How to be good?

Note the question mark: it is the most important part of the title. This is a column pocked with question marks; I do not have the answers, nor do I trust those who claim to have them. I am especially wary of people and groups who issue prescriptions about how we should live — too many of those become the stars of tabloid exposés.

We think our moral compasses are so finely tuned that in moments of crisis we will always, automatically, do the right thing. We want to believe that when we are tested we will know exactly how to answer, and that answer will be firmly on the side of truth and justice. How do we know this? Where does our absolute certainty come from?

For most of us it springs from the fact that we have never been tested. I don’t mean the daily choices like, “Will I ignore that red light since there’s no traffic cop and everyone’s doing it?” Those split-second decisions we make every day may be an indicator of how we will behave at the “big” exams, but as Shakespeare frequently notes, humans have the amazing capacity to surprise themselves. The usurper, having murdered his way to the throne, discovers in his final battle that he does possess a king’s courage.

The only war most of us will fight is with ourselves. Lucky for us, though less conducive to Shakespearean character development.

What do I mean by the “big” exam? One day last week I woke up to the news that the former Armed Forces Chief of Staff and later Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, one of the most powerful figures in the previous administration, had shot himself in the heart as he stood before his mother’s grave. As this apparent suicide followed Reyes’s appearance at the House investigation on military corruption, we all assumed that the two events were connected.

Immediately my mind went off in two tangents. The first was the cynical observer of Philippine politics tangent: he was probably guilty; suicide as a means of escape. The second was the literature major tangent, which tends to view suicide as a romantic gesture. As romantic gestures go it was huge, and we’re not even going into the cinematic nature of the act, a single gunshot shattering the morning air (Did birds fly up at the disturbance?), the bloodstain spreading over the tombstone…

How do you reconcile such disparate viewpoints? Can one be both cowardly and brave?

Practically the only value of a liberal arts education is this: for every situation, you know which writer to turn to for edification. This looked like a job for Albert Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus. And Dostoevsky, though technically every day is a Dostoevsky day. Until I had consulted my authorities the circumspect answer seemed to be: “Without restitution (of the money), the gesture, though large and appealing to the romantic sense, is empty.”

Shortly afterwards I got this reaction from Jon, an NGO worker (and member of the Philippine rugby team). “I find it fairly difficult to have any sympathy for Angelo Reyes as well,” Jon began, “but it is worthwhile to ask ourselves if, in the same situation, we would have done any differently.

“In a situation where corruption has become so institutionalized that literally just about everyone is on the take, staying quiet but not taking any money presents a risk to your career, to your life, to your family. In a group where everyone is dirty, anyone who stays ‘clean’ is automatically suspect. How many of us have the strength to be, say, a Heidi Mendoza, with your young son asking why, if you love them, you do this to them?

“And trade your life, whether literally or metaphorically, for what again, exactly? A country that will move on and forget you after the initial wave of media celebration? For an incremental decrease of evil in a country so shot through with a systematic effort to corrupt and compromise every single institution? Your children can go with much, much less, your career can hit a roadblock, you can suffer the resentful stares of your wife because you love your dignity and integrity so much that you refuse to participate in a system that has been in place for five, 10, 100, 400 years? The effort, while noble, seems rather quixotic and insane.

“To be good in an evil system requires exerting a conscious effort of self-sacrifice, possibly an amount of self-sacrifice that may be too much to ask of a reasonable person. To do the right thing in such a situation requires a certain insane level of disregard for one’s own well-being. While the country needs many, many more Heidi Mendozas, we may all be too quick to point and say we are definitely not Angelo Reyeses. When the test comes and you weigh each side, it’s pretty difficult to definitively say on which side you will come out.”

That’s the big exam I’m talking about, the one where someone you know comes to you with P100 million and says, “Take this, it’s yours, you don’t have to do or say anything, this is the way it is and has always been.” If you take it there may be consequences — may be, for others have gotten away with it. If you don’t take it there will definitely be consequences.

How can we be good when the system is... not? Until our own test comes our certainty is nothing more than smug self-righteousness. 

For now we can only write ponderous essays.