The paradox of freedom

what mr. celdran failed to include as a reason why there is still NO people power is the Filipino diaspora.

on OFWs alone, Philippine migration data in 2003 estimated that about 2,500 Filipinos leave the country to find work abroad. since the May 2004 election that would be about 1.4M – the number of Filipinos, according to melay v. abao of institute for popular democracy http://www.ipd.ph/features/GloriaWatch/GloriaWatch1.pdf , who are likely to have been politically active (in October 2004, the actual number who went abroad is a little over 1M http://www.census.gov.ph/data/sectordata/2005/of0401.htm ).

what about the Filipino families who have the means but sick and tired of the political turmoil, corruption, economic uncertainty, etc. and decided to migrate elsewhere seeking better life and environment? unfortunately, i don’t have data on this. but still, they also could have been politically active if they remained here.

simply put, the politically-aware public that may join street protests is not around anymore…there is no fatigue…it’s just that there are NO more people for the power!

wala nang point pag-aralan ang people power.

wala namang nagbago pagkatapos ng martial law eh.

mga nakaupo parin ngayon sa pwesto eh yung mga tuta ni marcos.

yung asawa nya eh laging nasa pasosyal na parties na laging nasa mga society magazines na mahal na mahal ng madami.

yung mga skwelahan wala pa ring libro.

yung mga gutom wala pa ring makain.

sori pero para sa aming bagong henerasyon na mga 80’s babies walang kwenta ang people power ng mga magulang namin.

yung left di mo alam kung yung pinatalsik nila dati eh bakit ngayon kakampi na nila.

sa totoo lang kinakahiya ko ang henerasyon ng people power.

kasi hindi people power ng masa yun.

people power ng mga mayayaman yun.

nang mga may pera.

wala… walang nagbago. kaya walang people power.

naglolokohan lang tayo lahat.

Jeez. For lack of any other juicy scoops to dish out to ignorant minds, the media goes back to the subject of “people power” and even cites the less-than-groundbraking analysis of an old activist fart like David Celdran.

People Power IS DEAD. And it was killed by its own inventor — Cory Aquinio.

It is a story I tell in this brilliant article here:

(“R.I.P. People Power (1986-2005)”)
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/agr-disagr/18-6-majority.html

Excerpt:
=================
In a country peppered by souls still heady and giddy about Fiesta Revolutions of past, the rallying cry in response to an impeachment bid against President Gloria Arroyo that catastrophically failed to pass Congress on 06 Sep 2005 was once again — you guessed it — FIESTA REVOLUTION! Led by no less than Madame Ex-President, former Time Woman of the Year, and Ms 1986 “Revolution” herself — Ms Corazon Aquino, what may now be billed Edsa IV (or Commonwealth Avenue I, as the case may be), promised to be another spectacle of sorts. This time there was no particular heir-to-the-throne around which the fete was organised. If it succeeded in its bid to amass enough warm bodies in the streets to make a statement, it would have marked a new low in the practice of a concept that Filipinos fancy themselves to have invented back in 1986. If it had failed, it will have further served to highlight the utter ridiculousness of how Filipinos conduct their affairs.

And failed miserably it did. Bursts of little street protests sporadically erupted in Manila’s streets in the days following the House dismisal of the impeachment bid, but none even remotely approached the kind of numbers these would-be anarchists crowed in the days leading to Tueday. Each were in fact smaller in number than the equally ridiculous street gathering in Makati on 25 July.
===================

ha ha! 😀

The Paradox is not with Freedom, but with People Power itself.

Hanep katawa yan ryebosco…kung hindi lang sana totoo!

toro, maganda ang iyong mga sinabi at sangayon ako sa yo. maidagdag ko lang na ang ibang mga ofw’s ngayon ay hindi na rin mapigil ang basta manahimik na lamang.

ryebosco, magaling ang pagkarebisa mo sa ating pambasang awit.

START NG KARMA SA MGA ALIPORES NI ARROVO. KAWAWA NAMAN SI WYCOCO AT SIYA ANG NAUMPISAHAN. SINO KAYA ANG SUSUNOD NA MAKAKARMA. BALIK GARCI SA P’NAS AT TALAGANG INUTIL NA YATA ANG MGA AHENSIYA NG GOBYERNO NATIN. ANO KAYA ANG SASABIHIN NI GARCI NA PAWANG KASINUNGALINGAN ULIT. AKO AY HINDI NA MANINIWALA KAHIT SA KONTING SASABIHIN NIYA NA CLEAR ANG ELECTION NOON. KAYO MGA KABABAYAN ANO ANG MASASABI NINYO AT PINAYAGAN NA NI ARROVO BUMALIK SI GARCI AT MAG SASALITA DAW. SANA GUMALING NA SI WYCOCO AT MAG BAGO NA NG UGALI AT HINDI IYUN PUMAPANIG SA KASAMAHAN. KUNG MAKAKABALIK PA???

Floyd, ulitin ko lang muli ang ilan sa mga sinabi mo:

“… para sa aming bagong henerasyon na mga 80’s babies walang kwenta ang people power ng mga magulang namin.

“… sa totoo lang kinakahiya ko ang henerasyon ng people power.”

Dahil bukod tangi ka sa lahat na galing sa henerasyon mo hindi ko na kasalan kung hindi maabot ng iyong isipan ang sagot sa iyong tinatanong. Itanong mo na lang kaya sa tatay mo.

are you guys at pcij on iTunes? because i was searching for pcij there… didn’t find any. it would be great if you guys were. easier to download your podcasts.

just a thought. cheers.

ang salawikaing “ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan…”

nagamit na panimula ito ni E. San Juan, Jr. sa kanyang sanaysay ukol sa “Pinoy diaspora:”

http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2005b-1.shtml
http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2005c-1.shtml

nawa’y mabasa ng ating mga kababayan lalo na ang mga nagpupunyagi sa ibang bayan.

“…ay hindi makararating sa paruruonan,” ‘di ba floyd?

“…ay may beke,” ang sabi naman ng aking 20-taong-gulang na pamangkin na nagugulumihanan din sa magulong takbo ng mga pangyayari sa ating bansa…

BenignO :

With your patented sharp general comments,

it’s about time to hear you in podcast.

And in advance, I will use it as one of the materials in teaching Consti Law.

What do you think ?

Kindly consider

looks like there’s a digression on this page away from celdran’s opinions on people power to the ideas people have regarding the use of english and/or filipino (tagalog).

my two cents before i take a step back and listen to the comments about celdran’s presentation:

benign0 raised two points i think worthy of discussion:

“But if someone seeks enlightenment and has two tools to pursue knowledge to choose from — English and Tagalog — which of the two do you think will offer BETTER results? If we use as an excuse for inaction, the fact that most Pinoys are more comfortable in Tagalog, yet are unable, as a society, to articulate EXISTING knowledge in Tagalog (much less create NEW knowledge in Tagalog), then we, at the end of the day, offer them nothing.”

“It does not matter what language we speak, as long as the spirit of what we communicate is robust and backed up by conviction and SUBSTANCE.”

i agree with his final point, but i think that there’s something fundamentally flawed about his statement “But if someone seeks enlightenment and has two tools to pursue knowledge to choose from — English and Tagalog — which of the two do you think will offer BETTER results?” i think it’s flawed because i believe the that the language/s one uses is irrelevant to successful pursuit of knowledge. english-speaking peoples do not have a monopoly on the world’s store of knowledge, nor are the people who have and are now involved in increasing it exclusively english speakers (fluent or otherwise). a lot of nobel prize winners have had to have their speeches translated to english from their native tongues, for instance.

i do not think that english is a better vehicle for idea transfer than tagalog is; after all, english as we now know consists of a lot of words borrowed from different cultures from around the world. spoken french is the same (though the academie francaise frowns on it). so does japanese. so does filipino. i think that in the sharing of ideas, especially across cultures, we also get to share terms. languages are on the same playing field — it’s only a matter of what is the dominant culture. in the roman era, it was imperial latin (even while conquered tribes spoke their bastardized versions); there was a time that the elite of what is now england spoke french (the norman versus saxon bit); spanish and portuguese also were the linguas francas of their day (i hope that that’s spelled right), resulting in other patois created by the societies they conquered.

english as we know it now is merely the patois spoken by the dominant culture of this era. if people find it a useful tool in expressing themselves, fine; if they find their own native tongues more appropriate to the views they share, fine as well.

i can already imagine the comment “so why do you use english when you said ‘i do not think that english is a better vehicle for idea transfer than tagalog is’? simple. tagalog wasn’t my first language; ilocano and english were.

i remember resenting the fact i had to learn filipino (tagalog) when i was in grade school, even more so when i moved up to higher levels of education. growing up in an ilocano household in baguio city, we spoke in either ilocano or english, not in filipino, not even the patois we call taglish now. this was because in grade school i didn’t see what learning tagalog was for (i was pissed by the “speaking in english” fines we had in filipino class); later, i resented it because i believed that in being taught as the national language, marginalization of cultures (like that of northern luzon, the cordilleras, bicol, visayas, and mindanao) took place in favor of the tagalog culture. i mean, i learned ilocano as a means of communicating within my community, english to communicate out of it… if, for instance, a cebuano did the same, or a lumad, we’d still have english as a means to share ideas… i don’t think i’d have needed to learn tagalog to do that. fine, the dominant culture is supposed to dictate the language, but to some extent i believe that choosing tagalog, merely one of the several hundred local languages, over the rest and forcing it down our throats in the guise of a national language supposed to unify the philippines has contributed to the regionalism pervasive among filipinos by somehow subtly emphasizing that non-tagalog speaking people may just not be filipino.

anyway… rizalist, what did you mean by “The Paradox is not with Freedom, but with People Power itself”?

The ‘thing’ Freedom

Essentially, Pinoys have from daunting experiences, been amongst the few in the world who would have pedigrees of invaluable lessons, history of colors dealing with extraneously difficult situations from other people, outsiders as well as from themselves and colonizers who would have none but be exploitative, assimilate Pinoys to tailor according to only their peripheral interests.

But despite the education, still we are from how I see it, so far away as if in some animated stagnation, unmoving and so irrepressibly naïve despite the impeccable academics.

In business, we like saying ‘stick to basics’ which means be the raw deal let outsiders invest and be the maker of the ‘finished’ product, we just buy them back double, no cinch.

I have no make of to be honest with the kind of business infrastructure we have as a ‘free’ nation but with the kind of incredible money we owe to people here there and everywhere, I would probably assume we could be aiming to ourselves exploit the riches of the Moon and then the Martian soil.

But that’s not it, otherwise we could have been just like most other people in the ‘hood’ be righteously involved in making do with provisions for just the simple need like transport and this is to enable assuring the ‘supply and need’ thing so that we assure there’s food on the table, is this too difficult to understand?

Freedom by just the sampler of how we should treat overrated technocrats, the ‘borrow money exclusive club’ clique of morons (forgive the bad mouthing) can only utter none but just borrow and borrow.

This explains also why we have oligarchs who may be behind many celebrated heists financiers of both Martial Law & People Power, some brand new ones every now and then; you can’t miss them because they always have Swiss bank accounts in hidden bank vaults somewhere. Well, some good some bad may portend to just how life should be lived in a free nation like ours.

But when people start to die for nothing, this I would probably imagine to be a differing kind of derangement. Can we win wars by being so naïve not know that it is fraught with dangers and that it is ill affordable? There are other ways by which to handle conflict one I would imagine would be to comprehend why there should be one in the first place, are we really knowing why we are at war with ourselves?

I am beginning to be very afraid we as ‘freedom loving’ people may not really be knowing the heck why there’s war in these times especially with the 9/11 global menace of people so irreversibly insane they just have to blow, detonate away never mind the innocent. God be my keeper, I am really scared.

Freedom as explicate in money terms said in many trading floors does entail of an intricate web of money culture the world is so heavenly hamstrung with, ours by way of saying is just an insignificant subsidiary, be as it may, is in reality a plaything for just the very few oligarchy in the country.

Sure, the oligarchy when they are possessing of good numbers is definitely healthy economic signs, the preponderance of which is growth and development. It is when they are few and exclusionary and so controlling that it somehow become abnormal, sometimes very dangerous.

The Oligarchy in the country is dominant and is too small a number for comfort and for a country too large and widely scattered as ours, and all water in between, it is definitely a bad sign.

For none medics like us, let it be the dengue the soon pandemic disease (the Oligarchs) and we know this to be borne from mosquitoes that would dwell in unkempt waterholes, like say our economically stagnated country.

To come of it, our military infrastructure is badly incapacitated and is not in ways to describe, capable of deployment in multifaceted battlefronts.

The reason being faces behind the armed fronts engaging our troops are either Marxists, Muslims or rightists. This being difficult to assess in pedigrees of how to treat each and everyone of them, no money for it either so that military resolutions by my way of saying more so definitely is nil.

Economics is, I would surmise, the only viable locomotive by way of perhaps enhancing the ability to bat for negotiated settlements, and may be the best remainder of the best thing, but what economics is there for a poverty stricken democracy for us to be able to enable for political resolutions?

So back to the oligarchy the few clique of filthy rich people behind the money thing, the people from within the economics of it all.

The paradox of it, I aver may exemplify complexities of magnitude because we still have to determine exactly where the oligarchy interests’ lie and it is not easily discernible. Henceforth, the paradox of the oligarchy can spell to be the genuine power behind the People Power and the Martial Rule, the creator and the destroyer of both the phenomenon and this is not ‘the chicken and egg’ theory.

A sign to say the filthy rich being scared is when you see their walls climb sky high. The Marxists would like to line them up and massacre them, and the military and politicians milk them bone dry. I personally would like more and more of them than their present number because by having so, you get to have jobs and good business, a very good thing isn’t it?

However, who are this people? Marcos the brilliant despot rounded them up like the beef on his dining table, promised them if they provide the pocket backing to invade the Sabah State of Malaysia during the 60s, they will have the riches yet imagined. They even recruited a Cavite smuggling king according to the movie-make of the terribly embarrassing event, for the transport scheme.

In the super secret invasion plans, Marcos recruited Muslims from Sulu to be his terrorists invade unsuspecting Sabahans, which was by the way, the very trigger why there is war with the Muslims present day.
In other words, the oligarchy is behind every mill to grind in the country and we do need them badly to cooperate if the intent is economics to solve things up in-as-much-as political resolutions should ever come to naught, this to my mind is the paradox to tell whether to be or not to be.

lest i be judged as deviating from ms. avigail’s topic, i’ll try as much as possible to stick to the post…

there is ongoing “people power” here for and against Filipino language. what i just find disturbing is that there exists a Filipino putting down Filipino (as a language). might that be the “paradox” of our time?

was it Rizal who said “Ang taong hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika ay masahol pa sa hayop at malansang isda” or was it Pythagoras?

…to lessen my digression, i am giving the “freedom” to all readers to know: http://grabeh.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7612&page=3&pp=20 .

thanks, pcij…

So, Mr. jester, kung baga the core of your argument is that *just because English is the lingua franca, it does not necessarily hold a monopoly on knowledge”?

Remember that, at least at the moment, it is knowledge primarily in the fields of economics, finance, science, and engineering that holds a premium in today’s world. We lament the departure of brilliant Filipino minds who are experts in these fields. And those who do stay languish in low-paying jobs under the shadow of non-value-adding politicians, lawyers, and mediocre artists (I recall a blogger here who cited how many of the Philippines’ most treasured artists themselves now live abroad).

What is my point? I will use a challenge to illustrate my point:

Cite three examples of books or textbooks written in Tagalog that articulate knowledge in the fields of economics, finance, science, and engineering in Tagalog or any other native dialect.

If you can’t cite any example, then consider how a Pinoy kid, being given a local education with 50% of public education resources devoted to shoving Tagalog down his/her throat, will fare later in life.

JR, you dunno no good Inglis speller too. he he he. That’s a good one which I hope cools down that fellow who’s so het up putting down his mother tongue. I bet you can’t count the number of successful Pinoy kids who made good in spite of their deficiency in English.

oist, all, the PCIJ folks just might kick us out for digressing too much as it is…

… but i hope they let this one (among others) slide.

baycas,

i took a glimpse of the link… thanks! wonderful thread. i am heartened with the powerful arguments supporting a multilingual society… naturally, as i would like to see more contemporary iloco work and a renaissance of classic iloco literature (which is why i miss that bannawag magazine from my childhood days), as well as the work of other filipino cultures, translated into filipino and english, for the appreciation of all.

that pythagoras is damn smart; hit the nail right on the head, he did:

“My counter contention is this: if your product is world class and the skills that produce those products are exceptional, you become progressive. Knowing English will not directly make you progressive if your product and skills do not correspond with what the world market needs.”

yup. my engineer counterparts in the PRC still speak in chinese (some know absolute no english), but it doesn’t make them any less competent than we pinoy engineers. same goes for some of my japanese and thai colleagues. why not? after all, math is math, numbers are numbers, in whatever language. a fluent-english-speaking idiot will not learn calculus faster than a broken-english-speaking math maven simply because of his command of english. i should know: i tutored calculus and differential equations to a few classmates from region 2, a few indonesians, and a few (to put it politely) former ateneans. it was far easier to teach the indonesians and isnegs than the preppies.

benign0,

“Remember that, at least at the moment, it is knowledge primarily in the fields of economics, finance, science, and engineering that holds a premium in today’s world.”

yup, more’s the pity (i say that ironically, just so you know). personally, in my capacity as an engineer delving in materials science, i think that premium is overrated. knowledge advances, yes, but does wisdom?

at any rate, not all the brilliant studies of these fields you and others like you put a high premium on are in english. lots of them are in other languages (d-uh). ever heard of the University of Nancago? the mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki? that school and that fellow are fictional names used as a nom de plume by various brilliant mathematicians on the planet… all writing in french ONLY, no matter what their true nationality is (french, german, japanese, or what-have-you). i doubt if you’ve ever judged the quality of a scientific paper written in arabic (translated for us non-arabic-literate, of course, to broken english — the translator was indonesian).

i will be asked, “fine, but french is a language used by an already progressive society, as is arabic (debatable, yes, but defensible). what about tagalog — or iloco, for that matter?”

fyi: some of my instructors wouldn’t accept my papers if i wrote in iloco, as not all of them speak nor read it. that doesn’t mean that my thoughts wouldn’t be any less valid if i wrote in iloco, would it? again, english is a vehicle, not the be-all and and-all of knowledge.

as to your challenge, i’ll get back to you when the playing field is between english and our local languages is equal in terms of publication: WHEN publishers decide to make an effort to mass-publish in our local languages. only then can a valid comparison be made. apples and oranges, you know.

counter-challenge (if i agree that an apple is an orange is an apple): tell me how much trash is published in english, compared to how much trash is published in iloco (okay, fine, tagalog — i doubt if you can read iloco).

toro,

“I bet you can’t count the number of successful Pinoy kids who made good in spite of their deficiency in English.”

hell, i work with people like that all the time, brilliant minds, broken english, pinoy or otherwise. i’ve stopped counting; i know that my (relatively) good english doesn’t make me any smarter than them.

agbiag ti pilipinas, kakabsat ken kailian! can we go back to the people power issue now, please?

good points again jester. i agree, as i’ve mentioned in the other blog here, it’s the skills and the competence of the person that count most. i have worked also with europeans, middle-easterns and our other asian neighbors and english has never been the most important thing, it’s the product that counts most.
interestingly, i find it strange that in other parts of the world specifically in europe, people seems to be not so much interested with the english language. why i say this? i happened to have access to the europian tv channels (close to 500 channels all) and most of the english movies, sitcoms, & other english programs are translated or dubbed on their local dialects like french, germans, italians, greeks, russians, etc..except for CNN & BBC of course. i might even learn soon how to speak french & german. anyway, there’s one channel i like best and no need for any english translation to uderstand what’s being shown.
even india and pakistan which are former colonies of england did not adapt the english language. then, there’s the miss universe beauty pageant, beauties who are winning the events are not really good in english. they even have interpreters while the phil contestant, wow so fluent in english yet it’s the idea that counts most. so, can we truly say that english is a big factor for success? (naku, baka mapulaan na naman ako neto).