon.

Alam na.

Marami sa ating nagpapalagay na dapat "alam na natin" ang mga bagay-bagay. Alam mo na dapat kung ano ang ID number mo. Alam mo na dapat na may nanalo ng 741M sa Lotto nitong Lunes. Alam mo na dapat na mayroong masama diumano sa Neozep kaya huwag ka munang magkakasipon (o kung malas ka talaga, mag-Decolgen ka muna). Alam mo na dapat na kapag pupunta ka sa job interview e dapat nakasuot ka ng matino, naligo, nag-ahit, naghanda magsalita at maging pormal kumilos. Alam mo na dapat na kung papasok ka sa klase ay dapat nakapagbasa ka ng mga babasahin, at kund hindi e yayariin ka ng guro. Alam mo na dapat na hindi ka dapat nagkakalat sa harap ng maraming kaibigan ng sinisikap mong ligawan (unless natitiyak mong mas may kiling sila sa iyo) kung ayaw mo malaglag at makasira ng pagkakaibigan. Alam mo na dapat na kapag boring na ang guro at hindi ka na dapat nakikinig... DOTA NA!!! sa ever-convenient na laptop habang kunyari ay nagtatala ng mga nota. Alam mo na dapat na hindi ka dapat mamalahiyo (plagiarism para sa mga hindi nakakaunawa; abangan ang Ikatlong Isyu ng Matanglawin! *shameless plugging*) sa isang pamantasang kayang sirain ang self-respect ng isang pangulo ng Board of Trustees na nagkasala ng ganoon. Marami nang dapat ay inakala nang "masyadong obvious" na ang isipin na may hindi nakakaunawa nito ay "baliw" o "iresponsable."

Baliw. Iresponsable.

Tuwing magkakaroon ng labasan ng iskandalo o mga sablay na nagawa, mabilis kaagad tayong mambato at manisi. Mabilis tayong makibahagi sa paglibak sa mga itinuturong maysala kahit hindi natin alam kung makatarungan nga bang gawin yaon o hindi. Yung ibang-iba sa atin ay hindi natin magawang mayakap, hindi natin magawang harapin nang maayos at ituring na kapwa natin. Higit pa rito, hindi tayo bukas sa posibilidad na tayo ay posibleng kaakibat sa mga kalagayan at ugnayang nagkakahon (kung di man nagkakadena) sa kanila sa ganitong masamang lagay. Hindi natin matanggap na ang mga ilang "iba" sa ating paligid ay posibleng likha din natin. Hindi natin kayang harapin ang ginawa ng mga nauna sa atin, at natatakot tayo sa mga ito at kung ano ang posibleng harapin ng mga susunod sa atin. Ikakahon natin ang ating mga sarili sa mga komportableng bagay, pati ang ating mga anak, kahit ikamatay ng kanilang pagnanasang lumaki, maging maalam, lumipad. Tandaan: hindi mo mapipigil ang isang isipang nais lumaya. Masaya na ang prinsipeng si Siddharta at mayroon nang pamilya, nguni't pinili niyang maglakbay, mag-aral at magpakasakit upang maging Buddha. Lilitaw ang liwanag sa sinumang nagnanais, mag-isa man o mayroon siyang mga kasama.

Pakikisama.

Siyempre nga naman, tayo nga naman pala uli ay mga "sosyo-politikal na hayop." Emphasis on hayop (paumanhin sa mga hayop). Hayop. Animal. Mula sa salitang Latin na "anima." Kumikilos. May nagpapakilos satin, at ang nagpapakilos satin ang matatawag nating "pagnanasa." Dahil tayo ay mga nilalang na nagnanasa (dala na rin ng pagkakilalang tayo ay kulang), hindi tayo nangingiming gawin ang lahat ng posibleng kailangang gawin para makamit natin ang inaakala nating nais natin at kailangan natin. Minsan napaghahalo natin ang kailangan natin at nais natin, kahit hindi tama iyon. Siyempre, kasi minsan ang nais natin ay kung ano yung makinang, yung nakakasilaw, yung iniisip nating makakatulong para masilaw natin ang iba't hangaan nila tayo. Nakakalimutan natin yung sinabi ni Emilio Jacinto na ang ningning, dahil ito ay nakakasilaw, ay hindi tunay na liwanag. Ang tunay na liwanag, sa kanyang dalisay na pag-iral, ang nakapagbubukas ng mata, ang nakakapagbigay ng kakayahan sa isang tao na makakitang maayos. Siyempre, hindi nagsalubong si Platon at Emilio Jacinto (lalo't ang pananaw ni Platon sa dalisay na liwanag ay nakakasilaw, "white ecstasy" sabi nga ng iba), pero alam mo ang patunguhan. "Great minds think alike," ika nga.

Dakilang pag-iisip.

Marami sa ating takot mag-isip nang higit sa ating kasalukuyang kalagayan. Takot na tayong mangarap. Takot na tayong madapa at masugatan, gayong ang anumang sugat at galos ay nagsisilbing tanda ng isang pusong nagtaya, handang muling magtaya kahit nabigo't nabitin. Hindi kailangang malaki; sabi nga ng aking hinahangaang si Joey Ayala: "ang mga dakilang gawa'y nagmumula sa guni-guni." Hindi nagsisimulang malaki ang mga dakila; nagiging dakila lamang ang mga dakila sapagka't nangahas silang sumampa sa mga bagay na kaya nilang tuntungan nguni't maaari lamang masampahan pagkatapos ng mahabang pakikipagbuno. Nagawa lamang tuntungan ni David ang bangkay ni Goliat pagkatapos makipagbuno't mangahas gumamit ng isang hamak na tirador. Mas okey gamitin ang armas na datihan mo nang ginagamit at alam mong hindi ka bibiguin, hindi ba? Para ring pag-akyat ng bundok: mahirap, puno ng hamon at patibong, pero pagdating sa tuktok, anong ganda ng vista (hindi yung sablay na Windows OS).

Pakikipagbuno.

Huwag tayo matakot makipagbuno. Tiyakin lamang natin kung papaano natin titindigan ang ating pinagtatanggol sa ating pakikipaglaban. Lumalaban tayo dahil mayroon tayong pinapahalagahan. Dahil mayroon tayong ninanasa. Mayroon tayong minamahal na handa nating pag-ubusan ng kahuli-hulihang patak ng dugo. Natandaan ko, kahapon lang sa klase ng isang kagalang-galang na gabay, na delikado gamitin ang pagmamahal bilang kategorya ng pagkilos tungo sa pagbabago. Dahil ang pag-ibig ay pribadong bagay, hindi ito madaling bigyan ng pananagutan. Kapag inilabas mo at pinagwagwagan sa harap ng marami, pag-aagawan iyan. Babasahin. Kikilatisin. Hihimayin. Pipira-pirasuhin. Sira ang kabanalan ng pag-uugnayan ng nagmamahalan. Mula dito, parang hindi katanggap-tanggap ang pag-ibig bilang tunguhin ng ating mga kilos. Kumikilos tayo dahil nagmamahal tayo't nais nating mahalin. Parang hindi dalisay na pag-asa, dahil may inaasahan pa rin tayo. Kung ang tunay na pag-asa ay dalisay at walang bahid pagkamakasarili, posible kayang maging pag-ibig ang pinagmumulan ng ating mga kilos at hindi na ang ating hinahanap? Kumbaga, "if love cannot be the object of our efforts and longings, can it be our driving force/impetus towards greater heights?" Alam ko, parang tinatalo natin si Hannah Arendt sa pinagsasabi kong ito, pero imposible kaya?

Baka naman hindi. Baka naman may silbi ang pag-asa ni Michael Hardt:

"Everyone always talks about them in terms of their hatred, which is of course true too, but I don’t think there’s really a contradiction between love and hate. What I think is really fundamental to them is there’s a kind of “love of the same,” “love of the race,” and that’s what leads so horribly wrong in them. ... One thing that prohibits us from loving the stranger—from enacting the kind of politics that is based on love in a much more general expansive way—is precisely the regimes of violence in the world and those proscriptions for division that prohibit us, that not only make it dangerous, but make it impossible for us to form a politics constructed through love in this way." (A Conversation on the Politics of Love, with Leonard Schwartz).

Siyempre, tinapos ko talaga ang lahat ng sinabi ko sa pagsasalita ukol sa pag-ibig (then again, hindi naman politikal na sulatin ito). Dahil sabi nga ng pamagat ng libro ni Dr. Agustin Martin Rodriguez, PAG-IBIG ANG KATUWIRAN NG KASAYSAYAN.

Dysfunctional Sonnets 1 & 2

Created Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 1:38am

Zenith of my dreams now quite vague,
May probably pass by like a plague,
And perhaps deem me unworthy of thee;
Anguish be mine like worthless Montague,
Rage consume me for I shall not be free.

Has it occured to thee how it pains me
And vexes me when you seemingly flee?
Amazement never falters whenever I glean
How your pensive eyes penetrate and see;
Lighting on my dark countenance so mean.

Does it pain you if I seek so boldly?
Kindly be patient and please forgive me.
O, how can I condense into mere words,
In these paltry lines what I feel for thee?
Not a moment passes by without fleeing birds.

Tenaciously, nay, forcefully, I truly wish
Never may I lose your countenance so waifish;
And let me, my lady, just once to remind you,
A promise that I'll ceaselessly live for you.


Created Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 7:28pm

If someone asks you why one should not cry
Answer them thus: for tears blur our vision
Dim our minds and expose us to a lie
No one can disabuse of such notion.

Or perhaps because we as a rule forbid
Not only sadness but emotion and be tepid;
Like a fire that ceases when fuel runs out
Our lives are worse while feeling than without.

O, foolishness perhaps to stare at the moon
Divulging grave secrets forbidden since noon
Verily now I imagine its sharp crescent
Have become thy smile lighting my descent.

Every evening, therefore, I wander and seek
And yet I cannot find and thus I so grieve;
Your smile, I imagine framed by your cheeks
Radiate that light and hope, my reprieve.

Or maybe indeed I have fallen truly mad
After all, it is nobody but you to be had
Under this existence of wars and pain
Zeus be my witness, I live for you til I'm slain.

Depressing Trends

So eto na nga. Technically hindi pa namamatay ang aking animating principle sa pagsusulat, pero hindi ko na nga lang sa ma blog na ito inilalagay. Kasi nga naman, minsan, mas may taga at mas mabilis ang feedback sa sinusulat sa Facebook via the note system.

But then again, ako nga ba ay nagsusulat to express or to impress?

Siyempre, Atenistang sagot: "pwede namang both e."

Pakyu ka talaga sa iyong golden mean Aristotle.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Because Words are Action...

... and because there is a thin line that separates true love from a mental breakdown.

Why love? Probably one of the most convoluted questions man has asked himself since he began devoting time to talk and think about the subject. For someone who has probably not appreciated the meaning of loving or being loved (as is someone who is willing to take seriously one's being a rock or an island in the midst of people), it would not even be a pressing concern. But perhaps, dear reader, you are not reading this because I am to speak on why it is not expedient, nor efficient, nor healthy, nor wise, to fall in love or even entertain the idea of loving or being loved by someone. It was a question a Philosophy class I was taking has elaborated upon. A wise man emphasized to me how and why there is a need to acknowledge the nature of love as always "for the other," never reflexive but always centrifugal, never "what's in it for me" but "what will make the other happy." When I was asked the question: "why would you love her?" I was stumped, and blurted out very shallow statements. But, perhaps, after mulling over it, I shall attempt to respond to it again:

Why should I love?
I want to love because I am someone who was brought into this world by love. I am a loving being and should therefore succeed in my purpose.
Love is part of my nature. In the same manner was born in the vale of tears due to the conditions and failings of those who came before me, I carry the hopes of those who fell in the dark, wishing to do something about the environment of sadness they have passed through and wished to restore those who suffer to their righteous place of happiness.
I want to love because I myself have been loved yet never was able to return that love adequately. There are things that are given to us as gifts, and a gift is only a gift if the person receiving it does not even feel worthy of even getting considered for it. We can only be able to be part of this economy of gift giving by giving as well, as much as we can, especially when it hurts.
I want to love because otherwise, I believe I would be committing a sin to the world has given me everything in life, good or bad. Should I not love, it would be a disservice not only to me who has not achieved one's purpose in life, but to the very world which allows me to live my life as a person from love and to love.

Yes, I have a right and responsibility to love, and so you will ask, why HER?
It's not because she is charming or because she reminds me of my innocent, younger self.
It's not because she is kind, intelligent and witty.
it's not because I am presumptuous enough to say that she needs someone like me; I doubt it ever crossed her mind.
These might be among those reasons why I would love her all the more, but it was never for those reasons that I would decide to begin saying that I would love her and that my life is tied to and for her.
I love her because... IT IS HER.
Her very person has given my life a purpose beyond achieving my goals in life.
I love her because her happiness and smile has inspired me to do things that I perhaps wouldn't have done otherwise, and because these things have come to give my life meaning once more at that very time I have begun losing sight of it.
Because of her I have rediscovered why I do the things I do.
Because of her I have relearned why I need to appreciate the little things in life.
Because of her the pain of existence has become bearable, if not even light enough for me to carry it with one hand.
Because of her I have learned that I cannot go on living like I used to if I am to be someone of use, worth and service to others.
Because of her I feel alive again, if only for the simple pleasure her smile inspires in me, like the triumphant sunrise or the beautiful tranquility of the moon in all its phases.
Because the few moments I spend in conversation with her give me that hope that I can still be of service or help to those who might need them, even if it should be not her.
Because of her, I want the world to experience the happiness it long dreamed of.
Because of her, speaking about justice has become something that I am implicated in if only for the simple act of avowing to be someone who would protect and stand up for someone.
Because I want to protect her smile, I want to make sure nobody else will cry.
Because of her innate appreciation for the beauty of life, I have made it my oath that everyone can dream of life and should hope once again.
Because her happiness and one smile made me see how my own study of politics, even if it is contentious, bitter and dirty, could and should always protect those who need to be protected and supported, and because they themselves have the right to eudaimonia too.
Because her smile gave me one good reason to live again for everyone.

And I could go on and on and on and on to say what else I can say, yet even if words should be extinguished and I be reduced to ashes, I cannot still say why I should love her. For it is beyond words.

But should she not see it? Should she not appreciate it? Should she decline or reject it?
At this point in my life, for I can only speak for myself in the now when I can no longer change the past nor even prevent what the future holds lest it can be seen in the now, it would not extinguish my hope, even if I shall be deeply wounded.
Her mere existence is enough, her very happiness being secure enough reason for me to go on.
I shall proceed thinking of her all the days of my life, even if it means walking down the road to life alone.
For this memory of her smile, and the unwavering hope, that she shall come to live her life to the fullest, that she shall be happy in her own way and in her own terms, shall let me proceed in doing what I believe is rightful and just, even if it is just a little, is enough.
Even if my unsatisfied hunger and desire shall gnaw at me, her one smile, even if for a passing second, is enough.
For should I insist in loving her in my own terms, even at the risk of her drowning in tears, it shall not be love, but a crime of the highest degree: the violence which mere committal demands that I cease to exist then and there.
For speaking shall never be enough, and any action I should take, even if I should make myself an oblation at the pyre, if driven simply by my own obsessions, shall never be love, but a simple, petty, crime.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

15 Books

Kinagat ko na: pampagising din ng utak at ala-ala

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose.

1. Ang Kasaysayan at Pamahalaan ng Republika ng Pilipinas, Alberto Abeleda. I was this inquisitive child since Grade 1 who was prone to exploring the halls of National Bookstore branches and randomly picking up books I have no idea what they actually contain. One particular time when I was at an NBS branch in Makati (in the old Glorietta 1 Branch that has sadly now closed), I picked up this particular yellow book with a map of the Philippine Islands which was actually a textbook for high school freshman Philippine History: talking about the history of the Philippines since the pre-colonial era until the then-current Ramos presidency (it had a 1995 copyright). Tucking myself in a corner, of the book shelves, I was actually obsessed with leafing through the images of the different historical people, places and events that I did not notice how my parents were already calling me for about 30 minutes within the textbook area of NBS-Glorietta (akin to the Finding in the Temple perhaps? Damn presumptuous.) It was among the first textbooks I have read from cover-to-cover, in my spare time (and as a Grade School student at that)! From then on, I somewhat became an avid reader of Philippine history books and triggered my interest in government (which probably explains my primary obsession with Philippine History and why I am about to graduate [hopefully] in Political Science). My interest in the book never waned for years that I actually referred to it as my own primary book in Philippine History when I was taking high school freshman Philippine History, if only because the book assigned to us seemed shitty. (My History teacher, Mrs. Meliza Closas, Christine Jennifer A. Dimaliuat, and South Crest School Batch 2007 can attest to this fact).

2. Buhay at Diwa ni Jose Rizal, Alejandro & Medina. Another product of my usual playing around National Book Store, this time in Alabang Town Center, I came across this particular college text book on Jose Rizal’s life and works. Another book which I finished cover-to-cover (albeit with the help of my father reading it to me when I fell ill during the summer break of 1999), it probably is the reason why I am a fervent Rizalist (not religiously though) up to this day, even after being exposed to Leon Ma. Guerrero’s The First Filipino, Gregorio Zaide’s hagiographic accounts, and even Sir Ambeth Ocampo’s deconstructive take on him in Rizal Without the Overcoat. Sometimes, re-reading the book and being exposed to a glorifying account of Rizal’s greatness is still necessary if only to reinforce your pride in being Filipino.

3. Good News Bible. Probably the first Bible I had (and appreciated) when I hit Grade 5, the idea of getting my own Bible actually came to mind when I came across a stray Our Daily Bread booklet my mother left around our house. There was a particular statement wherein it was mentioned that “someone whose Bible is not falling apart is a person whose life is falling apart.” Nakunsensiya by that statement, I persisted in asking my parents into getting me a good Bible, which one (this particularly-large Good News Bible with a leather brown jacket) became my new daily read after finishing assignments. It became my favorite book to go to when I feel depressed and/or angry with school life, and it also became a personal indicator that I was already entering puberty when I found particular passages in Ezekiel arousing my curiosity far more than an elementary student probably should have.

4. Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Jose Rizal. Forced to read expurgated editions of the Noli and Fili (before even hitting junior and senior high school) for a required presentation in freshman Filipino (and which I actually had the same topic, at least the Noli with our then-class president Catherine Lea Posadas), I became far more interested with the depth of the narrative and the supposedly-subversive arguments that Rizal wrote into it (leading me to convince my parents to buy me the unexpurgated, accurate Lacson-Locsin translations). Becoming tired of the supposed “patriotic lodemines” these literature have, it unwittingly drew me into adopting that antagonistic thinking against the Catholic Church (which was possibly reinforced by our family watching the televangelist program Ang Dating Daan at the height of its feud with the Iglesia ni Cristo sect). Even after reading Paul Ricœur’s statement on the need for contextualizing religious texts (against ADD’s espousal of the sola scriptura stance), I still have yet to find any convincing refuting statements against Rizal’s interpretation of the injustices the Spanish Catholic Church and colonial regime, probably reinforcing my persistent religious dilemma up to this day.

5. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas peré. With reading Rizal’s two-novel saga and discovering that he actually read this book as a child, I also made it a point to try reading it myself. Even if what I have up to this day is a censured and expurgated version of it, managing to find the whole text in the net exposed me to the richness of French culture and the exciting world of the literary genre roman-feuilleton. Despite Dumas being supposedly a hack and prone to plagiarism as well as historical revision, I was drawn in to the supernatural, the intrigues and the action that this novel delivers. This novel remains dear to me over the past years that I still fondly remember how I did a comparative analysis of the Noli-Fili saga with The Count for my senior English and got one of the highest grades among the class for it. More than that, buying the book actually led me into beginning my growing personal library, stuffed with Shakespeare and the like.

6. Mga Ibong Mandaragit, Amado V. Hernandez. A book I bought together with Cervantes’ Don Quixote, it opened my eyes to the conflicted history of the post-Liberation era Philippines which was characterized by growing strife and social unrest, hardly the supposed peacetime it seemed to be as I was taught Philippine History in elementary under the benevolent Mr. Eddie B. Ruiz. Feeding my then-growing anti-American sentiment (which came to its peak when I agreed to a proposal by fellow honor student Joselito Alcaraz II to burn an American flag in a Filipino convocation during our batch’s speech choir presentation, which we lost), the book in a way began my partiality to Leftist thinking and desiring to read the texts (or at least summaries) of books by Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung. That my senior high school writings were already influenced by being exposed to Ateneo de Manila’s Matanglawin (of which I am a proud member over my entire 4 years in the Ateneo) probably hardened my resolve to pursue Political Science (aside from the initial desire of pursuing Law).

7. Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel Cervantes. I was actually interested in getting the book after I read Rizal’s allegory El Consejo de los Dioses and saw how it was compared to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Reading the two books that run the entire course of Cervantes’ narrative about a delusional knight, it is practically the thickest book I read from cover to cover, devouring it for the entire summer break of my high school junior year. The details of the narrative are now hazy to me, but it was ultimately one hell of a read for a high school student. Definitely when some college students are even stumped trying to read beyond half of it.

8. The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli. Seeing in a footnote in The Count of Monte Cristo about this particular book on politics, I once again sought it in National Bookstore and devoured it within 2-3 days. Being then an Aerospace Cadet of our school, the book’s tackling of leadership and virtue-building appealed to me becoming a leader applying those skills in resource mobilization and human resources. I learned the hard way when I became Corps Commander and Interact Club president how it was not so, running my Cadet Corps and club aground in my forgettable-yet-still-memorable high school senior year. Nowhere did I think that Machiavelli would resurface in my study of the History of Political Theory under good mentor Mr. RR Rañeses; I actually became notorious in class for being unusually active in this part of the course (as well as hazarding a translation job of the book which I never seemed to accomplish up to this day).

9. Closer Than Brothers: Manhood in the Philippine Military Academy, Alfred McCoy. Before I was even familiar with his book An Anarchy of Families, Philippine Social History and his bloody thick Colonial Crucible, I was drawn to the book due to my aforementioned affiliation with the Aerospace Cadets in high school. Reading about the PMA and its history, as well as its dealing with the politics of colonization and the brutalizing era of Martial Law, my resolve to enter the PMA was affirmed at the chance that I will not pass the UPCAT or the ACET. The book actually also reinforced my attempt to reconfigure my detachment’s military culture by importing PMA slang and literature. When I did pass the UPCAT and ACET, my detachment was running aground and graduation near, I thought I would enlist with the ROTC and continue my frustrated military life there. However, being exposed to the full brunt of the Political Science curriculum and ultimately seeing that I am too wimpy for the COCC program changed my weltanschauung and turned me into taking Political Science seriously. And probably, the Philippine military and political science benefitted from it.

10. The Ambeth Ocampo Canon: Rizal Without the Overcoat, Bonifacio’s Bolo, Aguinaldo’s Breakfast, Luna’s Moustache, Meaning and History and Bones of Contention. Name any Ambeth Ocampo book selling in 2006-2007, I have them. Reading Sir Ambeth’s peculiar take on history simply affirmed my love for it and actually influenced my taking AB History as a second choice in my Ateneo application form. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that being exposed to Sir Ambeth’s skeptical take on supposedly-sacrosanct elements of Philippine historiography was the first step in shaping my mind into the student of critical thinking I would be after more than three years of Political Science. Photocopying Looking Back and Mabini’s Ghost in the Rizal Library, but more importantly being his student in Hi 165 during my Junior year was probably an event in my life I will never forget (if only for the mind-warping it dealt me).

11. Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, Benedict Anderson. Once again picking up a book I had no idea what it was actually about in National Book Store Festival Supermall around my senior year (together with Justice Abraham Sarmiento’s retrial of Andres Bonifacio), this introduced me to anarchist thinking and the history of anarchist movements around the world. That Anderson tried tying it up with the anti-colonial struggles of many Spanish colonies exposed me to my first book employing studies of comparative politics (which sadly I wasn’t able to replicate when I took the course last year) whetted my appetite for Leftist thinking and Philippine history all the more. It actually became a book dear to me that it is the book that immediately comes to mind when one mentions Anderson, not his overly-quoted Imagined Communities. That I am actually planning to write my thesis in my MA in Global Politics as an expansion (and possible rebuttal) of points he made in the book made me appreciate it further.

12. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The most epic reading assignment given to me in my freshman Lit 13 class under Mr. Gino Francis Dizon (an influential teacher and the first who led me to appreciating queer studies [who I suspect owned the very room I now occupy in Torres Bldg.]), it gave me such classical literary gems such as “Today is still Monday”, the accounts of peoples, cultures, revolutions and everything else with the spin of mysticism and erotics. Also, I have never found a literary book with such fantastic last words: “because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on Earth.”

13. Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault. Because life is never the same after Foucault. And, to quote how Mr. RR Rañeses featured it in his own “15 books” list: “the first page did it.” Not to mention the life-changing statements and weltanschauung-altering perspectives you can get from political theory classes, beer/coffee sessions with Rosselle Tugade and Arjan Aguirre, philosophy classes under Fr. Luis S. David, and critical International Relations.

14. The Republic, Plato. Technically the first major reading assigned to me as a Political Science sophomore, this was the start of that era when I have a book that I did not finish cover to cover. (T_T) I wonder how I actually survived managing to write the 1st major paper on the course without having a full grasp of the text, and actually passing it. I usually tried time to time to review it, but it actually dawned on me that I have to begin revisiting it seriously if I would actually become a legitimate faculty member of the Political Science department after my masters.

15. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Roland Barthes. Because the romantic, torpe totoy in me survived despite exposure to liberal thinking, critical thinking and having friends with less-than-demure thoughts. Introduced to me one rainy afternoon in Contemporary Political Theories under Sir RR (when he supposedly had nothing better to lecture), I was drawn in by the fascinating interplay of word, text, meanings and linguistics. Only acquiring it about a few months ago, reading it never fails to make me gush. Venturing into the metaphysical (the closest I have due to the simple reason of never being exposed to Ricœur, Marcel, Scheler, Kant and Sartre in Ph 101-102) as well, it is probably among the reasons why I consistently refer to it in my papers in my Philosophy of Religion course under the legendary Eddieboy Calasanz.

Looking back after reading this list, it actually sounded as much as a short autobiography as it was a list of my books.

PHOENIX MODE

Dahil sa madaling araw na ito ay buhay na uli ang aking panulat.

Dahil sa madaling araw na ito ay nagsisimula ang mga araw na seryoso ko nang tatapusin ang lahat ng putanginang requirements.

Dahil sa araw na ito ay manonood ako ng UAAP finals pagkatapos ng non-conformity sa loob ng tatlong taon.

Dahil nakakablog na muli ako.

Simulan natin sa hindi masyadong puno ng shit.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Habang Binabasa Natin Si Barthes at Bob Ong

Hinahanap ko kung paano magsasalita
Tinatanaw mo ang ayaw nila ipaunawa,
Sinisikap ko lagpasan ang daigdig
Hinuhukay mo ito't nanliligalig.
Habang magkatabi sa iisang gilid,
Ng bus na tila malamig na silid.
Iniisip ko muli kung mahal ko ba siya,
Ika'y pasulyap-sulyap sa mundong tulala;
Nananaginip kaya ako na kasama ko siya,
Dala ng kamalasang kami'y nagkasira?
Sa iyo ba kaya'y may nag-aantay rin?
O sa puso mo'y nagbigay-panimdim?
Hindi ko malaman kung paano at bakit
Nguni't pagtatabi nati'y nagbibigay-sakit
Pagka't habang ika'y humihimbing
Ang dibdib ko'y umaantak at umiiling.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Kung Binabasa Mo To, Bakit Hindi Ka Aktibista (O Bakit Ka Nananatiling Aktibista)?

BAKIT AKO NAG-AARAL? Naisip mo ba yun kahit minsan, o dahil sa puntong ito ng buhay mo na bata ka pa naman kaya hindi mo pinag-iisipan? Malamang hindi di ba? Nag-aaral ka kasi lahat ng kaedad mo nag-aaral. Nag-aaral ka kasi pinasok ka sa ekwelahan ng magulang mo. Nag-aaral ka kasi natutuwa ka. Nag-aaral ka kasi hindi ka naman talaga nasa eskwelahan para matuto: gusto mo magkaroon ng kaibigan. Nag-aaral ka kasi... basta. Andyan e. At pag di ka nag-aral pagagalitan ka. Kukunsiyensiyahin ka. Ituturo sa iyo ang mga kaedad mong hindi nag-aaral dahil tamad sila, wala silang utang na loob sa magulang nila, kaya dahil ka ganoon, nandyan ka, nasa isang “mabuting” pamilya, inaasahan ka mag-aral para payabungin pa ang lagay ng pamilya mo.

Maraming dumaan sa eskwelahan na ganyan ang tinakbo ng utak mula pagkabata hanggang mamatay. Hindi na bago tong kwentong to. Nag-aaral kasi gusto nilang umangat ang buhay. Nag-aaral kasi iyon ang tradisyon: nasa pamilya na na nasa eskwelahang ito sila nagsimula at magtatapos kaya dapat huwag sirain ang tradisyon ng pamilya. Nag-aaral ka kasi, gusto mong may patunguhan ang buhay mo, at sinasabi kong “may patutunguhan” sa imahen ng “may magandang trabaho, malaki ang kita, hindi nagugutom, may kaya.” Para maipagmalaki ng magulang, mag-anak at pamilya. Para respetuhin ng lipunan. Para maayos ang takbo ng buhay, may kasiguraduhan. Halos lahat naman yata tayo sa puntong ito takot sumugal kaya laging “play on the safe side.” Sumunod sa utos. Ang sumunod, may biyaya. Ang pasaway, may parusa. Simple di ba?

Pero sa dinami-dami ng sagot na yun, siguradong-sigurado ko, kahit hindi mo sabihin, maiisip mo rin yun: “pero hindi lang yun e.” Sa dami ng rason na ibinigay sa iyo ng ilang taon mong pamumuhay, hindi mo pa rin sasabihing iyon lang ang takbo ng buhay mo. Iyon lang ang tanging rason mo kung bakit mo ginagawa to. Kung mangyari man na yun nga lang ang sagot mo, iniisip mo: “maski hindi ok, matututunan ko namang mahalin to.” Tignan natin yun. Bakit mo gustong “matutunan mahalin” ang isang bagay? Kasi pakiramdam mo, andito ka na e. Ganyan talaga; sulitin mo na lang. Hindi mo man pinili, at kahit baliktarin mo ang panahon siguradong hindi mo mapipiling hindi piliin ito, ganito ang takbo. Kumbaga kinwento nga sa akin ng isang guro: “may pagka-tinapon ka sa lagay mo.” Nandyan ka sa pamilyang yan na pinahahalagahan ang edukasyon nang hindi mo pinili. Nandyan ka sa isang pamilyang wasak-wasak at hindi ka tinuruan kahit minsan ng kahit ano nang hindi mo pinili. Pero may nais kang gawin. May nais kang maabot. At ayaw mong papigil sa kung ano ang meron ngayon upang makuha mo ang nais mo bukas. Kaya kahit pakiramdam mo hindi mo talaga nais gawin ito, kailangan mo gawin, kasi may rason ka. Pinanghawakan mo na.

Kaya naman iisipin mo: “Nag-aaral ako dahil gusto ko, at gusto kong may marating.” Ipagpalagay natin: nais mong mag-aral dahil nais mong magkatrabaho nang matino. Nais mong maging maayos ang buhay mo. Nais mong yumaman, o kaya maging sapat ang hawak sa araw-araw. Kaya kailangan mo ng maganda, matino at maayos ang sweldong trabaho.

~O~O~O~

BAKIT AKO NAGTATRABAHO? Nasabi na natin kanina ang mga rason mo kung bakit ka nag-aaral, para makarating ka sa puntong nais mo magtrabaho. Nagtatrabaho ka dahil ika nga, kailangan mo mabuhay. Kailangan ng pantustos. Kailangan mo para mabayaran mo ang magulang mong gumastos sa iyo ng ilang taon sa araw-araw; consuelo de bobo ika nga (tignan mo mamaya uli yung sinabi ko ha; “consuelo de bobo). Nais mong magkaroon ng maayos na trabaho kasi kailangan mo iyon kung magtatayo ka na ng sariling pamilya, at nais mo na pag nagtayo ka ng sariling pamilya, matutustusan mo sila kagaya ng pagtustos sa iyo ng magulang mo. Simple di ba? Halos pareho ng nasa itaas.

~O~O~O~

BAKIT NAIS KO MAGKAPAMILYA? Nais mo ituloy ang lahi, gaya ng naituro sayo ng magulang mo. Nais mo rin maranasan ang maging magulang para makapagbayad-utang ka sa pagtitiis sayo ng magulang mo noong ikaw naman ang pinapalaki nila: consuelo de bobo uli. Dahil nais mo lumagay sa tahimik. Nais mong may uuwian ka, may nagmamahal sayo at mamahalin mo, na magbibigay kahulugan sa buhay mo.

Hindi mo ninais magkapamilya “bago” mag-aral at magkatrabaho dahil alam mong komplikado to, pangmatanda lang. At hindi ka pa naman matanda. (Pansin mo yun, maraming nagsasabi ngayon na ayaw nila tumanda?) Siyempre, takot sila sa responsibilidad, nais muna nila maging malaya. Nais nila maging handa sa tamang panahon.

~O~O~O~

At sa huli, ipapasa mo ang mga kaalamang ito, ang mga rasong ito, ang mga pagpapahalagang ito, sa magiging anak mo. Kung itatanong niya sa iyo kung bakit ganun, sasabihin mo: ganoon talaga e. Sumunod na lang. Huwag na maraming tanong. May silbi naman lahat iyan, malalaman mo pagkatapos mo maranasan. Hindi mo na pinag-iisipan, kasi naniniwala ka naman na hindi ka lolokohin, na mabuti ang intensyon nila kaya nila pinagagawa sa iyo ang mga bagay na hindi ka talaga okey sa simula pero sinusubukan mong “matutunang mahalin.” Na hindi sila nagkakamali: di ba nga naman, kung mali itong mga ito, e bakit pa ginagawa ng lahat at ng kapwa mo?

At sa mga huling tanong na iyan, diyan na tayo nagkakatalu-talo.

~O~O~O~O~O~

Paano pala kung mali ang mga ikinuwento sa iyo ng mga kamag-anak mo, ng mga magulang mo, ng mga kaibigan mo? Paano kung yung mga pinanghahawakan mong hindi mababali e makita mo pala biglang sira, hindi mapagkakatiwalaan? Paano kung pakiramdam mo niloko ka lang?

Maraming nang sumagot nito. Nagrebelde. Hindi na nakinig sa awtoridad. Itinapon ang buhay. O, sa mas “malalang paraan”, gaya ng sabi ng mga magulang at nakakatanda mo, at isa sa mga simpleng dahilan kung bakit ayaw ng mga kamag-anak mo o ng mga nakakatanda sa iyo na pumasok sa isang pampublikong paaralan o unibersidad: MAGING AKTIBISTA.

~O~O~O~

Bakit tayo takot na maging aktibista? Ano ba ang depinisyong itinuro nila satin ng aktibista? Mareklamo. Hindi sumusunod sa utos. Hindi nakikinig sa matinong usapan. Nanununog. Sasali sa NPA. Magiging kriminal. Mamamatay. Aaksayahin ang buhay sa pagrereklamong walang katuturan.

Sino nagsabi? Ang mga magulang mo na pinagkatiwalaan mong hindi nagsisinungaling sayo. Ang mga kaibigan mong tinuruan din ng mabubuting magulang. Ang administrasyon na pinagkatiwalaan mong hindi ka ginogoyo. Ang mga nakatataas sayong sinasabihan kang sundin lang ang dati mo nang ginagawa para gumanda at guminhawa ang buhay. Yung mga dati nang parte ng buhay mo. At siyempre, hindi mo iisiping nagkakamali sila. Hindi mo iisiping hindi nila pinag-isipan yun.

Pero sa totoo lang, sabihin man nilang pinag-isipan nila yun, kung wala silang pinag-isipang ihahambing doon, hindi talaga nila pinag-isipan yun. Kung sumunod-sunod na lang, hindi nila pinag-isipan yun. Hindi sa minamata ko sila, pero kailangan nila aminin yun: hindi nila pwede angkinin ang di nila alam. Kaya nga consuelo de bobo di ba: consuelo – pampanatag, panigurado. Bobo – hindi alam. Panigurado ng hindi alam. Kasi hindi mo nga pinag-isipan. At natatakot ka na pag pinag-isipan mo na, hindi ka na matatahimik sa buhay mo.

~O~O~O~

PERO BAKIT NGA BA MAY NAGIGING AKTIBISTA? May pinaglalaban, ito sasabihin nila. Madali sa kanilang bigkasin ang mga teoryang panlipunan, ang paniniwala sa di-pagkakapantay-pantay, ang eksploytasyon ng mga manggagawa’t mahihirap ng sistemang piyudal-kapitalista-burukr
ata-pasista (at iba pang label). Ang manawagan para sa pagbabago ng mga istrukturang panlipunan. Ang manawagan para sa isang himagsikan, isang digmang bayan. Basahin mo lang ang Philippine Society and Revolution (PSR/LRP o Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino) ni Amado Guerrero (huwag na itangging si Jose Ma. Sison ito). Dahil ang rebolusyon ang tungo ng daigdig ngayon. Dahil ang tunay na lipunang para sa Pilipinas ay isang komunistang lipunan na pinagtatanggol ng Bagong Hukbong Bayan, na pinagtitipon ng Prente ng Pambansang Demokrasya, at pinangangasiwaan ng Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas. Daling i-label di ba? (Siyempre, hindi ko naman pangangasahan, mga kaibigang Kaliwa, mapa-RA o RJ, na ito lang yun; kinakalaban ko nga ang pagge-generalize.)

Pero hindi pa rin nasasagot ang tanong di ba: BAKIT? Kasi may kawalang-katarungan. Kasi iyong iniisip mo dati para sa sarili mo, naisip mo: bakit ako lang ang dapat makinabang sa mga biyaya ng mabuti’t maayos na buhay? Bakit parang hindi ko inisip kahit kailan na may kapwa ako na dapat ko paglingkuran. Bakit kailangan ko mabuhay at magkamal kung pwede namang simple lang ang buhay? Bakit kailangan ko sundin ang dikta ng merkado na bilhin ang ganito at ganyang bagay na hindi ko naman talaga kailangan? Bakit ko pagsusumakitan ang mangalap ng labis-labis sa kailangan ko e hindi ko na nga maisaayos at ma-enjoy ang mga bagay na mayroon na ako dati? Bakit ko aagawan ang iba na hindi na nga makakain ng perang gagamitin ko lang naman dahil natripan ko lang bumili ng isang kape sa Starbucks na umaabot ng P200+ pesos? Tangina mehn, kape, 200? E isang linggong hapunan na yun ng iba! Hindi ka ba nahihiya sa balat mo?

~O~O~O~

Madali rin naman sagutin itong rason na to e: hindi ko kasalanan iyon. Pinaghirapan ko to. Binigay to sakin ng magulang ko, ang pinaghirapan nila para sakin: bakit ko aaksayahin sa di ko kilala? Tamad sila kaya sila ganyan. Magsumikap sila! Hindi sila sumunod sa magulang nila e, hindi sila sumunod sa sistema e; dapat lang sa kanila yan!

Pero ang problema, hindi na sila ang may kasalanan, ang sistema mismo. Kung ang sistemang ito ay magpapayaman lamang sa dati nang meron at iiwan sa kangkungan ang milyun-milyong nahihirapan, palagay mo ba patas yun? Di rin ba sila taong kagaya mo? Wala rin ba sila karapatan sa mga bagay na tinatamasa mo na dati pa, sila na hindi nakaranas nito kahit minsan?

~O~O~O~

Iisipin ko nakunsiyensiya ka na sa sinabi ko: kung hindi pa, patapusin mo muna ako tapos saka ka magsulat sa comments section. Pero iisipin mo rin: oo, tama, hindi makatarungan, kailangan baguhin. Pero may mga pinoprotektahan din ako e. Gusto kong maayos ang pamilya ko. Wala akong panahon baguhin ang lipunan dahil may tiyan akong pakakainin. At siyempre, yun namang mga aktibistang kilala na natin, tutuyain ka. Isa kang walang-kwentang petiburgis. Isa kang makasarili. Isinusumpa ka ng bayang nag-aruga sayo, at humanda ka sa paghihiganti ng prente. Kumbaga, dahil hindi ka lang umayon, kalaban ka na nila. (Mga kaibigang Kaliwa na makakabasa nito, huwag niyo itangging hindi niyo inisip to. Baka nag-iba ang panahon: sabihan niyo ako).

Pero nanatili doon ang tensyon ng mamamayan sa politika’t lipunan. Susunod na lang tayo sa takbo ng kasalukuyang sistema dahil komportable, dahil ligtas, dahil kahit papaano may kinikita. Ang sumasalunga, itinatakwil ng lipunan. Hinahabol na parang hayop. Pinapatay ng Estado. Ang aktibista naman, ipangangalandakan sa mundo na siya lang ang nakakaintindi sa lipunan. Na dapat mo siya pakinggan at kapag hindi ka nakinig, pasensyahan na lang, wala na kayo ugnayan. Dahil nakamarkado ka na sa takbo ng isip niya. Tinutuya ka dahil hindi mo kaya magsakripisyo nang higit para sa bayang tinatawag ang tulong mo. Walang pinagkaiba sa sinabi ni John F. Kennedy: “Huwag mo tanungin kung ano ang magagawa ng bayan mo para sa iyo, kundi ano ang magagawa mo para sa bayan.”

Pero hindi ba yun nga ang punto kung bakit may naghimagsik sa simula pa lang: kais nga gutom ang marami? Kung yung gutom na yun e masasabit sa laban sa pagpapalaya, hindi kaya nagkakamali? Kung yung nais bigyan ng kalayaan mula sa mga tali ng buhay niya e hindi makumbinsing nakatali siya kaya siya hindi malaya, hindi kaya may problema din ang nagsasalita? Hindi rin kaya sa sobra namang pagpapahalaga sa pagkilos para sa pagkilos, hindi na swak sa orihinal na layuning magpalaya?

Siyempre, sa mga nanghinawa na sa walang-isip na pagkilos na kinahinatnan ng mga kilusang ito, sinabi na natin: mag-isip muna tayo ng tamang gawin. Huwag muna tayo kumilos. Pabayaan muna natin na ganyan tapos saka tayo lumusong kapag alam na talaga natin ang gagawin. Pero ang tanong: sigurado ka ba talaga na alam mo kung kailan ang tamang araw na darating? Katapusan na ng buhay mo hindi ka pa kumikilos, kahit yung paun ti-unting tinatawag mong “neo-liberal,” “dole-out,” at kung ano pang ek-ek?

~O~O~O~

Nananatili yung tanong. Nananatili ang takbo ng buhay mo. Nananatili ka sa isang kalagayang ang ipinagmamalaking halaga ng lipunang ginagalawan mo ay kung sino ang makakakuha ng pinakamarami. Kung sino ang makakapagkamit ng magandang buhay. Itinuturing niyang tanga at masyadong mabait ang mag-iisip ng kapakanan ng kapwa, kahit ipinagmamalaki niya na sumasampalataya siya sa isang relihiyon na ang tinuturo ay ibigin ang kapwa na gaya ng sa kanyang sarili.

Babangon ka sa umaga, mag-aayos ng gamit, tutungo sa kung ano man ang gawaing ipinagpapalagay mong siyang tunay na dapat takbuhin ng buhay mo.

Kung nananatili kang nasa “safe-side,” nabubuhay ka para sa iyong sarili, at kahit pumupunta ka sa simbahan at kinakanta mo na “walang sinuman ang nabubuhay para sa sarili lamang,” sinong niloko mo?

Kung nananatili kang kumikilos para sa pagbabago ng lipunan nguni’t nananatili ka sa iisang pananaw at perspektiba, na wala kang paggalang sa pananaw ng iba at ipagpapalagay mong lagi kang mas may alam ka sa kanila, sinong makukumbinsi mo?

Anuman ang ginagawa mo iniisip mo nakakatulong ka sa pagtakbo ng makina ng lipunang ito. O kaya nakakatulong ka sa paglikha ng bagong makina ng lipunang ito. Pero ang tanong: kelangan ba talaga natin ng makinang nagpapatakbo sa lahat na lang ng aspeto ng buhay natin? Kailan ka titigil saglit at iisipin mo naman: hindi lang ako ang narito. Hindi lang ang mga nakikita ko ang kasama ko sa mundo. May kasama ako. At hindi lang yung iniisip ko o itinuturing kong kasama ko ang tunay na kasama ko.

Kailan mo iisiping magpahinga kahit minsan? Yung pahingang nagbibigay ng linaw sa lahat ng ginawa mo dati, ginagawa mo ngayon, at posibleng makatulong sayo sa paggawa mo bukas? Yung masasabi mong “kahit hindi sigurado, alam ko may katuwiran ang ginagawa ko. Lundagin mo beybeh!”

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Punong-Puno na Sa Pamumuno?

Isang pananaw sa mga unang araw ng pagtakbo at retorika ng pamahalaan ni Pangulong Benigno Aquino III

Sa katotohanan, kinatatakutan ng burgesya ang kamangmangan ng masa kapag sila’y nananahimik, at ang kanilang pananaw kung sila’y naghihimagsik.
- Karl Marx, Ika-18 Brumaire ni Luis Bonaparte

Nakakadalawang linggo na mula nang ating tanghalin si Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Cojuangco Aquino III bilang ikalabinlimang Pangulo ng Republika ng Pilipinas. Bilang isang mamamayang nahubog ang pananaw-politikal sa maliligalig na panahon ng pamamahala nina Joseph Ejercito “Erap” Estrada at ni Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, nauunawaan ko ang malawakang pananabik at matatayog na pangarap ng ating mga kababayan sa kanyang maaaring maibigay para sa pagpapayabong ng pamumuhay ng mamamayang Pilipino. Napakadaling makisali sa mga mapagdiwang na pahayag na ibinabandila ng mass media at ng mga kasapi sa mga kilusang repormista ng panggitnang-uri na siyang nanguna upang ipahayag ang mensahe ng pagbabago sa pagtungo sa “daang matuwid,” isang daan kung saan ang katiwalian ay walang puwang upang sirain ang tiwala’t ugnayan ng pamahalaan at sambayanan. Kung saan ang pamahalaan ay maituturing na lingkod ng sambayanan at ang mamamayan ay siyang magiging kaakibat upang makamit ang mga layuning pangkalahatan ng ating bansa’t bayan. Isang “bagong simula,” ika nga nila.


Takot Na Kami Masaktan

Sa kabila nito, marami rin sa mga nagmamasid ang nag-aagam-agam: masyadong masaya’t nananabik tayo na tila baga ang pagpanaog ni Aquino sa Malacañang ang siyang susi sa malawaka’t malakihang pagbabanyuhay ng politika’t ekonomiya ng Pilipinas sa ngayon. Na para bagang siya, sa kanyang pagkatao bilang tagapagmana ng mito ng tanod ng demokrasya mula sa kanyang mga magulang na sina dating Pangulong Corazon at Senador Benigno “Ninoy” Jr., ay nakatali at nakatadhanang “iligtas” ang Inang Pilipinas mula sa mga kuhilang Kinatawan sa kamara na walang ginawa kundi ang magpataba at ibulsa ang kuwartang ibinubuwis ng mamamayan pagkatapos ng suson-susong paghihirap. Na tila baga ang kanyang kamuntiang pagkakamali ay ating ipag-aalsa’t siyang wawasak nang lubusan sa pag-asa ng mamamayan sa mga demokratikong institusyon. Na para bagang masyado yata tayong ambisyoso, baka pag pumalpak, e malilintikan rin lang pala tayong lahat.

Kauna-unawa ang mga agam-agam na ito, sapagka’t naipit at nabaon sa isang mapagsisi’t walang-tiwala sa sariling kalagayan (self-hating and reproachful state) ang ating mga mamamayan sa ilalim ng siyam na taon ni Gloria Arroyo, na tandisang sumira sa mga institusyong panlipunan at nagwalang-bahala sa interes ng mamamayan sa kabila ng kanyang pagkakalagay sa puwesto noong 2001 sa pamamagitan ng ikalawang himagsikang-bayan (“people power”) sa EDSA. May takot sa atin na magtiwala ulit sa institusyon sa agam-agam na tayo na naman ang maituturong maysala kung magkaloko-loko na naman ang mga bagay-bagay. Nguni’t hindi ito makatarungan para sa ating mga sarili, kung nais natin talagang panatilihing demokratiko, maka-Diyos, makatao at makabayan ang ating lipunan. Tungkulin natin na manatiling mulat, may paninindigan at manatiling nakamatyag upang tiyakin na ang ating mga narinig na gagawin ay tunay na maisagawa ng kasalukuyang administrasyon. Na sana nga ang telos (patutunguhan) ay nakikita sa lakad ng bayan ngayon. Minsan ngang ibinahagi ng kapwa natin mga Atenista, ang SpongeCola: “dehado kung dehado, para saan pa ang mga galos mo kung titiklop ka lang?”


Samantalahin, Huwag Pagsamantalahan

Marami sa ating nagitla at lumundag sa tuwa nang marinig natin si Pangulong Aquino na ipahayag sa Quirino Grandstand noong ika-30 ng Hunyo na “kayo ang boss ko.” Ngayon lamang tayo, kung tutuusin, nakarinig ng isang pinuno ng bansa na kinilala ang kanyang utang na loob hindi sa mga kauri niyang nakaririwasa na nangampanya at gumastos para sa kanyang kampanya, hindi sa mga may-kapangyarihan sa lokal na nibel, at hindi sa mga institusyonal na padron kundi sa mamamayang humalal sa kanya sa unang automated na halalan sa kasaysayan ng bansa. Totoo, hindi madaling paniwalaang naging malinis ang halalan, hindi madaling paniwalaang hindi nakibahagi si Aquino sa mga tradisyunal na paraan ng pagkalap ng boto (na kung pagbabasehan ang mga nakatakdang batas ngayon ay itinuturing nang krimeng ikabibilanggo), kalokohang sabihing walang bahid-dungis ang halalang ito na hindi binago ang mga dinamiko, nguni’t hindi makatarungang sabihing nanalo lamang si Aquino dahil ibinoto siya ng ignoranteng masa na namanipula ng mga institusyon ng burgesya at ng kleriko-pasistang Simbahan (na natitiyak kong narinig niyo na sa mga tagasuporta nina Manny Villar, Richard Gordon at Gilbert Teodoro: huwag niyo sila pakinggan, pikon lang ang mga yan).

Dala nito, may mga taong nangahas nang magtakda ng kanilang mga nais at banta sa kasalukuyang administrasyon kung hindi ito magagawa. Pinalaki na natin ang minsanang pagtuya ni Aquino sa “wang-wang” upang siya mismo’y pagbawalan nating mag “wang wang” kahit mahuhuli na siya sa mga pulong dala ng trapik. Isang batikang brodkaster nga ang nangahas magsabing “dapat hindi na rin lumalabas si Noynoy kapag Lunes dahil coding ang plaka niya.”

Hindi lisensya ang pagkilala ng ating Pangulo sa ating halaga upang putaktihin siya na sundin ang ating balang naisin bilang mga kabahagi ng taumbayang “hindi nag-iisip at sumusunod lamang sa galaw ng tiyan.” Nararapat nating tandaan na sa ating paghalal kay Aquino, ating pinili siyang upang gabayan ang kilos ng mga aparato ng estado at lipunan at hindi karapat-dapat na baliin natin ang kaniyang plataporma de gobierno dala ng ating posibleng makitid na isipang iniisip lamang ang kakanin bukas. Bilang kabahagi ng isang pamayanan, tungkulin natin bilang Pilipino (at bilang taong may kinikilalang mabuti) na mabuhay nang may pagpapahalaga sa kapwa. Kailangan nating kilalanin na ang pakikibahaging politikal ay hindi isang paraan upang magkamal para sa sarili, kundi upang tiyakin na nanatili ang ugnayan natin sa ating kapwa sa mahinusay at mapagyabong na paraan.

Ano ang pinagkaiba natin sa mga trapo at mangungurakot sa mga sangay ng pamahalaan na binabaliti ang kanilang kapwa para sa kanilang sarili kung ating gagawin ito? Ano naman ang pinagkaiba ng isang Pangulong iisipin maski ang pinakamaliit na kibot ng kanyang leeg at kung paano ito makakasama sa sensibilidad ng tao sa isang aliping saguiguilid? Hindi ito makatuwirang kilos, at pinapatunayan lamang natin na tayo’y mga utak-alipin pa rin, sapagka’t “sumusukob sa mang-aalipin ang nangingibig na hindi lumaya.”


Higit Sa Lahat, Magpanagot

Sa pagsasabi kong hindi natin dapat samantalahin ang pagkilala ni Pangulong Aquino sa ating tinig, hindi natin isinasama dito ang katotohanang pangunahing karapatan nating humingi ng katarungan sa mga pampublikong institusyon. Hindi dapat kaligtaang si Pangulong Aquino mismo ay hindi pa rin sinasagot nang mahinusay ang mga patayan sa Hacienda Luisita na pagmamay-ari ng kanyang angkan. Hindi natin dapat kalimutan ang katotohanang nangangahas nang maghain ng kaduda-dudang mga pagbabago sa Saligang-Batas si dating Pangulong Arroyo na ngayo’y kinatawan ng ikalawang distrito ng Pampanga. Hindi natin dapat kalimutan ang daan-daang mamamahayag, aktibista at mga inosenteng mamamayan na pinaslang ng mga galamay ng rehimen ni Arroyo at hindi pa rin napaparusahan magpasahanggang ngayon. Hindi natin dapat kalimutan na ang ating mga kinatawan sa Mababang Kapulungan ay ang mga dating pangalan pa rin na sumuporta sa mga interes ng tiwaling pamahalaan at pumatay sa mga batas na sana’y nakapagbigay-kapangyarihan sa mamamayan para sa demokratikong pagkilos.

Dito natin marapat ibuhos ang ating pagkilos bilang mga mamamayang nagnanais ng pagbabago. Marapat nating bantayan at palaging paalalahanan ang ating Pangulo’t ang burukrasyang sumusuporta sa kanya na tungkulin nilang linisin at panariwain ang tiwalang ginutay-gutay ng mga rehimen nina Estrada at Arroyo. Karapat-dapat lamang nating panoorin ang mga nagaganap sa ating pampublikong lunan at pagdudahan din ang mga samu’t saring opinyon na dati’y tinatanggap na lang nating basta-basta.

Ibinahagi ng Hudyong manunulat na si Hannah Arendt na “ang pagpapatawad lamang ang tanging kilos na hindi lamang tugon kundi isang bagong kilos na di-inaasahan, di-tinakda ng kilos na nagbunga noon, at pinalalaya sa mga kahihinatnan nito ang nagpatawad at pinatawad.” Nangyayari lamang ang pagpapatawad na nagbubungang mahinusay kung ang katarungan ay naigawad sa maysala, kahit sa anyo ng mabigat na parusa. Kung tunay na ibinabandila ng pamahalaang Aquino na “walang pagpapanumbalik kung walang paggawad ng katarungan,” hinihingi nito na tayo bilang mamamayan ay manindigan na ang mga maysala ay magiging karapat-dapat lamang sa awa ng taumbayan kapag sila’y nalatayan na ng hagupit. Hindi naghihilom ang isang malalim na sugat kung hindi dadaan sa masakit na proseso ng pagtatahi nito.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Tama Na Party: Maraming Tiyanak Baby

(Prologue: At sa wakas, nagtinta na ang utak ko.

Nitong mga nakakaraang buwan para bang napakahirap magsulat [o, kung magsusulat ka man, parang walang taga sa damdamin, walang pagpapahalaga talaga, walang pagtataya]. Parang napakahirap pigain at/o ilabas ang mga bagay na ang akala mo dati mo nang alam, dati mo nang naiintindihan, dati mo namang kayang sabihin nang walang alinlangan. Kung tutuusin, ang mga dating mahahabang rant at/o pagpapahayag ng ideya, damdamin, etc. ay nauwi sa bigla-biglang bugso ng damdamin sa Plurk, pagsipi sa mga binabasa kong kung sinu-sino nang patay na tao sa Facebook, at tandisang pagkabagoong ng aking isiping kritikal. Para bang naka-life support ang utak ko nitong nakaraang tatlong buwan at ang nakapagpanatili lamang sa aking paki sa mga nangyayari sa aking paligid ay ang mga nakatatanda’t mga tagapaggabay sa Kagawaran ng Agham Politikal, ang mga kapatnugutan sa Matanglawin at ang mga kakilalang paminsan-minsa’y pinararaket ako sa Paaralan ng Pamamahala.

Siguro special thanks sa aking mga itinuring nang mga political parents na sina Ma’am Joy Aceron at Sir Kiko Isaac (peminista ako, bakit?), sa revolutionary counsel nina Sir RR Rañeses, Sir Arjan Aguirre, Sir Gino Trinidad, Boss Rosselle Tugade at Master Biboy Alimangohan (mga kainuman, tagapayo, tagahubog ng pagtanaw sa politika at tsismis, steady supply ng second-hand smoke, at palaging tinatanong sakin ang normative question na “nakakain ba yan?”), sa mag-anak ni Karen Mae Cruz at Phillip Recentes (na pinaglalabasan ko ng mga singaw sa utak at hinihingan ng payo), ang Block I1 at I na nagpapakita saking may pag-asa pa rin pala ang isang nabulok na utak na gaya ng sa akin, ang Block II na lagi’t lagi akong binibigyan ng hamon na sumabay at/o umigpaw, ang Matanglawin na nagtitiwala pa rin sa aking kakayanang ayusin ang sirang cabinet (matatapos na po!), ang Ateneo College Ministry Group na may tiwala pa rin sa aking kakayanang maglingkod sa harap ng dambana, kay Padre Luis David at G. Patrick Momah para sa isang taon ng pagsigang sa aking utak kay Michel Foucault at Hannah Arendt, kay Dr. Benjamin Tolosa na hindi na kailangan ng pagpapaliwanag, sa Legal Network for Truthful Elections na alam kong binigyan ako ng marmaing bigay sa kabila ng aking mga walang-wawang pagkukulang, sa mga manong guard ng aking tinutuluyan na walang-sawang bumabati sa akin sa pag-alis at pag-uwi na para ko nang mga tatay, at sa aking suking binibilhan ng mangga. May utang pa akong dalawang kilo sa kanya.)

~O~O~O~

Alam kong maraming tuwang-tuwa sa atin nang masaksiha’t marinig natin ang isang bagong administrasyon at ang pangako ng isang bagong pagtalad tungo sa daang matuwid na ibinandila ng ating bagong Pangulong Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. Maraming kabataan siguro ang ngayon pa lang nakarinig ng isang Pangulong nagsasalita na tunay na pinalakpakan at pinagtitiwalaan ng sambayanang nakakapagsalita, na malamang ay naikukwento lamang sa inyo ng inyong mga guro sa HeKaSi tuwing pinag-uusapan si Ramon Magsaysay o maski ang kanyang inang si Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino. Sabi nga ng marami, isang bagong kabanata, isang bagong pagkakataon, isang bagong Pilipinas.

At siyempre, ang sinasabi ng pinakamarami ang siyang pinaka-hindi dapat pagtiwalaan. Oo, tunog elitista yun, pero patapusin niyo ako.

Marami sa atin ang may tendensiyang magpakasaya tuwing tayo’y makakakamit ng maliliit na tagumpay. Sa totoo nga lang, sinabi na dati pa ni Nick Joaquin na ang ating kasaysaya’y isang kasaysayan kung saan napakalaki ng papel ng mga piging. Na siyang supposedly ay pinag-uugatan ng ating fixation sa mga pista sa puntong ipag-uutang pa natin ang siyang ipampipista kahit malubog sa utang at hindi na mabayad-bayaran. Na kung tutuusin ang ating mga dinadakilang rebolusyon ng 1986 at 2001 ay sobrang parang katuwaan lang, na iilan lang ang namatay, kaya parang chipipay sa ilan ang napanalunan nating “demokrasya,” at dahil doon ay parang binabale-wala na ng kasalukuyang henerasyon (at ng ating mga kaibigang taxi driver) na mas ok pa yata ang mamuhay sa ilalim ng isang diktadurya. Siyempre, insulto naman ang sinabi kong iyon sa libu-libong pinatay ng rehimeng Marcos, pero sa totoo lang, minsan may appeal yung sinabi ng RAM na walang value ang iyong kinakamit na panlipunang pagbabago kung wala kang itinaya. Preferably, dugo. O sa panitik ni Simoun:

Ano ang kamatayan? Kawalan, o isang panaginip? Maihahambing ba ang mga katatakutan nito sa mga paghihirap ng isang isinumpang salinlahi? Kailangang wasakin ang kasamaan, patayin ang dragon at paliguin ang bagong bayan sa dugo nito upang sila’y lumakas at di-magugupo. Ano pa ba ang batas ng kalikasan, ang batas ng pag-aalit kung saan ang mahihina’y dapat malipol upang ang mga walang-silbing lipi’y di magtagal at nang di bumalik ang takbo ng mga nilikha? Tama na ang mga pambinabaeng pagdidili-dili! Sundin ang mga batas na ito, payabungin sila, at tataba ang lupa habang lalong nadidiligan ng dugo, at ang mga trono’y lalong titibay habang sila’y nakasandig sa mga krimen at bangkay! Huwag nang magduda, huwag mag-alinlangan! Ano ang sakit ng kamatayan? Isang saglit na damdamin, marahil nakakalito, marahil kasiya-siya, tulad ng paggising mula sa paghimbing. Ano ang winawasak? Kasamaan, pagdurusa – mga mahihinang damo, upang palitan sila ng magagandang tanim. Tinatawag mo ba iyang pagwasak? Dapat ito tawaging paglikha, paggawa, pagkandili, pagbuhay!

Pero ewan. Supposedly pinanghahawakan ko ang paninindigan ng sosyalistang demokrasya (hindi sosyalera¸ putek, alisin mo ang fluffy-shit na napupulot mo sa Starbucks, Rockwell o Emba). Na ang pakikibaka’t pagsusulong ng pagbabago ay sa pamamagitan ngpagsasalita, diyalogo, diskurso at pakikibahagi sa parlamentaryo ng lansangan. Na lahat ay madadaan sa salitaan at diskurso. Na ang tanging paraan ng dahas na puwede nating paghugutan ng lakas para lumaban ay ang ay dahas ng mga salita. Dahil sabi nga ni Napoleon, mas nakakatakot harapin ang isang diyaryo kesa sandaang kanyon.

Pero parang kulang e. Parang may mga tao talagang hindi dapat patawarin. Kumbaga sabi nga na “may mga hindi mapapatawad ang Espiritu Santo,” mayroon ding mga bagay na hindi tayo dapat patawarin kung tunay tayong Kristiyano at naniniwala sa katarungan.

Kagaya ni Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Kagaya ng lahat ng mga kupal na trapong tinutularan ngayon ni Manny Pacquiao (siyempre, pwedeng-pwede natin idaan sa dirkurso ang pangangailangan sa mga trapo o etikong trapo sa pagpapanatili ng demokratikong espasyo). Ewan. Para bang may pakiramdam ka na sa mga ganitong panahon “hindi na sapat ang mga reporma at mga paki.” Kumbaga, sa etika ng MAGIS na sa malaking hamon ay higit na malaking tugon, ang isang malaki’t tandisang pambabalahura ay dapat gantihin ng higit pang pambabalahura sa mga maysalang kalaban ng bayan.

Kasi, isipin mo naman, ang sarap pakinggan nitong mga salitang to nung Miyerkules di ba?

Kayo ba ay minsan ring nalimutan ng pamahalaang inyong iniluklok sa puwesto? Ako rin. Kayo ba ay nagtiis na sa trapiko para lamang masingitan ng isang naghahari-hariang de-wangwang sa kalsada? Ako rin. Kayo ba ay sawang-sawa na sa pamahalaang sa halip na magsilbi sa taumbayan ay kailangan pa nila itong pagpasensiyahan at tiisin? Ako rin.



Kami ay narito para magsilbi at hindi para maghari. Ang mandato ninyo sa amin ay pagbabago – isang malinaw na utos para ayusin ang gobyerno at lipunan mula sa pamahalaang iilan lamang ang nakikinabang tungo sa isang pamahalaang kabutihan ng mamamayan ang pinangangalagaan.

Ang mandatong ito ay isa kung saan kayo at ang inyong pangulo ay nagkasundo para sa pagbabago – isang paninindigan na ipinangako ko noong kampanya at tinanggap ninyo noong araw ng halalan.

Sigaw natin noong kampanya: “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” Hindi lamang ito pang slogan o pang poster – ito ang mga prinsipyong tinatayuan at nagsisilbing batayan ng ating administrasyon.



Binuhay natin ang diwa ng people power noong kampanya. Ipagpatuloy natin ito tungo sa tuwid at tapat na pamamahala. Ang naniniwala sa people power ay nakatuon sa kapwa at hindi sa sarili.

Sa mga nang-api sa akin, kaya ko kayong patawarin, at pinapatawad ko na kayo. Sa mga nang-api sa sambayanan, wala akong karapatan na limutin ang inyong mga kasalanan.

To those who are talking about reconciliation, if they mean that they would like us to simply forget about the wrongs that they have committed in the past, we have this to say: there can be no reconciliation without justice. Sa paglimot ng pagkakasala, sinisigurado mong mauulit muli ang mga pagkakasalang ito.

Mga ilang ulit na rin naibahagi ni Prof. Ambeth Ocampo: “History does not repeat itself: we repeat history.” (Hindi inuulit ng kasaysayan ang kanyang sarili; tayo ang umuulit sa kasaysayan.) Medyo hindi ko magawang maging kampante na magagawa natin ang mga pagbabagong ito habang nakaamba ang punyetang balitang ito:

The former President and her son, Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado Arroyo, filed House Resolution No. 8 calling for a constitutional convention (Concon) to propose amendments to the 1987 Constitution.



“We are aware that her heart has always been to amend the Constitution. That is not a surprise, that is something we will deal with together with our partners in the House,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda told reporters. “It is something that we are not bothered with, it is something we expected from the start.”

Lacierda said that Cha-cha was a “matter of numbers in Congress” and that if the Aquino administration succeeded in convincing members of the House that amending the Constitution would be untimely, “then that will be dead in the water.”

“Gloria is trying to test the waters,” said Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms. “It’s one way of polling members of the House and find out whether she still has the numbers.”

“Her proposal to change the Constitution could be a rallying point for congressmen who will not get positions under the Liberal Party-led House leadership,” Casiple said.

Other analysts said that while the Arroyo resolution posed no direct threat to the presidency of Benigno Aquino III, an early debate on Cha-cha could tie down Aquino’s legislative agenda at a time when he needs his reform program to take off.



House Resolution No. 8 states that the various proposals put forward to change the Constitution are vital to addressing the people’s needs and to making the country globally competitive.
It says the changes are best achieved through the least controversial method—the constitutional convention. The other prescribed modes for revising the Charter are through a constituent assembly and through a people’s initiative.

“Calling for a constitutional convention to propose amendments or revisions of the Constitution is the least divisive and the most transparent, exhaustive and democratic means of implementing constitutional reforms,” the resolution states.

“The ... Constitution contains certain provisions which have outlived their purpose and need to be revisited to institute much-needed socioeconomic and political reforms,” it adds.

Electing delegates to the Concon would also allay concerns that sitting officials would just want to take advantage of the constitutional changes.

“To dispel fears of promoting any vested interests among the incumbent elected officials, the election of delegates to the constitutional convention is necessary and desirable,” the resolution says.



Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Teodoro Casiño said that Arroyo’s move was cause for alarm, adding the threat of her eventually becoming a prime minister remained because lawmakers might just back her resolution to gain more power for themselves.

“That’s precisely one of the reasons she ran for Congress. The cat is out of the bag,” Casiño said.

“Remember, most congressmen want Cha-cha in order to abolish the Senate and make Congress more powerful.”

Another Liberal Party stalwart, Mandaluyong Rep. Neptali Gonzales, is proposing that the question of whether there should be a constitutional convention in the first place should be thrown to the people in a referendum.

“Let’s relieve Congress of this issue,” Gonzales said. “If the people say they don’t want (a constitutional convention), let’s stop it. If they say yes, we push for it with a new measure.”

Sige, given, kinatawan na lamang ng Pampanga si Arroyo. Malaki ang dipirensya ng kapangyarihan niya noon bilang Pangulo at ngayong nasa Kongreso lamang siya. Pero kailangan pa ba nating harapin ito? Gusto ba talaga natin ang ganitong proposisyon? Tinanong ba talaga ang Pampanga ukol dito? Siyempre, gaya ng Ilocos na “hindi bibitiw ang loyalty” kay Apo, ganoon nga siguro ang takbo ng sikmura ng mga tao doon ngayon. Kahit ba sabihin ni Frederic Schaffer na ang paglalatag ng repormismo at “clean and honest election” ay kadalasan nakakainsulto sa sensibilidad ng mga mahihirap (na naniniwala sa politika ng pakikipag-ugnayan at palitan ng mga kagamitan sa pagkakaibigan, na swak naman sa sinabi ni Aristoteles), ito ba talaga ang gusto ng mamamayan? Gusto ba talaga nila ang baguhin ang porma ng konstitusyon na inilalatag ng isang partidong matagal na nilang gustong paalisin sa poder? Paano natin matutulungan ang ating Pangulong makapagsimula tayong lahat sa landas na matuwid kung ang mga “kinatawan” natin ay ang mga datihang ungas pa rin?

Minsan, marami talagang interesanteng bagay sa proposisyon ng “good governance,” pero hangga’t hindi nito nagagawang mailatag ang mga talagang nais at kailangan ng mamamayan, anti-demokratiko pa ring paraan ng pagpapatakbo ito. At dapat lang sigurong isuka na natin ang pagkukumpara natin sa Singapore sa ating mga sarili: lungsod lang yan! Mas malaki pa nga ang Makati diyan e (isa pa siguro sa mga dahilan kung bakit nga nanalo si Binay).

Hindi madali ang baguhin ang isang lipunan: sure, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Pero parang hindi rin yata ayos na lumaban tayo na ang dala lang natin ay salita at mga reporma. May natitira pa rin sa aking damdamin na ang isang sambayanang handang manglipol at magbubo ng dugo ng mang-aapi (maski kababayan pa niya ito) lamang ang may kakayanang magtagal bilang demokrasya. Yung sinabi ni Padre Florentino sa panulat ni Rizal: “kapag ang sambayanan ay di handa, kapag lumaban ito sa pamamagitan ng panlilinlang at dahas, nang walang malinaw na pag-unawa sa kanyang ginagawa, mabibigo ang mga pinakamatatalinong panukala. At mabuti na ngang mabigo, dahil bakit mo ipapakasal ang babae sa lalake kung hindi niya ito lubusang mahal, kung hindi siya handang mamatay para sa kanya?”

Pero baka mainit lang ang ulo ko. Takot ako dahil mayroon ngayong posibleng makapagpadala ng pagbabago na haharangan na naman ng mga anti-politikal na elemento. Takot ako dahil pagod na pagod na ang mamamayan at ayoko nang mabigo sila sa kanilang mga pangarap. Dahil sa mga ganitong pagkakataon, kapag nabigo pa ang anumang layon sa reporma, dalawa ang puwede nating hantungan: ang mapilitang lisanin ang bansang ito at ang identidad na Pilipino, o ang tumungo sa larangan na may dalang tabak, rebolber, sumpak, tirador, boga, pillbox at molotob.

Molotob. Kaunting kibot lang ng kabiguan, baka magtapon na ako nito. At ang mga taong pagod na na pipiliin ang mamatay na lumalaban.

~O~O~O~

(Postscript: Ewan ko lang: antagal ko rin hindi nakapagsulat dahil hindi ko alam kung ano talaga ang dapat sabihin. Actually humaba lang ito dahil sa mga news clippings, pero nakita niyo naman na sa puntong ito ng buhay ko hindi ko talaga alam kung papaano haharapin ang mga posibleng panganib na haharapin nating mga lumalaban para sa tunay na pagpapatatag ng demokrasya. Baka senior syndrome lang din ito.)

Sunday, May 16, 2010

PROMO (At Dahil Minsan, Torpe Lang Talaga Ako)

Bukas, may event kasama ang Matanglawin, The Assembly at Sanggunian ATF 2010, ang AUTOMAYHEM. Bilang hosted ito ng mga kaibigan natin sa Political Science classes na PoS 100 under Mr. Arjan Aguirre, sa ika-4:00 ng hapon, inaanyayahan ang lahat magtungo sa Leong Hall Auditorium. Kung interesado ka malaman kung talagang "iba na ngayon" ang konsepto ng halalan sa Pilipinas, pumunta ka na.

AUTOMAYHEM?
ATENEO STUDENTS’ FORUM ON THE AUTOMATED ELECTION

May 17, 2010, Monday
4:00-6:00pm
Leong Hall Auditorium
Ricardo & Dr. Rosita Leong Hall
Ateneo de Manila University
Loyola Heights, Quezon City


KUKUMBINSHIN KA NAMING HINDI.

Special feature dito ang mga kaibigan nating sina Gerald Pascua at Leiron Martija, kasama ang ginagalang na Atty. Carlos Medina ng ating pinagtatrabahuhang Legal Network for Truthful Elections. SAMA NA, MAGSALITA!

~O~O~O~

Obviously, alam ng marami na hindi gumagana ang utak ko the way it used to be. At siguro matatapos lang ito kapag nabili ko na ang libro ni Alan Navarra na GIRL TROUBLE. Quoting from pp. 100-101:

GIRL TROUBLE: Required Reading Para sa Lahat ng NGSB, Mga Basted, at Mga Binigo


I can’t marry a rich girl because she only cleans up because she has issues.
I can’t marry a poor girl. She doesn’t need to clean because she don’t got stuff; I’ll have to buy it for her.
I can’t love a military or a rebel girl because they grown old killing a lot of people or die young fighting a war she does not understand.
I can’t love a free spirit, because she’ll leave.
Can’t marry a homebody because she’ll never leave.
Can’t love a health buff because she won’t stop buffing.
Can’t marry the fat one because she’ll never stop eating.
Can’t love the artist because she loves her art.
Can’t marry the university girl because she wants a university boy.
Can’t get down with the butcher because she stinks.
Can’t be with an achiever because she’s too square to try anything new.
The overachiever doesn’t have the time.
The underachiever just doesn’t.
The failure gets left behind.
The loyal one is a bore.
The honest ones are stone cold bitches.

Bonnie. Len. Dane. Gara. Berry. Shale. French. Melen. She. Che. Fe. Je. Me-Ann. Ness. Cora. Anch. Vita. Dita…

Mga putangina ninyong lahat, iniwan niyo ako.


(insert the song "Lost Without Your Love" Here)

~O~O~O~

Yeah, I have to admit it, masyadong naging cathartic ang nakaraang 2 buwan. Masyadong maraming perspektibang lumipad mula sa aking kaisipan. Masyadong maraming pagkakamaling nagawa at mga tamang pinaplanong pamplantsa ng gusot. Masyadong malungkot, masyadong halakhakan. Masyadong matamis, masyadong simpait ng dugong lumabas mula sa sinaksak na atay. Masyadong nakakawalang gana. Masyadong nagbibigay pag-asa.

Ika nga ni Joey Ayala, magkabilaan ang mundo. Hindi nga naman nawawala ang tunggalian sa loob ng mundo sabi ni Lolo Pepe. Isipin mo nga naman, kung natatapos ang tunggalian, kung talagang puwedeng lutasin ang mga suliranin nating lahat ng iisang tao pa lamang, ano pa ang silbi ng mabuhay? Ano pa ang silbi ng utak na ibinigay sa iyo kung sasayangin mo sa pagkatanga lamang? Aanhin mo pa ang bisig na binigay sa yo kung hindi ka rin naman kikilos. Para sa'n pang mga galos mo kung titiklop ka lang?

~O~O~O~

You focus on the trivial and lose sight of what's most important. Change is impossible in this fog of ignorance. How can we evolve when regulation is all we know? - Uchiha Itachi (うちはイタチ).

Oo na, promise, magsusulat na ulit ako ng mas matino. Marami kasi akong iniipon. O baka naman rin kasi wala nang maiipon. Sino ba puwedeng pumiga sakin?

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Fourteen Reflections

(Premise: It's been damn long since I have written down something. I do probably have to rethink and reformulate a few of my thought processes [and my lifestyle in general] to finally start writing that first 2 chapters of a thesis I was thinking. Here were a few things I learned after mulling over the past 4 weeks of working outside the academic setting.)

1: Yes, I can live without the internet. For a day. You should try it too.
2: Karma down? Fuck it. Mobilizations down? Fuck me. Public participation should be the end-product of our private processes. Our motto should be LET US BE SEEN.
3: There's a lot of room for fixing public transportation sectors, and the first step is discouraging private transportation.
4: The obsession to work in solely non-partisan action is highly detrimental to more healthy politicization. Nonetheless, the watchman mentality, vigilance, should remain for accountability to be set. The term "watchdog" reeks of disciplinary non-thinking.
5: Citizens should not solely look at processes but in issues and ideas, and must mold civil societies into making them so.
6: The presumption of the law that everyone is innocent until proven guilty is prone to maintaining a liberal setting that permits injustices to normalize. Sovereign power and confrontations should be restored. Justice delayed is justice denied.
7: Growing trends within civil society institutions that acknowledge their ultimate incapacity to effect change outside public institutions should be sustained.
8: The claim that politics is dirty should not be abhorred but is actually the intrinsic nature of interest consolidation. Mudslinging, however, is not, and mudslingers should be eliminated.
9: The use of progress and efficiency in political campaigns and rhetoric is anti-political: that is the province of bureaucratic processes. The fetish for modernization has screwed developing countries: it should be abandoned.
10: Bureaucracies are concerned with national housekeeping. Bureaucracies are for fast and efficiencies that are not open to argumentation. Our elective offices are designed to make these offices accountable to public interest.
11: Political maturity is about troubleshooting and thinking coupled with tempered guts. Therefore, BUREAUCRATIC ACUMEN ≠ POLITICAL MATURITY. To use bureuacratic acumen, track records and past merits as your criteria for electing a political office is stupid, anti-political, and anti-democratic (ERGO, SHUT UP, "COMPETENT CAMPS" and "THINKING CAMPS." Your elitist bearings are stinking.)
12: A healthy practice of politics does not concern itself with personalities, but persons. Not parties of convenience, but communes of ideologies and communities. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism should not be welcome if democracy is to be maintained. Ergo, what we should have is a STRONG LEGISLATURE. Any campaigns with NO STRONG LEGISLATIVE AGENDA, THEREFORE, SHOULD BE REJECTED.
13: Marxism is still the more exciting perspective, hands down. But a healthy dose of postmodernism is never bad.
14: If only education is not bound by bureaucratic requirements and thinking not a monopoly of leaders, perhaps our societies would be thinking better and more loving of their freedom to be willing to be bound by it.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Bien Viernes

Mga alaala ng mga mahal na pumanaw
Habang nakapikit ay aking natatanaw
Tumatawid sa isang ilog na mababaw
Lumululan sa isang mahabang salambaw
Marami silang roong nangakalulan
Bangka sa sandaling iyo'y siksikan
Habang ang piloto'y tahimik sumagwan
Minamataa'y pampang ni Kamatayan
Sa tuwing ako'y nababagot sa kaiisip
Aking tinatawid, takot walang-kahulilip
Mga gawa ng taong hindi malirip
Na pipigil sa tuksong humiga't umidlip
Inaalam ang bitukang halang ng tao
Kung ilang bungong winasak ng kamao
Ilang angkan at bayan ang iginupo
At itinapon sa impiyerno't pinapaging-abo.
Itong mga kabuhungan ang sinasamyo
Habang papalapit ang oras ng pagtungo
Ng dakilang kordero sa tuktok ng Calvario
Nang doo'y mapako't itigis ang kanyang dugo.
Ilang ulit na ring inalala ang mga kaibigang
Pinagkaitan ng ilang pang taong kaligayahan
Na makapiling ang mga kasintahan, magulang
Dulot ng di-inasahang tawag ng kapalaran,
Narito ako't inaaksaya ang mga sandali
Na dapat sana'y nalaan sa pagkakandili
Pagninilay, pagtawag sa mga ginigiliw
Pag-alala sa mga huling sandali ng aliw
Na sinisikap huwag mabahirang-agiw
Habang malungkot na awit ang kasaliw.
Sapagka't ang pusong hindi nasusugatan
Ang siyang higit sa kanila'y kahinaan
At ang damdaming hindi nababahiran
Ay siyang punlaan ng lipos kapaitan.
Habang nakikita ang bata sa lansangan
Aking naaalala ang isang kabataang
Lumipas sa banyangang kalupaan
At umuwi sa kanyang sariling bayan
Mabuhay at mamatay sa kalungkutan
Na marahil, sa akin ring kamangmangan
Hindi ko tunay at lubusang mauunawaan
Hanggang ako'y di mangahas lumulan
Sa paglalakbay patungong kamatayan.

QUUM JUSTITIAE RATIO SIC EXIGIT: Reflections on Self-Nurturing and the Political Life from the Works of Foucault, Arendt and Aristotle


[Prologue: This is a paper written for the final oral examination of the course “Ph 102: Philosophy of the Human Person II” under Fr. Luis S. David, S.J. and Mr. Patrick Momah. It was submitted at the Department of Philosophy, Ateneo de Manila University at March 24, 2010 and subsequently defended at March 26, 2010. It served to answer the following question:

Taking account of the disciplinary, that is to say, the political, the social, etc. networks/frames/spaces in which I have awakened to the realization of, what resources can I draw upon to resist the lure of the “big picture” (totalitarianism, mechanisms, biopolitics, ideology/”cog in the machine” ideology of myself/ourselves), big-brother type professional politics, scientisms, naturalized identity formations, etc.) and to work my way instead into the “rubber-meets-the-road”/ethical Foucault/political Arendt practices of everyday living?]

Sanity and Savagery

To speak of being a participant, willing or unwilling, in the structures of disciplinarity by which modernity has envisioned and transformed itself into, is inevitably an exercise of our capability to achieve a more accurate picture of our current situations. I do not claim that I as a person have already broken free of these disciplinarity institutions. In fact, the idea is not necessarily to fight it via violent denial but to engage it in a way that the identities and understanding of oneself are at the same time reinforced by participating in the tensions of formative and discursive power. French philosopher Michel Foucault himself would propose a healthier engagement of power relations as a means via where one can “transmit knowledge and techniques” by means of an acknowledged authority in a particular “game of truth.” Practices of power, as he willfully combats Jean-Paul Sartre’s view of power as evil, can remain sensitive to the necessity of avoiding “subjection to arbitrary and unnecessary authority” through the reframing of “rules of law, rational techniques of government and ethos, practices of the self and of freedom.” (1)

Modes and ways of thinking and perspectives are never and should not be forecasts of potential future conditions: they are always implicated in the existing environment within which those who dared to think are operating from. Nonetheless, solely thinking of the present without understanding it as lived out with people leads to the danger of subscribing to a generalized notion of how peoples are presumed to live ideally; to the point that these linkages with people are sacrificed for the preservation of what might be simply a fiction. The primary example we can consider is the fall of German philosopher Martin Heidegger to the allure of the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party, as might be gleaned from James Bernhauer’s appraisal of the evolution of his thinking. Seeing as how Heidegger came to a view of Christianity as “historically bankrupt,” unable to sustain the longings and aspirations of the German people for association attuned to the times, he was convinced to support the declaration of the death of the Christian God yet still “cherish a sense of the Sacred which is focused on the Fatherland.” (2). This desire to uplift the German state, visibly a desperate measure for “desperate times,” blinded him to the ramification of Nazi rule willing, as Heinrich Himmler was noted for proclaiming: “to kill this people which wanted [an exaggerated yet nonetheless grounded observation] to kill us.” (3). We are living in conditions in which, by sheer force of will or the careful construction of systems of knowledge that encapsulate people’s lives, we tend to simply live by our own mental fabrications even if they are already out of touch with reality. (4).

There is a challenge, therefore, of acknowledging and renegotiating spaces for resistance via which means of association are necessary for our self-formation. At the same time, we are as well made aware of the fact that our environment has been crafted by those before us to serve interests which, though initially have been created to facilitate our self-formation, has already begun serving counter to its purposes: virtually making us recidivists who perpetuate ineffective structures and/or relations by our own inaction. They are not only unable to solve the problems they were designed to fix, but increase their incidences further. (5).

As such, what we seek is a mode of living in which we articulate ourselves not as only forming our identities via the set labels and limitations of our existing disciplinary structures. The forms of engagement I choose, therefore, must correspond to an ethic of constant re-appraisal of the self and the engagement I follow for my community. With this understanding, I reflect on my engagement in critical citizenship: that is to say, the practice of a form of communal affiliation not based on the fiction of nationalism but on the desire to improve myself and the lives of those around me. This I carry out through information-gathering, question-seeking and searching for kindred spirits through any possible avenues.


Men in Manila (or why Nation-Building is becoming Anti-Political)

Political theorist Hannah Arendt has always maintained a suspicious viewpoint whenever the idea of the nation-state is put into play. As might have been gleaned from past experiences, the surrender of many to the nation-state argument as the sole arbiter of ideal communal formations have been used by many anti-political elements to forward their agenda. Moreover, the nation-state argument has given way to the articulation of a so-called form of tribal nationalism, which in many ways deny the plurality of human relations while uplifting association in the nation-state as the sole identity one must hold:

Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by "a world of enemies," "one against all," that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man. (6).

By participating in the thought processes that govern an obsession with the nation-state, one is prone to advocating generalizations and modes of activity that promote the interest of the “social” (i.e., national housekeeping, bureaucratic processes). Sadly enough, most of our presumed avenues for public participation (i.e. forums on leadership and issues, noise barrages, even electoral practice) has been clouded and, if one may use the term, “emasculated” by private sensibilities and the desire for maintenance of the status quo. With the fetishization (that is to say, the consideration of a value without understanding its epistemology and ontological implications with relations to others) of the pursuit of one’s own happiness in the private became the presumed norm, the enthronement of public participation to paramount concern of a citizen was placed asunder. (7). As such, it would not be perhaps surprising if people who are more enthralled with the maintenance of private interests would support anti-political and anti-democratic processes of governance, (8). whilst maintaining a veneer of public participation via the appropriation of public symbols and turning them into consumable products they were never intended to be.

And nonetheless, these ideals are what we applaud, what we deem as the ideal form of nation-building: that is to say, the practice of dole-outs and presumed problem-solving, not troubleshooting and practices of foresight. This shallow exhibition of political participation is what allows, perhaps, what Lisandro Elias Claudio (a Department of Communication lecturer here in the Ateneo and Batch 2007’s valedictorian) would call an effect of the “anti-politics atmosphere” that is not only prevalent inside the Ateneo de Manila campus but in Philippine society at large more so. (9). In denying the practice of politics as a practice of virtue and preparedness (or, as José Rizal’s penname placed it, Laong-Laan), we reify the unjust conditions within which people are currently living and are trapped into. It would be difficult to assume that they are aware of their current conditions: they need to be made aware and, to use a metaphor, be led by those who are not blind.

Pehaps, then, it would be more ideal if we begin to engage issues of national importance via a healthy and consistent understanding of our local environs. That is to say, our efforts should not be participative in the imagined and fictionalized understandings of human relations as they are, ultimately, contributive to the mechanisms of disciplinarity that control us and the totalitarian constructs that destroy our notion of commonality with other people. Our challenge, as Foucault has done when he chose to see the concentration camps at Auschwitz, is “to journey so deeply into those impure events and contingencies that have fashioned our feelings for both life and death” (10). yet emerge with that surge of energy that will enable us to undertake a more exhaustive, more extensive and ultimately, more intimate practices of identity-building through the care of the self.


The Execution of the Hermeneutics of the Self

The assemblages continue to affect our daily lives in means which we ourselves are not even aware of, and therefore we are missing the point of analyzing the pervasiveness of power if we attempt to look at it in high places. If change should be enacted and to be catalysed, it must begin and should be sustained within the capilliarities and the bloodlines of power. The minuteness of an infectious invasion of power should be confronted at however deep the level it has inserted itself in the systems and the bodies that is under such influence.

If we would look at our day-to-day activities, there is always the desire of our environment to make us useful and productive so as it would be able to sustain itself. Thus, there is always the proliferation of such taglines that says “we care for you,” “we got it all for you,” “everything is here,” all intent on minimizing the costs, maximizing the extensive effects as well as the outputs. The indulgent culture is so intensive to constitute disciplinary structures by prohibition is almost certainly counterproductive, if not resulting in further damages not only to the subject of regulation, but to the prestige or capability of the executing body itself. It is in this mode of thinking perhaps that Socratic parrhêsia, as Alexander Nehemas discussed, becomes vital and appreciated:

Political parrhêsia, the public practice of telling one’s rulers or fellow citizens a truth they might not want to hear and for which they might punish the truth-teller… Socrates does not transmit what he knows, or thinks, or pretends to know to others. He has no knowledge to communicate. As Foucault puts it, he shows courageously to others that they do not know and that they must attend to themselves: “If I attend to you,” Foucault writes, uncannily identifying his own voice with that of Socrates as he does throughout these lectures, “it is not in order to transmit to you the knowledge that you lack, but so that, having realized you know nothing, you will learn thereby to care for yourselves. (11).

What might be gleaned from this? It is our understanding that relations are conduits of knowledge and exchange of information regarding one self and, sometimes, our very selves. It is therefore essential that in the execution of our relations with other people, mutual reinforcement of ideas and perceptions are created in order to assure that those in a relationship are capable of handling each other’s quirks while reshaping their own selves in the process as well. It is practically the same logic that governs how marriages are supposed to be maintained and made an avenue of mutual self-development and enrichment. (12).

By participating in an exchange relationship, one does not only participate in the creation of identities, they also reinforce linkages that moreover contribute to a healthier and well-rounded being. Even Aristotle approves of these linkages by calling them friendships of advantage, wherein these friendships last “for as long as they supply each other with pleasures and benefits.” (13). While in our contemporary, liberal ethic of excessive self-introspection and aggrandizement of self-worth, friendships reliant on use sounds somewhat demeaning, as if a person’s worth is only dependent on their capability of delivery. However, it must be understood that this form of friendship is only intended in reinforcing the intrinsic idea of friendship, which is, first and foremost, the valuable aspect of loving, not being loved. As Aristotle would want to put it: “Friendship, then, consists more in loving, and people who love their friends are praised; hence, it would seem, loving is the virtue of friends. And so friends whose love corresponds to their friends’ worth are enduring friends and have an enduring friendship. This above all is the way for unequals as well as equals to be friends, since this is the way for them to be equalized.” (14).

Forgiveness, therefore, leads to a more significant development of relations because not only do they address questions of justice in rectification (15), it is also the means by which people can remain in the public space and experience other peoples’ presence despite the danger and actuality of being injured by each other. It is, as Hannah Arendt would put it, the only means “can men remain free agents, only by constant willingness to change their minds and start again can they be trusted with so great a power as that to begin something new.” (16). The creation of linkages is so powerful and vital to the development of the self that to neglect it will only cause the stunting of one’s growth as a responsible member of the public space.


The Road to Our Emmaus

It appears that there are a lot of things and products we need in order to live the fulfilled and successful life, and these products masquerade as appeals to the person’s stereotypical notions of beauty and fitness. Surely, these beliefs did not appear in our collective social consciousness since the beginning; we have been habituated into them and are made to patronize them in order for us to be able to labor in more favorable circumstances in our respective workplaces. That we are being asked to indulge in these forms of lifestyles is something that we should not take seriously: after all, Foucault has praised the “virility of moderation”:

Self-mastery was a way of being a man with respect to oneself; that is, a way of commanding what needed commanding, of coercing what was not capable of self-direction, of imposing principles of reason on what was wanting in reason; in short, it was a way of being active in relation to what was by nature passive and ought to remain so. In this ethics made of men for men, the development of the self as an ethical subject consisted in a setting up a structure of virility that related oneself to oneself. (17).

That everything is interrelated is not only true in unexploited virgin nature: it is a norm which, unfortunately, contributes to consistent and increasing consumption. Other sectors of society which cannot subscribe to these norms or choose not to be are labelled deviant and are excluded from society. It aggressively maintains a growing feeling of paranoia which, more often than not, permits and proliferates the sense of resignation and hopelessness wherein “there is no way to defeat the system but to partake in it.” This passivity is most likely what emaciates the efforts of our citizens to reclaim the public spaces. It is, therefore, our responsibility to act accordingly by maintaining a healthy tension between our submission to these disciplinary structures while at the same time negating their “cog-in-the-machine” ideology. As Michel Foucault himself has asserted in for what purposes he wrote the second volume of The History of Sexuality, he mentioned that it is “not for, but in terms of, a contemporary situation.” (18).

Whenever I circulate around the structures of a locality and understand the means by which these areas operate of their own logic, interests and instinct for self-preservation, I make it a point that there would be something good that will come out of these undertakings. As such, having been reintroduced to the institutions of public order and interest as demanded by my discipline of Political Science, I decided that every instance there would be free allotted time for me to go to our city hall and listen to the deliberations of our city council regarding interests and policies that needed to be carried out. Having a handful of contacts inside the office of the City Council, I deemed it my duty to invest myself with such forms of knowledge available to me so that I would be able to further establish myself as an agent of political articulation and change.

Of course, such a practice that I do in my hometown is not everyone that people actually do, but nonetheless I always try in my circles to influence them in the behavior I am espousing in order to create a counter-culture of sorts in the little spaces I operate in. Despite the misgivings of many intellectuals regarding its capability of establishing relations, the online accounts I maintain (whether they be Twitter or Facebook accounts) have become somewhat instrumental in my desire to disseminate information and promote a more critical view of things. True, these online accounts are mere projections of our identities and are not at all representative of them, but then again they could help as a starting point of topic discussions when people meet face-to-face.

Without the desire to aggrandize myself, perhaps my constant readiness to answer the questions of people who are taking interest in political participation (more so that the national elections are just a couple of months away) helped in them making more carefully-weighed decisions. In fact, most of the discussions I conduct with friends and colleagues in Facebook carry over to real life, wherein then we truly tarry a while with each other and exchange ourselves in the practices of friendship. In carrying out my services to friends who find my company informative or at least marginally enjoyable, I also benefit it the same way that my parents have always asked me to “think as much times as you can when deliberating, and ask others you trust about them.”

The context of the societies we live in dichotomizes action and deliberation. To act in an environment alien to your interest through rebellion, one cannot help but forego thinking for the benefit of accomplishing the actions and the plans for change one has embraced. It is only in speech and in breaking bread with each other that we truly form ourselves into agents of a responsible polis, inviting Wisdom Himself to sup with us as we are operating for justice that lives in His name.


NOTES:

(1) Michel Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” (trans Robert Hurley and others). in Paul Rabinow, ed., Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: the essential works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 1 (London, Penguin Press, 1997), 298-299.

(2) James W. Bernauer, “After Heidegger: Towards a Post-Fascist Politics of Spirit,” in Budhi Vol. 1, No. 3 (Quezon City, Ateneo de Manila University, 1997), 57. This “desperate times, desperate measures” mode of thinking is usually attributed to the radical proposal of political engagement Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli has espoused in his classic work The Prince. Nonetheless, to credit Machiavelli as the originator of motivations for totalitarian rule is an insult to his intention of promoting a politics of action and of interest-consolidation, which Heidegger’s student Hannah Arendt would put forward herself, as will be discussed later on.

(3) Ibid., 61.

(4) Supposedly, this is the detestable logic by which the Nazi concentration camps continued and intensified operation despite Germany already at the losing end of the Second World War. As political theorist Hannah Arendt put it: “Behind its horrors lies the same inflexible logic which is characteristic of certain systems of paranoiacs where everything follows with absolute necessity once the first insane premise is accepted”; that is to say, immense manpower wasted on wanton production of deaths. “Social Science Techniques and the Study of Concentration Camps,” Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (, accessed 28 January 2010, Jan., 1950), 50.

(5) Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan, 2nd ed.: Vintage Books, Random House, New York, 1995), 264-265. As characteristic of penal institutions, “In the history of imprisonment does not obey a chronology in which one sees, in orderly succession, the establishment of a penality of detention, then the recognition of its failure; then the slow rise of projects of reform, seeming to culminate in the more or less coherent definition of penitentiary technique; then the implementation of this project; lastly, the recognition of its successes or its failure… Prisons do not diminish the crime rate: they can be extended, multiplied or transformed, the quantity of crime and criminals remains stable or, worse, increases.”

(6) Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (2nd ed.: World Publishing, Ohio, 1958), 227.

(7) Ibid., The Human Condition (With an Introduction by Margaret Canovan, 2nd ed.: University of Chicago Press, London, 1958), 68. As illustrative of what she has condemned as “the rise of the social”: “When this common wealth, the result of activities formerly banished to the privacy of the households, was permitted to take over the public realm, private possessions—which are essentially much less permanent and much more vulnerable to the mortality of their owners than the common world, which always grows out of the past and is intended to last for future generations—began to undermine the durability of the world.”

(8) Political scientist Mark Thompson, in a case study of the “good governance” rhetoric, took the Philippine reform movement to task for advocating values of “good governance” even if it means putting to question the safety of democratic institutions. As he mentioned, “In the name of promoting good governance, the middle class-based reform movement had destabilised the democratic system.” “Pacific Asia after 'Asian Values': Authoritarianism, Democracy, and 'Good Governance'” in Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 6 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., , accessed 14 October 2009, 2004), 1090. It appears many of these middle class actors have still not learned their lesson and are still pushing for these values even by resorting to un-democratic modes of action, as witness particular coalitions which have its roots in the Ateneo de Manila University itself.

(9) Lisandro Elias Claudio, “Eagles without talons?: Nation-building and the Ateneo de Manila University,” in “Post-Filipinism”, , accessed March 20, 2010. The frustration against the anti-politics stance is understandable due to the fact that “there is one major flaw in the university’s anti-politics framework: the claim that activism with its attendant criticism of national politics does not work. It does. In the 1970s, the “talk” of student activists (many of them Ateneans like Edgard Jopson) conscienticized an entire generation, exposing them to the ills of authoritarianism. It was a slow process - educating and opening people’s eyes takes time – but it worked. When the crowd in EDSA overthrew the dictator, it was a victory for those who fomented dissent. It was the legacy of the makibaka activism that is currently derided in the Ateneo.”

(10) James W. Bernauer, “Beyond Life and Death: On Foucault’s Post-Auschwitz Ethic” in Philosophy Today, Vol. 32, No.2 (Summer, 1988), 141.

(11) Alexander Nehemas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998), 166.

(12) I remember in passing an anecdote that was shared to me by Fr. Thomas Steinbugler, S.J. when I was serving during his masses every Monday afternoon. Supposedly, a marriage counselor he knew asked in a counseling session what are their definitions of an ideal spouse is. Most of the attendees gave their notions of an ideal spouse by saying that a spouse “should do this for me, to help me,” and the like. The marriage counselor, after having taken in all of them, responded: “These are right, but what can be seen as wrong is how you always impute the burden of perfection to your other half. For a marriage to work, what we should think of is “I will be a spouse who will love my spouse despite his/her shortcomings and give leeway for him/her to develop what he can to his/her full potential. The moment you stop thinking of yourself and you think of your better half, the more mutually-enriching your marriage would be.”

(13) Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (Translated by Terence Irwin: Indiana, Hackett, 1985), 1159b10.

(14) Ibid., 1159a35-b.

(15) Ibid., 1132a14.

(16) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 240.

(17) Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume II: The Use of Pleasure (Translated from the French by Robert Hurley; New York, Vintage Books, Random House, 1990), 82-83.

(18) Ibid., “The Concern for Truth,” interview by Francois Ewald, trans. Alan Sheridan, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman (New York, Routledge, 1988), 263.


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QUUM JUSTITIAE RATIO SIC EXIGIT: Reflections on Self-Nurturing and the Political Life from the Works of Foucault, Arendt and Aristotle by Hansley A. Juliano is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Philippines License.
Based on a work at kalisnglawin.blogspot.com.

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