Of calamities and corruptions

Perhaps, the worst of all scams is when the scalawags among men would steal the very food from the mouths of the poor, when the strong and the powerful would grab the crumbs from the dispossessed and then, selfishly amass wealth that they do not need at all. When politicians and bureaucrats bicker and slug it out in order to take away relief goods from the hungry victims of quakes, typhoons and wars. The most despicable among man's inhumanity to other men is when people of power, influence and prestige would use their position to plunder the national coffers and deprive the people of what they need to survive.

Pope Francis suspended a bishop in Germany for his ostentatious and lavish ways, while millions of people elsewhere do not even have food to eat, no roof above their heads and are dying of poverty, diseases and hopelessness. It is not the disasters that we should worry about. Not the floods, nor the aftershocks of that killer quake, not even a volcanic eruption of the highest magnitude. Rather, we should be more concerned with the crisis within the soul of humanity. Men have indeed lost their reasons, to quote Mark Antony on the death of Caesar, and reason has fled to brutish beasts. We must all pause for deeper reflection.

All the crises that beset us today, whether natural or man-made, whether political, economic or social, whether arising from PDAF, DAF (or BADAF), they all spring from one ultimate source: the insatiable greed in the hearts of Godless men. These crises also highlight two major weaknesses of humans: first, the mysterious audacity of those men of greed and brutish cruelty, scoundrels, rascals and scalawags, who dare to perpetrate such heinous acts of plunder and economic perfidy of scandalous scopes and magnitudes. Then, second, the amazing meekness, unassuming ways and seemingly endless tolerance among those who have become the usual victims of these scandals and shenanigans.

The more corrosive social virus that attacks our human society today, the social cancer that Dr. Jose Rizal wrote about in his immortal NOLI and FILI, is that mysterious absence of collective outrage, the seeming lack of anger and exasperation from the ranks of the ''hoi polloi'' or the masa. People are apparently cynical, unbelieving and indifferent. People do not care anymore. Faith and trust in our government and other institutions have reached an unprecedented lowest ebb. All investigations are for show. They are merely to humor and entertain the people. Like Marie Antoinette, a piece of cake to feed the beggars of France, in "Les Miserables''. It is like playing the flute or the vilen while Rome is burning…

The more reprehensible evil lies more on the victims' lack of a spontaneous sense of outrage. In the face of all despicable display of abuses, the people have become impervious and unfeeling, unmindful of the abominable deeds inflicted on them by some scheming "pharisees, scribes and men of the robes, and teachers of law", those pretentious and misleading wolves in sheep's clothing, the false prophets and dishonest tax collectors who are like '' white tombs, clean and immaculate outside, but inside is a catacomb of stench and decay". All these were condemned by Jesus Himself more than two thousand years ago. Rizal denounced this a century and three decades ago. Recto, Ninoy, and many bold and passionate Filipinos denounced them. But they are still here. Here in the hearts of men.

And so, reflecting, it dawns on us that the enemy is from within. It is in the hearts of men. As Shakespeare would aptly put it: The fault, my dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings. Yes, the problem is not that which were inflicted by corruptions and calamities. The greater malady is that we have become too tolerant of the evil that men do to us all. We have lost the power to oppose. We are, in effect, by our inaction and non-involvement, by our sheer skepticism and collective indifference, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Or to put it in its worst form: We are our own enemies. We do not need any disaster to kill us nor any corruption to break our nation. By not doing anything, we are capable of destroying ourselves. For, as the sage said: Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. That is our worst fate. And we need to confront that. Now.