New guy

(The outsourced life chronicles)

Ah, the 42nd floor. So many new faces, and not one face I know. Who are all these people? How did they get here? My, they’re mostly young, and well-dressed, and beautiful, and smart. I wish I could get to know them all and be close to some.

Where was I all along when I was looking for new staff for expansion. Oh, I remember. I was self-employed, I mean, hiring myself out to do temp jobs to tide me over in between jobs.

The last time I was connected with this firm, I was a probee. Now I’m back as a contractual. It’s funny. Is that fair? Guess not. Well, in a world of relativism, fair has become relative. I can live with that. The marvel is I’m back at all. Who would have thought. But I came back a different man – and via a different route. I didn’t make my entry through the usual channel, although I took and passed the regulation HR exams. (An insider said I got a very high score. J) I had a friend, an old officemate, to back me. I guess I got kinda lucky -- although I prefer to think I got in because I was good.

But I’m tired of this. I’ve been through it all. I’ve written more than a hundred articles on the subject, some of which neared sounding subversive.

Will they like me here? Will I like them? I’m too old in this – all that drama of the old daily grind. Somehow, I feel sorry for myself. I feel like riding for a fall. The defeatist part of me getting the upper hand, sure.


**

It’s amazing how this company is able to corner a multi-talented, highly educated workforce – doctors, engineers, lawyers... Do you ever wonder where these people have gone? They’re all hiding here. Many of them, mercifully, still practice their true professions, but only as a sideline, I guess. For now, this is their bread-and-butter. It’s sad when you think about it. This high-end factory. They’ve all given up on the system and worked with it. They voted with their resumes. It’s a desperate act when you think about it. “Bread and circus,” the political cynics would say. "Keep their hands busy, keep them amused, and they'll be okay." But I see more of acceptance in it than resignation -- not cynicism but realism, pragmatism. Maybe I’m just trying to be overly positive-minded, being pollyannaish.

But I know this is not the ideal world. I’m pretty sure we all went to university with this possibility too far off our minds. Who would have thought? But what are we to do, faced as we are with immediate needs – putting food on the table, marrying and being married off, making a family. This is far better than nothing. At least we are able to make both ends meet, and afford to live a parallel life in the real world when we exert an extra effort outside office hours.

To think that the Americans hate us so much for this. They feel that we stole their jobs. Oh, we understand them. If there’s anyone who’d understand unemployment, underemployment, insecurity, fear far better, it’s me, it’s us. We’ve perfected those things for years, turning each of them into an art form.

What’s an ideal world anyway? Is idyll attainable? It’s most likely that the master-slave dichotomy will outlast us all. That’s how will fallen cookie crumbles. We just have to make the most of it.

So it goes. I will toil day in, day out, whether at the office whenever I’m called to report, or at home, my new office base. I will try my best to be happy and contented with my lot, until a better one comes along. I know I’m just delaying the inevitable, though: falling in line at the embassy for some working visa. I just hope my rationalizations and denial will see me through in the meanwhile.

Domino

(The outsourced life chronicles)

It takes an entire community to support an office life. I first realized this when this company I worked for one day closed down. The first to go with us was the canteen. Then the office supply store on the ground floor followed. The utility companies also lost business, making all the maintenance men and women we’ve known jobless overnight. The bank too, which dealt with the payroll. The corner grocery store also suffered a major setback. The fast-food stores around the block lost a big number of regulars. Even the underground economy suffered: the carinderia, the small-time banana cue and fishball vendors, et al.

I wonder how everyone will find a way of surviving.

Darfur

Did you know that I have a former high school classmate who now works as a doctor in Darfur? She’s connected with this Medicine sans Borders or something to that effect. I’ve always wondered why she ever took that kind of horrible job? Is she genuinely committed? Does she love humanity that much? Or is she trying to escape something at home? I have my own suspicions but let’s leave it at that. The last time, it was Kashmir.

I have these personal thoughts in mind when I mustered the nerve to pick up a long-winded article on Darfur in Harper’s. Reading through it, I had to stop midway. It’s a crazy world out there, like Abu Sayyaf land times ten -- the multiple factionalism, the violence. The accompanying photoessay is unbearable, especially the one with a seven-year old boy that looked skeletal and whose face resembled ET’s. Darfur, in the Sudan, is the world’s new Somalia, the new Ethiopia, the new Rwanda. Yet we hardly ever read or hear about it.

I wonder how M. survives there. What’s a good girl like her doing in places like those? Her people needs her kind too if she’s all that intent. But who am I to ask these questions? Well, I’m writing them down because I’m not ever gonna ask them to her face. These are questions mostly to my self.

On youth

I resent this:

“It has taken old age to make me realize that the world exists for young people. Their tastes in food and music and clothing are what the world is catering to, even while they are imagining themselves victims of the old.”

- a character in John Updike’s The Full Glass” (short story)

The mystery of cancer

Why do even kids catch cancer? What really is the cause of cancer? If it is caused by carcinogens, then why do kids catch it when they are supposedly carcinogen-free, when they haven’t smoked a cigarette?

This is unscientific, but if hate is the real cause of cancer, then why kids, who are pure and therefore free of hate, catch it?

If carcinogens are the real culprit, then why do a lot of smokers, even the pure-tobacco cigar smokers of Ilocos, live out their age without ever having cancer? Maybe other disease, but not cancer.

I know people whose entire lifestyle revolve around living a carcinogen-free existence, and yet they still develop cancer. …While there are people – jeepney drivers, for instance, constantly exposed to lead and other toxins in the air – surviving unscathed. This disease seems unfair.

I couldn’t contain it anymore, so I asked a new friend, yet another barely practicing doctor. Why do kids have cancer? He explains that it could be genetic, mentioning this theory called “two-strike theory” or something. The genetic reason makes sense to me, and I’ll leave it at that, for now.

But it is just a theory. Anybody can construct a theory to explain anything mysterious. I’ve read somewhere about someone who goes so far as to say that cancer is caused by a virus. If so, why hasn’t the virus been isolated?

Cancer doesn’t just have unknown causes – the disease’s “etiology” being “idiopathic,” in medical parlance – it also has no known cure. All you cure in cancer are its symptoms. I learned that from my new boss (also a doctor).

I wish medicine, the imperfect science, could shed more light on this and other such mysteries.

Jaki, on Darwin's theory of evolution

As a science, Darwin's theory is the only scientific approach to the vast sequence of living beings because its two pillars: the difference between parents and offspring can be measured as well as the impact of the environment on that difference. But since neither of those pillars have been quantitatively established with sufficient precision, Darwinism as a science remains incomplete, a point which drives Darwinists mad. As for Darwinism as an ideology, it is materialism at its worst. Evolutionary theists still should see these points in their true weight.

(Whoa, I have also insisted on the same point in this space, in less elegant wording. Naturally, not one soul liked it -- to think that it's not even a scholarly thought, it's plain common sense.)

Fr. Stanley Jaki is "one of the most influential scientific minds in the Catholic Church. He died on April 7. He gave respectability to the view that, far from being essentially at odds, Christianity and science are natural allies. His burial will be at Pannonhalma Abbey, Hungary, on April 29."

Snipped from the news:

"Jaki was a prolific writer, authoring dozens of books, articles and essays covering everything from the metaphysics of the Eucharist, to the primacy of the Apostle Peter, to exactly where and how Charles Darwin went woefully wrong.

One of the central questions he dealt with was this: How is it that science became a self-sustaining enterprise only in the Christian West? Jaki believed the answer lay in the Christian faith, in belief in the Incarnation, and his life work was to show why this was so.

The American writer Walker Percy, a convert to Catholicism, formulated the position Jaki came to espouse this way in his novel Lost in the Cosmos: "As Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation."

Jaki affirmed that Christianity prevented a slide into pantheism because the doctrine of the creation was bolstered by faith in the Incarnation. Pantheism is invariably present when the eternal and cyclic view of the cosmos prevails. The uniqueness of the Incarnation and Redemption, Jaki held, dashed to pieces any possibility of the eternal and cyclic view; for if the world were cyclic, the once-and-for-all coming of Christ would be undermined. The uniqueness of Christ secures a linear view of history and makes Christianity more than just one among many historical factors influencing the world, Jaki argued. The dogmas of the Creation and Incarnation mean "an absolute and most revolutionary break with a past steeped in paganism,'' and the enunciation of these dogmas and their historical impact is "an uphill fight never to be completed," he said.

A relentless scholar, Jaki studied the religious thinking of G. K. Chesterton, the works of the French physicist and historian of science Pierre Duhem, and the life of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian who famously converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Jaki is probably best known, however, for works like The Relevance of Physics (1966) and Science and Creation (1974), in which he argued that the scientific enterprise did not become viable and self-sustaining until its incarnation in Christian medieval Europe, and that the advancement of science was indebted to the Christian understanding of creation.

Father Jaki was a beloved and much-sought after "Chestertonian," and a true follower of the Rule of St. Benedict in every way imaginable — he was always teaching. He only had to be invited to speak once to the annual American Chesterton Society Conference....after that he would simply call Dale Ahlquist in advance and announce his topic! Such graceful moxie is very rare these days and those of us who have known him, learned from him, and loved him, have all been blessed and bettered by his initiative; it will be a palpable loss not to have this spiritual and intellectual giant in our midst any longer."

How much caffeine is too much?

The other day, I had Starbucks coffee to perk me up, then I had red iced tea from Karate Kid, then a cup of Coke from Jollibee later in the afternoon so I won’t be caught sleeping on the job. When C. gave me 3-in-1 Nescafe Intense, I shook my head. I’m not suicidal, but I almost got close to it.

A good question coffee addicts like me would like to ask then: How much caffeine is too much? Studies have tried to figure it out. Well, here's the result:

Caffeine dosage over 30 mg/day is toxic, and can cause agitation, palpitations, and tachycardia. You might need to be treated with procainamide, lidocaine, and beta-blockers.

Source: Emohare O, Ratnam V. Multiple cardiac arrests following an overdose of caffeine complicated by penetrating trauma. Anaesthesia. 2006.

See also: Caffeine-Related Psychiatric Disorders

My inner fetus

Have you met people who claim to have irrational hatred for their mother or father? I have. “Is it possible that our experiences in the womb can affect us?” Is the trauma of the mother the trauma of the child? Psychologists say the answer is yes.

Christine Schilte and Rene Frydman. Having a Baby? (Attendre Bebe?). Hachette Pratique. 2001 ed.:

“It is believed that many of the mother’s moods are transmitted to the child via the hormones. When a mother is stressed or emotionally upset, her body secretes hormones that make her heart beat faster and the tone of her voice may also change. … The development of the fetus can also be hindered by the mothers actions, and possibly her experiences.”

Supporting evidence cited:

- Dr. Fred Schwartz, a physician who developed “Transitions,” a series of recordings for the child in the womb:

…”Babies in the womb can hear at least several months before they are born.” Feeling welcomed means a life of affirmation; parental feelings of anger and abortion attempts lead to adverse effects on the baby.

- Dr. Monika Lukesch, Constantine University, Frankfurt, West Germany:

In a carefully controlled study of 2,000 women during pregnancy and birth, the “mother’s attitude toward her baby has the greatest single effect on how an infant turns out.”

- Dr. Gerard Rottman, University of Salzburg, Austria:

The unborn child is capable of very fine emotional distinctions.

- Dr. Thomas Verny, Canadian neurologist and psychiatrist:

“There is, however, no question that the unborn child remembers or that he retains his memories.”

(via Ilsa Reyes’ Inner Child Treasures, 2007, St. Pauls, Manila.)

**

Related new links:

Fetuses found to have memories by Jennifer Harper

Unborn Child's Memory Develops by 30 Weeks in the Womb: New Research by Hilary White

Play

“Man is the only perpetually young thing in the world, and the playground is the ideal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents… When we grow up, the world steals our hours and the most it gives us in return is a sense of usefulness. Should automation rob us of our sense of usefulness, the world will no longer steal our hours. Banned from the marketplace, we shall return to the playground and resume the task of learning and growing… Man first became human in an Eden playground, and now we have a chance to attain our ultimate destiny, our fullest humanness, by returning to the playground.”

- Eric Hoffer, San Francisco philosopher in Far Too Easily Pleased: A Theology of Play, Contemplation and Festivity. 1976.

Quote

One can be good for many wrong reasons. – Sr. Miriam Pollard, OCSO

Miss California, harassed

Miss California's answer to the beauty contest's Q&A lost her the Miss USA crown. You guess what the question was, and who asked it. It's Perez Hilton, the nastiest, most bitter, most hateful blogger around, and we're stopping there, or he might notice this little insignificant corner.

Here's another blogger's post that I'm in total agreement with.

The question:

“Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?”

Prejean’s response:

“We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

For that answer, Ms. California is being attacked here.

You might want to express your support for her here.

This is a fight for our basic freedom: speech. Yet where are the usual freedom-fighters? Missing in action. Same old, same old.

Peck's stages of human spiritual development

M. Scott Peck, in his book The Road Less Traveled and Beyond, identified four stages of human spiritual development, which seems to makes sense.

From Wikipedia:

"Stage I is chaotic, disordered, and reckless. Very young children are in Stage I. They tend to defy and disobey, and are unwilling to accept a will greater than their own. Many criminals are people who have never grown out of Stage I.

"Stage II is the stage at which a person has blind faith. Once children learn to obey their parents, they reach Stage II. Many so-called religious people are essentially Stage II people, in the sense that they have blind faith in God, and do not question His existence. With blind faith comes humility and a willingness to obey and serve. The majority of good law-abiding citizens never move out of Stage II.

"Stage III is the stage of scientific skepticism and inquisitivity. A Stage III person does not accept things on faith but only accepts them if convinced logically. Many people working in scientific and technological research are in Stage III.

"Stage IV is the stage where an individual starts enjoying the mystery and beauty of nature. While retaining skepticism, he starts perceiving grand patterns in nature. His religiousness and spirituality differ significantly from that of a Stage II person, in the sense that he does not accept things through blind faith but does so because of genuine belief. Stage IV people are labeled as Mystics.

"Peck argues that while transitions from Stage I to Stage II are sharp, transitions from Stage III to Stage IV are gradual. Nonetheless, these changes are very noticeable and mark a significant difference in the personality of the individual."

(via K.)

Manny Pacquiao, songer

Me, to my younger brother, who was listening to a new Tagalog song on FM radio: "Patayin mo nga yan, paulit-ulit, ang pangit-pangit!"


Brother: "Si Manny Pacquiao yan."


Me: "Huh?" (Faints.)

_____________
*songer (n., bastardized English) - Someone who tries to sing, and passably can (at least at the karaoke bar), and so fails to fend off mockery and insult by Simon Cowell. Despite all that, the songer isn't hurt. He knows.

**

Succumbed

Dear diary,

I succumbed to the temptations of the square-toed pointy shoes. For the office. (Need to wear 'em for whenever I report to the office so I can watch the Friday night fireworks at the MOA from Ayala Ave.).

So sue me.

On suicide

Suicide is one of those issues that can get really complicated. Here's the current position of the Catholic Church on suicide (via Mr. C.):

_________________

"Suicide is not one of the seven sins punishable by excommunication.

"The Church no longer automatically deprives a suicide of a Church burial, although there are still some restrictions on the solemnity and publicity of the funeral.

*"(Canon 1184 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not mention those who have committed suicide among those who are to be denied such rites.

http://www.zenit.org/article-14559?l=english

Canon 1184 does mention that public sinners who died without showing repentance may be deprived of Church funeral rites and burial, so if there is evidence that a certain person who committed suicide did so deliberately and without any mitigating cirumstances (e.g. a drug lord who kills himself in the course of a gunfight rather than surrender to the police), then that person may be denied a Church funeral / burial upon the decision of the bishop.)

"Yes, a lot of people commit suicide because they're not in their right minds. However, it is not proper to automatically assume that all suicides are insane or not in their right minds. Some people do embark on suicide with full awareness of what they are doing.

"It is interesting to note the "torture" clause in the CCC. This can refer to a case where, according to some moral theologians, suicide may be permissible:

"In our times, torture has become so refined and so methodical that in some cases, it is impossible for even the most heroic and patient man to endure torture without breaking down and doing what his torturers want. The Communists, Nazis and the CIA perfected torture techniques that were guaranteed to make people squeal. In the Church, the most infamous case was that of Cardinal Mindszenty, who was brutally tortured physically and mentally by the Hungarian Soviets until he made all of the false confessions that the Communists wanted him to make. The Chinese perfected the art of brainwashing.

"Now, let us say you are a political leader or a military man who has been captured, or is about to be captured. You are in possession of extremely sensitive information that could lead to the torture and death of many other people -- and you are certain that your jailers will torture you with unbelievable cruelty into revealing the information. Or you could be someone so important that your torturers will certainly try to drug you or brainwash you into becoming one of their minions, thus causing countless others to be killed, imprisoned or otherwise made to suffer.

"In such cases, according to some moral theologians who confronted the widespead use of torture by the Communists and the Nazis in the 20th century, it is morally permissible for that person to kill himself rather than let himself be tortured, thus endangering the lives of many other people. In this case, the person committing suicide is in reality defending those people from death. He is like a soldier who covers a grenade with his body rather than let his comrades die."

Wrapping my brain around it

In my desire to save capitalism from itself, I picked up Harper’s Nov. 2008 issue, which is about How to Save Capitalism: Fundamental Fixes for a Collapsing System, which features the ideas of capitalists and anti-capitalists: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Bill McKibben, James K. Galbraith, Barry C. Lynn, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Janszen, Amelia Warren Tyagi, and Michael Hudson.

The result is that everyone has a convincing point, leaving me all the more confused about what it’s all about: I couldn’t write my own take because I simply couldn’t connect the dots. Why can’t these people talk in a plain language? What exactly do they mean by, say, “realigning interests”? Sounds bull-manurish to me.

On to the survey of ideas then, hopefully not wild guesses that could bring us either nowhere or elsewhere that’s even worse (my own stupid thoughts in parentheses):

Stiglitz: Realign the interests of Wall Street

“The downturn is likely to be so severe partly because we have succumbed to the opinion that markets work best by themselves, unfettered by government regulations. But the people making this argument are the ones who have been served well by it. (But they always make this trickle-down-effect rebuttal. –R.O.) We can do far more to protect against self-interest. (But capitalism is all about self-interest, else we embrace its natural opposite.- R.O.) In particular, we need to improve the incentives that drive those in the finance industry, so that their interest align with those of the society and economy they are meant to serve. (But isn’t this a legislation of love? But the bigger problem is the legislation of selfishness and greed. Moderate the greed. -R.O.)”

Lynn: Abolish the stock options

“[M]anagers of … corporations [should] focus more on making next-generation products and less on piling up cash for themselves and the fund managers they serve. And that is eliminate, or at the very least to alter radically, the stock options that since the early 1990s have become such a huge part of executive pay packages. Back then, options were promoted as a way to bring the self-interest of managers more in line with that of shareholders. This is exactly the problem. The old antagonism between “professional” managers inside the firm and the masters of capital outside it helped ensure a balance between acts of creation and acts of destruction.”

Warren and Tyagi: Protect financial consumers

“When a baby stroller or an eyeliner is discovered to be dangerous, it is removed from the shelves. Yet financial products go unmonitored for basic safety. When shopping in the complex and constantly evolving financial market, where actual costs and unfavorable terms are regularly concealed, consumers are on their own. … It is time we created the equivalent of a Consumer Product Safety Commission for financial products, an agency whose purpose would be to protect homebuyers and investors from the finance industry’s most dangerous offerings.”

Hudson: Tax the land

“Classical economists contended that the tax burden needed to be shifted off of industry and labor and onto that which was taken from nature or granted by government decree (Mill’s ‘earned increment’)…. [The current} tax breaks on property and capital gains, along with the tax deduction for interest payments, provide a powerful incentive for (real estate) buyers to go into debt; that is, to pay mortgage interest to bankers for property they hope to sell at a gain. Thus, the income that governments have relinquished through property-tax cuts ends up being paid by new buyers to banks as interest. Rather than funding new development projects, most savings have been turned into bank loans for housing that already exists…[.] (I am suddenly reminded of Jane Smiley’s novel about real estate agents, In Good Faith – read it, read it, it’s so prophetic!) … As reform-minded economists have long argued, we must tax the rentiers (i.e., those who earn from long-standing land, monopoly, and bank rights). Taxing their privilege would yield as much as the present income and sales taxes combined, without eating into the earned income of wages and profits.” (This is simply impossible because the renters are also the lawmakers themselves. Hello? –R.O.)

Galbraith: Plan

“The problem is not how to save capitalism (our system is not capitalism) but how to save the unique and successful mixed economy built in the United States over the eighty-five years since the New Deal. … (Hi, Jego, you there? Isn’t this what you’re saying all along? –R.O.) Today, after thirty years of attack on government, all [the major public sector] functions (research, defense, finance stability, education, health care, housing) are damaged and in peril. The rot comes from predators posing as conservatives and mouthing the rhetoric of “free markets.” Their [real] goal is to use the government to build monopolies, to control resources, to block regulation, to crush unions, to divert as much as possible from taxpayers into private pockets. … The next successful system should be built on the basis of regulated finance, collective security, and above all, a national purpose.” (Shades of China’s central planning and development goals, eh? –R.O.)

Janszen: Reindustrialize

“[W]e should use the government to lay the foundations for a reindustrialization of America. We can do this in two ways. First, get government out of the way of progress by removing subsidies for uncompetitive companies. … Second, and more important, we should remove government subsidies of FIRE () industries. Be removing our structural support for the FIRE sector, we would free up billions of dollars of capital for both the private and public sectors. The capital, in turn, could be invested in American infrastructure. We need high-speed railways, ubiquitous high-bandwidth wireless, and nuclear energy, but we currently have a dysfunctional market dynamics that is stopping us from making these improvements.”

McKibben: Localize

“If the logic of a cheap-energy world has been relentless globalization and specialization, the logic of a post-oil planet point in the other direction: toward increasingly localized economies. … [T]he cheap-oil economy … has made us the first people on earth who have no need of one another. Everything we buy comes from an anonymous distance. We eat far fewer meals with family and neighbors than we did fifty years ago; we have on average far fewer close friends. The basic premise of the American economy – that the goal was a bigger house farther apart from other people – turns out to be mistaken, both ecologically and psychologically. …The cold economic logic of the world now dawning is that a relocalization must happen, one way or another. … We can subsidize small farmers and rooftop solar panels and bus systems. More fundamentally, we can make the cost of energy reflect the damage it does.”

(Solar wind, geothermal, and ocean current energy are doable. So are water fuel, air fuel, algae and other biofuels. What are we waiting for? Apparently, change won’t happen because we have an entire civilization based on coal-oil-and-gas-powered economy to protect – i.e., until the oil bottoms out and time runs out on us. –R.O.)

On nudity

Since we’re at it, we might as well, ahem, explore it. Let’s listen to the secular side of nudism, to see the difference. Here’s one of the more entertaining, non-pervy pieces: The naked truth: Nudes, nudity and going commando

A sneak peek:

“Are you comfortable in the nude? That was the question recently posed on dating portal RedHotPie to their swarm of amorous readers. (And after reading a few profiles - for work purposes of course - it's evident these folks would no doubt be leaning towards the less-prudish side of the fence.)

“The poll wasn't talking about perving at other people's butt cheeks either, but was asking about how comfortable you feel with walking around your own pad, sans any form of protective gear (including socks).

“Co-founder of the site, Max McGuire, says he wasn't at all surprised that the poll discovered a whopping 86 per cent of respondents actually enjoyed prancing about with bits dangling mid-air, with not even the wintry August temps able to persuade them otherwise. "Australia, being an outdoor and beach culture, means that the average Aussie is more at home with less clothes than more," he says. (Amen to that.)”

One need not wonder how we Filipinos would fare in a survey like that, what with our very low self-esteem, negative body image, and equation of sex = dirty. We are guilty of "negative chastity," and that says a lot.

Book review: Free Love, True Love: Rediscovering Love & Intimacy in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

A version of sex and such, which you won’t get from the neighborhood drunk

Fr. Joel O. Jason, SThL. 2007. Free Love, True Love: Rediscovering Love & Intimacy in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Shepherd’s Voice Publications, Quezon City.

This little book contains the word “fuck.” And it wasn’t even edited out with a neat asterisk (“f*ck) for good old decency. I’m surprised this book wasn’t issued a prior restraint order by the Archdiocese of Manila. It even earned an endorsement from Arch. Gaudencio Rosales, no less (yes, meriting a nihil obstat and imprimatur).

To be fair, the usage of “fuck” was in the right context. It was in a lifted quote from Frida, that colorful movie about Frida Kahlo (the Mexican surrealist) and fellow crazy artist Diego Garcia, which is telling enough, and therefore a good excuse.

Not that we mind the usage (not me -- just be sure it's necessary/in context and the audience is mature). Just that it was totally unexpected, coming from a priest with a Licentiate Degree in Moral Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

This book is apparently an attempt (a feeble one, Fr. Jason humbly admits) to mine the rich field of the departed pope’s legacy (among many other things, that is): his Theology of the Body (TOB), a bulky volume that is so exhaustive it takes entire semesters-long classes to give it fair discussion. Reading this first attempt, though, is such a breeze you could read it in one sitting.

But don’t be deceived by its slimness, for page after page, gems of insight are bound to stop you dazzled in your tracks, each promising a thoughtful pause. This is what gives the book heft and makes it a precious read.

**

Be prepared for lines you haven’t encountered before but could strike you as something fresh and true:

- “To the pure, everything is pure. To the impure, nothing is pure.”
- “License” is doing what you want, whenever, wherever, and with whomever. “Freedom” is doing what [you] ought […].”
- “In our times […] we have fallen into extreme exaggerations. One culture covers the women from head to toe because she is a temptress. The other extreme virtually strips her naked and exposes her every erogenous zone.”
- On the use of “factual” in place of “normal” in referring to widespread practices that go against Catholic/Christian teaching: “It’s factual that men abuse their women. It is almost everyday news stuff. But it is not normal.”
- “We think sex is dirty because we learned about it from a drunken bystander in the streets.”
- Etc. etc.

Christian contextualization of sex

The Christian contextualization of sex, in this book, should be read by all especially those with misguided, untenable positions on the most delicate matters in relation to sex, as though sex has nothing to do with religion. Listen up, folks: everything sexual is religious:

To fully understand that sex is not meant to be dirty, Fr. Jason explains, “[t]here is a need for an adequate vision of man. Man has three states”:

- “Original state” - God’s original plan, the blueprint, the state of man ab initio
- “Historical state” - the present fallen state, affected by sin (but not infected, Fr. Jason quickly cautions, as to be corrupt at the core and thus hopeless)
- “Eschatological state” – man’s ultimate destiny/vocation/calling, i.e., praising and worshiping God forever in communion with the angels and saints”

“There is a need for an adequate vision of the body,” Fr. Jason continues to contend, paraphrasing the pope along the way, of course. “Man is body and spirit, not an either-or entity” (body only or spirit only). “An adequate vision of the body recognizes man in the totality of his being, i.e., a unity of body and spirit. And the body -- and only the body – is capable of making visible what is invisible (i.e., the spiritual realm).” (Aha! Integration – a favorite subject of mine, of late!)

“Look at the human person as a pure spirit, and you fall into hyper-spiritualization, a repression of anything and everything sexual. Look at the human person as a pure matter, and you succumb to hyper-sexualization, characterized by excess and indulgence.”

Sex as sacred symbol

With such an “adequate vision,” the book points out, sex can then be seen in the right context: as a sacred marital act, an icon (or sacrament), and even a liturgy (an act of worship)! Sex, in the context of marriage, goes the argument, is but a foretaste of heaven, the “heavenly one-flesh unity that awaits us all.”

Of course, the corresponding insight is this: What we have done to sex today is either extreme prudery or turning “this icon into an idol.” We use the analogy, only to abuse it, extending it to the other direction, reducing “heaven” itself into the carnal, sensual thought of ‘getting laid’ forever. (Oops, if you could excuse my vulgar language, brothers and sisters.)

On nudity

The section about nudity -- or nakedness” – is particularly instructive. “Chastity is not just a matter of “covering our eyes” or “looking away” (which the pope calls “negative chastity”), it is also about a transformed heart, one that may afford to look yet is pure-hearted enough not to be aroused (“positive chastity”). (I’ve long had this long suspicion myself, but, wow, how that pope elegantly and briefly put it!) And if I may add: The test of chastity lies in your state of arousal upon encountering nudity –- and I must hastily point out, an aroused genital cannot lie about the state of one’s heart (unless there is erectile dysfunction). To rub it in, what’s in the heart is what matters most, and no one can fake it. Perhaps this is the reason why we instinctively know why a work of art is porn or not, though we find it hard to explain why. And, oh, we also know that one doesn't even have to be nude to be considered lewd. “I know it when I see it,” one writer said, referring to porn, and I perfectly understood. In telling the difference between pornography and art, context, presentation, and inner posture of the heart are the keys, and I guess it’s safe to assume the criteria to be universal.


Deletion of the malice of fig leaf

The book has other little unexpected surprises. For one, it’s edifying to learn that John Paul II de-fig-leafed Michaelangelo’s glorious Sistine Chapel nudes, thus erasing past cardinals’ prudish paint-over on the original Renaissance work. The pope then proclaimed the Chapel to be the “Shrine of the Theology of the Body.” (Surely, it helped that the pope was a former artist.)

**

Copyediting notes

Since I’m quite the snob, I can’t help but add that I found quite turn-offy Fr. Jason’s pandering to the present propensity for ugly, unfunny puns. I know I’m guilty of that, too. And I know he’s lowering his standards to cater to Filipino pop culture, and quite certainly, the ploy works. Otherwise, the use of routinely bleeped words would stick out like red-penciled entries in a draft encyclical.

Had the priest hired me as copyeditor, though, I’d have advised him to go easy on the puns. A writer can try to be accessible by not ever using multi-syllable words, but one doesn’t have to ‘poke pun’ indiscriminately. It can be grating instead of gratifying to the more discriminating readers, those of more delicate constitution (which most devout Catholics are, Fr. Jason’s most likely readers, whether he likes it or not). On the whole, Fr. Jason succeeds, but sometimes the effect can be like humming Handel’s “Messiah” in the earthy RnB style. Although the good priest is obviously hard put at coming off as an accessible prelate, somehow I get this feeling that I am being patronized.

Having said that, I am not very hopeful, though, about outsiders, the target audience, picking up this book at all. The very subject at all will turn them off, not to mention trigger in them allergic fits at such jargon as “metaphysical” and “eschatological.” What works for the unconvinced, I’m afraid, is the use of a subtler strategy, such as an engaging short story, with gorgeous illustration.

But enough of copyediting blather. (Hire me instead next time! Heheh.)

Happy feelings and hyper-spirituality

(The thoughts written down here are not solely my own. They are stitched together, coherently I hope, from different people who took part in conversation.)

I should be in touch with my feelings, but feelings are not everything – especially when it comes to spirituality. I should distrust my feelings, happy feelings, in particular, because I might use it as my basis for spirituality.

Surely, there’s nothing wrong with being happy and with good feeling per se. We strive to seek it. Sometimes, we may regard it as spiritual consolation, welcome it as a blessing, and we may be right. Show me a person who is happy, and I’ll show you a person who is less inclined to fall (into his usual compulsions).

Jesus Christ, being fully human (yet fully divine), must have had His share of laugh. Saints of ages past also have experienced ‘holy mirth,’ and some were known to laugh uncontrollably hard for a long time (help me with examples, please). We also routinely read about people who had been chosen to have ecstasy. Holy people are associated with a happy, peaceful disposition.

But euphoria, extreme happiness, has to be regarded with suspicion. In my own experience in Catholic charismatic community, euphoria often led to its opposite extreme: depression. The point is, we are not to seek it that it becomes suspect, i.e., it might be a result of autosuggestion.

A happy feeling need not be looked upon as a requirement when praying to God. Prayer is not about feeling good; it is about communing honestly with God, with or without words. One need only take a good look of the complex map of emotions that the psalmist expresses in the Bible: they run the gamut, and not always in a positive tone. There are psalms of frustration, fear, anger, confusion, despair, anguish, hatred, contempt, etc. (One could look it up for concrete evidence.)

In prayer, one must be honest with oneself, and one must be especially honest to God. Besides, it’s useless to lie. One can never hide one’s true feelings to God anyway. We may be in denial in front of God, but who are we fooling? It’s important that we don’t end up fooling ourselves because, for example, how can God ever forgive something we refuse to acknowledge as fault?

Of course, the other extreme is equally foolish. We should not seek out loneliness in prayer. That’s what punks and the similarly inclined (artistically speaking) do: They allow despair to have the last word, condemning themselves by committing the sin of Judas: not allowing themselves to see their own beauty and potential and hope in God, how God sees us and what good He promises in us.

What we’re only saying is that we shouldn’t trust spiritual highs too much. The feeling is so good we might get addicted to it, thus worshiping the gift instead of the giver. We might even (unconsciously) use the hyper-spiritual ‘highs’as Karl Marx’s opium: to deny or numb our pain. We should develop a healthy suspicion for happy feelings. Even the devil can trick us into feelings of false happiness and false peace. Several times, I’ve seen this happen to me and to other people.

But who needs the devil when our fallen self, our dysfunctional self, is prone to self-deception? At this point, it’s good to close with this much-cited page from St. Teresa of Avila’s diary. Allow me paraphrase (I hope as accurately as possible):

Teresa: “Lord, which of the two is more pleasing to You: this sister who prays to you crying with joy, thanking You for the wonderful feelings she’s having, or that sister who prays to you while being bored, tired, lazy, and irritable?”

God: “The second one pleases Me more. The first thanks me out of my consolations. The other prays to Me despite her desolation.”

The Ways We Lie an essay by Stephanie Ericsson

(I have a little objection to at least one point raised here (about Lilith), but never mind. I have written a similar but less exhaustive article on lying here. See this article too for a less fun but far more complex take on the matter: Is It Ever Right to Lie? by Dr. Jeff Mirus, April 11, 2008. Read also about the dynamics of denial, a more exquisite (i.e., often unconscious and therefore more dangerous) form of lying. (Actually, denial has a tricky morality, in that it's not conscious lying but unconsciously not letting oneself know reality, to paraphrase psychologist Noel Larsen.) See, further, Jib Fowles, on the many ways we spin the truth.)

Update: I've found a new interesting article that tackles in a more sophisticated manner the controversial topic of honesty/truth-telling/lying:
The Insufficiency of Honesty from a book by Stephen L. Carter


The Ways We Lie

an essay by Stephanie Ericsson

The bank called today, and I told them my deposit was in the mail, even though I hadn't written a check yet. It'd been a rough day. The baby I'm pregnant with decided to do aerobics on my lungs for two hours,our three-year-old daughter painted the living-room couch with lipstick, the IRS put me on hold for an hour, and I was late to a business meeting because I was tired. I told my client that traffic had been bad. When my partner came home, his haggard face told me his day hadn't gone any better than mine, so when he asked, "How was your day?" I said, "Oh, fine," knowing that one more straw might break his back. A friend called and wanted to take me to lunch. I said I was busy. Four lies in the course of a day, none of which I felt the least bit guilty about.

We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy institutions. Like most people, I indulge in small falsehoods and still think of myself as an honest person.Sure I lie, but it doesn't hurt anything. Or does it?

I once tried going a whole week without telling a lie, and it was paralyzing. I discovered that telling the truth all the time is nearly impossible. It means living with some serious consequences: The bank charges me $60 in overdraft fees, my partner keels over when I tell him about my travails, my client fires me for telling her I didn't feel like being on time, and my friend takes it personally when I say I'm not hungry. There must be some merit to lying.

But if I justify lying, what makes me any different from slick politicians or the corporate robbers who raided the S&L industry? Saying it's okay to lie one way and not another is hedging. I cannot seem to escape the voice deep inside me that tells me: When someone lies,someone loses.

What far-reaching consequences will I, or others, pay as a result of my lie? Will someone's trust be destroyed? Will someone else pay mypenance because I ducked out? We must consider the meaning of our actions. Deception, lies, capital crimes, and misdemeanors all carry meanings. Webster's definition of lie is specific:1.: a false statement or action especially made with the intent to deceive; 2.: anything that gives or is meant to give a false impression. A definition like this implies that there are many, many ways to tell a lie. Here are just a few.

The White Lie

A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings. — Bergen Evans

The white lie assumes that the truth will cause more damage than a simple, harmless untruth. Telling a friend he looks great when he looks like hell can be based on a decision that the friend needs a compliment more than a frank opinion. But, in effect, it is the liar deciding what is bestfor the lied to. Ultimately, it is a vote of no confidence. It is an act of subtle arrogance for anyone to decide what is best for someone else. Yet not all circumstances are quite so cut-and-dried. Take, for instance, the sergeant in Vietnam who knew one of his men was killed in action but listed him as missing so that the man's family would receive indefinite compensation instead of the lump-sum pittance the military gives widows and children. His intent was honorable. Yet for twenty years this family kept their hopes alive, unable to move on to a new life.

Facades

Et tu, Brute? —Caesar

We all put up facades to one degree or another. When I put on a suit to go to see a client, I feel as though I am putting on another face, obeying the expectation that serious businesspeople wear suits rather than sweatpants. But I'm a writer. Normally, I get up, get the kid off to school, and sit at my computer in my pajamas until four in the afternoon. When I answer the phone, the caller thinks I'm wearing a suit (though the UPS man knows better).But facades can be destructive because they are used to seduceothers into an illusion. For instance, I recently realized that a former friend was a liar. He presented himself with all the right looks and the right words and offered lots of new consciousness theories, fabulous books to read, and fascinating insights. Then I did some business with him, and the time came for him to pay me. He turned out to be all talk and no walk. I heard a plethora of reasonable excuses, including in-depth descriptions of the bigbreak around the corner. In six months of work, I saw less than a hundred bucks. When I confronted him, he raised both eyebrows and tried to convince-me that I'd heard him wrong, that he'd made no commitment to me. A simple investigation into his past revealed a crowded graveyard ofdisenchanted former friends.

Ignoring the Plain Facts

Well, you must understand that Father Porter is only human. —A Massachusetts priest

In the '60s, the Catholic Church in Massachusetts began hearing complaints that Father James Porter was sexually molesting children.Rather than relieving him of his duties, the ecclesiastical authorities simplymoved him from one parish to another between 1960 and 1967, actually providing him with a fresh supply of unsuspecting families and innocent children to abuse. After treatment in 1967 for pedophilia, he went back to work, this time in Minnesota. The new diocese was aware of Father Porter'sobsession with children, but they needed priests and recklessly believed treatment had cured him. More children were abused until he was relieved of his duties a year later. By his own admission, Porter may have abused as many as a hundred children. Ignoring the facts may not in and of itself be a form of lying, but consider the context of this situation. If a lie is a false action done with the intent to deceive, then the Catholic Church's conscious covering for Porter created irreparable consequences. The church became a co-perpetrator with Porter.

Deflecting

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. —Cicero

I've discovered that I can keep anyone from seeing the true me by being selectively blatant. I set a precedent of being up-front about intimate issues, but I never bring up the things I truly want to hide; I just let people assume I'm revealing everything. It's an effective way of hiding. Any good liar knows that the way to perpetuate an untruth is todeflect attention from it. When Clarence Thomas exploded with accusations that the Senate hearings were a "high-tech lynching," he simply switched the focus from a highly charged subject to a radioactive subject. Rather than defending himself, he took the offensive and accused the country of racism. It was a brilliant maneuver. Racism is now politically incorrect inofficial circles—unlike sexual harassment, which still rewards those who can get away with it. Some of the most skilled deflectors are passive-aggressive people who, when accused of inappropriate behavior, refuse to respond to the accusations. This you-don't-exist stance infuriates the accuser, who, understandably, screams something obscene out of frustration. The trap issprung and the act of de-.ilection successful, because now the passive^aggressive person can indignantly say, "Who can talk to someone as unreasonable as you?" The real issue is forgotten and the sins of the original victim become the focus. Feeling guilty of name-calling, the victimis fully tamed and crawls into a hole, ashamed. I have watched this fighting technique work thousands of times in disputes between men and women, and what I've learned is that the real culprit is not necessarily the one who swears the loudest.

Omission

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. —R.L.Stevenson

Omission involves telling most of the truth minus one or two key facts whose absence changes the story completely. You break a pair of glasses that are guaranteed under normal use and get a new pair, without mentioning that the first pair broke during a rowdy game of basketball. Who hasn't tried something like that? But what about omission of information that could make a difference in how a person lives his or her life? For instance, one day I found out that rabbinical legends tell ofanother is woman in the Garden of Eden before Eve. I was stunned. The omission of the Sumerian goddess Lilith from Genesis—as well as her demonization by ancient misogynists as an embodiment of female evil—felt like spiritual robbery. I felt like I'd just found out my mother was really mystepmother. To take seriously the tradition that Adam was created out of the same mud as his equal counterpart, Lilith, redefines all of Judeo-Christian history. Some renegade Catholic feminists introduced me to a view of Lilith that had been suppressed during the many centuries when this strong goddess was seen only as a spirit of evil. Lilith was a proud goddess who defied Adam's need to control her, attempted negotiations, and when this failed, said adios and left the Garden of Eden. This omission of Lilith from the Bible was a patriarchal strategy to keep women weak. Omitting the strong-woman archetype of Lilith fromWestern religions and starting the story with Eve the Rib has helped keep Christian and Jewish women believing they were the lesser sex for thousands of years.

Stereotypes and Clichés

Where opinion does not exist, the status quo becomes stereotyped and all originality is discouraged. —Bertrand Russell

Stereotype and cliché serve a purpose as a form of shorthand. Our need for vast amounts of information in nanoseconds has made the stereotype vital to modern communication. Unfortunately, it often shuts down original thinking, giving those hungry for the truth a candy bar of misinformation instead of a balanced meal. The stereotype explains a situation with just enough truth to seem unquestionable.All the "isms"—racism, sexism, ageism, et al.—are founded onand fueled by the stereotype and the cliche, which are lies of exaggeration, omission, and ignorance. They are always dangerous. They take a single tree and make it a landscape. They destroy curiosity. They close minds and separate people. The single mother on welfare is assumed to be cheating. Any black male could tell you how much of his identity is obliterated daily by stereotypes. Fat people, ugly people, beautiful people, old people, large-breasted women, short men, the mentally ill, and the homeless all could tell you how much more they are like us than we want to think. I once admitted to a group of people that I had a mouth like a truck driver. Much to my surprise, a man stood up and said, "I'm a truck driver, and I never cuss." Needless to say, I was humbled.

Groupthink

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light? — Maurice Freehill

Irving Janis, in Victims of Group Think, defines this sort of lie as a psychological phenomenon within decision-making groups in which loyalty to the group has become more important than any other value, with the result that dissent and the appraisal of alternatives are suppressed. If you've ever worked on a committee or in a corporation, you've encountered groupthink. It requires a combination of other forms of lying—ignoring facts, selective memory, omission, and denial, to name a few. The textbook example of groupthink came on December 7, 1941. From as early as the fall of 1941, the warnings came in, one after another,that Japan was preparing for a massive military operation. The navy command in Hawaii assumed Pearl Harbor was invulnerable—the Japanese weren't stupid enough to attack the United States' most important base. On the other hand, racist stereotypes said the Japanese weren't smart enough to invent a torpedo effective in less than 60 feet of water (the fleet was docked in 30 feet); after all, US technology hadn't been able to do it. On Friday, December 5, normal weekend leave was granted to all the commanders at Pearl Harbor, even though the Japanese consulate in Hawaii was busy burning papers. Within the tight, good-ole-boy cohesiveness of the US command in Hawaii, the myth of invulnerability stayed well entrenched. No one in the group considered the alternatives. The rest is history.

Out-and-Out Lies

The only form of lying that is beyond reproach is lying for its own sake. —Oscar Wilde

Of all the ways to lie, I like this one the best, probably because I get tired of trying to figure out the real meanings behind things. At least I can trust the bald-faced lie. I once asked my five-year-old nephew, "Who broke the fence?" (I had seen him do it.) He answered, "The murderers." Who could argue? At least when this sort of lie is told it can be easily confronted. As the person who is lied to, I know where I stand. The bald-faced lie doesn't toy with my perceptions — it argues with them. It doesn't try to refashion reality, it tries to refute it. Read my lips.... No sleight of hand. No guessing. If this were the only form of lying, there would be no such things as floating anxiety or the adult-children-of-alcoholics movement.

Dismissal

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am the Great Oz! —The Wizard of Oz

Dismissal is perhaps the slipperiest of all lies. Dismissing feelings, perceptions, or even the raw facts of a situation ranks as a kind of lie that can do as much damage to a person as any other kind of lie. The roots of many mental disorders can be traced back to the dismissal of reality. Imagine that a person is told from the time she is a tot that her perceptions are inaccurate. "Mommy, I'm scared." "No you're not, darling." "I don't like that man next door, he makes me feel icky." "Johnny, that's a terrible thing to say, of course you like him. You go over there right now and be nice to him." I've often mused over the idea that madness is actually a sanereaction to an insane world. Psychologist R. D. Laing supports this hypothesis in Sanity, Madness and the Family, an account of his investigation into the families of schizophrenics. The common thread that ran through all of the families he studied was a deliberate, staunch dismissal of the patient's perceptions from a very early age. Each of the patients slatted out with an accurate grasp of reality, which, through meticulous and methodical dismissal, was demolished until the only reality the patient could trust was catatonia. Dismissal runs the gamut. Mild dismissal can be quite handy for forgiving the foibles of others in our day-to-day lives. Toddlers who have just learned to manipulate their parents' attention sometimes are dismissed out of necessity. Absolute attention from the parents would require so much energy that no one would get to eat dinner. But we must be careful and attentive about how far we take our "necessary" dismissals. Dismissal is a dangerous tool, because it's nothing less than a lie.

Delusion
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves. —Eric Hoffer

I could write the book on this one. Delusion, a cousin of dismissal, is the tendency to see excuses as facts. It's a powerful lying tool because it filters out information that contradicts what we want to believe. Alcoholics who believe that the problems in their lives are legitimate reasons for drinking rather than results of the drinking offer the classic example of deluded thinking. Delusion uses the mind's ability to see things in myriad ways to support what it wants to be the truth. But delusion is also a survival mechanism we all use. If we were to fully contemplate the consequences of our stockpiles of nuclear weapons
or global warming, we could hardly function on a day-to-day level. We don't want to incorporate that much reality into our lives because to do so would be paralyzing. Delusion acts as an adhesive to keep the status quo intact. It shamelessly employs dismissal, omission, and amnesia, among other sorts of lies. Its most cunning defense is that it cannot see itself. "The liar's punishment [. . .] is that he cannot believe anyone else." —George Bernard Shaw

These are only a few of the ways we lie. Or are lied to. As I said earlier, it's not easy to entirely eliminate lies from our lives. No matter how pious we may try to be, we will still embellish, hedge, and omit to lubricate the daily machinery of living. But there is a world of difference between telling functional lies and living a lie. Martin Buber once said, "The lie is the spirit committing treason against itself." Our acceptance of lies becomes a cultural cancer that eventually shrouds and reorders reality until moral garbage becomes as invisible to us as water is to a fish. How much do we tolerate before we become sick and tired of being sick and tired? When will we stand up and declare our right to trust? When do we stop accepting that the real truth is in the fine print? Whose lips do we read this year when we vote for president? When will we stop being so reticent about making judgments? When do we stop turning over our personal power and responsibility to liars? Maybe if I don't tell the bank the check's in the mail I'll be less tolerant of the lies told me every day. A country song I once heard said it all for me: "You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything."

Ericsson, Stephanie. “The Ways We Lie.” 1992. 4 Dec. 2005 .


http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:Qi3JYoCxF-IJ:classroom.quixoticpedagogue.org/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_docman%26task%3Ddoc_view%26gid%3D667+%22the+ways+we+lie%22+by+ericsson&cd=4&hl=tl&ct=clnk&gl=ph

http://ezinearticles.com/?Stephanie-Ericsson,-The-Ways-We-Lie&id=376173

Elements of Style: Struck and Whitened-out

Can't help giggling at this totally bitchy bashing of the grammar gods we tutors and tutees grovel at, Mr. Strunk and Mr. White -- at least when we're teaching (not when we're actually writing). :p (Not really – I never suggested Strunk and White to my tutees, ever. We use an in-house manual.)

50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice by Geoffrey K. Pullum

Sample of random bitchiness:

"It seems to me that the stipulation in Elements is totally at variance not just with modern conversational English but also with literary usage back when Strunk was teaching and White was a boy. Is the intelligent student supposed to believe that Stoker, Wilde, and Montgomery didn't know how to write? Did Strunk or White check even a single book to see what the evidence suggested? Did they have any evidence at all for the claim that the cases with plural agreement are errors? I don't think so."

Ahehehe.

And this:

"The copy editor's old bugaboo about not using "which" to introduce a restrictive relative clause is also an instance of failure to look at the evidence. Elementsas revised by White endorses that rule. But 19th-century authors whose prose was never forced through a 20th-century prescriptive copy-editing mill generally alternated between "which" and "that." (There seems to be a subtle distinction in meaning related to whether new information is being introduced.) There was never a period in the history of English when "which" at the beginning of a restrictive relative clause was an error."

Ouch. like Jeff Dunham's dead terrorist character, I'd say, "I keel yeww!" But I agree. In technical writing, in particular, it's very important to distinguish the difference, for the purpose of precision.

There's also his quarrel with the active voice as the preferred voice. I agree as well. Passive voice is indeed equally important, as when there is a need to use an indeterminate doer or subject (the indeterminate “it” and “there,” like in this sentence).


**

Other things:

Top 10 Urban Legends of 2008

Susan Boyle, superstar

Today's quotes

A blessed Divine Mercy Sunday to all. Here's a quote apropos the occasion: "The more the soul suffers, the greater right that soul has for mercy." - from Sr. Faustina's diary (via Malou)

**

"God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different." - Rabbi Harold Kushner (via Mel)

"Every time I begin to feel that there just isn't any more strength in me, I end up knowing that there is more in Him." (via Malou)

"Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors." (via Mike)

"Only the strong can be humble." - Me.

Nice forwarded essay on Christian belief: Credo: Motivated belief and the stringent search for truth by John Polkinghorne, Anglican theologian and scientist

Neo-Bob-Ong-isms

Are these neo-Bob-Ong-isms? Someone should publish an illustrated book. Don't forget the token royalties for me for pitching the idea. :p

"Alam mo bang di na ko kumakain ng sinabawang gulay? Kasi sayo pa lang makulay na ang buhay ko."

"Hindi ko pa nararanasang magmahal kahit minsan. - Fishball (Php 0.50 since 1990s)"

"Sa kin ka nga nakahawak ng mahigpit, sa kanya ka naman nakatitig. - mouse, nagseselos sa monitor."

(via Ian C.)

"The silences of Lent"

A friend strongly recommended this retreat during Lent: It’s reportedly a good material especially for those who are discerning. He says he is amazed at “how the story of Abraham, when he sacrificed Isaac, coincides with what happened in the Paschal Mystery. Undergoing the online retreat will help us understand this deeper.”

Below is the combined text of the retreat blurb and accompanying handout which we’ve gotten hold of from Fr. Johnny Go’s retreat and from this site and from Fr. Go’s personal site.

______________________

“The story of Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac is one of the most powerful—and disturbing—stories in the Old Testament. But did you notice the many kinds of silences that permeate it, hidden between the words and actions of the different characters? In this story we find three silences. But first, a few question starters:

What do I feel about silence? Do I get enough silence in my life? Do I want more of it? Why?

What is my stance towards silence in my life? is silence a friend I seek, or a ghost I fear?

Why am I seeking silence in my life? Or: Why do I fear silence?

What type of silence am I being invited into and embrace this season of Lent? Is it The Silence of Abraham (Disquiet Discernment)? The Silence of Isaac (Trusting Surrender)? The Silence of God (Hidden Presence)?

These different silences correspond to the Silences of Lent: The Silence of Gethsemane, The Silence of Calvary, and The Silence of the Empty Tomb. Depending on what’s going on in your life here and now, God is inviting you to embrace one of these silences.

The Silence of Gethsemane/The Silence of Abraham (Disquiet Discernment)

In order to discern God's will, to distinguish it from the demands and noises of the world and from our own voices, we need the Silence of Gethsemane. Relevant Scriptural passage: The Agony in the Garden (Mk 14:32-42). Parallel Old Testament reflection on Abraham: How clear was God's voice? Abraham had to transcend his own feelings and common sense to make this decision.

The Silence of Calvary/The Silence of Isaac (Trusting Surrender)

In order to accept without understanding, to endure without despair, we need the Silence of Calvary. Relevant Scriptural passage: The Death of Jesus on the Cross (Mt. 27:45-54). Parallel OT reflection on Isaac: He didn't understand what was going on, but he trusted his father -- and decided to entrust himself completely even in pain.

The Silence of the Empty Tomb/The Silence of God (Hidden Presence)

In order to recognize God's presence in the ordinary, and his action even in our wounds, we need the Silence of the Empty Tomb. Relevant Scriptural passage: The Road to Emmaus (Lk. 34:13-14). Parallel OT reflection on God: He exercises Divine Restraint, choosing to hide from us and inviting us to find Him.”

Management types

Or, Is your boss a Theory X manager?

(New lessons learned)

What kind of manager are you? Or what sort of manager is your current manager?

As for me, I have been working different jobs for years and, therefore, have experienced handling some people and being under other people. I’m not very sure what type of leader I have been (I am generally not interested in dealing with people), but living in such a hierarchical world, I have no choice but deal with different types of managers and supervisors, and I believe my own experience is enough for me to tell the difference between managerial types.

What I can tell readily is that there are as much different leaders as there are personalities, and as it is, it is quite difficult to categorize personalities, each person being a complex and unique creature. But being given to making sense of the world by placing everything in neat little boxes, humans categorizing other humans, such as managers, is unavoidable.

There are managers who are tough, and there are managers who may be considered weak. There are dictators and slave-drivers, and there are more compassionate ones. There are managers who treat people as objects, and there are managers who treat people as friends or family. There are managers who assume workers as foes, and there are managers who assume they are allies. There are managers who liaise between owners and workers, and there are managers who take sides.

A manager is thus a major influence in the workplace, particularly on the worker’s degree of job satisfaction.

According to those who specialize on this topic, there are three basic types of managers: Theory X, Theory Y, and Theory Z managers.

X

Theory X managers assume that workers are mostly dumb-asses and disgusted with work, so they must be treated like slaves or beasts of burden. Employees are thought to be driven mainly by the motivation to earn and not to be punished or sanctioned for it. X managers, therefore, decide without employee consultations. They believe in dangling higher wages or extra pay to workers as the main incentive for improving job performance. These managers do not consider the importance of new responsibilities as a motivating factor, presuming workers to be afraid of improvement. Nevertheless, the X manager somehow gets the work done under the influence of fear and intimidation.

What happens when an X manager finds himself dealing with employees who are no longer satisfied with the monetary rewards? That’s a challenge that a heartless, dictatorial X manager has to contend with.


Y

In contrast, Theory Y managers presume employees love their job, are intelligent and ambitious enough to take on higher-level tasks, and are adaptable to change. They believe that an employee’s job satisfaction lies more in the knowledge that she or he is performing well in his or her task. They also assume that employees can be self-driven and responsible given the right workplace conditions. Y managers are concerned about their employees' own concerns, and strive to know how best to ease them out so they could be at their best at work. This way, employees feel like they’re a part of the firm, not mere spokes in a wheel, unlike employees under an X manager.

How is the general softness of this management approach counter-acted? That’s a question of balance that a Z manager has to contend with constantly.


Z

Theory Z managers seem to reconcile both extremes. Z managers operate around trust: the employers’ trust on their workers’ loyalty, and the workers’ trust on their employers’ concern for them. This mutualism results in teamwork, cooperation, and a personalized (in contrast to mechanized) workplace relations/dynamics.

Workers under Z management are more open and flexible, and their opinion/input sought. The motivation of mutual trust makes workers more willing to consider other skills and swap tasks with co-workers on a regular basis, and undergo training sessions for this purpose.

Recommended readings:

Psychologist Douglas McGregor's (1960s) writings on management

William Ouchi’s (1981) Theory Z: How American Management Can Meet the Japanese Challenge

Newsbearer as the news

I was raring to wade into the details of the Dacer slay-BW scan connection, but this Ted Failon thing came up and suddenly somebody's wife's alleged suicide became the biggest news in town, like it's big deal and not happening everyday here or anywhere and as though Ted Failon was the biggest criminal we've ever known. Give me a break. The police is harassing a brave media guy is what I'm seeing. Smells ratty, like personal vendetta, to me.

Not pleased to meet me

(Or, I’m a “Negastar”)

I'm a Negastar. That's what people realize about me a few minutes into meeting me. People who know me tend to accept that piece of bad news, so they anticipate it. Result? They are not surprised.

I'm the first to sound the alarm when you've got cold, and most likely I'll pronounce it as cancer. Like an evil oracle, you don't want me around. Or else I might criticize how bad you cooked your pasta, even while I'm inhaling it myself in generous quantities.

You might already know that your company is in the red and about to go under, but I'm pretty sure to deliver the news with a straight face. At least you will know it if the orgasmic satisfaction I feel is fake. I give you that assurance.

Indeed, if a see your face, you can trust that I’ll focus on your little pimple. If a see a clear skin, I'll notice the tiny wart. You're a born critic, somebody figured me out.

I'm not sure if that's an insult or a compliment. I don't really set out to find faults. I don't go out in the street to point out how the sidewalk should be designed. Fault-finding just comes naturally.

Of course, I'm being a jerk. I know that. No need for reminders, please -- I'll be the first one to put myself down, so you won't have the luxury of insulting me. Maybe I'm ill, and this is my disease.

You notice so many things, my friend F. complained to me one day. I wish that was true, because it's not. He's only half-right. I don't notice everything, I just notice those that seem odd to me. What about the good side of things? Well, what's the point? I thought those should be a given, in the first place. People and things should exist to be good, or they should cease existing.

All these critics in the papers and online, I hate them all because I can only identify with them too well: They think they know everything, and worse, they think they know how best something should look, taste, feel, sound, and smell. I wonder if they have friends left. I wonder who told them to set the standards so high.

The nerve of these people, right? But that's how we are. We can't help it. Our not-so-secret ploy is that we offend ourselves first so we can offend everyone else.

But I love the most vicious ones among my fellow hooligans. They are tactless, but at least they don't pretend. Brutality, to us, becomes a good word when paired off with honesty.

And at least they are funny. Anything laughable is forgivable.

The world surely needs kindness now more than ever but why does Simon Cowell rule the roost? Perhaps it's because we're indispensable, the arrogant, the curmudgeonly, the cantankerous, the ill-tempered, the foul-mouthed, the vile, the impudent, the imprudent, the brash, the brazen, the vulgar, the crass, the cross. Ladies, and gentlemen, we are the Beauty Police. I guess. An ugly world populated by tasteless people under the machinations of even uglier people just have to meet its match: us.

Negastars like me are hard to please, but I don't feel like apologizing for it. I feel awful about it, yes, because people might think I'm living the life, having the best of both worlds, and that's not true. It's just that bashing feels good because it makes me feel better. You guessed it: I'm just projecting my self-hate with the whole world as silver screen. Oops. Can't believe I let that out.

But seriously, negativism is much more than that. Someone has to point out that grammatical slip on the billboard. Anyone has the right to express how awful he feels about anybody and anything, and why. Someone has to point out that not everything is okay, that the ship is sinking, that the sky is falling, that tomorrow is the end of the world.

Besides, it a good excuse for bad manners, for the uncouth ceases to be 100% bad when s/he has a good point.

Who will tell the rest of the world that the king is parading around naked? Tell me. Only a negastar like me can do that. If negastars find themselves useful, it must be because the world is sick of the falsely positive.

It doesn't feel great, nonetheless, to be Mr. Negastar. I don't like the thought of being feared and loathed at the same time. In the toss-up between the two, the only choice is no dice. And I feel ashamed of biting the hands that feed me. I have that little capability left. You have to give me that.

Maybe I'll just work on becoming antiseptic-nice and popular next. It might bring me lotsa love and money, not to mention make me President.

Free-trade paradox

I failed to note this obvious point in my own blatherings on the outsourced life:

"...[T]he very people who suffer most from free trade (no thanks to outsourcing - ed.) are often, paradoxically, among its biggest beneficiaries (thanks to Made-in-China-cheap goods - ed.)."

- James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, May 26, 2008

**

Reaction: I thought the greatest beneficiary of globalization are the firms who save as much as 90% in overhead and labor costs by outsourcing the non-core, or even core business, and ultimately wherever the benefiting home base is (chiefly the United States, of course, where the stash is saved and invested further).

Another thought: How can anyone buy Made in china goods, no matter how dirt-cheap, if one has lost one’s job?

Why am I asking the question when my entire so-called career is built on outsourced business? Well, I guess I’m just trying to make sense out of these heady changes, whether things are being done fair or not. Maybe it’s because I can afford to ask, not being among the unemployed. Or maybe there's this fear that I am vulnerable, part of at-risk population, and no one will be there to care.

It makes sense then that the bigger question that begs to be asked now is: Shall governments and the rest of society stand on the sidelines while thousands lose their jobs and go hungry, whether at home or abroad? There must be a way out, a solution to this modern Gordian knot, one of which is the proper transitioning of those who will be affected. That’s only fair and right.

**

Goodbye, useless jobs; hello, meaning and fulfillment

One good thing the global crisis can give us is the death of mindless, toilsome jobs and the creation of meaningful, fulfilling ones. I wish to write further on this later.

The new untouchables

"The impersonality of life in the Western world has become such that we have produced a race of untouchables. We have become strangers to each other, not only avoiding but even arding off all forms of 'unnecessary' physical contact, faceless figures in a crowded landscape, lone and afraid of intimacy. To the extent that it is so,we are ll diminished. Because of our untouchableness, we have failed to create a society in which people touch each other in more sense than the physical. With our inauthentic selves, and wearing other people's image of what we should be, it is not surprising that we remain unsure of who we really are. We wear the inauthentic selves that have been imposed upon us as uncomfortably as an ill-fitting garment, ruefully, at times, and unknowingly, wondering how we got this way. As Willy Loman says in Death of a Salesman, 'I still feel kind of temporary.'."

- Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), xiv.

Ambidextrous 'poem'

(Forwarded email)

"Lost Generation"
by Jonathan Reed

"I am part of a lost generation
and I refuse to believe that
I can change the world
I realize this may be a shock but
“Happiness comes from within.”
is a lie, and
“Money will make me happy.”
So in 30 years I will tell my children
they are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope."

**

(The 'poem' is meant to be read from the last line up or the reverse, whichever is your inclination. :-))

Gleanings

Important religion headlines local media didn’t pick up:

- UN Commission Ends with Delegations Saying No to Abortion

- HIV Researcher, a Self-described Liberal, Defends Pope's Recent Condom/AIDS Statement

- Bishops: Middle East may soon be empty of Christians

Been watching the politics of truth about stem cells. A couple of items I should've linked to earlier:

- Obama opens up stem cell work, science inquiries

- Stem cell decision exposes religious divides

- Is conservatism dead? Does that mean liberalism is again alive and well? That's what you think.
The coming evangelical collapse, at least according to a rather alarmist Christian Science Monitor writer

- Interesting to note even if you don't have a secret stash of wealth: Top 50 Safest Banks In The World

- Interesting forward from PP: Life imitates Bonfire of the Vanities

Request to academia

May I have a request for academia? Would you come up with just one definitive global citation standard, a gold standard, if you will? My head is spinning right now, thanks to the different citation standards I know, for I've been confusing everything with each other. I'm sure students are having the same problem. Students of law use Turabian. Some old-fashioned teachers stick to Chicago. Australians used the Harvard style. Doctors use the AMA style, but even the style that PubMed uses, which AMA supposedly uses, has slight variation. Most Americans use either the MLA or APA, depending on the education level and course or field. I'm not sure what they prefer in Philippine schools, but since Filipinos are de facto Americans, students must be confusing themselves with a lot of rules per MLA and APA styles. When I was a college student, we were told to use the Chicago style. There are perhaps a dozen other standards, and that makes the problem even more complicated. (And, oh, before I forget, the world's major media outfits have their own in-house stylebook each, thank you.)

What's the use of standards when there are so many? Can we just have one across all fields? Life will be a lot easier that way. Thank you.

Invasion of introduced species

There are a lot of other things to notice in a summer outing, I know, but I can’t help it: being a weirdo, I ended up noticing the plants in this nice little Pansol resort my officemates went to the other week.

I told our new boss, “Hey, look, the plants here are all different. I am not familiar with any of them.” Dr. A. agreed. She noted that even the flowers are different: gigantic orange gumamelas. At least I didn’t notice the flowers at once.

But the trees, they were all strange-looking to me. The champagne palms are at least familiar, but since when did we see champagne palms around us like they were coconuts? (A. once told me that champagne palm-farming is a lucrative business. A sapling costs Php25,000 back in the ‘90s.) There’s also this tree that looks like half-banana, half-palm. The leaves fan out like a paper fan, but the trunk is like that of a date palm’s. There are other palms that I couldn’t recognize from the different beautiful varieties we have, so they must have come from a Bornean forest or someplace. I remember studying in high school the many uses of the different palm, bamboo, and reed varieties we have in the Philippines, so I couldn’t be mistaken. Resort after resort, this is what has happened in the last few years. You need not be like ET (a part-time botanist) to realize that.

From a biological perspective, these introduced species are worrisome. Though I have yet to read about introduced plants becoming real pests and driving native plants to extinction (it’s the animals that usually do that), I know enough about the dangers of ‘genetic pollution.’ Introduced species may thrive, but they are ill-suited to the local ecology, and vice-versa. The local fauna (birds, insects), for one, don’t find them very useful, and when there's typhoon or epidemic, they are the first to be toppled or infected. Imports enrich our lives, though, so who’s complaining. My only complaint is that they tend to edge out the good things we already have.

From a cultural standpoint, imported plants are funny in that they are all a part of this very Filipino pattern of effacing and looking down on what we have, thinking that imported stuff are infinitely better. There’s some truth to that – the introduced species look postcard-pretty indeed. The imported anahaw variety, for example, looks more like a plastic potted plant, light-greenish in color and pastel in shade, matte in texture, but has broader and more showy leaf. If the resort aims to transport the visitor to another world, it has succeeded. What’s wrong is the colonial mind enmeshing itself once again in the picture, our national lack of self-esteem, and it saddens how it reminds me of how we are fond of losing mindlessly the heritage we have even before we become familiar with it, be it biological wealth or built structure. For instance, are we even aware that we have endangered tree species worth saving? Are we even aware that we have a lot of underused gaudy flowering plants that would be good for our roadsides? (I had learned these things from a visit in the Manila Orchidarium in Luneta.) On the other hand, I can also understand how much we love to have that which we don’t have. And what is beauty, by the way, if not entirely dependent on the eye of the so-called beholder? The imported plants appear to be beautiful only because they are differently beautiful as compared to the usual.

Pasay Rotunda, 2009

(An Easter reflection)

Question: Why do the MMDA’s footbridges have no roofing? (You know, those unsightly pink pedestrian footbridges sprouting around the Metro like poisonous mushrooms.)

Hypotheses: Is it to punish commuters by exposing them to the scorching heat of the sun? Is it because people are bedbugs that must be secretly exterminated by exposing them to the ultraviolet radiation? Is it because Chairman Bayani Fernando is the new Hitler?

Correct answer: It is to prevent the opportunism of the desperate and other related evils from taking up permanent residence.

Pasay Rotunda. Ah, there’s no place like hell, like Pasay Rotunda. I say this because this is a place where I have witnessed so many resident evils making it their playground central. Let’s meet all the characters there:

There’s the toothless pimp who, in the middle of the night, calls your attention with a discreet, “Psst, sir, chicks?”

There’s, of course, the pimp’s partner-in-crime, the prostitute, who hides in the dark alleys, but with a sizeable part of her body exposed and yet her face is heavily made-up just the same. Apparently, she has something to hide behind her quest to reveal herself in full.

There’s the constant presence of the pickpocket, who prefers stealing in secret, in silence.

There’s the snatcher, who occupies roughly the same niche but uses another strategy, be it snatching something as pricey as a late-model cell phone, or the wads of cash you just withdrew from a nearby bank and placed in a clutch bag, or the branded cap you’re wearing to make yourself look like someone worth a hundred bucks.

There’s the drunk on his way home, a trouble-magnet threatening to puke any minute on your scalp the undigested minute-noodle and 3-in-1 coffee he had for nightcap.

Even worse, there’s the armed drunk, most likely a depressed cop or security guard after a group hug with like-tempered buddies, and given to caressing his gun as though it’s his dick in heat.

There’s the corrupt ‘kotong’ cop making an illegal sideline or otherwise protecting illegals (for a fee, of course).

There’s the evil jeepney driver beating the red light, if not bribing a cop after being caught, or violating other traffic rules such as over-speeding, overloading, swerving, cutting trip, etc., then making bitter alibis after

There are the uncouth bus drivers and private motorists who switch lanes within split-seconds, promising a hit-and-run.

There are the assorted vendors of pirated goods making a killing, making another quick buck on stolen ideas, flaunting their wares while flouting the law.

There are also the assorted petty-crime gangs, conniving, cooking up their plans A and B.

There are the beggars, vagrants, and street-kids who might be genuine victims of the system but are otherwise members of an elaborately fronted syndicate of mendicancy.

There are also the hangers, the loiterers, who, if not unfortunately jobless or waiting for the end of the world, are assorted poseurs: drug addicts, shabu pushers, illegal job recruiters, pie-in-the-sky evangelists, nutcases, and plain weirdoes.

Only ‘hold-uppers’ and murderers are missing from the picture, and I don’t intend to witness their act.

The commuters? They are the angels and saints mostly, unless they are violating traffic rules, throwing refuse on the road, spitting their gum with impunity as though they are former Singapore residents, spewing their phlegm on the pavement, throwing their cigarette butts and ensuring that the drains would be clogged and there would be flood next, or otherwise posing as one of the above demons from hell.

But now, Pasay Rotunda has been somewhat improved by the pink footbridge, which surrounds the busy interchange like some fancy circumferential road built over the place.

With the crime-resistant footbridge, it’s now easier for commuters to take a shortcut from home to workplace and back. What took the authorities so long to get the idea? Anyway, on behalf of everybody, let me say thank you very much, we certainly appreciate it. We can breathe better now that we don’t have to have a direct contact with Dante’s Inferno downstairs, which is hellish even on a bright shiny day.

Are you a compulsive giver?

(New measurement scales)

Is your love of giving compulsive? For example, are being generous to somebody more than it’s normal, zealously sharing information more than you should, etc.? Do you feel like nothing is ever left for yourself? Take this test.


Plea for acceptance (for who you really are)

Could it be that you are trying too hard to solicit acceptance and affection from others by giving even without being asked? Why? You need to probe deeper.

Expression of unmet need

Could it be that you are projecting an unmet need on others by giving them what you feel you should receive instead?

Plea for unconditional love

Are you perhaps pining unconsciously for the love of a significant person in your life which you were unable to receive (for some reason, maybe bad parenting)?

Misplaced guilt (Guilt complex)

Could it be that you happen to believe in "free culture," that culture of giving freely out of a sense of duty to give back everything you’ve learned or have acquired because you got everything for free, nice and easy? It seems you have an unnecessary sense of guilt, feeling undeserving? The underlying problem is even more serious, the hidden wound even deeper.

Lust
Could it be that you are simply lustful, or thirsty, for knowledge, giving away everything you know, but in a quid pro quo arrangement: so you could learn something new from others or get something concrete in return? What does that tell you about your concept of giving? Do you give only because you can receive something back? Why? Who taught you to think that way? (Check for distorted visions of the world.)

Insecurity

Maybe you’re just trying to be a show-offy jerk, a pompous ass? Maybe you’re just trying to impress because you are so insecure? Maybe everything is an act -- an act of compensation, to be exact -- for a perceived lack? Where is such insecurity coming from? Why do you think you need to perform? Is it because you feel worthless? Who told you so?

Sense of isolation

Could it be that your desire for imagined nobility, your desire to dwell on high-minded matters, to have lots of high achievements, to try to sound intellectual, etc., is an unconscious act of covering up a secret life of isolation ruled by baser instincts, a secret life spent on sexual gratification (matters 'down below')? Is your public life preoccupied with things of the mind or high-minded stuff because you are covering up something baser under your very nose, i.e., so you will not be able to get in touch with your feelings? Why?


Do any of the above questions hurt you much? That’s a sure sign that you have a hidden, deeply hurtful, unresolved issue, and you are unconsciously in denial. Remember that, once you are hurt, it’s because it is true.

Now if all your answers are negative, then let’s celebrate! It means your generosity is coming from a pure, secure place (not out of your own neediness). The world will appreciate what you are able to give.

Lent quotes

On punishment in the face of God’s supposedly unconditional love

"Huwag kayong matakot sa kasalanan dahil parurusahan kayo ng Diyos. Matakot kayo sa sa kasalanan dahil lahat ng kasalanan may katumbas na kaparusahan." – Fr. Rolando dela Rosa, OP

On repentance

"Repentance means to change the direction in which you are looking for happiness." – Fr. Thomas Keating

**

That quote from Fr. Dela Rosa is worth discussing further.

Someone who seems to be cynic-agnostic-atheist had asked me this question: “If God’s love is really unconditional, then why does He punish? (To extend the question, “Why is there hell?”) Good question.

I hope I had given an equally good answer. It was a long-winded one, but along the lines that Fr. Dela Rosa made (otherwise elegantly): “Be afraid not because God will punish you for your sin. Be afraid because every mistake carries its own punishment. (That’s the nature of sin (which God did not create, by the way).)”

Let’s give Fr. Dela Rosa the floor on this one (in his reflection on TV last Good Friday):

“We all have an innate desire to be punished. We expect to be punished because, in our limited understanding, we can’t accept a God who’d give love even without punishment. We expect to be punished because that’s how we love, that’s how we forgive: only after others are punished, only after others prove they are worth loving. We find it hard to understand that God could give love without condition, that he could forgive even without punishment.”

Translation: We attribute to, or project on, God soemthing He didn't even have anything to do with. Sin and its consequences (the alleged punishments) are the devil's -- and our -- own creation.

**

Major Lenten bummers: I missed the retreats/recollections given by my favorite priests, plus this new retreat, The Silences of Lent given by a Jesuit, Fr. Johnny Go. To those who were present, share your notes and handouts please!

Notes from my ‘staycation’

J.

If I wasn’t in a resort, at home, at the traditional seder meal, or hounding the churches like I used to, you can blame it on my seven-year-old nephew who was in my place for a brief summer visit. (No, I invited him, or asked his parents’ permission.) In no time, my place was naturally a mess. Toys were all over that one could trip on a marble one moment and order a crutch or a wheelchair another moment. Everything that resembled an animal figure was a toy to J., He took a terra cotta rabbit, a wooden parrot, an exquisitely painted wooden duck, even anime figures (Naruto, et al.) and the skull figure punctuating an emo-punk black ballpen that I have. He even discovered my field guide on American birds – a precious find. But I couldn’t help giving it away. “Please take good care of it,” I told him, “’coz it’s expensive.” But the kid just flipped through it like a comic book. Why did I say that, in the first place, when it was supposed to be his for good; what do I care if he run it through the paper-shedder? Good thing he failed to notice the boomerang a friend from Australia gave me and the bamboo letter-opener engraved with Hanunuo Mangyan poetry script. (God, not those, please.)


Microminireviews

I was stuck not just with my nephew, but also my magazines, my unfinished books, and, of course, some rented videos:

Desperadas 1 – What a frivolous, overwrought, and over-extended movie, a launching vehicle that’s unconvincing even though Regal Films has thrown in the big-movie-outfit production value it deserves. A disappointment, considering I picked it up because I was intrigued by its subject. Alas, it appears to contain none of the precious sentiments by people I know that I have expressed here. The glaring omission makes for a major bummer. What a waste of talent (and my time)! I found all the gorgeous leads in their Tuscan-inspired houses to be a piteous sight because they had worked hard for a trifling movie. Sigh. This complacent work is an utter disservice to the glorious history of Philippine film. To think that the subject of choice is a chance for the story to become profound in an understated way, in the context of a suburban Manila and its high-maintenance inhabitants.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – A barely-funny comedy (starring Adam Sandler) advancing the gay marriage movement. It’s most funny moment is when a tabloid proclaims this headline after a short tiff/altercation between two contending groups (the gay-is-not-the-way evangelists versus the gay-rights-yeah party): “Gay Basher Bashed at Gay Bash.” That Jessica Biel is unforgettable, though. Gotta research which other movies she’s starred in.

Mamma Mia! – What an enjoyable movie! The story feels stilted, just so it can accommodate the most memorable of ABBA’s hits. But the production numbers are memorable enough, plus it has really funny moments and solid surprises. Who would think Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan could sing? Even the brooding Dane, Stellan Kierkegaard (no, Skarsgaard, hehe), and the ageing but boyish Brit, Colin Firth, are a surprise you’d feel glad for them for landing the roles at all. The music is, of course, the real top-billed star of the movie. It should bring back memories of the late ‘70s to those who have been already alive and breathing at the time. Me, I was born into a household with teenagers listening to lots of Elton John, the Beatles, John Denver, Rod Stewart, and, yes, the Swedish group ABBA, and I liked all of it. Not surprisingly, I know all the songs and all the albums, and I can sing most of the lyrics.

Little Miss Sunshine – I don’t know what to do with this brief, little interlude of a movie. It’s appalling the way it depicts dysfunction in various forms. It ends with a bitter taste in the mouth. It seems to declare war on good taste, although it is somewhat right about life being a tacky beauty contest. It doesn’t say much about the nature of dysfunctions, though. Too bad because it’s becoming one of my favored topics.

Himala – After M. texted me about it, I was able to re-watch the latter half of this profound and complex film about the relationship of faith, superstition, unbelief, with poverty, parochialism, and ignorance directed by the deep-thinking Ishmael Bernal and the greatest local actress I’ve seen act on celluloid, Nora Aunor. Those unforgettable eyes. That smallish brown face engulfing the entire film. Too bad she’s no longer making films this memorable. (On a personal note, my brother says Gigi Dueñas, one of those supporting actors from PETA, was his Literature teacher at Angelicum College.) Until now, I am still unsure what to think about this unquestionably moving yet unsettling film. I should re-watch this equally confounding film, Nunal sa Tubig. Why are such gems unavailable on DVD or even in Video City’s VCDs for rent? Tsk-tsk. Must we find them as pirated Criterion Collection copies too?

Can't get over Chip Tsao's cheap shot

(As we are typing this, Hong Kong-based Filipinos are are up in arms in protest.)

Gee whiz, only Conrado de Quiros got the joke! (Me, I didn't find it funny at all.):

"Chip on the shoulder"
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer

I REMEMBER again a column a friend of mine wrote ages ago. It was a
satire. He commended the appointment of a moralistic bastard to a
government post that would enable him to render judgment on creative
works. The commendation was grossly exaggerated and full of praise for
the wrong things. He ended by saying that he could think of no one who
better deserved the job.

How did the moralistic bastard react? He wrote a letter thanking my
friend profusely!

His letter was not satirical. But that just goes to show how satire
can be a dangerous thing in this country. Not because it invites
reprisal from its target but because it invites misunderstanding from
its target audience. I have another friend who got sued for writing a
satirical piece by someone who wasn’t her target. Hell, I got sued—or
this newspaper was—for a satirical piece by two people I was trying to
help!

This was way back in the early 1990s when I was still writing
editorials for this paper. A man and woman got fired from their jobs,
clerical ones in a provincial court. They had both worked for decades
there, but now lost not just their jobs but their retirement benefits.
Their crime? They were having an affair. I said they truly deserved to
be fired, having clerical jobs was a crime in itself. Of course the
judge was a well-known drunk, but being a judge his judgment could
never be impaired. And of course the court was known to look the other
way in cases involving the rich, but that was courtly prerogative. Or
words to this effect. You get the drift.

We got sued—by the man and woman! Of course the provincial court
dismissed the suit almost immediately. What can I say? The judge
himself must have been tremendously pleased.

I remembered all this when I read Chip Tsao’s article “The War at
Home.” That was the article that produced a tempest in our teacup last
week. Many Filipinos took umbrage at being depicted as “a nation of
servants.” The DFA demanded an apology from the offending Hong Kong
publication, and got it. The Bureau of Immigration got into the act
and declared Tsao persona non grata, never to set foot in these shores
without issuing an apology for the contumely.

Curious at a thing that could drive us to heights of outrage, when we
are being openly injured and insulted every day by our government and
we just shrug it off as part of being Filipino, I read the article. My
reaction? LOL, as the kids say. Or for those who do not understand
text language any more than satire, laugh out loud.

The article is funny and witty. What is it saying? Let’s see if we
can’t exaggerate it more to drive home the satire:

The Russians are meddling in Spratlys? Fine, the Russians taught the
Chinese Marx and Lenin anyway. The Japanese are meddling in Spratlys?
Fine, the Chinese can’t do without karaoke anyway. But the Filipinos
threatening to go to war over Spratlys? That is an outrage! Being a
patriotic Chinese citizen, he (Tsao) means to do his part. He has
already told his Filipino maid that if war breaks out between China
and the Philippines, he will hold her hostage.

“The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they
think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and
lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East…. Some of my friends told
me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their
maids have been made to shout ‘China, Madam/Sir’ loudly whenever they
hear the word ‘Spratly.’ They say the indoctrination is working as
wonderfully as when we used to shout, ‘Long live Chairman Mao!’ at the
sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution.”

Isn’t that funny? And isn’t the target clearly the Chinese government?
The Falkland Islands is a dead giveaway. The Falkland War, which
Britain fought with Argentina in 1982, is a reminder of lingering
British colonialism. By the same token, the Spratlys is a reminder of
ongoing Chinese expansionism. The references to indoctrination and
“Long live Chairman Mao” are an even deader giveaway.

Arguably, Tsao could have used another way to satirize the Chinese
government, but the use of the Filipino maid is just too tempting.
This is not of the order of that joke in “Desperate Housewives” where,
upon being told she is menopausal, Teri Hatcher says: “OK, before we
go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they
aren’t, like, from some med school in the Philippines?” That is truly
cruel, casting as it does Filipino doctors in a bad light, with not
very savory consequences for their practice in the US. It deserved
being protested.

Tsao’s “joke” is nothing like that. It even casts Filipinos in a good
light, by inference. Surely the Chinese have no love lost for Russia
and Japan? The latter particularly— you know, the Rape of Nanking? By
objecting to the one country that has not done Hong Kong, or China
generally, any harm, it extols its virtues.

Some Filipinos of course have defended Tsao’s article by saying that,
true enough, we are a nation of servants. No amount of denying that
will make it go away, it’s time we took our licks if we can’t do
anything about it. There’s that too. But it misses the point. The
point is that the barb isn’t aimed at us, it’s aimed elsewhere.

Frankly, I don’t know how we can fail to understand or appreciate
satire. We have a robust tradition of it. Jose Rizal was past master
at it, writing slyly, funnily and bitingly about the Spanish rulers,
especially the friars. But maybe it’s not just that tradition we’re
losing, or have lost, it’s the capacity to read itself. Ultimately
that may be the true satirical, ironical and cruel footnote on us:

We haven’t just become a nation of servants, we’ve become a nation of
illiterates."

**

Here's what F. Sionil Jose thinks, which is something I'd expect from him:

"Why are we 'a nation of servants'?

Here we go again, some inconsequential columnist in Hong Kong takes a cheap shot at our unhappy country, calls us "a nation of servants" and immediately an uproar, and magma feelings of hurt are unleashed. Editorials, columnists, politicians are outraged - they demand apology as if one would really salve the bone-deep insult.
It was the same sometime back when an English publisher defined "Filipina" as a housemaid. Such insults hurt profoundly but the pain fades quickly and soon after all that enraged outburst, we settle down to the same complacency, we continue sending more of our women abroad to be raped by Arabs, demeaned by Malaysians and
Chinese, heckled by the Brits. What has our sense of outrage brought us?

Go to Hong Kong, to Singapore. Visit the Star Ferry environs in Hong Kong or Lucky Plaza, and Singapore's Orchard St. And there, on Sundays you will see them, hundreds of Filipino domestics, yak-yaking, socializing on the sidewalk, having a pleasant respite from their work.

To the visitors, tourists and the natives, they are a piteous sight, illustrating so clearly and so well how this country has sank. As a Filipino, having witnessed such, I am utterly shamed. I do not blame our poor women for their sorry condition, for I know only too well their plight is the only way by which they can help their families at home and survive.

It is such a boring cliché now, but back to the not-so-distant past: Filipinas was the second richest country in the region, next only to Japan; our universities attracted students from all over Asia, and we had the best professionals, the most modern stores and hospitals.

And what was Hong Kong then? There were slums crawling up those hills on Victoria island, and slums all over Kowloon. Singapore as an English naval base was like old Binondo, with its small squalid shops and equally small houses.

But look at Singapore and Hong Kong now, then look at our country and people.

Sure, you can find in Makati magnificent mansions, the biggest luxury cars, the tony
restaurants, skyscrapers. But elsewhere the ugly sprawl of slums, the very poor who now eat only once a day. We must ask ourselves that question, why we became "the hewers of wood and drawers of water" of the world. What happened to us, a very talented and heroic people with a revolutionary tradition?

Once we have answered this question, then we should no longer wonder why there is a continuing diaspora of our brightest people, of our women. It is then the time for us to be truly enraged - not at that Hong Kong columnist - but at the creators of this dismal miasma we call Filipinas. Do not kill the messenger who comes to us to tell the horrid truth about us. Ingest his message, then turn all that outrage, that vehemence, to the Filipinos who turned this beautiful country into the garbage dump of the region: the oligarchs, the Spanish mestizos, the Chinese Filipinos and the treasonous Indios who sent their money abroad instead of investing it here in industries to create jobs for our people. Then it is time for us to rail and condemn the crooked politicians who are the allies of these wretched rich who permitted the relentless hemorrhage of this nation's capital.

Revolutionary tradition? Ask those rebels why, after 40 years, these leeches are still feasting on our blood!"

**

Here's what Mr. Pete Lacaba says in the PP list:

"I will have to confess that what bothered me about the recent brouhaha over a Hong Kong columnist's referring to the Philippines as "a nation of servants" was not what he wrote but the reaction to it. Somehow the reaction reminded me of the Spanish colonial government's decision to put Rizal before a firing squad because he made fun of Spain as a nation of Padre Damasos.

Political correctness is making it more and more difficult to practice the satirist's trade. Of course, I myself would probably be more comfortable with satire of the rich and famous rather than of the down and out--down and out na nga, pinagtatawanan pa. But, hey, we believe in free expression, right? And we should know how to fight satire with satire, di ba? After all, priests are servants of God, and people in government are supposed to be public servants, and tibaks see themselves as servants of the people.

Maybe the Hong Kong columnist should have said "nation of kasambahays, " para mas politically korek."

**

Honestly, do you find this piece funny?

"The War at Home"
by Chip Tsao
Hong Kong Magazine

"The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That's no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

"But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: there are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don't flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

"As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

"Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

"Oh yes. The government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout 'China, Madam/Sir' loudly whenever they hear the word 'Spratly.' They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, 'Long live Chairman Mao!' at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I'm not sure if that's going a bit too far, at least for the time being."

42nd Flr

It’s weird observing Manila from the heights. It’s like watching a multi-plot, complicated, but interconnected story unfolding with the hours -- only that the story is told as a silent film with no zoom-ins. One can’t help but ogle at the planes taking off from the airport. The harbor with its giant-hulled ships waiting. The highways crawling with metal critters. The high-rises reaching up to the skies like giraffes feeding off acacia shoots. The helicopters hovering like raptors. The motorists, all hurrying up, harried. The entire surreal horizon watching down on urban creation. With every household and its inhabitants and all the toothpaste tubes being emptied out, all the detergent suds seeping out into the (untreated) sewer, all the bathing and drama and sex and crime and haughtiness and sleep and horror and humor going on. With the haze -- the smog – above it all.

From my perch, Manila is one great novel waiting to be written.

Funny Achmed

This stand-up comedy routine made my weekend: “Achmed, the Dead Terrorist” by Jeff Dunham. It’s a hoot, though terribly racist. What’s even more scary (scarier?) is the American audience is laughing with nary a stab of conscience. And this, coming from a notorious terrorist-hater.



(via Dyosa, the gyoza-lover)

On depression, again

I’ve been copy-editing (for eight or so passes!) a medical monograph on depression, and along the way, I can’t help but shake my head. The current knowledge on the subject is extensive and complicated, but I find myself being incredulous because real depression is hardly a medical/physiological condition, but more of a psychological or psychiatric condition. No pill can cure depression.

Anyway, what I just want to note now are some new learnings on the subject. I learned that we human beings have two ways of coping that predict whether we end up being depressive or not.

Rumination – a negative way of coping, which involves focusing “passively and repetitively” on the emotions associated with one’s experience of distress

Reflection – a more positive way of coping, which involves a “turning inward” to address emotional symptoms connected to one’s experience of distress; also known as introspection.

As we might expect, rumination is associated with anxiety and depression, while reflection is not.

There are very few studies investigating the differences that men and women cope. Initial findings show that, yes, men tend to ruminate more and women tend to reflect more. We need more empirical evidence!

Bummer, I’m old

It used to be that total strangers addressed me as “boy,” “kid,” or “son.” Now, it’s only “sir,” “mister,” “Uncle,” or worse.

I got my first taste of the bitter fruit of advancing years when I IM-ed my friend, a La Salle college student, this way: “Wazzup, kiddo!?” Feeling utterly patronized, the young jerk, riposted, “Nuthin’, old man!” They boy styles himself as being someone advanced for his age, philo being his fave subject. "Old man?" What arrant arrogance!

I laughed heartily to that, but I was bitter inside. A lethal dose of reality check confronted me, where I was long in denial. There’s no denying it: It hurts to feel old or be looked upon as old, which I am becoming -- fast.

The first signs and symptoms of the disease have been merrily hinting their way to me, but my response has only been to hit the Delete, Control, and Restart buttons.

This notorious Peter Pan have long been extending his 30s long after his best-before date, but the delusion is bound to wear out. What else do errant hair strands turning gray or silver, suspicious wrinkles here and there, sagging muscles, and fat deposits all say but that I am not getting any younger?

Sigh. The damned symptoms seem to chorus, “Deal with it!” but only a defiant no can be heard from this curmudgeonly bugger. But now, the signals are not just dropping hints, they are making investigative reports and in-depth feature stories like evil journalists.

If I only could turn back time. Wait, why am I quoting Cher? I should quote Michael J. Fox’s Back to the Future instead. I know -- I can’t even help giving myself away now.

Who am I joking anyway? The time I stopped keeping track of pop music hits at The Cranberries’ “Zombie” and Oasis’ “Wonderwall” says it all. Clearly, it’s time to get real.

But I didn’t even need to be honest with myself. Like I said, I only had to listen to how people make fun of me nowadays. Since I’m surrounded by doctors at work, I receive such real compliments like “elderly, “aged,” and "geriatric.” It’s funny -- at least, for now, when everything is still hyperbole. What will happen when the humor wears thin, when all the joking stops and I receive real respect in place of ribbing? Crap! No, creepy.

I guess it is written, like the Bollywood film Slumdog Millionaire says. When I got bored at 27, I got an inkling that everything would be downhill from there. “How can anyone get bored at 27?,” laughed Ms. Jing Hidalgo during a writing workshop I had attended under her once upon a time. Because she was smart, she got the joke.

Now, I’m barely able to afford joking whenever I say I am bored. And that scares the hell out of me because, to crib from yet another old movie (The Breakfast Club), “with everything being boring, the only hope is to die.” Ah, death. Don’t even mention it.

I’m near in tears as I write these lines. Why am I getting old? I don’t want to get old yet, much less die. Why should I taste the penalty of ageing? Is ageing the punishment for being young once? That seems to be case.

I ask these questions because that’s what people around me remind me of everyday. They point out that I tire so easily. They embarrass me by noticing aloud how laughably early I get drunk and call it a night. They note how a mere chuckle sends me into a coughing fit, as though I had emphysema. They give the meanest prognosis at the first sign of body aches and pains. One says “rheumatism,” another pronounces “stage 4 cancer.” Other keywords used with impunity are "high-BP reading," "cholesterol count," and "osteroporosis," all of which, they point out, are Google-able search terms under "gerontology."

Oh how sad. All these kids were just babies yesterday. Now they are leading the world. Why can’t they be babes permanently, so I could be young forever? Now I feel like they are pushing me aside to obsolescence and oblivion.

These children deserve some whipping, don’t you think? They can be the rudest animals on earth that Sir Richard Attenborough could ever find. How conveniently these pests forget that they, too, will get old –- sooner than they expect. I guess everyone who claims to be nearer to tweens in age than to teens should be rounded up and brought into that welcoming vestibule of the cemetery where the sign “My turn now; yours later” is emblazoned in bold Gothic font to rain on the Proud Youngster parade, with their illusion of immortality.

It’s interesting how people react to that spooky sign. Some make a secret pledge to grab hold of everything as much as they can while still young and alive. Some just don’t care – whatta brave bunch! – and their motto is inevitably, “When you go, you go. If it’s your time, then it’s your time.” I have a problem with both groups, though. They are both extremists. Both act like they could die anytime; one is afraid as hell, the other on-the-ready any minute from now. But the fact is most people die at a ripe old age; no need to rush. The other fact is it’s ridiculous to want to have a taste of everything. Life is too short; the world’s riches too long.

Oh, why did I end up talking about death? Maybe I’m maturing. Truth is I can’t think of myself being 40 yet. Where have all my years gone? What happened? What went wrong? This must be how it feels like to have menopause.

Another way “my juniors” make fun of me is how I date myself unconsciously with my cultural references. I mention ABBA or Elton John or Doc Martens or Michael Jackson and they’d all go, “Hahah, who the heck is that?” I get bitter, of course, because, grumpy old man that I am (note the voice of resignation), I am more updated than most of my fellow old farts – much, much more updated. Like, I know how to use Windows Vista. I know how to text-message and use chatroom acronyms, complete with smileys and frownies. I know which boy band named ‘N Sync used to be, even though I didn’t give much of a damn. What’s more, I can still tell the difference between Lindsay Lohan and Zac Efron, between Paris Hilton and that scandalous blogger named Perez Hilton, and even between the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. Oh, wait, I’m not sure about the last.

There are times, though, when I am caught in my senior moments, such as when I am handed a PSP or an iPod, in which I quite have lost interest. I try, though.

But, yeah: Forever young – that’s what I wanna be, the cheesy song line notwithstanding.

It’s funny, though, how, as a young boy, what preoccupied this mutant’s mind was plotting how to be mature for his age. Now that I’ve reached maturity, I feel like I have nothing else but regrets. I feel like I’ve lost my childhood, and I’m just getting started reclaiming it. I hope life gives me that chance, at least.

Word of the day: bromance

I didn't know Brad Pitt and George Clooney are having a sizzling bromantic affair. Bromance is assumed to be between two straight guys. I wonder what it should be called if it's not.

Another new weird term for weird pairings is "cougar": a romantic relationship between an old woman and a man young enough to be her son.

On dysfunction

I was asked: Is everyone dysfunctional? I’d like to answer everyone has a degree of dysfunction. But I’d rather quote an authority on this: Fr. John Keating, spiritual formator/director, in his book, Intimacy with God. He claims the survey says only 2% of people don’t have issues, and he has yet to meet that 2%. Fr. Keating, I believe, wrote the book at a ripe old age, too old for bullsh*t.

Is everyone dysfunctional? I’d phrase my answer this way for the reader: Do you have any pattern of personal flaw? Do you have any secret weaknesses or favorite sins? Do you ever find yourself doing something you feel you shouldn’t? Your honest answer is good enough for me.

But we shouldn’t worry too much about the word. Neurosis (roughly its synonym) is not a disease in the medical/scientific/pathological sense. There’s a difference between immaturity and personality disorder and full-blown disease or mental illness.

Since a neurosis can afford the alibi of being something unconscious, even Christianity doesn’t view it as sin per se. But a neurosis has the potential to turn into a crime, or sin. That’s where the essential difference lies: when something bad is committed by the neurotic in full consciousness or control of the will.

Being dysfunctional, therefore, doesn’t make one any less human than the next, or any less deserving of his basic rights. A dysfunctional individual may not be whole, or at least not yet, but then who can claim to be perfect or ‘completely healed’? No one, except the dead who has been saved. Or one who is brazen enough as to be presumptuous.

After all, someone else pointed out correctly, the First Family, i.e., Adam's and Eve's, from whence all descended, is a highly dysfunctional family (past the Fall). We are all somewhat children of "the original dysfunctional family."

Sucker for best-of lists

Sucker that I am, I began rummaging through my meager library for titles on The Guardian’s list-of-1000-novels-to-read that I might have glossed over, and now here they are currently competing for my time (limited). Glad to have found these titles escape my seasonal culling. I almost gave them away or else threw them out as hopeless trash:

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham – What a brazenly different children’s story, an anti-Aesop, in a writing style that has been lost in the ether.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence – Will this bring me to hell? So help me God.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – I love Swiftian satire so bring it on.


Meanwhile, here’s a link to a why-I-wrote-my-book essay that Gelo kindly forwarded to me: Visions and revisions" by William Zinsler.

Getting to know me

A friend asked me, “What are the things you like best about yourself?” I was surprised how my answers boosted my self-esteem.

- I’m usually nice and kind. Emphasis on usually. I give people the benefit of the doubt. (I know this can put me in grave danger.)

- Some say I’m witty, even intelligent.

- Many people other than my mother find me charming. I don’t look that bad. It’s something about my eyes, and my smile – or so they say

- I have very minimal fashion sense, but I know whether a person is stylish or not. I have an eye for beauty, or art. I like people who’ve got style, be it fashion or some other. It doesn’t matter whether they are rich or poor.

- I may be comparably poor, but I know how to appreciate the finer things in life.

- I have a sense of humor.

- I love words, and my hobby is intense enough to help me make a living out of it.

- I have keen attention to detail (though perfectionism is a curse, a stress magnet).

- Despite all this, I don’t blow my own horn – unless unduly provoked.

- I can be quite rash in judgment, but I am given to having second-thoughts. I am humble enough to acknowledge my mistake and give the credit where it is due.

- I can be a bore to some people, but I have in fact surprisingly wide interests. And I’m fond of synthesizing ideas from disparate places, and I think that makes me an interesting person over coffee, even though I’m not so fond of making arguments. (I let other people stick to their beliefs, at least in their face.)

What are your own answers to the question? Do you know yourself? Or at least the better part? I’m pretty sure you’re only too familiar with the darker side!

Nuba

Grbe! Maxiado nman 2ng bagong txt lingo ng mga kabataan now. Uu, d qo halos kinaya ha. Dati hrap aqo. D qo magets. Until my youngish frendz started teling me, “txt-txt nalang poh u.” Poh? Eh d pa naman me maxiadow matanda ah? Saka what’s wid da ‘h’? Other dan 8s annoying, I don’t get it mehn. Saka whaddaya mean “txt-txt”? Oh, I get it. Wat I mean is ba’t para kayong si Tarzan and Jane lahat? Mxiado nman. Ai, d nyo pla kilala yun. Nuba! Pahiya p me.

Rediscovering Francis M.

As I promised to myself, I tried listening to other Francis M. tunes I wasn’t familiar with, and what do you know – I discovered singles I didn’t find annoying in the least. Here are three uploads I got with the help of my younger brother:

“Kaleidoscope World” – quite ok; not rap

“Private Diane” – a collabo with Ely Buendia doing the refrain plus a badass-mouthed rap group (Death Threat) he must have discovered; interesting

“Liwanag” – I like this; another great achievement of Francis is his sponsorship of Gloc9, a truly great rapper we can call our own – great beats, great choice of subject matters

How come these songs never made a blip in my radar screen for Pinoy pop music? Other than the material wasn’t assigned to me for review, it must be because these were never played in mainstream media. This is a major frustration I have with the local music biz. As a detached observer, I noticed that the hit singles, the ones getting the most airplay, are those that are not necessarily great, artistically speaking. The excellent ones are roundly ignored. Is the problem a matter of taste, with the insular masa limited to what they already know? Maybe. Could it be that something’s wrong with the promotion and distribution side of the business? More likely. I hope nothing stinks behind the scenes, although I’ve once read a longish article in The New Yorker detailing how, in the US music business, the producers and promoters are god. What they ignore gets ignored in the mainstream. Translation: what they find will click with the masses, what they find will sell, is what gets the airplay. Of course, money is involved, lots of it, changing hands, from producers to talent managers/promoters to distributors to radio DJs. Is this the case with us?

(I updated my earlier post on Francis M, to accomodate these thoughts.)

Boycott Hong Kong

Is it wrong to be a servant? No. But why are we angry?

Because it's not true we're a nation of servants. Because the claim is unfair. And it's not because we are being defensive. If it is true, then it is only partly true, and only in the hyperbolic sense.

Because the very statement reeks of malice, drips with contempt, laden with arrogance.

The Hong Kong columnist doesn't know that he demeans other nations of servants as well: Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, etc. And don't we forget his very own China once upon a time, when Chinese in the Philippines worked as bote-dyaryo-garapa ambulant buyers-and-sellers, and other Chinese around the world worked as amahs, cooks, etc.

How very revealing that statement. How much it is filled with contempt for lowly workers, which belies another evil lurking behind the bigoted words: the misplaced contempt of the rich for the poor, as though the rich don't depend on the poor to get even richer.

This is not just a bigoted Chinaman demeaning Filipinos; it'a also about the arrogance of the rich against poor people.

Coupled with unchecked greed, it's the arrogance that perpetuates the very system that brought us:

- the great socioeconomic divide,
- the dehumanization of common laborers,
- the ruthless master-slave work relationship/organizational hierarchy, which should have been outdated a long time ago
- subhuman level of impoverishment, especially among urban dwellers
- the wholesale stealing of the future and full development of human beings,
- the massive destruction of the environment,
- the arrogance of commerce, particularly how it pockmarks our landscape with billboards whose size is matched only by their ugliness
- the primacy of profit over human beings,
- and everything else that makes modern civilization actually uncivilized and far more primitive and barbaric than the prehistoric Neanderthals.

Quote

Mr. B., my former boss, who needless to say is very rich (he owns a chalet in Tagaytay Highlands, for one), once told me:

"Alam mo, ang mga mayayaman ang gusto nyan, lalong yumaman. Laging nagiisip kung pano yumaman pang lalo. Mas todo kayod iyang mga yan kasi may lifestyle silang kialangang i-maintain."


True? Maybe I was too naive, but I was kinda shocked to hear a rich man say that about his fellow rich. Traitor (to his own class)!!

Pina, Pina, sa’n ka na napunta?

I don’t know what to think of the Nicole rape case. Is it yet another case, writ small, of America’s forced entry into the Philippine psyche, resulting in abuse and exploitation? Patricia Evangelista made a good point last Sunday when she said that rape is rape, no matter if the guy’s sex advances were solicited or not. At the moment the penetration is perpetrated and the woman refuses, not even the alibi of marriage can undo the allegation of rape. This is a point that has already been eloquently made in the movie The Accused (starring Jodie Foster). I’m surprised Evangelista didn’t mention the original work, “Pina, Pina, Sa’n Ka Pupunta” (I forgot the author), a short story that is required reading in Humanidades 101 in the UP System’s curriculum. It’s a short story (or stage play) that Prof. Delfin Tolentino of UP Baguio said he fought hard to be included in the syllabus, even though the story had graphic scenes of rape, which he deemed necessary in depicting what America (the rapist) had done to the Pina character (the one raped), the Philippines. It’s a fight Tolentino eventually won. Maybe it’s no longer included among the required readings. But there are rape cases and there are purported rape cases. With “Nicole’s” alleged recantation, we are left red-faced and reexamining our reflex reaction when the media story broke out. We thought, maybe we were wrong; maybe we’ve been too rash and judgmental, accusing the poor angel-faced Smith of wrongdoing where there was none. Maybe the case was more like the purported rape case involving basketball star Kobe Bryant, where the circumstances were clearly grayer and thus suspect, with the woman ending up being suspected of courting Bryant into an ugly ripoff. Nicole has left for the US, leaving us all behind with a question mark: Nicole, pano na, san ka na nagpunta? San kami, tayo, pupulutin? Sa kangkungan na naman ba? In Latin, quo vadis, Nicole? We deserve an explanation. We deserve the truth. If you were indeed raped, which seems to me the case, why go down to that level, where you demean yourself and embarrass all the Pinas and the rest of us?