Glimpses
Our sons and daughters
By Jose Ma. Montelibano
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 01:52:00 10/03/2008
Filed Under: Social Issues, Youth, Relief & Aid Organisations
While I have been critical of what is happening in the Philippines, I do see that many other countries, including the United States, are also in need of leaderships that authentically have the people's issues at heart. However, the misery of others is not consolation to our poor who suffer daily and the whole citizenry who are deprived of role models. Worse, Filipinos cannot escape a fate proportional to the learning required to transcend a pattern of corruption, poverty and violence.
As a writer, I have taken two tracks: to instill fear at the consequences of the wrongdoing we do, or the wrongdoing we tolerate; and to spark inspiration by the good we do and the good that others do. I do this because, as a writer, I know of no other way to touch hearts and minds away from what is wrong and toward what is right.
As a concerned citizen, I have participated in advocacies and organizations that consistently, to my judgment, discourage wrongdoing and encourage pathways to societal reform and transformation. My life in Gawad Kalinga is an example of such participation, and I remain open to contributing in other ways and to other individuals and groups whose views and sentiments parallel mine.
My continuing journey is becoming more optimistic despite clearer eyes that can discern more quickly the shenanigans of thieves, liars, and manipulators — even at the highest levels of government or from the elite of nations. I grow more optimistic because of the nobility that beats in the hearts of our young, of the guarantee of idealism by creation itself embedded in the soul of every emerging generation.
I had seen the idealism of our own generation. I had seen in the 1960s how the young poured into the streets to decry what they saw as poison to the nobility of equality, fraternity and liberty. I saw how the government, riding on the paranoia of the West against Communism, used force to suppress the first expressions of idealism and then use fear to extend a rule without laws except those coming from a dictator. Many resisted, but in the end, our generation succumbed. And those who could not take a life without hope or ethics at home chose to leave for foreign shores.
Many question if 14 years of martial law and a conjugal dictatorship were enough to corrupt a whole people into accepting or tolerating wrongdoing. By themselves, the conjugal dictatorship and a pliant military would not have been enough to subvert a value system from good to bad. They had help, however, from a global environment that was in the midst of a Cold War and a not so distant colonial history that made it easier for a people to readopt submission. With many families unable to resist the benefits of an environment rife with exploitative opportunities, Filipinos gave in to relative peace without freedom rather than harsh strife in insistence of freedom.
For 14 years, therefore, a people reverted to colonial times and habits, with a few exploiting and many submitting. Thus, it was not only about 14 years; it was also the revival of the last four centuries. Rather than new habits developing, old habits returned. When, finally, higher aspirations overcame fear and people-powered revolutions overthrew discredited leaderships, a lack of what to do made it impossible to sustain the struggle against greed and exploitation.
It is now obvious from our own recent history that an overflow of anger against what should not be is, indeed, enough to overthrow but not enough to build a new culture and establish higher ethics in Philippine society. In other words, anger is not a pathway to development but a simple trigger of opportunity to break the hold of evil. We need the anger, but we need much more than that to sustain efforts toward meaningful change, towards new lifestyles and higher values.
Filipinos need a vision and visionary leaders, new pathways of development that address the cancers of poverty, corruption and violence, good role models of proper and effective leaderships in every level and dimension of societal life. Lacking these, we can remove bad governments but cannot build good replacements.
We have the first requirement — recognition of wrongdoing and resentment against it. That resentment is not only among tens of millions Philippine-based Filipinos but now even more so among millions of Filipinos abroad. It will take very little for this resentment to converge in a concerted action, but it is that little which is still missing in the minds of most.
What is that vision that the disillusioned and discontented will accept and follow? Who are its chosen messengers, the new Filipino leaders in possession of virtues, values, and expertise to lead and achieve?
I have seen the vision of Gawad Kalinga and know it is enough to be the heart of a national development program for at least one generation. Gawad Kalinga means "to give care" and is kind to historical victims, committed to correct a historical anomaly, determined to build a work and community living ethic that empowers the least and leads them towards responsibility and accountability.
Gawad Kalinga also honors the accomplishment of the more successful, of the more aggressive and established in society, and precisely invites them to lend their superior expertise and greater resources to spark an economic renaissance.
What is more important is that Gawad Kalinga believes it is only a repository of the best in every Filipino, our higher aspirations, our nobler dreams. It invites, it welcomes, is not afraid to change, to move upwards and to bring others with it, and sworn not leave the poor and the weak behind.
In other words, Gawad Kalinga is a spirit of caring, healing, and transformation. It is that part of us which we have denied, or forced by circumstance to deny. It is that part of us which seeks the light and wants to race toward it.
Among the youth more popularly known as the Y generation, I have sensed a palpable desire to live out those higher ethics, to build integrity among themselves, to live a lifestyle that honors the best of our culture. They have aspirations which want the best but not laced with greed, which want the highest but not laced with discrimination. I have seen the future full of hope. The Knights of our Round Table have arrived. The sons and daughters of the motherland prepare to build our Camelot.
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Responses may be sent to jlmglimpses@gmail.com.
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