Breaking traditions

Last Friday I wrote about how, sometimes, we might want to appreciate the “pasaway” (defiant) because they can actually be quite creative.

More than individual creativity, though, the pasaway can be major agents of change, getting other people to think differently, to do things in novel ways. Here, I have to make a distinction between people who are nonconformist for the sake of being nonconformist, with no real impact because people reject them as “KSP, kulang sa pansin,” or just wanting attention.

Or, we have the pasaway-contrarians, the ones who think they project themselves as wise by having to express opposition to everyone else’s views at meetings and workshops, usually after a consensus has been reached. Rather than impressing people as wise, they come through as trite.

Pasaway still has largely negative connotations in the Philippines because we are a conformist society. It does take courage to break traditions, and then to be creative in proposing alternatives.

I’ve been thinking about tradition-breaking a lot since last week, ironically after becoming university chancellor. I say “ironic” because usually, when you become the head of an institution, you’re expected to preserve traditions. But then I am in the University of the Philippines, the Diliman campus at that, and I’d like to think that the main tradition that needs to be preserved in UP is that of challenging, and breaking, traditions.

Again, I want to qualify that this is not the same as being nonconformist in a trendy way (which would actually be quite conformist), or being obnoxiously contrarian. If we break tradition, we need to bring in new ones.

Affirmation

The same day I was appointed chancellor I was called in for oath-taking, which got me into a minor panic. The problem was that as a Quaker, I do not take oaths. I’ve written about this in the past, in a column titled “Quaker oaths,” explaining our philosophy that if we promise to do something, we don’t need to swear and invoke God or the gods, as traditional oaths do. Just do it, as the expression goes.

As a college dean, I gave the option to student-council members of being sworn in, or taking an affirmation. It’s actually in our Philippine Constitution, with the president being allowed to say “I swear” (pinanunumpaan) or “I affirm” (pinatototohanan) when taking office. The last part of an oath, “Kasihan nawa ako ng Diyos” (So help me God), becomes optional, which means such affirmations would be acceptable as well to nontheists (Buddhists, for example), agnostics and atheists, and Christians who just aren’t comfortable invoking God.

UP’s vice president for legal affairs, Danny Uy, responded to my request for an affirmation, with an even better term than pinatototohanan: “taos-pusong nagpapatibay,” said with full commitment, from the heart.

Unfurling

Another occasion for tradition-breaking came a few days later. The first official event I had with a college was at the College of Architecture where, my invitation said, we needed to “unfurl” an exhibit. I had a hunch about what this unfurling was going to be, and I was right. As we walked over to the ribbons, the college dean, Mary Ann Espina, explained to me that architects are moving away from ribbon-cutting and into unfurling, the change coming about because of the increasing emphasis in the profession on sustainability. Ribbon-cutting has connotations of destroying something while unfurling comes closer to conserving, with nothing “cut” and lost.

So unfurl we did, the dean, another architecture professor, and myself pulling on the ribbons (cloth, actually) to untie them and to start the exhibit.

This wasn’t my first unfurling, though. A few months back at another event, professor Carol Sobritchea, a feminist and, at that time, dean of the Asian Center, explained to me that they were no longer going to do ribbon-cutting because the scissors, and the cutting, are so “male,” with connotations again of destruction.

I don’t know.  Hearing the word “scissors” somewhat unnerved me, as I could feel the cold blades, recalling the many stories, especially in Thailand but occasionally, too, in the Philippines, of women enraged by jealousy, wielding the scissors to get sweet revenge against their unfaithful husbands. Aray!

Seriously, I do like this idea of unfurling, and will promote it more now that I’m chancellor. I’m thinking of going a step further, suggesting a recycling of materials for the unfurling.  I can imagine, for example, someone explaining that the cloth being unfurled was the same one used 25 years earlier by another dean.

Be creative: It doesn’t have to be cloth. It can be abaca, ropes, any material that can be tied, and untied.

I must say we need to think of another term besides “unfurling,” which could be translated into Filipino into something like “pagladlad”—a rather theatrical unfurling of a cape, and meaning something very different, the equivalent of coming out of the closet in English!

Be creatively pasaway, too, for other traditions. The other week I was at Ateneo Rockwell and saw a piece of a very old ceramic plate, encased in a glass box, excavated from a Jesuit property in Sta. Ana. The ceramic shard was meant to symbolize Ateneo’s Filipino roots, going back to prehistory.

Looking at that piece of ceramic, I thought of how we might want to change our traditions around ground-breaking or cornerstone-laying. Why not rebury an older artifact or cultural item previously excavated or found in an institution’s archives or warehouse to show how we link the past to the future?

Come to think of it, even for laying the foundation for a new house, we bury coins (more to “cool” the earth and bring luck). Why not change that tradition, using old coins that Lolo and Lola used, or a time capsule filled with family souvenirs, dedicating our new home to those who came before us?

(E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)