Monthly Archive

Yesterday ended on a very sad note.  Having accompanied my seatmate, E-Shen, to the library, I decided to log on the net just to catch whatever was latest in the news.  As I flipped through the pages of inq7.net, I came across a letter to the editor written by an Atenean on a fellow Atenean’s dismay over what the country has become all the while he was away.  The latter was a certain Dr. Abay who’s now an established medical practitioner in the US.  A balikbayan just recently, Dr. Abay witnessed the decay of the country into economic and political instability.  When he attended his high school reunion, he was disappointed by the fact that many of his former classmates couldn’t join him for sheer lack of money.  Nothing in his story is surprising.  His observations are too long to retell and too typical to get oneself acquainted with even yet again.  However, what depressed me was the last part of Dr. Abay’s annecdote.  I quote so as not to water down the emotion:

In transit to the airport, I asked the taxi driver, a clean cut, neatly dressed gentleman in his late 50’s, “Ano po ang palagay mo sa nangyayari sa Pilipinas? (What do you think of what’s happening in the Philippines?)” He replied: "Kung hindi mapa-alis si GMA sa paraan ng impeachment, assassination na lang. (If Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will not be ousted by impeachment, then only assassination will do it.)", and he was dead serious.

I had dreamt of perhaps starting a graduate school of medicine in the Philippines, maybe a world-class medical care and medical training center. But unless the economic situation and the fundamental moral fiber of the Filipino improve, anything we undertake is futile and empty.

I boarded PAL flight 102 to LA on September 8. As soon as I settled in my seat aboard the Boeing 747, I wept.

Where is the Filipino’s love of country?

http://news.inq7.net/express/html_output/20050926-51382.xml.html

At that instant, I felt the very disappointment Dr. Abay poured out on the plane back to the US.  The question he posed was legitimate.  And I won’t be surprised to know that he is not the only one asking the same question.  Perhaps the question is more appropriately posed upon the leaders of our nation.

This whole encounter comes as if on purpose after my class on concept-formation just finished our discussion of Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge.  Though taken for granted in the social sciences, Mannheim presents a timeless theory on ideology and utopia, the first being a tool used by social groups in power to preserve the status quo, the latter by those wishing to change the situation.  Underpinning Dr. Abay’s question is his desire to see a better nation - quite utopian a Mannheimian may even say. 

I don’t believe however that the Filipino’s love of country is no longer present.  My flatmate, Tope, puts it humorously: Filipinos love the Philippines.  It’s just the leaders who don’t. 

By the day, life just becomes busier.  I wish to agree but empirical data refutes this.  Just look at how many of my friends maintain a blog account - take note - by the day.  Don’t you get irritated by the perennial messages in your mailbox reminding you to visit yet another guy’s blog account?  Well, I do.  In response, allow me to irritate you, too.  Welcome to my blog account.