Abominable contexts

For mostly everything, nothing could be simpler than defining the context it must have to become meaningful. Indeed, people are quick to note that it is proper contexting that leads to a greater understanding and better assessments of anybody’s worth.

Why then are most Filipino leaders and political administrations unable to align themselves with this simple truth? The sole context of a national leadership is loyal service to its rightful nation. In the last 100 years, what leadership has led this nation towards gaining decency and human existence for most Filipinos? Had there been such a leadership, could the current crises besetting this country have materialized at all? Having arisen, could they have endured for so long and inflicted so much harm to those who are most helpless in Philippine society, for instance, the innumerable street children condemned to never have a proper childhood?

There is an old saw that keeps cutting and drawing the blood of so many innocents, an oft-repeated canard about how people get only the government that they deserve. Only recently some of our most visible national figures publicly made the charge. They are not the only ones tempted to make the accusation. Even a brilliant and compassionate thinker like Rizal was moved at times to make this hasty and truly unfair judgment of his people.

Tal pueblo, tal gobierno! The assumption here is that the people did have and continue to have a choice in their mode of governance. The further assumption is that the people had not been so mutilated by the authorities and their environment so they are able to think straight, crave enlightenment, organize well and demand accountability of their society’s institutions and its leadership.

Where centuries have witnessed the increasing degradation of a people and the worsening exploitativeness of the authorities, one must indeed be craven to suggest that the country is in dire straits not so much because of its leaders but much more so because of its common people.

A systematically brutalized citizenry is eventually reduced to being brutes. A consistently miseducated people is mercilesly idiotized and their existential wiliness – the prized ability to keep one’s body and organic parts together, to survive regardless of whether one’s soul remains – is a poor substitute for their aborted human intelligence. A developed intelligence puts a premium on survival too, but recognizes when survival must at best be second best. Indeed, it is this very intelligence that drives one to sing fervently, "Aming ligaya na kung may mang-aapi, ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo!"

One does not have to be a populist to feel compassion for an oft-violated people. One simply has to stop being elitist where elitism aborts human sentiments that inspire a community to tend to its neediest members.

Social justice is of course a much trumpeted objective of those who have traditionally governed this country. However, where the ruling elites have shown little regard for noblesse oblige and at best settle for token and much-publicized piety cum niggardly charity, there is little chance that social justice will be served. To date, this has been one of Philippine history’s harshest realities.

Next time a national figure points an accusing finger and blames the common people for messing up this country, it would be well for someone to remind the accuser that his or her three other fingers are directed elsewhere. Those three are the presumptuous dignitary’s more honest fingers; they identify the only proper context for understanding the great misery that has afflicted this benighted land for so long.