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.

Of Rights and Responsibilities

Everyone has the right to be respected and be treated with dignity. But nobody can save a person who do not respect themselves or those who choose short-term spoils over a dignified future. 

We, as conscious and free beings, decided to move away from a world dominated by privileges and move towards fulfilling the promise of equal rights and opportunities for all. But even now, in an age where we no longer dwell in physical dark caves, there are still some of us who have yet to make that decision, not for others and not even for themselves.

Those who cling to primitive fears and hate do so either out of a lack of capacity to be conscious and responsible for their own actions, out of greed resulting in a refusal to let go of inequities that serves them well enough at the expense of other people, out of not believing that the time of privileges for a few is over and never was an option to begin with, or out of a denial of this simple truth: that if we want to be free, then choosing to be ignorant and reveling in it is evil and that we owe it to ourselves to choose goodness in all that we do.

We are only as strong as the weakest link among us. The goal is for all of us to act for the benefit of each other in order that there will no longer be such as a thing as a weak link. Commanding the respect of others begins with respecting ourselves -- sa isip, sa salita, at sa gawa. Commanding the respect of others ends with each of us maintaining disciplined vigilance against any attempt at cheapening our freedoms.

It Was Heard

The lone voice in the wilderness was heard. The echo got through the haze and fog of the confused night. The message was received. With the break of the dawn, the ship will sail once more. All of those who heeded the call are onboard. They will bear with them the names of the heroes of the last voyage, as they forge a new path forward. And all of those who failed to hear the cry will fall behind. Until the lone voice in the wilderness once again rise up and proclaim that the time to repent is now, for the final judgment is at hand.

Destiny

What do you do when you've reached the end of the road? You look to the sky and start to fly.

Predestination only goes in one way. Those who are true and faithful live in this world but are not of it. It means you get it out of your system but it never gets in.

It isn't about the journey. It really isn't about the destination, either. It is about fulfilling what has long been promised.