Get Real
Serve the age by betraying it
By Solita Collas-Monsod
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:19:00 04/26/2008
MANILA, Philippines—It was from Bono—the rock star of U2 fame and, even more importantly, a champion of social justice who puts his money where his mouth is and tirelessly works for the UN Millennium Development Goals—that I got to read this: “If you want to serve the age, betray it.” This he said in his 2004 commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), which had conferred on him a doctorate, honoris causa (the phrase is now also a blogspot).
The quote is actually a line in the epic poem called “Book of Judas,” written by the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly. Bono said it never leaves his mind. Since I read Bono’s speech, considered one of the all-time best commencement addresses, it hasn’t left my mind either. What does it mean, to “betray the age?” Bono explains:
“Well to me betraying the age means exposing its conceits, its foibles; its phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths.
“Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. Slavery was one of them and the people who best served that age were the ones who called it as it was—which was ungodly and inhuman. Ben Franklin called it what it was when he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
“Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the US Supreme Court betrayed the age, May 17, 1954, in Brown vs. Board of Education when it put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that.
“Fast forward 50 years. May 17, 2004. What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? What’s worth spending your post-Penn lives trying to do or undo?”
Those are very challenging questions. For Bono, the idea right now worth betraying is the “deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth,” which he says is exemplified by Africa: “Africa makes a mockery of what we say, at least what I say, about equality and questions our pieties and our commitments because there’s no way to look at what’s happening over there and its effect on all of us and conclude that we actually consider Africans as our equals before God.”
What about the massive moral blind spots in the Philippines at this time? What harsh truth, what secrets, what foibles of our age should we betray, if we are to serve the age? The answer may come out immediately for some, or may require long and painful introspection for others. My answer is actually identical to Bono’s: a deep-down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth.
Sure, we talk about the preferential option for the poor; sure we talk about everyone being created equal. Yet we regularly turn a blind eye to farmers killed or terrorized out of their rightful land, with the implicit approval of law enforcement officers. In some past cases, the killers were actually caught on film as they were firing their guns—and their names were given by those who fortunately escaped the bullets—and yet many of them have not been arrested, much less jailed.
Do you remember the driver of a rich politician who shot and killed a poor soldier in full view of motorists along McKinley Road—and who is not in jail, because his “amo” [employer] pulled strings? Or the rich businessman who ran over and killed two pedestrians while driving under the influence, but got his driver to take responsibility? Or the young man who ran over and killed a homeless person, but did not even spend a single hour in jail—because there was no complainant (the fellow was homeless, so the state does not think his life was worth anything)?
Then there are the police “assets” who are seen in different trial courts by NGOs who give legal aid to the poor—the same “asset” is used as an eyewitness to different crimes that police “suspects” are charged with.
But back to the agrarian reform issue—There is good news coming out of the House of Representatives where the agrarian reform committee has approved the version supported by the farmers. The Senate comes next. Hopefully, the program will be extended despite a hard core of landowner legislators who still have a massive moral blind spot: They refuse to accept the results of independent impact assessments that agrarian reform has benefited the poor in general and agriculture in particular, in spite of implementation shortcomings. (Up to now, most of collective CLOAs (Certificates of Land Ownership Award) issued have not been individualized, so farmers still do not have their own titles.)
As far as these landowners are concerned, they have a God-given right to the land, and the farmers are better off as tenants under their paternalistic care. As a result, they have been waging a campaign for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) to be terminated, even as they have resorted to terrorism to keep their land. They would have succeeded, too, if not for the Catholic bishops, who are “betraying the age” by presenting an implacable countervailing force and the rice crisis, which has made it very difficult for them to convert their farmlands and remove them from CARP coverage.
But that hasn’t stopped them. They are reverting to Plan B, which is to insert poison provisions in the bill that will spell failure for the program and for the farmers. And there is always terrorization.
Let’s do a Bono. Let us serve the age by exposing these bankrupt ideas.
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