Redemption

Nobody should endure pain or suffer for any reason. The only reason nearly acceptable is if someone committed a crime and suffered as a punishment. Some religious beliefs propagate the idea that our sufferings as human beings are a way to cleanse ourselves of sins. That we are all born sinful, carrying the sins of our ancestors, and must suffer to purify our souls. I don't want to venture into analyzing or opining about religious dogma, but I reject such belief. 

Even in the case of an immoral criminal who must suffer the consequences of their actions, it still begs the question why and how such vile acts were permitted to begin with or why such a vile being was allowed to exist. In our depths of despair, it becomes necessary for some to believe in a higher power or conjure a godlike entity, in order that they may still hope and believe that their suffering were not in vain.

The only thing I believe in is the first statement I wrote above. There are a lot of different takes on why suffering exists. This is my take: it shouldn't. The only thing that gives me hope is the idea that any and all sufferings are unjust and justice means an elimination of such in all its forms. Until want, despair, poverty, abuse, and any and all types of corruption are definitively and completely eradicated, the work to bring about the end to that which should have never existed must never stop.

Moral Bankruptcy as a Psychological Illness

Seeing people in power who abuse and exploit the vulnerable and defenseless can elicit different reactions in us, like fear, despair, or anger. Sometimes, the reaction can be that of wanting to understand - a certain curiosity, of how such a morally bankrupt person can exist among us. The latter can be likened to witnessing a train wreck or a car crash and not being able to look away.

At worst, such misguided curiosity can lead us to become stuck, like a deer staring into the headlights of a car about to kill it. We obsess with media depicting mass murderers, serial killers, pedophile criminals, rapists, and sexual abusers. We have engrossed ourselves to much in depictions of twisted realities in the form of self-looping psychological narratives that lead its audiences to nowhere but a steep fall from a meaningless cliff. In short, we begin to consume slop in the guise of exploration and learning.

We become too slow to recognize that the best we can get out of examining a morally bankrupt person's life and the times that gave rise to them is to learn from the mistakes committed that bred such hate, so that we may never repeat them nor propagate the illness of moral bankruptcy.

False Leads?

Some would say that engaging in discourse about morals, values, intents, motivations, or right vs. wrong and good vs. bad is only an exercise in chasing false leads leading to logical dead-ends and falling into an unavoidable self-righteousness trap. But, I would say, that humans, like all evolved creatures, have certain built-in, integral functions that define their very beings. And one such fundamental function we have as humans is the capacity to make sense of who we are. 

It might get repetitive, boring, or preachy to some, but the fact that human beings are not meant to be power-hungry, money-obsessed, amoral cheaters and liars, bears repeating. We sell ourselves short if we think that just because we aren't perfect and we make mistakes that somehow that is a license to keep making mistakes toward our own persons, or worse, a license to exploit and harm others.

There is such a thing as, "to be on wrong side of history". To be judged in hindsight as someone who caused their fellow people more harm than good, more suffering than peace. To be judged as those to have made grave, moral mistakes against their fellow men and all of humanity. Even in light of this undeniable truth, there are still a few who argue that history can be rewritten. That one must only acquire wealth and power and that those who have both can turn even lies into the truth. Those who argue this have been proven wrong, time and again.

We have the capacity, as human beings, to eliminate our physical, social, and psychological ills. The barrier to our realization of this capacity to its full potential is our tendency to choose a known harm over the unknown search for a cure. But we know from history that those who chose to settle with flawed and harmful ways, failed to progress, and did not realize the promise of a better future. 

At the risk of chasing false leads and falling into a self-righteousness trap, progress in our collective understanding of ourselves requires that we venture into roads that may be considered dead-ends, that we examine what may be considered losing arguments, that -- all the while guided by sound reason, an unwavering spirit and an internal moral compass -- we come out of the other side of this search more knowledgeable, more progressive, and less afflicted than when we began.

Tama o Mali?

Kapag ang isang tao ay nagkamali, dapat ba siyang bigyan ng isa pang pagkakataon para maituwid ang maling nagawa?

Oo? Hindi? Depende?

Kung anuman ang iyong sagot, may dalawang bagay na hindi napagkaila: una, ang tao ay maaaring magkamali; pangalawa, ang mali ay may karampatang tama. 

Ano ang halaga na pagisipan ang tanong na ito? Mahalaga ito para bigyang ebidensiya ang ating pananaw tungkol sa moralidad. Sa panahon ngayon na tila ang bukambibig ng marami ay "wala namang tama o mali" o "lahat naman tayo nagkakamali" o di kaya ay "kanya kanya naman yan wag tayong maghusga" na para bang katumbas ng ating hindi perpektong kaalaman sa tama at mali ay ang lisensya upang bumitiw sa moralidad, dapat isipin na hindi man natin alam ang lahat ay may alam pa rin tayo.

Dapat ay alam natin ang tama sa mali. Dahil kung totoo na ang pagiging tama o mali ay nasa kanya kanyang interpretasyon lamang natin, ano ang humahadlang na sa oras na ito mismo ay bawiin sayo lahat ng sa tingin mo ay tama sa buhay mo? Kung mayroon tayong lisensya na gumawa ng anuman kahit masama sa ibang tao, ano ang pumipigil sa ibang tao na gumawa ng masama sayo? Kapag gumawa tayong lahat ng kasamaan, ano ang mangyayari sa mundo? Di na kailangan lumayo pa ang isip para matanto ang sagot dito.

Kahit hindi natin alam ang lahat, mayroon tayong alam. Kahit hindi tayo perpekto, marapat pa rin magsumikap abutin ito. Dahil kapag ginawan mo ng masama ang sinumang tao, binubuksan mo ang pagkakataong may magawang masama sayo. Ang kabaliktaran ay totoo rin. Gumawa ng kabutihan at ito ay magbubunga ng mas maraming mabuti.

Ngunit, ang pagsisikap maging mabuti at pag-abot sa huwangis ng perpeksyon ay hindi nangangahulugan ng pagiging mapang-mata sa pagkukulang ng iba o ng sarili man. May kanya kanya tayong gusto at ayaw sa buhay. Ika nga ng Ama ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino na si Dr. Virgilio Enriquez, may dahilan ka kung hindi mo gusto maki-sama, ngunit walang dahilan ang sinuman na hindi makipag-kapwa.

The Physical and the Psychological

We know that humans are not only physical beings. We know humans have a mental, social, and emotional nature - or more holistically can be referred to as a psychological being. 

It is reasonable to assume that every physical phenomenon can have its corresponding psychological effect to a person experiencing it. For instance, sleeping is a way to rest the physical body, but we know it also affects our non-physical needs. Therefore, there is a difference between physically sleeping and feeling rested. 

When we apply these reasonable assumptions about the physical and psychological nature of a person to other phenomena, we see that our psychological being permeates what we normally only see as a physical encounter. 

For instance, when a retail shop sells you its goods and you pay to obtain the goods, a physical exchange of money occurs. A physical profit is gained by the store and by the buyer. The store gains money and the buyer acquires the physical item. But, a corruption to this ordinary physical exchange can also happen. Think of profiteering. A retail shop can manipulate prices so that its side gain unfairly more from an exchange with a consumer. The consumer in this case loses rather than gains. 

But what about psychological exchanges? Say for instance you go about your daily business then you see on your social media feed manipulated content designed to provoke negative psychological reactions you would not normally feel at that point. Can this not be considered intrusive, unfair, psychological profiteering? Who gains from such an interaction and who loses? We know social media is a causative factor in many adverse psychological conditions, especially for the vulnerable and young population. They say, "think before you share". But are social media users given the fair benefit of having the mental capacity to thoroughly think before they can act? Or is someone obviously profiting with an unfair psychological advantage? We know the answer to this. But maybe what we know is just the tip of an iceberg.

How are we to defend ourselves from obviously existing covert, manipulative, intrusive, psychological profiteering? Social media detox? Thinking before sharing? Think of a poisoned water stream or of historical events where drugs were covertly spread to certain communities. These are physical attacks. How were those communities supposed to have defended themselves?

I want to protect myself from psychological attacks that we know abound everywhere these days. They affect us in our online interactions and spill over to our physical lives. The physical and psychological are intertwined. So I share these opinions to defend my own mind. They say "think before you share". But, maybe, it should be challenge any idea, whether you share or not. I personally would not buy into any hype that easily. I will defend my opinions but I will be reasonable about it. Most of all, I would hold on to enduring values and try everyday to live up to high ideals, because just as clean air and clean water keeps our body healthy, a clean heart keeps our mind sound.

Old Habits

When we complain about the Filipino's tendency to have a short memory of his nation's history, to be soft to his most brutal adversaries, and to be forgiving of the gravest mistakes committed to his dignity, then we naturally ask how this came to be and why is it still so. The answer: we relapse into old, bad habits easily because we never bothered building up a national stamina for sustained hard-work, no drama politics, and for prioritizing service to others above personal comforts.

When you want to summit a formidable mountain, you want to build up stamina first and the lung capacity to withstand thin air. When you want to run or cycle through a long marathon, you want to condition your body to function well even with sustained exertion. If you want to be effective with thinking and executing long-term, you have to be effective with what needs to be done in the present term. 

If Filipinos are disappointed with our slowness and ineffectiveness, if we know that more can be done but we always seem to come up short for our countrymen, if we feel that many of our problems could have been resolved long ago if only we had the will to fix them, then we can only blame the fact that we did not do our necessary collective pre-work. Much like how the old story goes, when times are good we simply lie under a fertile tree and wait for the low-hanging fruit to drop to our open mouths as we take a nap. We never really trained our minds to think of and prepare for the winter even during springtime. So we always end up scrambling for crumbs during lean times.

Maybe because we don't have the four seasons to teach us how to prepare for winter. Maybe it's too hot and humid and it causes our laziness. Maybe there can be a thousand other excuses if excuses are what we are looking for. Pag gusto may paraan, pag ayaw...

The truth is, even in countries with four seasons or whatever other advantage we think they have, they still had to do the requisite pre-work of their nation. They had to build up the habit of hard-work and foresight. Hard-work most especially. Any advanced and stable nation you can think of is known for the no nonsense, no drama, hardworking sensibilities of its people. Sure, they may have another side when it comes to leisure, but they know that work is work. And again, work does not start or end in the workplace. A hardworking and serious streak is not like a faucet you just turn off and on. It is conditioned through time. It is discipline built through a pre-work routine. It is a consciously developed good habit.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Many societal ills seem convoluted and hopelessly linked to larger ills that persist since time immemorial, and therefore, this leads us to believe that what we don't like about the world are unchangeable. We begin to think that this in turn gives us the license to do harm and that good is relative and non-binding. This type of assumption is fundamentally unsound reasoning because it does not factor in our internal capacity, mainly human being's capacity for manipulation to self-preserve. 

In other words, what seems like unsolvable, intractable, social ills that are hopelessly persisting since time immemorial may actually be our own failings and problems with ourselves that we refuse to let go of lest we are exposed to the sting of a disinfectant. It is like a wound we harbor and nurse and keep away from water and sunlight because we fear to take the steps to cure it until the wound festers and the sores run. Then, to hide our illness, we fool ourselves to think that it had always been this way. We cling to those that can confirm our manipulated reality. We become complicit in our own sickness and refuse to get better. We lie and engage in more lies. We bury the truth.

The truth is that nothing is as convoluted and intractable as we make it seem. We can heal our own illness. We should choose to heal social ills instead of profiting from it, whether in a monetary or in a psychological sense. Because the profits we think we gain from prolonging a fundamentally flawed assumption will only turn out to be the shackles that hold us back from becoming better.