I wonder how you'll react to National Artist's F. Sionil Jose's diagnosis of our national malaise: We are poor because we, particularly our elite, have not been moral and nationalistic.
It's quite hard to react to the speech because I can't discern its thesis more readily than I'd like to, and the essay doesn't seem to be unified to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, please. I can sense a lot of wrong things in what he's saying; I just can't articulate them for now.
(Update: Turns out this speech is an old one, delivered back in 2005 (or around that time), and it's title is "Revolution and the University of the Philippines." Here are reactions at the time from three distinguished folks.)
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Gratitude corner
I've been a fan of wonderful essays lately. Essays can be as powerful as poems, short stories, and novels in rousing the emotion and bringing certain truths to life. Here's the loot I've found (hope everything is Googleable):
Thomas Merton's "Rain and the Rhinoceros," a complex yet easy-to-follow metaphorical essay about "solitude, personal freedom and the nature of joy"; I read it, though, as a gentle indictment of urban 'civilization.' Faith McNulty's "Mouse," a charming portrait of an otherwise icky subject, her pet mouse (pest to everyone else). McNulty is a nature writer for "the most urbane" of mags, The New Yorker.
The rest are used as essay writing models in college writing classes across America:
Bertrand Russell's "Three Passions" - a model of coherence and unity -- and honest writing. Alex Haley's "Thank You" - a different kind of Thanksgiving Day essay, which is an epistolary. Dick Gregory's "Shame" - the one essay that made me laugh and cry due to its pathos and brilliance, like discovering an intelligent jazz/soul piece in the attic; the delicacy of its topic (extreme poverty, embarrassment, and sense of dignity) makes this particular essay a treasure of humanity. Roger Wilkins' "I Became Her Target" - the kind of schoolboy memoir you'd first hurt deeply for to be able to write; a racially charged essay. John McMurtry's "Smash Thy Neighbor" - a contrarian look at a certain most cherished, all-American sport: football. George Orwell's "A Hanging" - a spare, non-maudlin, but haunting account of capital punishment in Burma. Russel Baker's "In My Day" - a nostalgia trip with a delicate, truthful twist about the supposed invincibility of our parents. Haven Kimmell's "A Legenday Moment" - a very witty and funny narrative about her neurotic parents who deserve each other. Beth Johnson's "The Professor is a Dropout" - the nicely developed and unforgettable tale of Guadalupe Quintanilla, a Mexican-American who's now at the top in America after being brushed aside as a moron due to her initial difficulty with the English language. Deems Taylor's "The Monster" - a gripping, unexpectedly mean valentine to the genius of Wagner. Mary Sherry's "In Defense of the F Word" - a proposal that failing students be given an F so as to teach them right and not cheat them of what proper education means. Joyce Garity's "Is Sex All that Matters?" - zooms in on the case study of a young woman, to illustrate the influence of the barrage of "sexual images in media on young people's behavior and dreams." Joan Dunayer's "Here's to Your health" - a comparison/contrast between "the glamorous 'myth' about alcohol, as presented in ads and pop culture, with the reality -- which is far less appealing." Beth Johnson's "Bombs Bursting in Air" - a ponderous yet fluid and easy piece exploring this question: "Is it possible for us to protect ourselves from the grief and pain of life?"
Meanwhile, I'm still in the middle of thumbing through this piece, which is one of the finest literary works ever made in English, at least according to one professor: Jonathan Swift's "A modest proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public." This is a material that's pertinent to the most recent manufactured crisis of our time: the so-called rice crisis or food crisis. (Aw, come one now, y'all. Stop lying, will you?)
Btw, I haven't read The New Yorker for months now, so I'm happy to grab a copy and even happier to know that it's the food issue of 2007, which I read from cover to cover. In this issue, I've read David Gopnik writing about "localism" (eating only the foods within your square mile of locality) as extreme sport, Calvin Trillin on Singapore's street foods, David Sedaris on not knowing how to cook, someone else about a sleek fine wine fraudster, another writer's "life list" on wildlife eats (accompanied by an sumptuously yucky illlustration of a endangered species pie), Lara (?) Vapnyar's entertaining fiction on two ESL students, "Luda and Milena," among other juicy morsels/offerings. Sasha Frere-Jones reviews the music Manu Chao and Joan Acocella critiques the latest translation of Dante's Paradiso.
And: I need to read the following assignments, which are not essays but full-blown books. Novels!: Shakespeare's Hamlet - because students are constantly assigned to write a literary analysis on this classic this time of the year. George Orwell's 1984 - finally, a super-cheap copy of a literary and sociopolitical writing gem! Edith Wharton's House of Mirth - to see what the fuss is all about, why the novel made it to the top 100 in a certain list; good luck to me, and thanks to Annie for the copy. I say good luck because I couldn't stand Jane Austen's convoluted prose and thoughts in Sense and Sensibility (to think I love convoluting in the name of deliberate obfuscation), although Charles Dickens I can take anytime. Speaking of Dickens,' I saw a copy of A Tale of Two Cities, and I was unfazed; I'd try reading this one too.
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Over the weekened, I saw Freestyle perform live (for free), had a nice haircut at a tattoo shop in Goldcrest with J.R., and discovered a wonderful food supplement that solved all my health ills: First Vita Plus (which contains malunggay, kulitis, sili, saluyot, and kamote leaf extracts), thanks to my old friend, Ai, who's a doctor and highly recommends this invention by former DOH Sec. Dr. Galvez Tan. (No, this is not a paid ad.)
Nice YouTube vid
Finally, I hate ads, but I love this one.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Magiting ka nga ba, Pilipino?
Posted by R.O. at 10:27 AM
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16 comments:
I tried accessing the link but it says 'The requested URL /fsioniljose_lecture.htm was not found on this server.'
I dunno why. What's your email? Will just send it to you, hoping you'll react.
Or Google "revolution and the university of the philippines" instead. There, you'll see links to the speech, plus reactions from several key people.
I read his speech here:
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2008/03/ignorance-apathy-social-morality-and.html
I think his analysis is spot on and becoming more and more true by the day. I disagree on the role of the peasant and some other minor stuff but i believe the oligarchs are driving us toward revolution as a necessity.
Do you Restyo Odon and Mr Jugo own a home/land/paying mortgage? Aren't you afraid that the Maoist revolution will succeed and socialize that piece of real estate that you have been paying for many many years and redistribute it to the proletariat?
I disagree with the unenlightened oligarchs, but I'll choose them any day of the week versus the CPP or Military Government, because the oligarchs understand and respect the concept of private property.
And why delete my post Resty? Did you find it offensive or something?
Please 1) identify yourself and 2) watch your language.
Sionil Jose is not a terrorist, but a decent Filipino writer even if you don't agree with his views and writing. He doesn't deserve such terms as "old fart" and "f*ck." Please let's be kind to one another.
And, no, I'm against armed revolution. What we're in agreement here is that we're in deep trouble because the rich get richer while the poor poorer.
Anonymous, i and my family belong to the middle class and have a lot to lose in an armed revolution. However, i do not let my class affiliations blind myself to the validity of Sionil Jose's ideas. That's the price of intellectual honesty.
It's a simple question of the lesser evil. Who are the aggressive power brokers/stakeholders in the Philippines ba? Military, CPP/NPA, oligarchs.
Pick one. How you might say? Well, let's stop picking on Arroyo for one and start supporting her. She's killing the commies and bribing the soldiers. So stop those middle-class rallies against GMA and support the parliamentary referendum to prolong her and her party's rule.
And let's not fear the poor people. Hungry poor people are simple mobs that can be silenced by the riot police. Hungry people with guns, aka commies, are harder to put down.
So what I'm saying is that for as long as we continue a sustained attack on commies, we would be able to control their ranks, and our middle-class way of life we be secure.
Anonymous, that you don't pull the trigger yourself but approve of those who do does not speak of a 'lesser evil'. It shows (yet again) the banality of evil.
anon.: right and wrong doesn't mater to you? corruption in high places is nothing to you?
Corruption is a terrible, terrible thing. It's the cause of much suffering of the Filipino poor.
If the communists or military sweep to power tomorrow and be a little less corrupt than the oligarchs, I would have to agree that there would be an exponential improvement in the lives of the hungry and destitute.
But if helping a lot of poor means that the new military or communist overlords would take away the accumulated wealth of the present rich, then I'm afraid I would have to side with the evil oligarchs.
As much as I can sympathize with the predicament of the poor, I wouldn't allow a power shift that would uplift their standard of living while at the same time lower mine, that is, my middle class way of living.
It may sound selfish, but I've thought this through. I don't want to spend the rest of my life "starting over" to accumulate again the real estate, big savings account, stocks, and bonds from which my I derive my (rent, interest, dividends, coupons) income from. At the moment, I don't work, but I live like semi-royalty because of that accumulated wealth. I'm afraid if commies or military take over then they'll tax me to the hilt or be forced to go overseas where I'll become a common tao (my wealth would be worth less if liquidated, converted to foreign currency, and moved overseas).
oh wow. bravo, cvj and resty, for taking on the anonymous one. i think s/he is over-paranoid. naniniwala kasi sa propaganda ng gobyerno at militar. it's not as if it's ever going to happen, that the commies will win in such an absolute manner that they will be able to "take away the accumulated wealth of the present rich". not in this god- and commie-fearing third world democracy kuno. but this is not to say that the Left's dreams for the masses are unrealistic and impossible. in fact, there would be no Left if government were in the service of these masses and not just of the elite.
Anonymous. No need to adopt the communist propaganda. It's a question of justice. No one has to take sides because there is only one side, the peoples and this side is well expressed in our Bill of Rights. Rights is not a dynamic, dependent on the current mode of government. It is the only permanent characteristic of man as a social and civilized being... that he has a right and no one, not even a thousand rich people, intellectuals, politicians or what not, can take it away from him.
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