It's not funny

Call me an old grump if you like but lately I have put my foot down against the Filipino lack of sensitivity and understanding of serious matters.

On at least two occasions, I have snapped at an audience for laughing at a situation that actually demanded sensitivity, understanding and seriousness. A close second to this rude and common behavior is to go to a business event or a party and to talk louder than the host while they make their welcome remarks.

We excuse the Filipino behavior of “laughing” or “making light of situations” as a coping mechanism where we laugh at the situation because we are actually very uncomfortable about it.

Whether it is in a political forum, a church service or an inter-active meeting of NGOs and victims, it has become normal behavior to make light or to laugh at the “inconvenient truth” of corruption, AIDS, Breast cancer, Domestic violence or bankruptcy or adultery. It seems that many of us no longer know the distinction of what is and what is not funny or amusing.

We make light or “pina-gagaan” the situations that confront us with paralyzing or disturbing truths such as rape, incest or homosexuality. We justify our acts to trivialize and humor matters because being too serious is a “turn off”.

Actually the seriousness of such issues is not a “turn off”. We are the ones who have turned off or tuned out in order to avoid the raw truth and the challenge to be involved in the ugly and scary reality around us.

Where “civic duty” was once the norm, we now find “comfort and security”. Where “concern and commitment” flourished we now find a void created by “distance and disengagement”. “Values” as a standard has been replaced by the relative concept of “price”. Sensitivity and compassion has been replaced by fear and indifference.

Issues are never comfortable. They are never simple. In order to heal, solve or correct the deep wounds and great personal tragedies around us, we must first feel and understand the pain of others and then the cause. In order to do so we must urgently admit and address the problem of laughing at things that are not funny.

Why? because laughing or “making light of things” has gone from bad to worse. What use to be an honest coping mechanism has now spiraled downwards to dysfunctional behavior of a society living in denial of its guilt and many sins. We no longer laugh to hide our fear to confront issues. We have made such issues a laughing matter.

Even in the world of local media and entertainment our great tragedy is that we have killed comedy and humor in entertainment by replacing it with endless tele-novelas of tragic proportions. Everyday, millions of Filipinos watch tele-Novelas that capitalize on tragedy, cruelty and violence. And everyday we become desensitized and actually live our lives thinking that tragedy, cruelty and violence is the normal Filipino way of life!

On the opposite side we transformed our real national tragedies into comic relief and humor for national consumption by media coverage of Congressional and Senate investigations. We use the “State of the nation address” as public material for satire and comic ridicule of the Presidency. We trade text jokes and ribald tales of the sexual misconduct and miscues of members of Congress as well as those in National government.

Our national leaders, especially our elected officials, regularly make a mockery of serious national concerns in order to draw ridicule packaged in laughter. Having a sense of humor is not the same as being a joke on the floor of Congress dropping one-liners to solicit laughter. Even more tragic is the fact that their public display of anger is plain vanity and self -promotion rather than true righteous indignation.

Making light is not the same as mocking people in theatrical exaggeration performed by people tasked with the serious responsibility of legislation and not comedic entertainment. Even the once respected media leaders have disposed of their wisdom and expertise and taken up a career of being clowns, drama talents or singers in their daily satires and tirade of politics and society.

How can we expect to be taken seriously if we ourselves don’t take things seriously when needed?

What can we do?

I recently heard someone say: “You will know what you love by the things that you hate”.

A lot of people certainly find it easier to list down who and what they hate compared to listing down who and what they love. By knowing what we hate, it’s a lot easier to list what we will not put up with or what we take seriously. Along these lines, we can also follow the rule “ a time and a place for everything. In so doing, our efforts are not misguided nor our values, distorted.

Nowadays, so many people go to parties to “network” instead of to celebrate and mingle. People go to church or mass to comply and avoid guilt instead of praise and worship, People go to work for the pay instead of productivity and accomplishment. People attend forums to carry their agendas instead of collaborating with others to get a better understanding and better solutions.

A line that is often quoted nowadays is: “if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything”. Learn to draw up a value system that is time and tested. Have a code of conduct that you believe in and live by. But above all, “Listen so you may hear, hear so you may learn, learn so you may care and in caring you may help others”.