We Are not Lonesome Pilgrims

I just finished reading a book written by Nami Mun. Miles From Nowhere is about a character named Joon, a Korean immigrant who lives in the Bronx in 1980’s. She has very problematic family, her father is a drunkard and her mother fallen into mental illness because of the infidelity of her husband. At the age of thirteen, Joon is caught into lonely life starving for love and attention from her parents. She really feels alone and unloved and these pushed her to left her parents and their home. Trying to be independent, she ended up fallen into series of tragedies in her life. She found herself in an escort clubs working as a prostitute, at an early age she struggles against drug addiction, she committed petty crimes and ended up selling cosmetics and newspaper in New York avenues. Her teenage life is ruined. She really felt hopeless but during these series of tragedies and hopelessness she meet several people who has profound effect on her life. One helped her to survive, other journeyed with her to recover from drug addiction and later loved here, slowly she found herself again, loved.

Joon’s story is a reminder to all of us that we do not journey life alone, but sometimes we feel so. Remember what God has promised you(Deuteronomy 31:6) and if you see others who are in the same situation, do not hesitate to open yourself on the possibility of service because the core meaning of our Christian life is service.

During the last suffer, Jesus mandated all his apostles and all Christians to love one another (John 13:34). But how do we love? Jesus answered this on the washing of the feet when He took the office of a slave (slave washed the feet of his master) that reminds us that service is a gospel of love in action. In Good Friday Jesus has shown the exact meaning of love by obedience; when he surrender himself to the will of His Father. We also felt the greatness of God’s love to us when He gave His only begotten son to redeem us from sin (John 3:16), Christ’s crucifixion is the perfection of this love.

My life and my God

While I contemplate on the Passion of Christ I think it also defines the meaning of life. Many people ask what we are here for? Where Am I going? What will I do or suppose to do? These are valid questions of anyone who has reason.  In the Passion of Christ we saw different lives; Pharisees, Sadducee, and scribes who were the greatest teacher of law and philosophers that time- were all gone and perished. But those humble servant who followed Jesus footstep with indomitable heart of service remains relevant in this world today. We see that a life of obedience and service is a life well lived. There are million people who walked on this earth and many of them perished unheard. We learned from them that the certainty of life is death, that we mortals are going to die anyway but in the course of living, often ask ourselves how will I measure my life?

St. John of the Cross said that at the evening of our life we will be judged by love (Ala tarde dela vida te examinaran en el amor). Christ taught us that love can be best interpreted by service.

Resurrection

Like in the story of Joon who managed to scrape against odds because people has been kind to her, Jesus Resurrection reminds us that there is hope a midst desperate situation. It is a constant reminder that tragedy can be defeated by hope, darkness by light, and lies by truth. For me, this is the message of Jesus in the celebration of His Passion, do not loss hope and if you have brothers who are in verge of losing, try to be in service to him and out of love offer him the wholeness of yourself like what Jesus did in the cross. Amen.

 

An open letter to Mr. Aldrin Jeff Cudia

March 25, 2014

Dear Mr. Cudia,

We never met. I entered in PUP two years after your graduation. Maybe by those time you were inside the academy fulfilling your childhood dream to be the best soldier. I understand it is tough fighting windmills and no one knows how this has been so demanding to you and to your family. I wrote you this to tell you that like must of the people out there, I believe in you. I can feel the genuineness in your heart to be the best soldier and it truly saddens me to see that things happen own its way and now we cannot do anything but trust and hope for the best and cling on to the belief that maybe it has a reason, as everything have but sometimes, reasons that we doesn’t know. A midst all these, I urge you to do not loss hope because we don’t.

I am one of hundreds of people who grieved when we heard that you’re not included in the list of graduates. Thinking the struggles you endured for four years inside the academy is nothing but a heroism in itself. You are a hero. And the fact that you waved away building your promising professional career and chose to toil on that camp for years is a selflessness act that we should all salute. After all, they deny you to be a soldier but they can never deny you to be a hero. Being a hero is not limited to being a soldier. In fact a lot of heroes are not and you can still be, without the shadow of PMA. Others who graduated their losses honor and ideals.  They are succumbed to the system and they ceased to become a warrior. You’re different because you are fighting and that makes you mightier than them.

As I write this I am thinking on how demoralized our soldiers are in combat at this very moment, how the government has neglected them, how rusty and outdated our secondhand battleships and combat equipment. Sir, your intelligence deserve a better place.

You are gifted, the world is vast and it is waiting for you.Take up Law or pursue career that you love, prove to them that you can stand without them. The time and space of the world is on you. PMA is neither your death nor your life but rather just a part of a memory. This is the beginning of a new life, Sir. Seek those things that will make you happy. Do things that will make you a hero. Do not loss hope.

It has been a good fight. And still is. Heart strong Sir Cudia. HEART STRONG!

Truly yours,
Anthony.
Quezon City, Philippines

 

The Prelude of the CCT in the Future

Part of the requirement in one of my major subject is to conduct a case study about relevant issues that we are facing today. Though it is not a dashing case study. In fact, our professor limits the pages into the 10 maximum pages. Since I know that it will not be sufficient in presenting my case I approached him and ask if I can exceed. His glorious face shines like a meteor and said, yes!

The Genesis

It was the eve of Valentine’s Day when two columns from Philippine Star sprawled throughout the Metropolis and cyberspace. These columns were written by Bobit Avila and Luis Teodoro criticizing the government particularly the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for failing to (1) rigorously monitor the CCT program and (2) allegation of possible corruption. The synthesis and their line of argument is based on the latest Social Weather Station Survey propounding that the 27.5% unemployment rate remain unchanged since 2006. The Logic guess like this, that base on the statistics the unchanged unemployment rate from 2006 to 2013 is a sign of failure of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program whereby billions of pesos were supposedly given to the poorest of the poor to alleviate their plight. On my personal judgement, maybe they have a point on some part… but measuring the success or failure of a national program by mere unchanged unemployment rate is not just weak but also an ambitious proposition.

I considered some of their criticism against the conditional cash transfer which i find sound like their criticism on the programs efficiency and effectiveness in achieving its objectives among others which falls into these two standpoints:

First, the Avila’s supposition from the line of his writing that there exist a chance of beneficiaries’ total dependence to the state as the conditional cash transfer program cuddle them to develop their sense of reliance and dependence rather than plodding to strive by their own efforts. This I think is a query on the effectiveness of the program. This assertion is a shebang. It opens a virgin territory of study on how value play an important part on seeking the behavior of the beneficiaries on the context of spending the financial assistance they are receiving from CCT.

The second standpoint goes from Teodoro’s skepticism and concern on sustainability which is a query on efficiency. Taking my thesis that for a program to be efficient, it must be sustainable,  I chose to a play with sustainability issue rather than delving into a-posteriori examination of the funds perceived predestined road to corruption by settling the focus on sustainability concern where I strive to examine the initiative of the local government specifically the barangay on how they keep an “active” participation and “involvement” on the implementation of the program.

 I started my case study by posting two questions:

1. How extent does the conditional cash transfer program affects the Filipino values?

2. Taking the local government experience with the conditional cash transfer program, what are the initiative of the barangay to ensure a proactive involvement?

The aim of the first question is to attain the purpose of understanding of the beneficiaries’ reception to the CCT program in the context of their values. Examining the values of the beneficiaries is important because it gives a prelude of what will possibly happen after the termination of the program since the value sterns individual’s present action and possible action in the future. It serves as anticipatory element for the futures victory or defeat of the program and the beneficiaries.

The second question has something to do with the institution (in my study, the barangay). It seeks to examine the initiative of the local government in the operation of the program and their reception of this responsibility. Does the barangay keeps an active participation and involvement like guiding the beneficiaries in spending the financial assistance up to sustainability measures by ensuring that the conditions of the program is not just fully accomplished but the beneficiaries is also prepared to take responsibility of providing for their family after the CCT?

The first dilemma that I encountered in the study is answering the question number 1. It is painstakingly hard since one has to posit specification of values.
What do I mean when I say Filipino Value? How can I qualify a value from another set of values?

In order to analyze Filipino values, it must be looked, one, from the standpoint of the “within” or panloob [inward-looking]. The first pressure of the study is to create linkages of different Filipino values. Taking Fr. Gorospe’s notion that a Filipino value or disvalue does not exist alone, in isolation or in a vacuum; the Filipino values are linked and clustered around with various core values. Somehow it produced confusion on my part. So in my study, I adopted the Serafin Talisayon’s way on clustering the Filipino values where he puts every specific Filipino traits into a collective scheme which creates a larger picture of values which he calls macro-clusters.

When we think of our values, Schwartz says, we think of what is important to in our lives. Thus, every cluster is a summation of what matters most to Filipinos. Taking from this standpoint, the study will focus on the beneficiaries’ values under the context of the following clusters:

1. Relationship cluster

This cluster is limited to the koinonia or being interrelated or oriented within the confine of family which seeks to illuminate aspects of family relations under the umbrella of the Filipino family character. The study on this cluster seeks to understand the role of the conditional cash transfer program on strengthening or weakening the family relations, solidarity, and reliance against life challenges.

2. Social cluster

The focus of this cluster is the integration of Filipino values towards the perfection of the community which is the idea of “common unity.” This part seeks to illuminate linkages of how the conditional cash transfer program affect the social level or for the purpose of my paper the “Tayo Level”. Does the CCT have a “unifier effect” or “disassembling” to the beneficiaries and the community?

3. Livelihood cluster

This cluster is important because it posts questions on entrepreneurial and sustainability capability of the beneficiaries. How they willed themselves towards effort of spending the financial assistance as business capital or investments where they can earn their own money and be self-sustaining.

4. Inwardness cluster

Inwardness is a “feeling” which involves the inward preoccupation of something which cannot be measured numerically but can be determined through precise line of questioning related but not limited to questions of state and condition of the beneficiaries’ “self” Sine qua non to the realization of life prior and during the program. Since the very nature of Inwardness is introspection or knowing the “self”, answers from the beneficiaries are what I call “subjective illumination” or how they describe it from their own words and thoughts. In general this deals with the CCT’s effect on the “self” of the beneficiaries.

5. Optimism cluster

This cluster is a collection of traits that leans towards the tendency of expecting the best positive outcome on the most hopeful aspect of a situation. Since the CCT gives hope, it is also proper to examine the optimism it gives to the beneficiaries. It seeks to examine how the conditional cash transfer program changed the beneficiaries’ outlook in the future and how the program boost or weakens their optimism.

Taking a leap on the river full of uncertainties

In order to immerse myself in the study of CCT, without certainty, I chose four barangays in Siniloan, Laguna as my playground. With are my friends who were also there to conduct other study in other subject (I really thank them who brought a lot of patience and understanding for me in doing this) we traveled to Siniloan, Laguna at night. We reached Bay, Laguna at almost 12 midnight. We stayed and sleep in Cheska’s aunt’s house who were very kind and accommodating to us. I slept with Paolo, we were on the same bed but nothing happened (My major heartbreak) as we watched the cat on the ceiling and pained our ears from the madness of Joy Ann’s thunderous  snore at 2 AM which ceased hour before daybreak. The night were lonely. The stars and moonlight are restless above the sky and my fingers were cold. I’ve been searching for you in many places which I know that you are not there. But I constantly seek you on edges and diverted roads hoping you will surface. It was my sudden realization that Manila is happier at night because night covers our exhaustion and our woundedness from possible defeat and neglect.

The next morning I jog on the middle of the street with the morning breeze panning on my face and boys and the young men were staring at me with amazement on their face.

It is a peaceful life.

At 10AM we embark and started our journey to Siniloan, Laguna. It is an hour drive from Bay. The roads are long and it is never-ending. In Siniloan, I met four women beneficiaries of the CCT. They shared their stories and open a glimpse on how they face the challenge of the CCT. I also met five barangay officials from four barangays in Siniloan and they also shares their reception on CCT.

These are their stories

1. Relationship

My game face is On and Dolores Casucian in a very defensive position

Dolores Casucian has been a CCT beneficiary for less than a year now. Out of her five children, only one is registered as CCT beneficiary. The family is receiving a total of Php 1,600 every two months which is Php 26.66 a day allowance which will never be enough to support the daily needs of her family. Dolores is like other beneficiaries- a typical example of a family struggling to make both ends meet. My objective in presenting her case leans towards the possibility of significant changes the CCT brought to the relationship of her family during the program and what has been its positive effect in the relationship they have as a family.

On my interview wit her, she shares that all financial aid she receives goes directly for the needs of her children. When she was asked if the money she receive is enough for the two month period, she said that it will never be enough. On my follow-up question when I asked her if the family has savings, her answer is none. It seems to me that Dolores does not anticipate the future. It is unclear to her to where will the family go after the CCT. All throughout our conversation, the question of sustainability lingers. It seems that Dolores is uncertain to what might be the future brings especially after termination of the program.

My theory is that the uncertainty of the beneficiaries, like what Dolores is experiencing is brought up by the failure of the major players to educate the beneficiaries on their responsibility in making sure that the program is sustainable for the beneficiaries by teaching them how to optimize the money for a potential capital in business and not solely for spending purposes.

Someone might ask how important is sustainability in the Relationship value cluster? I will say that sustainability is important to a family because it has a direct effect in the security and the harmonization of the relationship of the family. The more the family is sustainable the greater the sense of harmony they have. I believe that in every situation, a family should attain the level of capacity to support its basic needs by their own efforts and not by being dependent to anyone else- this Dolores and her family haven’t reached yet.

Dolores has no sense of security for her family in the long run. She is only dependent on what is has today and lacks the plan and preparedness for what tomorrow might bring. She embodies the negative Filipino philosophy of kung ano dataring (come what may) that has been evident in her answers when she asked if she has savings, her answer is none. When she was asked what she does with the money? Her answer is she spends it all. That makes her complain that the money she is getting is never and will never be enough because her case is a total spending without investing.

Since Dolores Casucian is a resident of Brgy. General Luna I also need to examine how the barangay plays their role in the CCT. What I learned is that the implementation of CCT in Barangay General Luna is veiled with the shadow of doubt regarding the genuine and eligible beneficiaries. Dolores shares to me an intrigue that in her barangay there are issues of mis-identification of beneficiaries. Dolores assertion that there are unworthy beneficiaries and some who were suppose to qualify given their circumstance are not qualified because the selection it totally depends on the DSWD in the municipal level.

The Barangay Chairman of General Luna, Hon. Felix San Francisco admits that he has no direct involvement in the Conditional Cash Transfer Program

On my interview with the barangay chairman Hon. Felix San Francisco, he honestly admitted to me that his barangay has no direct involvement in the implementation and monitoring of the Conditional Cash Transfer program. He said that the barangay did not receive a mandate from the DSWD and municipality to be one of the player in the program. When I asked him if it is right, he answered no.  San Francisco said that he believes the barangay, as the smallest unit of the government should partake into this effort. When I asked him upon learning this on what will be his own initiative to monitor the program. He said that they will look into it and consider it as an agenda of the barangay. But as of the moment, there is no clear programs, initiatives, plans, and activities regarding their proactive role in the conditional Cash transfer program.

 2 Social

Nory Deloy is a peculiar case of how can be the conditional cash transfer program a potent cause of the negative Filipino trait of inggitan (envy) and kanya-kanya (selfcenteredness)

Nory Deloy is the source of envy in Brgy. Bagumbayan because she is the only beneficiary of the Conditional Cash Transfer program in the entire barangay.

Nory Deloy has been a source of intrigue of some people in the barangay including the barangay secretary, Maria Lisa Realesa. The intrigue started when she was named as the beneficiary of the Conditional Cash Transfer program- the only beneficiary of the CCT in Brgy. Bagumbayan. Upon mentioning the case of Nory Deloy, the Brgy. Secretary has been so furious in mentioning that Nory served as a former barangay councilor and on that same time she was awarded as beneficiary of the program. During my conversation with Maria Lisa, she mention that the barangay has nothing to do with monitoring the beneficiaries more so; with the case of Nory as the only beneficiary. Maria Lesa even mentioned that there might be an alleged influencing to the DSWD in the municipal level given the circumstances of Nory’s past position in the barangay.

I treated portion of Maria Lesa’s interview untouched from her capacity as the barangay secretary but more in giving emphasis to her as a person who also wants to be a beneficiary of the CCT, but fails to. Since Nory is the only beneficiary of the program, she is often the source of envy of the people and aggravated to the circumstances that she was a former barangay councilor. Their inference is that Nory has an advantage over them. Thus, creating a shadow of intrigue over her being a qualified beneficiary.

The Conditional Cash Transfer program bridge our value as a people often positive like solidarity and fraternity but in this peculiar case, a negative trait of envy. Nory Deloy is a victim of the negative Filipino trait of inggitan (envy). Upon asking Nory on how the barangay monitors her, her answer is a cold nothing because she is the only beneficiary. She has been sidetracked by the muffling system of inggitan which eventually develop into a negative Filipino value of kanya-kanya (self-centeredness) shown on the barangay’s action when they left it all alone to Nory by creating a lessee faire relationship against her. The barangay, based on my interview with its secretary has no effort to monitor her and her children if they meet the conditionals of the program.

Studying this case of the CCT, it goes beyond the scope of both the barangay and the DSWD- the coagulation of tension from the beneficiaries and those who were rejected to be a beneficiary. It is a tendency to anyone to examine their situation and with their own biases defend them against being rejected often citing legitimate beneficiaries as better of than them. This process often result to the development of envy and the weakening of moral fiber as a Filipino.

3  Livelihood

Me with Maria Socorro Flomangaya one of the benificiaries of CCT in
Brgy Pandeño (her son is her private army)

Maria Socorro Flomangaya is a solo parent of six children. Her husband is in prison with a case that she refused to disclose. She has no stable job and has no business ventures that would sustain her with a stable income for her children. According to her, she sells spring rolls but upon accessing her home, a small termite-d box that would roughly fits six people, there’s no evident equipment or stall for her business. After the interview, she disclosed that one of her major source of income is jueteng. She is a small-scale jueteng collector in their barangay. It gives an impression that aside from the conditional cash transfer program which gives her Php 2200.00 every two months, which would gives her a daily allowance of Php 36.66, an amount which is very impossible to sustain the daily need of a family of seven. She resort to another source of income and it is the illegal world of jueteng.

In her case, I saw two evident problems. First, is her alarming passivity to exert efforts to be sustainable post-CCT. During my interview, I asked her if what she does when she receives the financial assistance from CCT. She answered that she buys a huge amount of rice and saves portion for daily allowances of her children for school. It is clear based on her buying pattern that she spends the financial assistance without any intention to maximize the money for business capital that would eventually radiates to possible financial liberation. It is logical to assume that she has no plan to use it for business. On my follow-up question, I asked her why is that she doesn’t use the money for business?  She answered that it is not the purpose of the money. She believes as they were taught to, that the money is for her children and not intended for a business capital.

It has been clear to me that there is a problem in relying information by the DSWD on the municipal level. They educate the beneficiaries that the purpose of the money is solely for spending and not for investment which directly negates the purpose of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program in reducing poverty through sustainable means. The sustainability and growth objective of CCT will never be materialized because the municipal DSWD educates the beneficiary like Maria Socorro that the money they receive from 4Ps cannot be, and should not be a start for a business capital.

The second problem in Socorro’s case is her lack of will to advance and of her apathetic attitude towards their condition. She is a case of educational deprivation and lack of the capacity to be innovative and sustainable in life. She waddled the negative Filipino traits of bahala na (come what may) or the dependence of the uncertain tomorrow. She lacks the plan and proper motivation in life and waits to what to come. From there deal with it without zeal and dint to beam up away from poverty.

Maria Socorro Flomangaya lives in Brgy. Pandeño. To take the side of the barangay, I separately interviewed officials from Brgy.Pandeño. Mr. Lauro Villanueva, the current barangay secretary and Hon. Janet Ramos Carandang who is the current barangay chairman.

It is very hard for me to interview Mr. Lauro Villanueva because is a the man of fewest words.

Chairman Janet Ramos Carandang of Barangay Pandeño with her game eyebrow on. Kidding! She’s a very nice woman. I felt her fire for service but not in the context of CCT where she remains cold.

During my conversation with them it shows that the they have no direct intervention in the implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program. Sec. Lauro Villanueva says that the CCT is the scope of municipal level and not the barangay level. Hon. Janet Carandang said that the barangay does not intrude in the implementation of the program because the municipal DSWD has no endorsement of any form to task them to monitoring or any similar task. However, the role of the barangay in CCT is just limited to noting the beneficiaries and insuring the DSWD that they are legitimate resident of the barangay.

Upon learning from this, I asked Hon. Carandang to what will be the barangay’s initiative in the implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer program in her jurisdiction, she coldly answers that there will be none. “It is hard to intervene, if you are not supposed to intervene” she told me.

Taking from that standpoint of its officials, it is vivid that Brgy. Pandeño has no proactive intervention and linkage to the implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer program. It is clear that the barangay left the burden and responsibility to monitor the program to the LGU in the municipal level and maintains a loose relationship to it slaying the possibility of a proactive relations where the barangay remains cold.

4 Inwardness and Optimism

Roselle Laynes is a laundry-maid and her husband works in a distant factory. She has three children and all of them are beneficiaries of the CCT. She said during our conversation that life prior to the CCT has been hard, they struggle to eat a complete meal three times a day. The major role of the CCT for them is it provides them the immediate needs for food and assists them in the financial needs of their children in school. When she was asked on how the CCT changed her outlook in life, she said that it positively changed the way she looks for the future.

I think the positive change that Roselle Laynes and her family experiencing is brought out by the circumstances that there is an available money to spend every time needs surfaces. They doesn’t need to toil on the agony of waiting and worrying how to get money. The conditional Cash Transfer program brings the sense of security in Roselle’s life, “hindi na ako nangangamba” (I am not fearful anymore). CCT boosts her confidence to the point of being secured and having the positive outlook to face the future.

However, the Php 1,400 every two months financial assistance will never be enough for the entire family. It has been the same question of sustainability. Like Maria Socorro, Roselle Laynes and her family is also taught by the DSWD that the money cannot be an investment for a business venture. In response, Roselle spends it all for the needs of her children and family. DSWD’s orients the beneficiaries on the importance of the health and education of the children but fails to remind the beneficiaries to plan and plan sustainability measures after CCT.

The effect of conditional cash transfer program on Roselle Laynes inwardness and optimism is directly related on the sustainability of the program. The problem is that the Conditional Cash transfer program is geared by the DSWD in the municipal level to attain the short-term goal which is to provide for the immediate need of the family which does not give financial liberation and security to the beneficiaries. I can easily infer that in this period Roselle Laynes is positive and confident for the future because she just received the financial assistance but this cannot rule out the possibility to flux or more so, change and retreat to what it was prior to the CCT when her lack of vision to the future constrict her to face the same struggle they had in the past.

On the level of involvement of the barangay Buhay, it has plays an active but minimal role in the implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer program only limited to the level of meeting the health conditional by tasking the Barangay Health Workers (B.H.W) to regularly monitor the beneficiaries if they meet the minimum twice a month check-ups of the children. The Barangay Health Workers pays a surprise visit to beneficiaries to check if the family is going well. This is the initiative of the barangay Chairman Roberto Valdenarro Jr. to account the beneficiaries if they are fulfilling the health conditionals by decentralizing the duty to monitor, but such monitoring doesn’t reach a proactive partnership of the beneficiaries and the barangay towards collective development.

Barangay Buhay Chairman Roberto Valdenarro Jr. while discussing the role of the barangay in the implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer program

It is good that they have their own effort towards the beneficiaries but taking the standpoint of an observer, the barangay must work harder to integrate the community to attain the “common unity” level of every barangay that will stir them towards development.

Realizations

In studying the value of the beneficiaries it was never been certain. And to tell you honestly, in my reflections as I turn in the paper, I sometimes doubt if I really hit the target or I just merely share the stories of these women and barangays all throughout the pages. During the study I learned that the diversity on the values of the beneficiaries with respect to each cluster series they are aligned to are dependent in one common factor, the sustainability factor of the CCT.

Take for example the case of Dolores Casucian, her certainty and security and harmonization of the relationship in her family depends on how sustainable is the CCT to them. The Case of Nory Deloy as a sole beneficiary in Brgy. Bagumbayan and her relationship to the society depend upon how the CCT is integrated and sustainable to others who are not beneficiaries. In the case of Maria Socorro Flomangaya, her value towards livelihood has been dependent to how the Conditional Cash Transfer program is sustainable in her family and in the case of Roselle Laynes, her optimism and outlook in life depends upon the span of time she has available money from CCT- a challenge for her on how to optimize what she’s receiving from the program.

Since the CCT is not sustainable to Dolores Casucian, there is a potent threat in the security and hindrance towards the harmony of her family. Since Nory Deloy is the only beneficiary in Barangay Bagumbayan she has been the source of envy by the community. Since the CCT has not been sustainable to Maria Socorro Flomangaya she develops the Filipino value of Bahala Na or the dependence to the uncertain tomorrow and resort towards illegal gambling activities. In the same way, since the CCT is not sustainable to Roselle Laynes, her outlook and optimism is uncertain.

Throughout my study, I discovered that the status quo of the CCT program in four barangays is not sustainable for the beneficiaries. The problem I saw was presented into two faces. One is the DSWD in the municipal level as it fails to truly present the spirit of the program which is to meet human development goal and one of it is sustainability. The DSWD in the Municipality of Siniloan taught all the beneficiaries during their orientations that the money they will be receiving is for spending purposes limited only to the needs of the children and food for the family with posting restriction that the money cannot be used for business capital or investment. All the four beneficiaries affirm such pronouncement. Because of this limitation, all the beneficiaries who were interviewed are not sustainable. Second is the traditional bureaucratic character of the barangay as it lacks the innovation and the will to be involved and carry an initiative of proactive involvement in the implementation of the program. They never realize that the CCT can be a vehicle towards community development by empowering the beneficiaries to invest and venture in business.

I said in to my report that maybe the prelude for the future of the program is possibly failure on the part of the beneficiary and the government because as of this moment, there is no long-term positive change on the values of the beneficiaries as it continues to propel in flux. There is also no clear indication of possible sustainability measures from the beneficiaries and the efforts to change this pronouncement from the implementing agencies like DSWD.

My second point is out of four barangays that were subject of my study, three barangays (Brgys. Panadeno, Bagumbayan, and General Luna) has total disconnection to the monitoring and implementation of the Conditional Cash transfer program. The brgy. Buhay on the other hand shows an intervention but only limited to assuring that the health conditionals has been met but regarding on sustainability concern the barangay has also no direct involvement.

I was really surprised that the barangay officials from these barangays have no proactive role in the program. The barangay should have an active participation as mandated by the Local Government Code of 1991 under operation principle of decentralization which states:

(g) The capabilities of local government units, especially the municipalities and Barangays, shall been enhanced by providing them with opportunities to participate actively in the implementation of national programs and projects.

On the part of the barangay, they argued that the DSWD in Siniloan, Laguna did not endorse the program to them. Taking this argument, the DSWD directly violates the project context and development plan of the CCT. Idealistically, the DSWD, is tasked to institutionalize a monitoring scheme in the implementation of its program with the local government units. LGU which includes the barangay. This arrangement is vital in ensuring the effectiveness and sustainability of the program as it assures that it truly reached the community.

More than that, according to the development plan of the Conditional Cash transfer program which was adopted by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the municipal advisory committee is organized at the local government unit level and serves to link overall implementation of the program at the municipal level down to the barangays. The purpose of the committee is to enhance coordination and implementation of services at the LGU level and likewise, enhances LGUs and partner agencies’ ownership of the project.

It has been clear in my case study that the DSWD through its municipal advisory committee fails to comply with this mandate. Furthermore, on the part of the barangay, they also fail to meet the mandate of the Local Government Code because it is evident that there is no genuine effort to move the matter on their judgement even that the matter was not endorse to them. On the question of the initiative of the barangay to ensure transparency, accountability and sustainability on the implementation of the CCT program, the answer is a blunt cold none.

On a very personal note, the whole study is a heartbreak (well aside from me and Paolo’s waste of night).  It was my face to face encounter to a very weak coordination and incompetent implementation of the program from the barangay and DSWD municipal level and in some point on the carelessness and passivity of  the beneficiaries. I wish them luck.

Many thanks to these people for the patience, tolerance, and understanding. Thank you also to Daca’s mama for our dinner. Paano ulit niluto ang adobo?
(PS. Proxy si Camille ni Daca)

My Ferriols Experience

I’ve been thinking of Philosophy for quite a long time now but changing career path means to me being hungry or infamous with my batchmates. Be it living within my needs shrouded without luxury and leaving my dreams to be a something someday. I know my fate and I have to take decisions like that in the future. That’s why I tries to escape because of the pain of making such decisions and be eternally forbidding with my life.

It was a slow morning and I decided that I have to sneak and trespass to Ateneo to attend this lecture by Padre Roque Ferriols. At first I am hesitant to go because I am an alien to another territory, but when I saw on twitter that he conducted his “Last lecture”  threatened by the worst feeling of too late,  I am determined to go. I’ve been eyeing to see him for years now after reading his Insights and his blog Malagipko. He is simply a legend by teaching Philosophy in our native language and his Philosophy spud to many students that still remembers him amidst their successes. I said I guess I’m starting to find my place here as I believed that I am bound to search for it. 

It was 8am and the drizzle of the rain has just started- I ran and catched the FX and went to Cubao as fast as I could. On my way I was looking for the very edge of life as if how would it manifests its beauty to me. But somehow, tiredness to everything snatched it just like that. All mechanical in one way or another. I have to be in Ateneo before 9 so I can find the venue and also see the students there. I reached Cubao quarter before 9 and went directly to LRT and everything seems to be boring.

From Katipunan I rode a tricycle and heads directly to the school.
While on my way, I am quite hesitant to go and then I saw how beautiful and peaceful the school is, it reminds me of my fellow students in PUP. How lucky are those students in Ateneo, they will not bare the discomfort and insufficiency of a state university like ours. They have this guards in white polo barong roaming around ensuring their safety- in my school we do not have that. They also have aircon and much more decent school facilities. They have no activism and dirty walls tired of vandalism. The school is not a confine of hell. It must have been a wonderful place to stay or sleep or to be a good student or something productive.

I entered to this plenary hall and I saw few students and they are not talking to each other. They were busy playing with the Ipad and busy doing something else. They are obviously rich and I am devoided of some feeling of inferiority. There’s the line breaks.

The plenary hall is a hollow ground. I waited and waited until a speaker stood at the podium and said something. He has a bard face and long neatly tucked hair. He looks decent and cool and his voice is as flimsy and a bit shy like a woman. He is introducing what will going to happen, who is Teilhard de Chardin and all. I sit there waiting. Looking at the ceiling unmindful of the crowd as the sharp ticks of chairs echoed. Just like that! Life is just like that- ticks of chairs, as the sound burns, life goes just like that.

Then there was a sudden chaos on one of the door. Fr. Ferriols is coming and it was my first time to saw him. Then the wheelchair was hoisted to us, there Fr. Ferriols, peacefully sitting on his old wheelchair. In my head I wondered how many people who have gone before us seated on that same wheelchair- but later abandon that thinking as it proves worthless. The only thing that I know is Fr. Ferriols is Fr. Ferriols. That’s it.

It was very long minute of silence as we saw him preparing and composing himself with his thoughts in his mind and grappling with much more words to say.

Almost all of student who went there just went there because a professor required them to do so, few really gave time and went as there because of conviction. Some makes these stare to their friends almost saying to go out and planning a group exit and I feel sorry to Padre ferriols as he wants to say many things but he was so deeply restrained by his physical limitation as his body is being eaten up by Parkinson. He tried to paint a better picture of lecture in our mind recalling the bygone years when Ateneo was then full of “talahib” and there are so many times that his words has failed him and these students have been looking for each other waiting for someone to stand and leave for them to follow.

The truth is most of them does not know the value what they have.

When the bell rang, the tiny sharp ticks of every chair echoed. I know many will be leaving while Fr. Ferriols is trying his best to introduce Chardin to all of us. It is Ferriol’s commitment in teaching Philosophy and his obedience in teaching Philosophy that strikes me until now as I write this. I deeply admire him for that. Really.

The ending of the lecture is quiet. Only of us left when he said thank you and
I clap as loud as I could for him to hear it.

After the lecture everybody left. 7 of us stayed. When it’ my turn I approached him and said, “Father I am one of those people that you inspires. And you became the reason why I want to take up a graduate studies in Philosophy after college.Thank you” I know that he is grappling with words as his muscles were contracting but in my ears I can hear him whispering the word “Thank you and God bless you.” I can see it in his eyes and I can feel that he is speaking from his heart to mine. I almost feel down. It is some sort of admiration that breaks me- it has been Fr. Ferriols that I am eyeing to see for years and the man of God and Philosophy that I admire now I shares the same moment with him.

I went out in the plenary hall I’m just in time, outside I saw him being hoist away from the place by his personal nurse and with the guy wearing checkered who has been so nice to me. I looked at them that way and when I turn around for a final glance, they are all gone, just like the sharp ticks of the chairs.

I’m a Sadhu

Every time I take that same road to Cubao, I wrestle against time and the internal conflict inside myself- there I see “me” together with my parents ambition to for me and all these things are falling apart against me. It is a fever that wants to let out but I feel that I’m too weak for it, as much as desire to love, I have forgotten how. There is too much selflessness in love that makes you forget yourself and also selfishness that makes you forget of others. Every time I witness the everyday monotonousness of my life, I became one of the gods and sadhu fluttering the living testament of how great a god like me instituted to this world the boredom. I’m a sadhu who carries himself like a victory.

There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the tiny hands of the clock says Bukowski- and the same imaginativeness of his poetry is running through my veins every time I looked at myself and senses my pasts and that are everytime that I failed to be has become my shadow of regrets that I tries to hide. Consumed with the fuel of myself in every same morning of resistance, I see life as the basking of the sun which shone its beauty like the oily flowers sways with the blow of oily air- everything becomes slow and indifferent.

The Three Kings

The more that this world advances into technology, the more stupid we become. At first it was a series of obscene videos from Hayden Kho disrespectfully recording his most intimate sexual moments with different women. The whole nation was stung by these videos. Many saw him dances with the fire flaming with sin and unfaithfulness. It was an affair that became a national interest, an obscene private moments that is brought out to marketplaces, to courtyards, to silent classrooms, to confine seminary, to hospitals, offices and bureaus. It was a private moment damned to be a public fiasco.

Can you imagine how great the mental and spiritual damnation they experienced by just imagining how technology stretch their shame throughout the whole world? After years of yearning and living with shame both of the women subject to the video moved on and continued live out of that image. But there is still that featureless face and yearning to commit suicide to subdue and conquer shame- never gone with the wind.

This is another problem of people in this world, We never learn- in this case, an eternal recurrence of stupidity and sensuality. After the Hayden Kho scandal another scandal erupted,  it was with a band vocalist with her girlfriend doing the same thing on a couch in the front of a camera- but this time they are both aware that they are filming it. Imagine a band vocalist who is being idolized with so many teenager stripping himself to shame by exposing his guts and sexual numbness with his girlfriend who maintained a respectful and demure posture that she lost when mob feasted over her sexual mastery. It was a show. It was a music of no chords and notes, a food for pervert souls- so as they.

Now, months later, another video is hitting the billboard. It came from a family man, a father of five children, and a husband. I never realized that we will go somewhere here that we can witness the unbearable silence or an annihilation of a family- the question lingers into my mind how will he deals with his children and how will the innocent children deals with shame and disgrace to their teachers and classmates in school and finally how will the wife keeps being faithful to her vows.

I never realized how humanity became so stupid in filming sexual acts just to be pleased in seeing themselves on the video doing the thing. Only the wicked do that, the molesters, the rapists, the perverts, the maniac and the madman. No sane person can imagine himself being pleased not by sex but by seeing himself having sex. It maybe the guts or too much of sin that made these people as wild as beast. One thing that I am assured  of, many to follow.

The world needs an exorcism.

Existential Terror

It was during the Million people March in Luneta  when many filipinos tremble to defiance against corruption that is there staring for decades, that I decided my own fate. I defy myself with my own ways. I said to myself that that nobody will understand you so better leave the control of the world to sane people because I myself is unsure with my own destiny and I do not want to mangle my search of myself by participating in shaping and reshaping our collective destiny which is futile on the first place because we are the same ungodly fans who elected unholy swine into office. I leave it with sane people and I asked to my Lord to spare me and let me search on the silent gallows of hundreds and thousands of featureless faces of people of who really I am.

It was a gloomy afternoon and the same weather expresses the same feeling- I hate it as much as I love it. I want to dive into that great void, I want to swim and drown myself to blood, I want to be forgotten. The enormous feeling of nothing to do and having no destination is like the feeling of being fry into the great radiation of the cosmic sun, the despair is creeping to my veins, I felt the heaviness of the world on my shoulder, I can smell the stink of rotten flesh and I cannot see any beauty to anyone and anybody. It was a demon in me but I’m too weak and fragile for him.

So I went to this retirement house in Quezon city to vent and to share my anguish. I arrived there before sunset and delivered myself to the church, pretended that I uttered a prayer but it was just a pure silence that I clenched to my tongue.

I kneeled and say to the Lord, Where are you? Do you listen? Why can’t I feel you?
There are so many thing that I want to say to the Lord but I cannot puke a single word, I can feel it in my throat. My muscles tremble, my skin shrinks with shame and confusion to Him because  I’m a nobody producing a tremor and eventually destruction of my faith and myself.

The next thing I know I was walking- looking at the trees that yawn at me- I was going to enter to a building and as I opened the glass door, a man in his 50s was reading a newspaper and asked me to what pleasure I was there. I looked at the telephone and I remembered my mother. She always phone me when she’s out to check me. True that those little affection never loses its radiance compared to big ones. It was just a split of seconds though- And I said to the man that I am looking for Fr.Villegas. He asked why Am I looking for him, I said I brought him something. I never want to share my intention or feelings to anybody because I Am doomed not to be understood. Or I guess doomed to be alone. Nobody knows me. I am just a part of the deluge and trapped into a small infinite whirlpool.

He stood and went to ask Fr. Villegas if he is available. I stayed standing and looking to the fishes on the aquarium. As much as I want to ask them who is God, does they know the purpose of their life? What are there guesses after their death? There mussings? Are they presupposed? How about ideas on loving? Anger? Pain? Sacrifices? But they seems irrelevant to this universe.

It doesn’t matter to them if you kill them because they are not bounded with leashes of problems, responsibilities and morality of this world. Fishes on the aquarium enjoys more freedom than people on Earth because you can do whatever you do to them but it doesn’t matter to them anyway- as long as they swim and burp. Sometimes I want to be a fish on the aquarium that stares to my master every time he arrives from work and will laugh at him because he is broke and burnout of living and proving his worth to bunch of worthless people.

Maybe I am quite rebellious, deranged, and damned but I am one of the lucky unlucky people out there to meet a man with wisdom. I think destiny delivered me to SVD Retirement house for the retired priests so I can vent and seek confinement to my weariness and to eject my existential anguish with life. Since then I keep on coming back to learn and relearn lessons from others- from life that was lived, enjoying the last moments, memories and the passing of time of a dying priest. By that I delivered myself higher but never reaches clouds and great skies just enough to escape the hellish pressures and deadlines, grades, and constant fall down there.

That afternoon with Fr. Villegas is one of the most personal and the most heartfelt. It is confessing my underpinnings of why do I have to live life. I told him that my life bores me, that everything I do is either sorrow or failure, the smiles and laughter I shown to people are fake, everything is turning faces against me, and here I am caught and trapped with the same trapeze of intensely boring life that is burning it’s guts to me.

I am trapped.

He said directly to me, eye to eye that I’m 18 and I have no God. Time momentarily stops as well the clinches of my heartbeats. Yes.

This is exactly the feeling of losing God and the personal connection to Him that I become god to myself. I become selfish and envious, angry and arrogant, unhappy and suicidal. When I’m alone, I can feel that the greatest part of me glitching- part of them is the capability of loving and being selfless by thinking others. This loneliness and pessimism is taking its toll. My incapability to love and to be selfless is raging, tempered into the silence of the high apix of my heart.

Searching God is one of the greatest challenge to anyone. Some say that they found God but they did really found Him but only stability of themselves- because they are better off and no great amount of problems and sufferings so they can easily say that they found God because they’re okay. The other say that God is with them, they can feel Him. Talking to Them. Some is not really feeling God but only faking the sensation or convincing themselves that indeed the sensibility is God. I hope God will touch me in a very personal way that when He do, I will openly forget everything.

I told Fr. Villegas that I am in search of God- a dire utterance and a courageous act to step out to this world derange with too much madness and complexity- towards God.

After we talked I left-  stayed at the cemetery until dark and finally go home after being tired of mosquitoes feasting over me.

The Looters and Plunderers

 In a small island 2127 kilometers away from Manila lies a small province veiled into seclusion to the worlds externalities. Dinagat Island, the place of poverty and destitute is being robbed by a corrupt government of the Ecleo- a political clan dominating Dinagat Island since 1963. Since then, it remains the poor and sick island in the Pacific. Even Dinagat has a vast deposit of nickel, chromites, and other mineral; it is still one of the provinces in the country with the lowest provincial income.

Dinagat Island never progresses.

 There is an overwhelming insufficiency of basic services which whips the ever religious and un-defiant locals. The province have are only 3 districts hospitals to serve cascading numbers of 127,000 people, the regional hospital is in Surigao City which is more than one hour away by boat, 75% of the total population is living below the poverty line, [1] no concrete establishment of infrastructure projects, [2] roads are still turbid with mud during rainy season and deluded with dust during muggy summer, school buildings stand rotten. Since then The Ecleo’s has been accepting PDAF for but yet there is no ember of improvement that stimulated in the province.

My point in putting Dinagat in here is to draw an imagery of how adverse it is to have a PDAF being raped by plunderers of the worst kind. PDAF or the Priority Development Assistance Fund or commonly known as the Pork Barrel is the mechanism of the government especially those on the local government to spark an improvement to their respective provinces by giving them regular allocation of public fund for priority projects that are vital in obtaining provincial improvement. This is channeled through their district representative. It is given to representative because of the notion that legislators can easily access the potential improvements of their districts since they have the first hand experience on the condition of their constituencies.

There are two issues here. On one hand, is it a constitutional duty of our representative to have a monetary control over the funds in their provinces since the only thing that they are mandated to is to legislate and makes laws? And on the other hand, since we are talking here of millions of pesos and people are naturally abusive when they can sight opportunity for them, PDAF then is a potential money-mill for politicians to divert the public funds into their own pockets?

I do not want to deal with these questions because only expert in the field of law and governance can answer it.  I just want to say two things, first is the appetite of Janet Napoles to fool and betray the Filipino taxpayers is inferior to level of appetite of our senators and congressman who bark against corruption and upholds good governance when in fact they are the first class looters and plunderers. This is not the sin of Napoles herself. We all sinned in our own way. We put insatiable swine into office because they are famous celebrities and good actors, we left everything in the government, we only become vigilant until scandals in the government is basking itself to us but after that we forget it and move on with another scandals without taking along with use the lessons that we should have to learn from the past.

Our men has been swimming to the infinity of poverty, been confronted with a dilemma do anything just to survive their daily lives, been into situation that they just want to be gone and left the intense boredom and suffering they have in this world, been so hungry that makes them shiver because their body is eating up the last fat they have. Surely some of the people up there have been controlling the opportunities. There is. This is what they really call evil that manifest it truer form.

Now, it gives me the impression of it is not the government or the system of pork barrel which is wrong; it is those who control such system, the insatiable swine who make feast over people’s money, the highest criminals are in office- politicians.

Even though that PDAF is really intended for people and for the development of their respective districts, the people is left with no other option but to call for scrapping of PDAF. It is unfair for the taxpayers and also for the government to be robbed face to face with pretenders who fool voters that they have sympathy for the Philippines. I see them as rapists who endow opportunity in the people’s money- such a shame for a third world country to be raped by first class crooks.

I just want to share a story, one night after the Million People March in Luneta, I went to SVD mission seminary to talk to an old friend, after that I went to hear mass. During the homily, the priest who also went there told a story about his first hand experience that day, Fr. Arlo Yap said that attendees of the Million People March has different aim in going there- ordinary citizens are there to call for total abolishment of PDF, party-list are there to call not for abolishment of their PDAFs but only to abolish the Presidential PDAF, vendors are there to earn from the crowd- but amidst all this, they are certain in one thing, never to be robbed again.

This might not be the conventional reaction paper like most of my classmates had written; this is a ditch of rebellion from a student. I wish even just of a day, senators, congressman, Napoles, and their cohorts will experience our peoples experience of poverty, to vend water in the middle of traffic haze and smudge in Edsa, to be hungry and shiver, to live on the sidewalk with all the dust and pollution, to sell on the sidewalk and run as fast as they could when policemen will chase them, to be tormented into unventilated garrisons, be bedridden on public hospitals without bearable comfort, to study on a classroom without dissent chairs and board, to walk on muddy and dusty roads to sell your products.

 Majority of our politicians today are greedy.

 One day we will altogether forget and move on with the same poverty and wickedness- we let our collective destiny that dictates us. We elect the same family, the same clan, the same name into office. Sometimes, it is somehow hard to fight against corruption and PDAF scams when we elected the people who are suppose to be vigilant about the funds but didn’t. Take for example Senator Jinggoy Estrada whose name has been dragged in PDAF anomaly, he was quoted by saying:

“It is not up to the senators to determine whether an NGO [non-governmental organization] is bogus or not.” Alangan naman na kami pa ang magsasabi na, ‘Uy, bogus ‘yan.’ How will we know?”[3]

He said that it’s not his responsibility to check whether an NGO which has allocation from the pork barrel fund actually committed to its job. He is in fact saying that he as senator is undiscerning to where the people’s money, entrusted to him go. That serious laxity of his part is never justifiable by any reason- Truly; young Estrada shares the same skin of his father- and the ever loyal voters keep them, value them, and put them on high government positions.

 There a lot of talking happens. There a lot of persecution happens- but will this aid the poor, dying, despair Filipinos to carry on with their lives? I remember Fr. Roque Ferriols, The Father of Filipino Philosophy who says that, “when everything has been said, the most important things are left unsaid- only actions.”

 Today, we are not just call to be informed. We  are called to not be petrified by our inactions.

VII

All
of my feelings
are dragging
me down
to that
great
void-

a
place
worse than
hell.

 

VI.

Your face is a
justification of my
mistake.

The often I see
your face,
the heavier the remorse
I have
to myself-
how great my
desperation
was, in loving.

Share this:

Your friends literature is a
literature of pretension.
Itching themselves to write
the voice that is not theirs.

Save that little imber of you
my little fag.
Beam
away from the
hell of your friends.

Be courageous enough
to write who you are.
Don’t be like them.
Don’t be like your friends.
They are the master of their shits
and pisses.

Save your soul.

A day In Tanay Rizal

It was still dark and the sky submerged into the deepest darkness, the clock could not steady to the unrest, and the starless dawn bears witness as we walked on the silent street of East Avenue. We went to the bus stop and waited for an air-conditioned bus to pass by. During the bus ride, many of my companions yawned themselves to sleep but I with Aivan spent the entire trip laughing so hard as we remember funny anecdotes with our classmates. There  was no malady of traffic in Edsa so we have the smoothest ride going to Shaw Boulevard. When we arrived their, Robbie and Paolo just waited enough for us- 5:20 in the morning- all set and we are ready to go. It was a jam-packed van. There are 21 of us and some of my classmates can hardly move at the back. Our Driver, Mang Oscar is in his mid 50’s, there’s a psyche an aura in him so great that assures you that you are in good hands.

As early as the sunrise we drove on our way going to Tanay, Rizal. We gingerly pass through all the traverse and the stiff terrain going up there. As the sky flickers we saw a magnificent view overlooking the city. It was beautiful and majestic. We felt that we were transported back to our provinces. The fog was there. The sun was there. The endless road was there.

Tanay is a first municipality of the province of Rizal. It is just 2 hours away from Manila. There are buses that directly travels to Tanay and there are also UV express vans catering the route of Tanay-Shaw via Antipolo and vice versa.

We arrive there around 7 AM. We immediately went to the municipality hall for courtesy. The municipal hall is astonishingly beautiful than any other municipal halls that I’ve been in the past. The three story building is a 78 million loan from Land bank and the construction was finished as early as the first quarter of the year. The colors of the building complement it’s Spanish archetype design. Our guide toured us around the vicinity and at the back of the new municipal hall is a replica of the old one together with the other three buildings.

The replica of the old Municipal Hall

 Ate Tricia our tour guide told us,  while three bird are sitting on the cable, that the new building is the fourth building that was built for the same purpose and the three other buildings are with the same “Spanishque” design because they want to emphasize the rich culture of Tanay. Tanay is one of the provinces that was Christianize by Franciscan friars shortly after the conquest and subjugation of the Spaniards in the Philippines, so there is a great influence of Spanish colonizer in their municipality.

On the opposite side of the road stands an elementary school. Moment after we arrived, we heard the sound of the National Anthem blaring over the cracked sound system and I saw all the people stopped, the tricycles stopped, the motorcycles stopped, and there was the greatest silence that I ever heard. You can only hear the hustles of the leaves, the whisper of the morning wind and the echoes of the national anthem.

Near the school is a gasoline station and besides the station stands a small burger stand. I and Ivan went there to stroll and look for boys our early breakfast before heading to anywhere we go. Upon reaching the stand I saw a Philosophy book lying on the table and I asked the woman on the burger stand if she is studying Philosophy. Her name is Emily and she is a working student. She studies at Rizal Polytechnic College taking up Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. She has a higher degree of dedication in studying which rich kids lack. She laughs to our jokes like an old friend, she’s easy to get along with and I hope everything will get better for her.

We bids her farewell as we walked back to the Municipal hall.

Parola

From Municipal hall, we went to Parola to have our breakfast.
Parola or lighthouse is just a straight dike itching towards the Laguna de bay. Aside from serving as a dock for bangkas,”bagsakan“or market place for fresh water catch and as a place to stroll and exercise. Our guide told us that it is a place for prenuptial shots since the place has a romantic feel.

Ivan and I explored the dike greeting every locals good morning to that they reply with a smile. There we meet a lady with her walker basking and retreating from one end to another. As the sun ray beams towards her, the enigmatic beauty of her smiles lingers from both ends of the dike. At the end of the dike stands a memorial statue for all the victims of Ondoy. We heard that many locals had been washed out on the area and hundred of them is gone without recovering their remains. Such sadness calmed by the slow wind. Hearing a sad news, we settled staring aimlessly to the lighthouse and the tranquility of the view.

Chillin like a bastard

Climbing the asotea is like dancing on a trapeze. It is nauseating and terrifying especially to someone like me who are afraid of heights.. but once you get there and when you see the flickers of the water as sun shines over it, the fish fences, bangkas running towards the dike, and the motorcycles transporting passengers from place to another you can say to yourself that there is something special in this place. For me parola is a kind of place you go if you have extra time, to kill the afternoon lethargy, or to shut every terrifying voices over your head. We stayed there. and talked to some locals.

Kuya Edward has the most passionate love for the Parola. He cleans it everyday from 5 AM up to early evening.

Municipal Plaza

Before going to the place of the Dumagats which I heard is 20 kilometers away from the municipal proper, we had a short stop-over to the municipal plaza. It is just a short stop so I hoisted myself on my way to buy some energy drink and to spare seconds of laughter with the locals- that is the prize I guess, when you will be able to spend some time talking to people who you do not even know. Near the plaza is a baroque style church built between 1773 to 1783 by polo y servicio (forced labor) it is the second of the oldest church ever built in the province of Rizal. I whispered this to myself that before leaving Tanay I must go and visit the place since it’s maroon facade haunts my imagination of that it is like inside one of the oldest church in Rizal.

Going to Barangay Cuyambay

The long and winding road of Tanay reminds me of triumph and defeat that a person have in his life. I imagine the road as aisle in weddings, or a carpeted pavements for an awards night where one of the recipient has spent his life for the award. The road itself magnifies the mystery in all aspects of Tanay and the ever slow phases of our travel is the rebellion of time where ones we are all dying slaves. But today I said to myself, is a day that we will all careless of time and infinite as the mountains ranges of Tanay.

The road going to Cuyambay is good but I have my little underpinnings if the van can make it or are we taking toll on Mang Oscar’s vehicle. As the road seems like either a cliff or a 45 degree lift and fall the heavier I feel for everything. For the baggage, for Mang Oscar, for his automobiles, for the guide, and for my classmates. From the national highway, we slewed to a tight road and the both sides of the road is a ravine, we submerged ourselves down up to the bottom of the cliff where Barangay Cuyambay is situated. Upon arriving at the barangay, people wonderingly looks at us because it maybe the first time for a UV Express van full of nuisance college boys and gals went there. We went there to have an outreach program for one of our major subject. Yes it maybe a schoolwork but we never treated it that way, we planned and perform it as college men and women reaching our hands to our people who have less than what we have.

The van stopped on Cuyambay Elementary School. I gingerly walked they’re looking for a place to fit in and when I saw the classrooms full of students and some of the decapitated buildings.

It reminds me of my childhood.

The students were in the midst of their morning class and they were all learning how to read a paragraph. There sleepers are silently lining on the doorway, and the sick dogs, roaming around the vicinity. There is common in all of these places, the face of inadequacy and indifference. The farther the place, the greater the similarities of inadequacy and indifference.

I’ve been in the same situation when I was a grade school student. Now that I am on my junior year in college I can say that only few of these kids will go farther as I did when I was like them. So much of my classmates before shares the same cycle of life as what their parents are and what the parents of their parents was. The same cycle of life is creeping on their veins and only few of us luckily surpass the same infinity. I was being transported back to what I was before and what it feels like when I was like them before. So now is a revenge of the old time and I keep it secret to myself. I feel certain that we will spend our day together with these kids. For I know that it will never happens again with the same set. We chose 15 kids so we can concentrate to them. The school teacher picked them as she knew the most deserving to enjoy the whole day.

And the children are really like angels, they’re brutally honest. On one occasion while I was preparing to talk to them, there is one voice echoed in the room and the voice said “Ay taba!“… It makes the time stops and it snatch my guts and freaked my fats out! And I said, “baby I’m beautiful in my way because God makes no mistake….” Joke. I ignored same thing as what I do every time.

At first, the children is hesitant and uncooperative. They are in question to our real purpose they felt they we held them as hostage. We started our simple program by a song and while we are singing, a girl cried, Her name is Joy. Her hair is cut short and she wears a grandiose red chili-like earnings which makes her stands bright. We knew that Joy will be a fierce lady in the future and she is the darling in the entire event.

Tears of Joy

My classmates played together with them. Rhea shares them story and makes them so excited. They also prepared meals and served the children they want.

-and me, an ever helpful being annoyed the children the entire day.

These kids are the reflection of what their parents are and what their parents desired them to be. So we knew that all of them are raised by good parent and all of them are hopes to and gears for to leave Cuyambang in search for a bigger world out there. Far from the descend of Cuyambang’s cold hands of destitute and misfortune.

We spent the whole day with them and it is the most fulfilling things that I ever did this quarter. It saves me from boredom and it urges me to reflect about the life that I am living, I hope that my classmates realize the same. That we are lucky enough to have the things that we enjoy and same as to the things that we desire to have.

The principal

The principal said that it was the first time in the history of the school that a group went their for a feeding and social literacy program and he is thankful to the group who went their way just for the sake of the children. We finished the event by giving children some umbrellas so they can use when it rains and some educational materials for their studies. Aside from that they also gave us memories and the fire as Public Administration student that it is the reason why we are set in this course which we all didn’t like at first. It rekindles the most sacred pact of all Public Administration student “To serve the people.”

Me with Ivan the bitch

After the event one kagawad (barangay councilor) invited us to drop by in their barangay hall. While some of my classmates rode the van to go there, I together with Robbie and Paolo walked. We passed through homes made of nipa and it was the most lonely row of homes there.

A lonely street in bragy. Cuyambay

No music. No entertainment. One rotting billiard table and that is all that they have. Only few houses has the best. The car. A house. The gate… When we are on our way, we saw Joy playing on the cascade. How energetic that child was. She wears the same earrings and cares the same fierce.

The barangay hall is an empty house sitting on a cliff. The only thing that makes the hall useful is an old Olympia typewriter. There’s a woman typing while listening to the radio on her phone. We waited there for around 5 minutes before the van showed up. Then finally they came with a bag of used clothes among other donations. We stayed some more for picture taking before hopping inside the van to continue the day. Truly, in such lonely place of Cuyambang, there is a disco of joy that no one else can understand but those who have been there.

There’s a feeling of nostalgia in the place because I felt one way or another that I found the old me there. The place. The terrain. The homes are sort of my past. So as the van lifts us on the same road on the same ravine I brought with me the longing and the understanding to the point of what I had become after leaving my my Cuyambay.

To Regina Rica

Regina Rica is one of the three pilgrim site we passed though in Tanay, Rizal.
I don’t know how we get there since after the lift from that tight round going to Cuyambay, we were again confronted by long and winding road going to Regina Rica. I knew that it will going to be long enough to enjoy the view so I spent time eating Patricia’s Homemade polvoron… but when we reached the junction and went deep down- and saw a bronze statue from a far, we knew that we are nearing to the place. It is the place as if left hanging from a greater descend down. Once you’ll reach the gate you will see two figures, one is to St. Catherine of Siena and the other is St. Dominic. The two saints are icons on the Dominican order.

It was Tuesday afternoon and they does not accept visitors every Tuesday but we managed to be allowed inside since told them that we are from Cagayan and we just want to get inside because one of our travel companion is severely sick and she just wants to touch the statue. We were confronted by two problems: First, we lied. Second, there was one couple on a motorcycle who also wants to get inside. So we devised a plan to maneuver back to national road and waits for them to ascend and leave. We did… and after almost 5 minutes of waiting they appeared and gone together with the afternoon lethargy, mirage, phone signal and reggae music.

We drove back going to the gate the security guard- who happens to the husband of the barangay kagawad whom we met during the outreach program opened the gate for us. While inside the van we could not stop laughing. Robbie was very serious that we came from Cagayan, Hermie was asked to internalize that she has a terminal illness, and all of us can’t stop laughing when Robbie asked us to sober.

Then we walked with the calmness of the place. I can live there forever. I can spend the rest of my life in such place. I like to think that those who appreciates silence had experienced the most terrifying noise in there head so they long for silence as if it is God- or healing.

There is reality there when one say that the greatest prayer is silence and as much as I desire to describe the silence of the place, every word will just keeps on falling. It is truly unexplainable. There are greater things there than to read it here and my words cannot describe the prayer of Regina Rica. I never felt the same feeling for many years now. The last was during my childhood days when we went to the mountain top to see the sun set basking the pacific ocean and I am certain now that it will never happen again shortly after this trip.

The man who designed the statue of Regina Rosarii

It is almost 4 when we went back to the road heading for the last destination before leaving Tanay, The Daranak Falls.

Daranak Falls

Rhea’s hidden talent.

Noel is trying to balance the rocks!

Daranak falls will close every 5 PM. We arrive there after 4 so we have less than an hour to enjoy the falls, take pictures, and swim our exhaustion away. We learned that aside from tourist destination, it is also a place for shooting the teleserye Luna Blanca and it is also a place where rock balancing was originated.

At the entrance there is a basketball court were anguished people playing basketball. They were all topless and they have big muscles and freaky psyche. There is also a Balut vendor asking everyone to buy and the one and only stall selling junk foods and soda. I wonder how much they will earn everyday being confronted with boredom, mosquitoes and all out there. It is a place of boredom devoid to any shattering. And no one will like to take a recluse there for too long. Inside, It is hard to appreciate the beauty of Daranak falls after the whole night of rain. The water is muddy and raging. But when I seen the photos taken when the weather is fine, Daranak falls is majestic. Standing on the big rock that holds as platform for audiences besides the cascades, the mints of the falls on our faces and it is like the kiss of the nature- an ever passionate kiss for wanderers and seekers. Over all, our Daranak experience was cut short because we have to leave. It’s 5 and no person are allowed to swim beyond 5 pm.

Paulo, Ate Tricia our ever energetic tour guide and Robbie

Paulo is trying to balance the rocks!

Leaving Daranak falls is leaving all the people there. The vendor who sells junk foods and Soda, the basketball players and the balut vendor who left before us with his motorcycle.

Going back to Town

We head back to the town to prepare ourselves into our journey back to Manila. Darkness slowly creeps down enveloping the sky of Tanay as we parked on one of the eatery near the town plaza. Kim, Cheska, Danica, Al, and Joy Ann with friends ate there while me together with Ivan and Noel walked to the nearest 7-11 store. Hermie and Kem followed us short after. Too bad that they do not have slurpee so I bought a sundae. After that, we walked going to San Ildefonso Parish Church as I promised to myself.

Before dark at the church.

There was an ongoing mass when we came and we stopped there to pray and join some locals in praying. I said thank you to the Lord for keeping us safe in the whole journey and I prayed for happiness for all the people whom we met during the whole day in Tanay, Rizal. It was six and it was totally dark when the mass was finished. We ran going to the van since we learned that the van is only rented until 5 pm. But Mang Oscar, the ever kind and patient man I recently knew has no complaints about the over time he gets from us.

It was the end of our day, we had our final chat with Ate Tricia. We saw a passion from her of how she values Tanay and how she dreams of Tanay as one of the major tourist destination in the Philippines. Right before a pagoda, we stop says our goodbye and goodnight to her as we drove before the melancholic highway of Rizal. Another hour had past and it is 8 in the evening, we arrived in the same spot where we first met Mang Oscar earlier that day and now is the time to say goodbye to both of us. He said goodbyes to us “Sa uulitin!(Till next time)” he said. Time will tell or maybe we won’t see each other again.

—-

Photos are from:
Ate Tricia Jaime
Kimberly Teodoro
Elmarie Jaramillo

Share this:

I will tell you
a story about this woman
in her mid-sixties.

There is a drama in
her loneliness that manifests
in her eyes.
Her angst hidden under the
weakness of her
limbs.
Her tattoo, a beast
devouring another beast-
withers
Under the sun,
rays burning yellow.
The air,
sways the lazy leaves.
A cat,
pissed on the lawn

She’s listening to the radio now,
70’s music flaming.
Burning the lethargy
of the moment.

IV

When my professor
hoists himself in the
doorway,
It is like the
saddest descend
to hell.

There is an
unexplained boredom
in him so great
that I can feel it.
Then I –
an ever hopeless
earthling kept inside
a dark box.

He says  “Stay in there
stupid!”

A boredom so great that
it burns my throat
and  gauges me by a
poisonous
shit.

Oh

Existential anguish
is when a professor
doesn’t do anything
or rarely do
something.

Chit chatting you know
his personal shits-
one fold to another,
boredom after boredom

And oh
life is so damned good
bullshit.

There’s a secret there.
When you want to study
or want to attain something
or what to get the honor
or to be the genius-
you just have to memorize.

You have to
unleash the finest
mediocrity
in you.

Do it because
you were taught
to.

III.

Then there you are
caught in silent
gallows of
nightmare.

Death is pointing
her finger
at you-
She wants you
motherfucker!

Well go, I said
unto you.
Leave.
Sometimes
leaving
is the best part
of living.

You soar there
like a wild eagle
free from
worlds externalities.
Heavens after
heavens of
freedom.

You don’t feel
glad ’bout that?

Well don’t feel sick
about me
for
I have also to face
my own death-
*Umali.

*Umali is my professor who gives very hard test every meeting.

TIME baybeh, time!

They say that the best part of being a teenager is you have time. A time to be who you are, a time to love somebody, to explore, to laugh, and a time to commit mistakes- millions of mistakes. Sometimes I wonder maybe somewhere in the middle of all these lies the untenanted space between me and my own time. It is like being confronted with a crisis of having time for everything but having no everything. So I am intrigued with the concept of “time.”

Every time I stares at the clock I see the world revolving around it, together with it slow silent circular movement, I see the numbers as decadence of decades, of life and death, of humanity’s persecution and victory. But as the clock goes on and on with the same circular movement- the impersonal, apathetic, heartless movement which embraces all the sudden and lethargy like a fresh wound of leprosy staring aimlessly to the world it devastates, like a suicidal poet filled with her boring successes, people treats her immortal- a language material, a literary god and bitch. Then this clock maybe, I said is not just there to measure time but stays there to usher humanity in silence to ask questions like What is time? How can we analyze it’s metaphor? Is the future time infinite?

When we can say that now is right now? Maybe every time a person says now, that “now” is swept away with each paltry flakes movement of the clock. Now is not yesterday and yesterday will not be the tomorrow- future is uncertain as time, the concept of now is unfathomable- so linear. Damned boring.

Someone will think of time as the “interchat”- the intricate,orderless dance of present and future and of real and untrue. When somebody says past and present, it might signifies the real- but to talk about the future- since it is indeterminate and uncertain, maybe it is not at all, true. It is like saying that my birth is real but my death is not.

While devouring a book of Philosophy instead some school stuff that bores me, I learned about this concept of ordering positions of event in time. It is like putting events into a straight line of time. Suppose the first line is the series A, it takes the position of present simultaneous with the other position running towards from the past to the present and from the present to the future. We can infer that in order for this to exist, it must attain a certainty in generating contradiction between past, present, and future which as we know are not certain about. A perfect example for this is when you are driving, it attributes the position of being present- it cannot be in the past and in the future. When maintaining an attitude against a thing or an event occurring once in every position in the series, the application of this view in reality will be in contradiction. So it ditches this series as impossible to be true because same event can happen in the different position of time. The B series has another system. It bases the position of time dependent on how early or late it happened to other events. It is also impossible to say that there is an occurrence of change in this series since it creates a permanent relation between events.

Though it gives two different view about the position of time in a life of a person, it does not answers the fundamental question: “What is time?”

The philosophy says that the world sees time in a circular order. It is like what we see in the clock- a linear durationless motion of two hands.Portion of the world says that time is the events that happens within that circular order. Some will say that it is the substance of that event, few may believes that it as measurement of change, the other few may say that it is the spatial extension between two events, and the most few will say that it is just a mental projection of external realities.

While reading all these it is like gauging life down there. It produces questions like is time uncertain? Am I suppose to wander my life in a plain line which bores me?

Time for me is not the measurement of the clock. Time is the essence of everything, the phase of everything that a human do with my his life. His achievements and failures- time lies a midst of every chaos and solitude out there.

The next proper question I guess is when will it cease? Does death ceases time?
When a particular motion or movement halt, will it urges the time to also stop?

Let see!

Share this:

The void
stares at me
wondering what Am I thinking.
The void doesn’t know
that I am thinking of disparity-

The carelessness
of the act,
the pretensions of
people,
the enigmatic
boredom 
that sucks- 
The life.
Human faces that
has no meaning.
No freedom. 
No juice. 
No Excitement.

People are controlled,
mutilated, forced to work 
let burn and waits 
to
die.

Such world is so awful.
And I have to wait,
for death to haunt me.
Hopefully,
soon.

II.

When this class ends

I
will
sing
at
the
top
of
my lungs.

I will sing
joyous songs
and snare a wild voice
of triumph-
to celebrate
my
uncorrupted
freedom.

Share this:

Bird

The bird
flocks her
little wings
to soar.

High-

above
humans
who
doesn’t
love her.

Me with my father during my first Birthday

Dear Papa,

You know how valuable you are to me and to Mama. We owe all things to you. We love you.
Happy Father’s Day!

18.

18. It feels boring. I think it is an age where you often get bored. It is also an age where you question the fidelity and infidelity of love. This might be the start of a turbulent life in the future, I don’t know, so I had created a compact with myself. First I will never get married, whatever I have and what ever I decided to do, I will dedicate this to my parents. Second, if that time comes that I am going to be bitchy to live- I will kill myself, but neither I think to reach an old age. I know my condition but I am not impelled by it. Therefore I always tends to ask the purpose of being a human. What we are here for? If we are all going to die, what is the purpose of life?

Last October I collapsed at the bathroom. There were nobody home. I was soaked with water and for the next 2 minutes- I was paralyzed. I thought it was the last time to see the world as my vision beams into a tunnel of darkness then I loss control to myself and immediately bitten off the floor. As I was able to regain my consciousness, I kept on saying the name Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! While holding on the gallows of silent gallons of water around me. I saw our house revolving. I cannot even see in clear view what’s around me but I kept on saying the word Jesus Christ. Spitting it in the dead air until I reached my bed. There was nobody home. It was the most punishing silence I ever heard. I cannot even shout because I feel that my throat was gauged. I felt I was like a sparrow shut into a dark cage. I was all alone that time and it was the most lonely afternoon of my life. When my parents came they saw me lying vulnerable, soaked in cold water. That was the first time when I feels that there is something wrong with me. I don’t know what it was.

I felt dumped when we had to sent thousand of pesos when we do not have enough just for those medical tests- it was the most painful moment I guess. I never worried of what will happen. I’am just worried because I saw my parents as they were worrying for me. They have to check my blood, my urine, the electrocardiography of my heart, my cholesterol and everything. When the result came the doctor said in clod blood that at the young age of 17, I have a hypertension and I have to take medication for the rest of my life. That was the start of my romance with Olmezar.

That was the first one.

This May I was writing my first novel, I suddenly saw tiny spots of black dots together with swirling white thread-like floating in my eye. It hinders my vision of letters and of everything around me. They goes after the movement of my eye creating a hallow everywhere I see. Even though they are not there every time, they only appear on day and white lights. I worried. I thought that I will going to be blind because I am aware of the complications of my hypertension.

So I checked the internet and found out that it was indeed floaters. It was the first time to see it and I was upset because those are symptoms of further damage in the retina which will eventually cause blindness if undetected overtime. Here I worried very much. I don’t want to be blind. But sometimes, fear pushes you to do everything. So it has a positive effect in the progress of what I am doing. Fear is the only way to fight back against the lethargy of the moment. Fear is also the only way that pushes human to do the impossible.

Last Monday we went into an ophthalmologist and he was more worried because he saw my blood pressure and it was as high as the ceiling. While we, together with my mama painfully listening as the doctor laid the worst scenario that maybe the floaters are effects of a hypertensive retinopathy brought out because of my hypertension and it might lead, eventually to blindness if not treated immediately.

At the very young age of 17 I had my worst.

So the ophthalmologist suggests that he had to check my retina and it will cost P5000.00. He said it in cold blood and we have no choice. That is the only way to decipher the problem if I will going to be blind. They have to drop 8 times anesthesia on my eyes. It was so painful that I cannot even see for the next 2 minutes every time they put those drops on me. The last one was so traumatic.
Then I was assisted to this machine which will help the doctor to see my retina as it flashes on a computer screen so everyone in the room can see it- my mother and Dr. Pineda and his assistant.

The Machine spits a very dazzling bright light. It was the most dazzling thing that I ever seen- oxymoron on what I saw last October. White all over my senses- and they all saw my retina. It was a magic that a machine can able to see what is beyond human can saw. It was first time humans saw my retina and I felt that my privacy was abridged. Then the doctor inserted a medical device akin to a stick on the surface of my eye to measure the pressure significantly to know wither I have a glaucoma which is a leading cause of blindness. It just took me 5 minutes of that intense suffering. After that, I cannot barely see for an hour and dazzled for the rest of the day. It was the effect of medication they say. When the result was out, my eyes are both safe though some nerve endings are starting to pop but it can be cured by medication. But the doctor warns me of a potent danger since I have a forever romance with my ever changing blood pressure.

It is not that the good days are over. My novel is waiting. The world is just there. The opportunities are waiting for me to seek them. The age is turning older and older every year. The yearnings and learnings. The badass friends stays where they are. 18 years.

I think The purpose of life is the experiences- that every experience presupposes the existence. I have my personal share of suffering and defeat in all those years. Even though I question God sometimes, Jesus is always been an answered prayer.

I just turned 18 today.

POLITICAL AMOEBA

So why I would pay attention to people whose IQ is equals of that of an amoeba?

– Miriam Defensor Santiago

Political Amoeba is my personal concept of people who are in constant change of there political parties and ideologies akin to that of power so they can utilize their benefits. This is different from a political butterfly because political butterfly is a politician or any relevant human being who constantly shifts from one political party to another so he can assures his gain. This “movement” of politician is normal and also accepted because we all know that there are no forever alliances in politics. Take for example the most dominant political party in our country today, the Liberal party. It is a coalition of different parties and some of their candidates came from different political parties and some had personal conflicts before.

As a Political Science principle, political party is as important as the existence of a democratic government because it serves at least 7 purposes:

1. The only organization or a machine that can win the election.
2. It educates the people on public issues.
3. It performs a basic role in providing leadership examples.
4. It is somehow a source of public policies.
5. It serves as a communication link between the government and the people and unites different regional cultures and traditions.
6. It also serves as a critic  of proposed policies of other parties.
 7. An instrument of the government for national integration.

Out of these purposes came perceptible elements of a political party. A party should have a common principles, philosophy and platform. Second, a candidate who runs to a certain political party should adheres to the party’s principles and possesses and has a common platform and philosophy. Since candidates in a coalition party comes from different parties of different ideology, it is evident that our system of political party in the Philippines is just a scurvy machinery like a platform to beam candidates into power and once they will get there they will resume fighting each other.

Political Amoeba is slightly a different concept because it adapts the character of an amoeba, a pitiful genera which falls second to the last rank in the hierarchy of biological classification. It is a very small unicellular organism which has indefinite shape, size and form. It looks like this:

Amoeba

Since they are very tiny specs of genus they are akin to political biped nuisances who were neither politicians nor elected officials but a poorest organism meticulously clinging on an algae  hoping that they can benefit in a mutual relation.

The development of political amoeba started when there is an opportunity to join a fuss of raging candidates eager to win during election. Then they will join the array and do everything with hidden desire of benefit. Amoeba as they are, but these people have tough faces and one cannot outwit them just like that. They have this ambitious undertaking to vertically rise into position because they are as ambitious as Theodora who was once a prostitute and worked in a brothel serving low-level costumer but managed to rise and became the Empress of The Roman Empire .

Political amoeba are devadasi of the government. They are the descendants of Theodora.

As a public administration student I recognized this as a corruption of order contrary to the principle of meritocracy. Political Amoeba is a sheer product of greed and evil and as dangerous as the nuclear radiation of a nuk slowly creeping on the darkest pavements of the government.

ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS: OVERVIEW

I was assigned to report all things about Aristotle in relation to his idea in political philosophy. It was assigned to me last year and up until now, I haven’t reported anything. Doubtless to my existence and pre-existence in the next life, so I decided to write all things here baka mamatay nalang ako hindi pa ako makakapagreport. This is the first of 4 part discussion which gives you an overview of Aristotle’s general ideas in Politics. Please bear with me in my lengthily post and forgive me if committed unbearable grammar lapses.

 

According to Aristotle, the polis or the city-state is the best part of the government because being part of the polis is the only way that someone can truly have a great life. Anything that is out of the polis are called isapolis. They must be either a beast or god. Meaning to say an isapolis might be below or above humanity.  Since he said that the end goal of every association is happiness, there must be a relation between Aristotle’s idea of Teleology– that everything in nature exists for a specific purpose and his Nicomachean Ethics which is in many ways reciprocal to Politics, to the end goal of human association which is happiness. The question here is this, what is happiness?

On Happiness

Have you ask the same questionto yourself, what things makes you happy and how will you know that this gives you the happiness that you want? Is it the right kind of happiness or you are just deceiving yourself?

Happiness might be wealth but a life devoted to monetary acquisition is not a happy life because you will work so hard to the point of lossing time to enjoy doing the thing you like. An American philosopher, Gregory Sadler said that human are always confronted by two junctions in choosing between wealth and happiness and in life, one is doomed to choose between the two.  In answering this question, Aristotle talks about virtue, honor, pleasure and living a virtues life. In his Nicomachean ethics, happiness is a product of doing excellent activity of the soul, excellence in thinking and deciding how to behave.  The object of life’s enjoyment is bodily pleasure, in political activity, honor and virtue. He also said that the end of human life must be complete, and the completion is born out of happiness. In order to fulfill such completion one must be involves in a koinonia or association or sharing in common which is very vital in the polis.

On Association

The different kinds of associations that exist are founded on different kinds of relationships. The basic unit of association is the household, the next is the village, and the ultimate association is the city, toward which end humans, seeking to attain the highest quality of life. Since Politics or political association is necessary in all form of association, Aristotle says that by nature, man is a political animal or zoon politikon. The reason here is a man is much more political animal than any other lower beast because human has a capacity of reason while other species may have voice, able to distinguish between pleasure and pain but does not have the faculty of reason in speech.

On Slavery

Aristotle is in favor of slavery by saying that it is necessary in order the society to function. For him slavery is natural because natural slaves do not possess rationality, intelligence and commanding powers and that they only fit in doing menial tasks. In his view, slavery is the means by which the master secures his livelihood and he defend slavery by noting that the nature is generally consists of ruling and ruled element. Even though that slavery is natural, there are two ways of UNJUST means to enslave people.  

1. This is during war

2. Those people who are not slave in nature.

On art of Acquisition

The next thing he is discussed is the art of Acquisition. According to Aristotle, Every human is driven to satisfy their basic needs, so different people go about satisfying these needs in different ways depending on their mode of life. Their job is the one which secures them of food, shelter, and other necessities. It is called natural acquisition because it is a necessary part of the management of a household. Unnatural acquisition, on the other hand, consists of accumulating money for its own sake. Aristotle observes that goods such as food and clothing have not only a use-value, but also an exchange-value. In societies where trade is common, a monetary currency naturally arises as a facilitator of exchange.

On theory of government

He discusses the variety of constitutional theories and saying none of those is perfect.  Before proposing his own theory of government, Aristotle examines other theories of government and reviews existing constitutions of well-governed states.

Plato vs. Aristotle

First, Aristotle criticized Plato’s Republic. For the purpose of my report I cited 4 major criticisms against Plato’s republic. These are the following:

1. “According to Plato, every citizen as much as possible should share in common, including wives, children, and property.” Aristotle countered this idea. Aristotle’s criticism goes something like this, “Different people must make different contributions, fulfill different roles, and fit into distinct social classes. Otherwise, a city will not be able to perform the many functions necessary for it to remain self-sufficient.”

2. Plato suggested that men should share with the women of the city and that children be taken from their mothers at birth and rose collectively in state nurseries. Aristotle disapproves this idea. According to him, it will produce magnitude of numbers of children that would not receive proper parental care and the lack of family ties would render citizens less capable of showing friendship and love.

3. Aristotle also attacks Plato’s remarks on the community of property stating that the practice of generosity, an important virtue requires individual ownership of property.

4. Aristotle notes that it is dangerous to leave the governance of the city entirely in the hands of one class because it deprives a system of association.

Phalaes vs. Aristotle

Second, Aside from debunking his own teacher, Aristotle is also against Phalaes (a Greek statesman of antiquity was primary concern is the equalization of property) his idea of a perfect government.

Aristotle criticized this by arguing that Phalaes does not realize that material equality alone cannot make people good.  Second, leveling land ownership would satisfy the poor, it would lead to insurrection among the rich who were to be dispossessed and who viewed their wealth as a right of nobility.  According to Aristotle, in order to eliminate civil dispute, society must educate the people in such a way as to control want and greed; the poor must be taught to accept their station and the rich not to become overly greedy.

On Citizenship

It is not enough to say a citizen is someone who lives in the city or has access to the courts of law since these rights are open to aliens or those who are not inhabitant of the polis and even slaves. So Aristotle suggests that a citizen is someone who shares in the administration of justice and the holding of public office. Aristotle points out that though citizenship is often reserved for those who are born to citizen parents; this hereditary status becomes irrelevant in times of revolution or constitutional change. During which the body of citizens alters because a change in constitution has a direct effect to the status of a person’s citizenship. Aristotle gives us a distinction between being a citizen and being a good man. According to him, a good citizen may not be a good man. A good citizen is the one who does well in the state and upholds and honors the constitution. In a constitutional state, he must know how to rule and how to obey. (The problem in a constitutional state is a citizen knows how to rule by obeying orders.) While a good man does the one possess a perfect moral.

The hesitation is this, how about manual laborers or slaves? Are they in the same way considered a citizen? Though Aristotle acknowledges that laborers are necessary to a city but defies that not everyone who is necessary to the city can be a citizen, according to him, a citizenship requires that the citizen be free from the necessary tasks of life.

On constitution

In general, Aristotle classified two kinds of constitution. The JUST CONSTITUTIONS which is geared toward bringing out the well-being for all of the citizens and second is the UNJUST CONSTITUTIONS which is geared toward the benefit of those who are in power. A constitution varies on the size of the governing body, so Aristotle classifies six different types of government which is now known as Aristotelian Classification of government.

The best types of structure of government are the one emphasizes a strong middle class to balance the rich and the poor with their very needs.

On civic government

Aristotle says that a government has three functions.  1. Deliberative which deals with public matters such as foreign policy, the enacting of laws, judicial cases in which a severe penalty is involved, and the appointment of public officials.  2.   Executive which holds public order and takes responsibility for governing and issuing commands. 3. Judicial which holds and passes orders regarding private and public disputes.

On Constitutional Change

The root cause of constitutional change is that different groups have different conceptions of justice and equality. The wealthy and the poor are those who are liable to form separate factions and each is trying to alter the constitution to their advantage. Therefore, whoever has in power should not fully exclude those who are not in power because constitutions are typically change as a results of high number of unhappy people rising up against those in power. In order to avoid this from happening, Aristotle suggests the policy of moderation, saying that the way to avoid the conflict is to have a balance between the rich and the poor giving both groups an equal power.

 

TO THE CORE

It’s going to be trapo to the core.

-Conrado De Quiros.

Any political science or public administration student masters the answer to the question “What is election? “. Since we are always dealing with the constitution, we can simply put it this way, election is a constitutional mandate by which a population chooses an individual to lead or hold public office. This definition is theoretical in the same way practical. So in order to analyze this definition, we have to synthesize this general definition into specific ones.

First is election being a constitutional mandate. Our constitution provides under article V that “Suffrage may be exercised by all citizens of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law.” When I asked a friend to analyze this particular provision, he is quite hesitant to my notion that election is indeed a constitutional mandate. According to him, the word “may be” gives him the impression that a citizen may choose if he wants to participate in election or not. In short, election is not an obligation because it provides you an avenue to choose. I explained this to him by saying, I think that the word “may be” refers to the act of participating into election but gives prohibition to those who are disqualified by law. So those who are unconfined with the disqualification, election still is a constitutional mandate.

Second, an election is a process in which people choose an individual to lead or hold public office. This is the practical aspect of election, the actual voting and a plurality of votes towards certain candidate-obviously wins in an election. Therefore, election is a number game.

There is a saying that goes like “to be real is to be open”.  In the Philippines, a candidate without ideology can win in a personality politics. Philippine election is so special because personality is greater than principle, belief and ideology combined! Majority of the member of a society gauge their bet depending on how popular a candidate is, even this person has no strong ideology. No doubt, Philippine politics is very open to someone like Annabelle Rama to run in congress. “Parang hulog ako ng Sto. Niño para sa aking mga kababayan na, alam ko, kailangang-kailangan nila ang tulong ko.” And I’m sure, if Cebuano will not be critical in choosing there representative in the congress, then it will be a landslide victory for Rama knowing how popular and scandalous she is. No non-thinking citizen will get tired in personality politics- simply because it is fun! When showbiz and politics is combined-fiesta! That is why a showbiz personality without any background in politics is getting elected.

“Parang hulog ako ng Sto. Niño para sa aking mga kababayan na, alam ko, kailangang-kailangan nila ang tulong ko.”-Rama (2012)

It is easy to say that one element lacking in the process of Philippine election, “pamimilosopiya” (philosophizing). Asking fundamental questions from “why are we going to vote?” “Who should be elected?” “Why should elect this particular person?” To questions like “What are the needs of our country? Does his ideology and platform satisfy these needs?” One should ask these questions because the world of politics is not just about being popular and well known. Public service is an everyday confrontation of big decisions that will radiate affects to everyone from professionals to darn fools. It is not enough to be vigilant, one should explore questions in the realm of ideology, academic background and practice because service is not a taping for a teleserye which has a room for editing mistakes.

Erap para sa mahirap. hehehe

Take for example the Presidency of Joseph Ejercito Estrada. He started his career in show business in his twenties where he gained his undying popularity. In 1967, fame helped him to hold an elective position as a local executive in San Juan which was then a municipality of Manila. The same popularity carried him from San Juan to senate and the epoch of his political career which is to be the 13^th president of the Philippines.  He has no educational background in Public administration, economics and politics; all he has is experience from being a municipal mayor, senator and some political and economic advisers. When fame sent him to be the president of the Philippines, the next question was what happened next? –Well surprisingly, his presidency only lasted for 31 months and his leadership was questioned for corruption, incompetence and cronyism aside from the fact that foreign investors gave up investing in our country because of the continuous social unrest. The climax of all this hullaballoo was the second People Power which leads to question the defectiveness of our system of democracy.

My question now is this, is it a legitimate claim that Philippine has a defective democracy?

When the rule of the people is sovereign versus the rule of law, demagoguery, a worst form of democracy will be evading the system.   When we asks ourselves reflections like why Democracy does allows people to choose leader but in the same way removes them from office when they want, Is in fact recognizing the presence of a demagogic element in the Philippine democracy. There most something wrong between democracy and election in the first place.  The concept of democracy is very clear, that all government is rest in the consent of the people, but when a despotic ruler limits respect and obedience in their favor, it gives a legitimate justification to a defective democracy. So Democracy must be protected against the inimical government.

Lastly, suffrage is confronted by these three problems: 1. Voters never learned from their mistakes and keeps on doing the same thing again and again. 2. A voter fails to philosophize who to vote- A voter only votes based on popularity which often misleads by commissioned surveys. 3. Voters are easily confused between showbiz and politics because nowadays it only means the same thing.

We learn from our mistakes. Would you allow yourself to commit the same mistakes again?

Religion and Politics: A Cosmological Dualism

Religion and politics continue to combine in important ways which in many issues about humanity are debated and acted upon but this clash is of two opposing intuitions, arguing, one from a moralist and secular point of view and the other is from a ‘rationalist’ point of view, depending upon the players in the government produces a great class against the role of the divine and natural order against the exercise of power in a society. As what Finer said, religion formed part of a vast cosmology into which all things are fitted. In this cosmology, all things from morality to immorality of a society up to politics and the exercise of power of the government are included.

The influence of religion is so great that it can even dictate the populace what and how to behave. Of course in such way that is according to the will and to the morals set according to the teching of God. This is something good in a society, where you have an institution that regulates and teaches the people how to be a good man more than to be a good citizen.

So what’s the different between a good man and a good citizen?

Aristotle, in his book Politics makes a clear distinction of being a good man and a good Citizen. A good Citizen is the one who is faithful to the state constitution while a good man is someone who possesses a   perfect virtue. So for Aristotle, being a good man is more superior to being a good citizen because a good citizen can be faithful to an oligarchic constitution, can be faithful to a communist state, can be faithful to a wrong ideals but a good man can only be faithful to one-virtue, which is a general concept of what is right and what is wrong or a general concept of Ethics.

The church plays an important role in building morals by teaching positive attitudes to the states citizens- and this is advantageous for the people because they are led to a good, happy, and peaceful life. But during the coming of a complex form of religion a more complex pattern of relationship to other institution began to emerge.  According to George Moyser, religious beliefs and activities began to carry with it the idea that there was a higher and better idea above and beyond ordinary reality to which all were in principle subject, including the king, the wielder of political power within that natural order. Thence created a possibility of separation between religious and political sphere. Along this separation is an emerging possibility of conflict and rivalry as what’s happening today.

Seeking Heaven

There is a large file of agility that needs to persist. It so happened that no one is seeking for it.

Magnitude of loneliness drives us to kill ourselves but that is not the reason, no one dies because he kill himself. One dies because loneliness killed him. Agility of persistence is when you fight back, when the danger and death is almost within your reach but you fight back with such great agility to drive that pain and reckoning to understand a limitation beyond you and never as it was, beyond as we one suspected it to be. I understand and I hope that death is as easy as it was. But no.

I am a victim of a black smoke that whispers me to kill myself. And pal up until now I breath that same smoke and it is running in my body. If death is as easy as forgetting my agility to persist I dead long ago before this solitude will hear me. The best art of writing is listening, though many like me, fantasize that person or that entity as if he is listening to me. All things are born out of fantasy. Even love. And death. I feel you and it saddens me that I feel you and we are breathing the same black romantic smoke. We are both seeking heaven.

I knew nothing now. my mental facilities are craving to stop, before me.

The Church of Immaculate Heart of Mary

Novaliches, Quezon City, Philippines.

Numbed

It is the first day of December and nothing is unusual with my life.  It is just the same day with the same people around me with the same view outside. Chaotic. I hate to say this but Philippines is a chaotic country or maybe I’am just being bias to say this because after all, it is how a person lives his life. This is my life and it so happen that my life sometimes bores me.

There are times that boredom feels you. It is like an angel waiting somewhere at the distance to touch you and eventually poses you! From your body, your organs up to your energy and resources and ultimately your soul. Then he will own you like his pet.  Life will be going to nowhere and you will be sucked into depression. Your palette will never taste the same taste of food that you enjoyed before. Your nose will never smell the fragrance of flowers, and your eyes will fail to see the splendor of colors around you. Your ears will make you believe to an illusion that no one is listening to you. Indeed, Depression paralyzes the body.

It was a late afternoon shortly before gloom when boredom stroked me. The first feeling is emptiness. I felt the emptiness and worthlessness,I was  like a piece of furniture without value. The great music of the world, everything is just nothing. All around me has no meaning and even my life has nothing but a life which lives longer after my death. I felt nothing. I was really Numbed. Then my veins and my mind, emptied but doing something to fight against this power, so mighty that slowly kills my vigor.  I lost connection and everything around lost their luster before my eyes.

I should not be under this inner conflict happening inside me, after all the beauty of the world is just waiting for me. What saddens me is the feeling that I will be forever here in my place. I am chained and that is the most frightful things to happen, when I die, chained.  There is some sort of “freedom” in me that wants to let go. I have to. I need it and yes I have to let go with it. The problem is thinking the problem and allows the thoughts restlessly runs in my head. It was a quiet afternoon but inside me is a war against myself. The hardest thing in the world to deal with is the revolution within- the conflict inside. The running thoughts of uselessness and the feeling that nobody listens makes it harder to bear.

This afternoon is the same afternoon yesterday, last month or last year. Nothing unusual and like Christmas, depression which makes me numb is just around the corner.

Looking for Destination

It was a hazy morning and Cubao was smugly as hell and all people were looking bohemians. The smug is running in my veins and killing me in a secretive passion. No wonder this city is a city of madness, where people are rushing and going nowhere. Yes there is a definite destination and the goal is to reach the point B but the destination I am looking for is just purely nowhere. We’ve been into series of searching for nothing. Human is still encapsulated from thoughts and meaning that are beyond they can think of. We haven’t find the meaning of life, of sense and of these collective thoughts, but we found the best manner to die. At least we find something.

During a bloody traffic in Edsa, my soul dies before it . I die every time I see these chaos around me and I am trying to fake everything as if I never heard nor perceived anything. Fragile but fake. The smug and the horns is killing me. The dilapidated buses and the rushing humans before and after me.  An old woman begging for coins. The footbridge. These are overflowing madness from us. And I die with it. I die not because I pity these people, but I empathize them and feel them living in such madness. Manila is not a solemn place to die. When your death comes and unluckily you die here, you will be bringing with you a lonely romance with the city’s depression. Then your death becomes worthless after all.

We are looking for destination because a voice inside us is urging us to seek for it. We tried and tried but just the same, everyday. . . we are confronted with this madness that slowly kills us. We are looking for a destination . . .

Quilop at Patmos 12 years ago.

April 2001. Twelve years ago, a very insightful article that will later on merit attention for Filipino political thinkers was published in a small publication and it was circulated along the metropolis. Therein is a written explanation why Democracy does not work for Filipinos. According to Raymund Quilop, and I quote:

Democracy does not fit the Philippines! It has allowed personalities like Joseph Estrada to reach Malacanan and at the expense of the entire society. . . Indeed Democracy allowed Filipinos to choose their leaders. But it is the same democracy that will enable people to remove their leaders from office if they deem it necessary.  It may allow people to commit mistakes by choosing their leader. But it is the same Democracy that will enable them to correct such mistakes, if they are willing to do so.

It is certainly not the most expedient form of government or way of life. On the contrary, it is the most tedious, with power having to be shared among so many stakeholders and the rights of people having to be ensured.

Here, Quilop’s manages to suggest another form of convenience and this is by putting up an authoritarian form of government with an iron fisted leader that carries a single concentration of political power to maneuver this country back on track. Quilop is leaning to a more radical way of disciplining the undisciplined Filipinos. He continued by saying:

However, it does not necessarily follow that people simply don’t follow rules in a democratic environment. Even Filipinos, known for disregarding rules, toe the line when they are in foreign countries, and in democratic societies at that, like the United States and Australia. Why?

Because in these democracies, rules are enforced and enforced strictly. But people know that this is not the case in the Philippines. This is the reason why they blatantly ignore the rules.

The Philippines, under the 1987 constitution itself in Art. 3 section. 1 declares that the Philippines as a Democratic Republican State and Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.

Idealistically, Democracy on one hand is a good system of government.

(1) It banners accountability and transparency compared to other forms of government because sovereignty or the supreme power and authority come from the people and since they are the one playing with these affairs, they are also exposed to these matters.

(2)  This relationship of people and democracy presupposes that this two are contiguous to one another, if they are, it is easy in a democratic system to respond to the needs of the people. Aside from that, democracy requires the ruler to ensure that the needs of his people are met.

(3) In a representative democracy, people can easily inquire about decisions taken by the government and the government should answer this query since, according to principle, sovereignty resides from the people.

(4) A democratic decisions are carried out not just by a single people. It involves number of people and they discuss and interact together, in effect Democracy strengthens the state’s decision making.

(5) One of the most eccentric and unique feature of society is itself runs a different variety of people with their own beliefs, interests, opinions, and philosophy.  We speak different languages and we practice different religion. In a society, a preference of one group might not be suited to the taste of the other group. So there is a conflict between two groups in terms of preference.  The role of Democracy is it provides a peaceful solution by applying methods to settle differences by balancing the playing fields so that all of them will be equal.

(6) Democracy is fair since it runs into the principle of political equality. People has there own voice, from people leaving a life like hell to people with substantial wealth, they all shares with this right. They are not subjects’ high risk for future abuses because Democracy safeguards them from these treats and accords them the dignity.

These are some advantages of a well enforced Democracy but we have to admit, on the other hand, that there is no perfect system of government. These imperfections constitute a decay and even death of that system.

The Sunset.

The sun is setting. View from MRT North Avenue Station. 

All About Sex And Gender.

When I was a grade school student I found this book entitled “BEING SEXUAL AND CELIBATE” in our house in the province. This book is written by Keith Clark. This was previously owned by my uncle who was a former seminarian back then. The first impression was, I did not grasp the whole thing about the book.  But I remember though that one of many things Keith discussed here was his philosophy about sexuality; and according to him human has three levels of sexuality. These are:

1. Biological level. The very easy way to know the gender of a person is based on the physiological manifestation of sex, the genital or the sex organ. It is considered as the “shallowest”  identification and it gives parent  a hint on how they will be treat their child later on. As shown in the photo below:

2. Psychological. Clark’s explanation in psychological level of sexuality is how a person feels about his soul. This is basically dealing with a persons perception of his sexuality.  If he feels his a man, then he is a man… same thing as being a woman. Gender identity disorder rises when there is the element of “discontent” to a person’s biological status. Status has two kinds: The ascribed and the achieved. Sex is an “ascribed status”  because sex  itself is a nature  assigned to a person without his/her interference. while the achieved status is the opposite.

In philosophizing this article I encountered a problem of how do we identify gender? Because gender possesses a higher or deeper sense of meaning since it embodies the range of a persons femininity and masculinity which entirely depends on sex, social roles, and sexual identity. My humble thesis here is “When a person decides for himself, anything around and between the process of making such decision forms part the totality of his achieved status.”  So i think this reconciles the conflict of identity of sex and gender as ascribed and achieved statuses.  Since psychological level of sexuality involves a persons decision, psychological sexuality gives rise to issues regarding human identification of gender which most of the time inconsistent to his assigned sex or what we call transexualism.

3.The Spiritual level of sexuality generally it is the intimate connection of a person to his God.  Specifically the persona of  the person each time he connects to his Deity, the way he presents himself to God, the Ethics of a person towards fulfilling his mission as a son or daughter of the Lord.

Homosexuality. Discontent. Deviation. 

I believe that there is such thing as discontent in sexuality. Discontent is a product of  a persons repression in his way of life. It  is the product of  repression of  freedom and the constriction of self in terms of gender expression. When a person cannot express his wholeness, when  freedom; suppose to be the feeling of “boundlessness” to do things which does not need to hide or seclude in order to stall self from social judgment is just a mere recitals of dreams and expectations.  Discontent is when people around are  “rationally  irrational” and “imperfectly perfect” which gives them the permission  and the posture of superiority  as a license to judge unevenly which will leads to a deeper sense of segregation in the society.

For example, homosexuality is still considered as deviation or disobedience to the conduct of  the society. According to my Sociology professor, homosexuality is a form of tolerable deviancy. Meaning, it disobeys  social norms and expectation but the society tolerated such deviation since the only difference is the “audience” or the people is now receiving this “feel” that homosexuality as nonprejudicial to collective good. Which I think is right! With my personal biases. Indeed, gays and lesbian are acknowledged and tolerated without any interference but are considered a normative violation.

THE WEST. SEX. CHURCH. TRADITIONAL AND LIBERTARIAN

The vast network of internet and its penetration to the whole society open windows for  Eastern people to see the western world on how they deals with homosexuality. Good thing we saw them that open. Thus influence our thinking of “today”. Until the modernization of “today”. . . still, religious people thinks and treated homosexuality as a sin. It is usual for the church to cling to their traditional way to view issues regarding our  morality. I believe that homosexuality is like sex out of marriage. They  carries the same weight. One thing I learned before was the Catholic line of teaching is greatly influenced by an Ancient Greek philosopher named Aristotle.

Applying Ethics by Olen & Berry states that St. Thomas Aquinas a mediaeval thinker incorporated Aristotle’s idea in Church Doctrine.

St Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle

First of the four doctrine adopted by the church from Aristotle is (1) nature has its purpose.  For the church, the purpose of sex is for reproduction. (Maybe God is too bored reproducing human by making a humanesque figure from mud. JOKE) —Beyond this purpose is immorality.

Immorality is the unacceptable conduct in a society. Since every society has there own gauge of what is moral and what is not, they put up an imaginary “column” to what is good and what is bad. The conflict here is when the society is influenced be a bigger body that influenced humanity for hundred of years from culture, tradition, beliefs, way of living up to way of thinking. Catholicism in the Philippine gains cultural and traditional significance and we are bored hearing this over and over again since grade school.

According to Aristotle, (2) everything has a feature that defines a characteristic. We human, our defining characteristic is we are rational and therefore has the capability to think and the capability to engage in fully human love. The third one is (3) everything in nature has its proper good. When a person is engaged in a fully human love he is also opening himself to a cycle.

In love, the church treated it this way:

That human love is not just a romantic love but a love that will be elevated to parental love. Parental love is when you produced children. Parental love is the completion or perfection of the cycle. So, true human love is not just romance and personal sexual pleasure. This builds a strong framework that sex in effect is for procreation and not just lust or any “platonic” reasons.

Church says, engaging into sex without love and to engage into sex not open to the concept of procreation violates human nature and therefore violates our dignity. Since it violates dignity, sex is a wrongful conduct that constitutes a “sin”.  This does not mean that unmarried sex with love and commitment is moral. Remember that everything in church has purpose, everything has characteristic, everything is proper good and (the last idea is) (4) those three are intimately related to each other. Here, the purpose of marriage takes place. Marriage is a union of two to become one so that they will be acceptable to the society and to God.  The church said, it’s immoral to have sex when there’s no sincerity and fidelity: Two elements of union that only marriage can provide and latter will justify that sex without marriage is immoral.  This is a very TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE about sex.

On the other hand, sex has a libertarian perspective.

Sexual revolution in 1960s to 1980s played important role to change the how sexuality is recognized as an existing reality.

This revolution is the “coming-out” of issues regarding premarital sex, masturbation, pornography, sexuality, and Erotic fantasy. It was rarely a view out of enlightenment when people see opportunity of “openness” in matters regarding sex.  One of its concepts is the idea of FREE LOVE.

Free love emerged as a sexual revolutionary concept in the mid 60’s that taught the hippies the concept of “power of love and the beauty of sex as part of student life.” Primarily a counter culture idea but its public manifestation was ended in the mid 80’s because of the public awareness of AIDS and other fatal sexual diseases. Other sexual revolutionary idea includes explicit sex on screen, the use of contraception and pills, premarital sex, and the normalization of pornography.

All of these are libertarian perspective about sex. Therefore, libertarian is synonymous to “freedom” or “openness” in sex. According to Sociologist/Anthropologist Margaret Meads who conducted a study about psychosexual development of adolescent in the island of Samoa, Sexual freedom experienced by teenagers is an easy transition from childhood to adulthood.

Aside from the reality that sexual revolution is coined with “freedom”, it is also a new form of capital exploitation in the form of pornography and other sexual acts that elicits and involves the monetary economy.

The general libertarian view about sex is like the usual conduct of human. Conducts like playing tennis, cooking, and other usual activities. So it does not give burden of eternal damnation or exacerbate such conduct as disobedience to God. Remember that in a libertarian perspective, as long as the manner of conduct of sex is not dishonest, done not in a manner of coercion, exploitation and does not violate obligation and fundamental rights of a person, this conduct is acceptable. Example of this is rape (insertion of any object to any orifice). The two elements of sex to be considered as rape are (1) force and (2) intimidation. If the act of sex is not coercive, then sex is just an acceptable conduct of two people.

 The mechanism of this view is often regards to ask “why not”. Why shouldn’t sex be treated like any other activities? Why we considered moral playing tennis with a person we don’t love but immoral to have sex in a person we don’t love? Why we say it’s moral to eat lunch with the same sex but immoral to have sex with the same person?

WHY?

As far as I know, sex is not just growling.

The Star

Our Goal In Life Is Death.

Have you ever think of death or practically dying as your own choice?

Six months ago I wrote a very sad poem about death. I was contemplating to have one. I don’t know if I am serious but what I generally feels inside that I want to die. Here’s my poem:

DEI

I just woke from a shallow sleep,
I sigh, open the window and take a deep breath.
Yesterday was awning to death.
Desire to die.
Wanting to die.
Forget dreams just die!
Forget family- forget the madness of the world.
FORGET EVERYTHING just die.

I slept like a sleepless drunkard as if I never desired to live.
When sleep has forgotten me I laid my body tired and dream for a
silent death.
I count people on my wake.
I think of people mourning at me.
The fragrance of blossoms.
The tears and laughter of friends,
their receptions and regrets.

My dreams of vivid sunrise and flashes of skies left me growling.
Darkness is gazing the undying emptiness of untenanted space and;
Death is a disturbance that betrayed my wholeness.
They never cease.
Dei in heaven,
You know oh lord you know,
That in a slow afternoon of Sunday,
I grappled hopelessly towards you.

It might be a product of superficial and wrong view over “life” but I don’t want to deal with this factor. The thing that I want to emphasize is this: As a human, we lies into the portion of being vulnerable to experience and wanting  death.

According to Sylvia Plath(1932–1963), a blooming American novelist, short story writer, and poet in her controversial poem Lady Lazarus,  “Dying is an art like everything else.” Suddenly, four months after she wrote the poem she committed suicide by placing her head in the oven.

Dying is an art.

It might be viewed that death is something beautiful. A masterpiece of dying. It is an art like anything else. Dying is an artistic process which involves the freedom and boundlessness of an art without  no foe and restriction.  There are many way to die. One dies because of natural death. One because of accident which suddenly occurs without knowing and the other might die because of sickness and infirmities.

 Some choose to die. Is it possible that a person is capable of choosing his death? Of course yes! Human are born to be a rational being. We are capable of thinking and reasoning which distinct us from  the other lower being. Rationality is acting on reason which accords to the fact of what is true and real. Therefore, there is a rationality of death where a person dies according to his “self determination”. He determines his own death. It is like how Sylvia Plath and other  people who committed suicide determined and chose their fate by destroying themselves.

According to a book entitled “Anatomy of Suicide”  the causes of suicide can be synthesize in four rational acts.

1. Suicide can be a practice to those people who wishes to prevent pain and personal suffering of the body and soul. This includes (1) physical and mental pain like what happened to Sylvia Plath and other people who lose the battle against depression.

2. Suicide can be an outcome of man’s courage severely put into a test like what happened to kamikaze pilots during the second world war.

3. Suicide can be a vindication of a person’s honor like what a samurai soldier do if he failed in his mission and failed his master.

4. Suicide can be a way of sacrificing life to be an example to others.

All of these are rational acts because a person uses his own reason to decides his own death. Rationality of death or rationality of suicide is a reflection of our morality.

According to Professor Shelly Kagan from Stanford University, life can be viewed in a Cartesian plane. Wherein, Y axis represents the intensity of  life’s experiences and the X axis which represents the duration of life.  It can be viewed this way:

3 ACTS OF LIFE

This figure shows that your life becomes “nothing” for a while and a person  were able to maneuver to recover and return to the life worth living.  It will be irrational for a person to kill himself in the point C because he were able to surpass the negative part of life.  Killing his self in this point in effect avoids him the large part of lifes opportunity  that will be better of living. However, it will be rational to kill himself in the point B because he will be able to avoid the problem what we will meet in the in the act II which is the most horrible point in your life. Point A will avoid him from a huge part of act I which is a life worth living and  committing suicide is a premature plan, -thus making it irrational.

This figure represents a wonderful recovery under act III up to the persons natural death. But what if this will not be the situation.

Consider this figure, wherein act III is almost near to natural death but he will be able to recover.  Obviously it will be rational to commit suicide in the point A. It is also rational for others to kill themselves in point B not to avoid the perils of the second act which now exists as history but rather avoiding their upcoming natural death. Sometimes suicide in point B is an act to prevent the aftermath in the act II.

This  figure illustrates a life that will be succumbed into life that is better of dead so dying is definitely a rational option.  Now, when will be the exact time? If you will die in the point A you will loss a short while of a life that is better living so dying in the point B will be the perfect option. For example, John has a severe form of Alzheimer’s Disease and he is confronted into a situation where he is contemplating to commit suicide. John is now facing a scenario that entails a reality that his life in the near future will be better of dead. Assume that we will put a point C near the vertical blue line, is it still possible to commit suicide? The answer is yes, either to avoid the aftermath and the exhaustion of the act II or to avoid the natural death.

Before considering the options illustrated above, we have to first answer two philosophical questions. One is a question of rationality and the other is a question of morality. A question of rationality is “when will be suicide a rational thing to do?” and on the other hand, the question of morality is, “Is suicide moral?”

The rationality of suicide arises after considering two very important questions:

1. Are you better of dead?

2. Could it ever be rational for a person to trust his judgment if the answer to the first question is yes?

The problem in answering this question is when a person perceived that his life is so bad and he thinks that he is better of dead, is most of the time, he is not  thinking clearly. So the fact that his mind is clouded entails that he  cannot trust his  judgment.

According to Philosophers, the very question that a person is better of dead does not make any sense. They made an assumption that in order to make comparison, we must consider the condition of the person before and what condition a person would be afterwards, if  they make such decision. The problem with people is they both satisfy this two question. It is like saying “I have a very good life before exactly opposite to my worthless life today and certainly a life full of worthless in the future.”  We satisfy these two conditions that’s why the worth of asking the question “Am I better of dead?” greatly diminished. The second question will not be answered because death is an end and non existence is not a “state of condition” because state and condition presuppose existence. So the condition of the second question will not be met.

Going back to the illustration, in general, we are not certain to what entails the future. Therefore, the  recovery in the third act remains possible making suicide nonsense after all. Prof. Kagan refers this  as a “crystal ball” which is the capability to foretell the  future. Since human has no crystal ball, suicide is considered as playing all odds or simply gambling your own life. Fortunately human always gamble for life in the sense that we are always in a point to taking risks in every  decision we make. We sometimes turn left or turn right or even going forward or backward. We agree into uncertainty.  We are like dancing with the thrilling melody in the midst of darkness.

 Filipino Culture and beliefs 

The Filipino culture and beliefs as we know is deeply influenced by Catholic dogma, and taking one’s life is considered a serious and grave sin against God.  The theological argument here is  life is a property of  God and it is His gift to the world and to be able to destroys it carries a heavy  assertion of dominion over God. It is a grave offense because we lies into the belief that only God can decide our death  since He is the one who gives us life.

My question is “Is it possible to walk with God even that person committed suicide?”

The answer lies on the view of the scripture about suicide. Once a person comes and walks in faith with Christ he will be forgiven for his sins as long as he walks in the light.  According to the book of Romans, those who walked according to the spirit and with Christ they will never suffer condemnation. How I dream that I can also walked with God the same way.

Note: I wrote this not in a defiance against the teaching of the church. I wrote this as a plain rational human being.

Cab

These are the Yellow Cab I saw when I went to Calamba, Laguna few months ago.

Despotism: All you need to know.

You can roughly locate any community in the world somewhere along the scale running along the way from democracy to despotism. Once the democracy end somewhere in the middle is Despotism.

Credit to owner

Any politics student should avoid the idea that the mere form of government can safeguard a nation against despotism. For example, Germany under the term of Pres. Paul von Hindenburg is a republic. And yet in this republic, an aggressive despotism took root and flourish under Adolf Hitler. When a competent observer  looks sign of despotism in a community he looks beyond find words and noble praises. But we agrees to two common “yardsticks” help in observing how nearer the community in Despotism.  The respect scale and the power scale.

REPECT AND POWER SCALES

An observer can use the respect scale to find how many citizens get an even break. As a community moves towards despotism, respect is restricted to fewer people. A community with low respect scale if common courtesy withheld from a large group of people on account of political attitudes, if people are rude to others because they have a higher political position and this gives them power and wealth which gives them that right or they do not like the mans race or religion.

Equal opportunity given to people not just citizen to develop their skill is one factor in rating a community on respect scale. The opportunity to develop useful skill is not enough. The equally important importunity to put skills to use is a further test on the respect scale.

A power scale is another important “yardstick” of despotism.  It gauges citizens share in making a community decision. A community which concentrated decision making in few hands rate low on the power scale and moving towards despotism. Like France under the Boron king which one of them says He is the state.

Philippines for example is a Democratic Republican Country. But Democracy itself allows despotism.

How?

Trough it’s citizens. When the citizen in a particular community allows power to be concentrated in the hands of the few. The test of despotism disregards the will of the people.  Another example is during election, when voters can only vote the way they are told. A community is moving towards despotism. When legislature become a ceremonial assembly only and have no real control in the law making. The state is moving towards despotism.

In a downright despotism, opposition is dangerous whether the despotism is official or unofficial.

The spread of respect and power in a community is influenced by certain conditions which measured by two means:

1. Economic Distribution 

If a community’s economic distribution become slanted. Middle class incomes grew smaller and despotism stands a better chance to gain a foothold.

A land which is privately owned one sign of a poorly balanced economy is the concentration of land ownership into a small number of people. In effect, when small farmers losses their lands they are also losing their independence. If these condition exist through out a nation, the likelihood of despotism  increased.

In a community which depends almost on a single industry like factories and mines, maintaining economic balance is a challenging problem. If this condition exist in the whole nation as a whole so that the control of jobs and business opportunity is in the few hands despotism stands a good chance.

Another sign of a poorly balance economy is the taxation system that presses heavy taxes to those who are least able to pay.

In my Economy class with Prof. Bernardo, a larger  part of a small income is spent in a much necessity such as food. Sale taxes in such necessity hits the small income harder.

2. Information

A community rate low on an information scale when the press, radio and another channels of communication are controlled by only few people and the citizen of the community have to accept what they are told.

For example in a master class for teachers, when graduate students are told that young people cannot trusted to form there own opinion and when teachers put this concept put in practice, students taught to accept ideas uncritically and questions are not encourage.  When newspapers and radio are officially controlled, the people will receives exactly what the few and control wanted to. One form of control is government censorship.

Now,  what is the status of Philippines today? Second, what way it is like to go in the future?

To find out the answer in the first question, you can rate it using the Respect and the power scale. The second question is answerable using Economic Distribution and information scale.

Remember, that the lower the community rates in Economic distribution and Information scale the lower it is likely to rate on the respect and power scales and thus to approach Despotism