Closing 2004, Closing A Cycle, Moving On

In a few hours time, we are bidding goodbye to 2004. New year's resolutions are again made. Even the ‘creatures of habit’ are resolved to reinvent themselves. Self-reinvention however is constrained by habits, which are the accumulation of practices that have become integral into our human system. The society or environment in which we find ourselves in also poses constraints in this process of self-reinvention.

I do not believe that habits determine actions and predispositions of an individual. I believe that people – in this case, adults – are capable of self-reinvention. People learn how to learn. Habits are in fact the subject and object of self-reinvention. Habits constrain, but not uniquely determine, individual predisposition.

Overcoming old habits, and hence accustoming ourselves to new ones, is not an easy task. This would involve forgetting and realization – forgetting some of the past that are better forgotten which are necessary for us to enjoy life more, and the internalization of a consciousness (a deeper personal realization) to ‘move on’.

Apparently, I have the consciousness about the possibility of self-reinvention. But I still find it difficult to forget some of the regretful past. Perhaps I am not yet conscious at all; I am just cognizant of it. There is therefore a need to elevate this cognition into the level of a consciousness, in which realization is deeply internalized into my system. Likewise, forgetting is too difficult for sentimentalist people like me. Was it Nietzsche who wrote about the sensibility that individuals become sad because they have memory? To a greater extent, I think he is right. Memory, especially bad ones, just makes us sad. (Meanwhile, I’m reminded of one of the lines in Pablo Neruda’s famous poem on love – ‘Love is so short; forgetting is so long’.) But as we forget and leave in the past those finished moments, learning must be permanent and must be integrated in our self-reinvention.

To friends who are having reflections at the moment and who are resolving to reinvent themselves for the coming 2005, it would be fitting to reflect on this beautiful text by Paulo Coelho entitled ‘Closing Cycles’:

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

And so, I must stop being who I was. I must recover myself from alienation. I must ‘move on’ - so basic in life, yet too easily forgotten; so common, yet too easily neglected. I’m closing 2004, closing a cycle, and moving on.

The Nightmare Of The Philippine Left: The History Of All Dead Generations

As Asia experienced the massive underwater earthquake yesterday, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) – the longest running armed guerrilla ‘revolutionary’ movement in Asia guided under the ideologies of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism – marked the 36th anniversary of its re-establishment. But the Party needs the kind of jolt that hit Asia yesterday to wake it up from complacency and the nightmare of the past.

In its anniversary statement, the Central Committee of the CPP calls on its force to ‘avail of the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system of big compradors and landlords’ as well as to ‘intensify the guerrilla offensives to advance the new democratic revolution’. Read the statement released yesterday (December 26) here. But how can the Party exploit the crisis and contradictions of the world capitalist system if it is burdened with its own crises and contradictions?

On 7 December, the Party released a diagram entitled ‘Kaugnayan ng mga Kontrarebolusyonaryong grupo sa mga Trotskyista at Sosyal-Demokrata’ (‘Connections of the Counter-revolutionary Groups with the Trotskyites and Social Democrats’), showing the connections with various Trotskyites factions abroad of several ‘pseudo-revolutionary petty bourgeois grouplets in the Philippines’. These groups include the party list Akbayan, the socialist organization Bukluran sa Ikauunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa (BISIG), and the democratic think-tank Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD), among others. Several key personalities in the Philippine social movements are also named ‘counter-revolutionaries’ including my former professor Walden Bello and Akbayan Representative Etta Rosales. Bello is a respected scholar in the Philippine academe and a recipient of the ‘alternative nobel prize’ for his advocacy against neo-liberal, corporate-driven globalization. In my work in the Philippine House of Representatives in the 12th Congress, Rosales is regarded as the most esteemed and credible progressive, left legislator in the chamber. Click here to see said diagram.

The Party, being the only left movement in the Philippines that has the monopoly of the use of force with the New People’s Army (NPA) as its armed wing, is historically notorious for subjecting to assassination those people it labels as ‘pseudo-revolutionaries’ or ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Just recently, two former leaders who have defected the Party, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara, have been punished to death. Read a statement on this issue from the founder of the Party himself, Jose Maria Sison, here.

The CPP has its gloomy and horrible past. In the early 1990s, it was on a ‘state of war’ - comrades killing one another. It was a tragic moment for the Philippine Left, leading to its division between those who re-affirm the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism ideology of struggle and those who reject it. Several progressive social movements have also emerged.

While it is true that the world capitalist system is, as ever, in crisis as well as the ruling domestic class in the Philippines, the Philippine Left is also in crisis. As the capitalist social structure limits - but not uniquely determines - the social formation and the social struggle; the kind of social struggle we could advance ultimately depends on the kind of social formation we have. At the moment, the progressive social formation in the Philippines is beleaguered with conflicts among one another, and with crises of their respective institutional and ideological capacities. Hence, the prospects are dim for a social struggle that could transform both the capitalist social structure and the capitalist-dominated social formation into a truly democratic, socialist one. Antonio Gramsci aptly puts it, ‘the old is dying, but the new cannot be born’.

The Central Committee of the CPP asserts in their anniversary statement - ‘As always, we pay our highest respects to our revolutionary martyrs and heroes who have made the supreme sacrifice in the service of the people’. Let the Communist Party of the Philippines be guided then with the true revolutionary ideals of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Che – who are among the revolutionary martyrs and heroes to whom the Party pays its highest respects. It must save itself from further alienation, and from suffering what Mao calls as the ‘contradictions of the onions’ (that is, people who are red in the surface but counter-revolutionary inside). Most often, progressive movements become alienated because they have forgotten the cause and objective of their very existence. It is then necessary to remind the Party of the ideals of the revolution.

Mao and Lenin have preached the ideals of ‘democracy’. Mao once said ‘let a hundred flowers bloom; and a hundred schools of thought contend’. Lenin reminded the people that nobody has the monopoly of ideas. This is what is to be a revolutionary – someone who upholds the democratic ideals of free articulation and thought. Too, Che Guevarra, one of the greatest romantic guerrilla revolutionary leaders in history, reminded the people in one of his letters to his children that the heart of a true revolutionary is one that is able to feel deeply any injustice committed against anyone in this world.

When will the CPP ever learn? While the state and capital continue to celebrate their orgies, the Party is still traumatized with the nightmare of the depressive past of the Stalin-Trotsky conflict, the rectifiable errors of Stalin, Mao, the Soviet Union, and other revolutionary personalities in history, and the failures of the Party itself. In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx wrote about the dialectics between agency and structure in the making of history, which could also be said in the case of the Communist Party of the Philippines in particular and the Philippine Left in general:

People make history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves; but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The history of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

Let this reminder of Marx serve as a learning to be lived with by all revolutionaries. To the extent that the radical potentials of all exploited groups are coordinated at the domestic, regional, and global levels in advancing unified struggle against the undemocratic neo-liberal system, a truly democratic change could be realized. Hence, without a credible, humane, democratic, and unified counter-hegemonic force, the progressive movement cannot sustain the revolutionary momentum and become a force for structural change.

Absurdity Of The Most Powerful Earthquake: From A Traumatic Society

Yesterday morning Southeast Asia (specifically Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Burma), Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Somalia experienced one of the most powerful earthquakes in history with a magnitude of 9.0 in the Richter Scale. As of this posting, more than 12,000 people have been reported dead, many are still missing. This is the first time I have learned of an earthquake being experienced across countries – a real natural disaster regional in scope.

In view of the fact that this earthquake is the strongest in 40 years, this is the most powerful earthquake I have felt since my existence. Living in the 16th floor of an 18-storey building here in Malaysia, the tremor felt in the country was truly nerve-wracking. You could feel the building swaying. I was still sleeping when the earthquake happened. The tremor woke me up. Initially, I thought I was just dizzy. Knowing that Malaysia is not within the ring of fire, I even doubted the engineering of our building as I was reminded of the building that collapsed in Divisoria, Manila due to poor and corrupt construction about five months ago. But this thinking could be absurd as Malaysia is reputable in being stringent in building infrastructures (I am however not undermining the issue of corruption also prevalent in the country). Now I realize that this dubious thought was a by-product of my Philippine upbringing.

I used to think of the Philippines as a stressful nation. But now, I have realized it is also a traumatic society – with its street crimes, its inefficient infrastructures built on corruption, and its natural disasters aggravated by man-made disastrous egoism.

Meanwhile, my deepest sympathy goes to the bereaved families and nations of those who have untimely died. I am in solidarity with them in calling for a much more cooperative, humane and caring world especially at this moment of natural crisis.

First Christmas Away From Home: Some Reflections

I love Christmas. It is actually part of my values. Today is my first Christmas away from home, especially away from my dear family and close friends, and from lovely kids (especially from my godchildren) for whom I enjoy preparing presents.

For 24 consecutive years since my birth, I have been accustomed to the lively atmosphere of Christmas season in the month of December. When it comes to celebrating Christmas, there is really no place like the Philippines. I’m trying to get over with the culture shock of observing the Christmas season in a non-Christian society. Now, I wonder how many more Christmases in the future I’ll be spending away from home.

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Last week, I was in Singapore with two Filipino friends. At Orchard Road, on our last night in the city, I was teary-eyed watching kids and teens on one of the stages along the road singing Christmas songs. It just hit me that I miss Christmas in the Philippines. But I know that I also share this sentiment with millions of Filipinos around the world missing their families back home. It is sad to think of the contradictions and the seeming inhumanity in this reality. Overseas Filipino Workers send money to families in the Philippines to be able to ‘materially’ enjoy the celebration of the season. But we all know that the psychological and social pains in this contradictory relationship are just sealed and concealed. It also reduces the ideal of the ‘family’ into mere money-relations.

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For regulation theorists of political economy, Christmas season is one of the modes of regulation that contributes to the stability of the regime of accumulation in the capitalist system. The season calls for consumerism – that is, for people to consume in proportion to what is produced. There is a tendency towards overproduction in this system of unregulated production. For capitalism to be stable, production and consumption must be in equilibrium, and class conflict must be regulated. This would involve increasing the purchasing power of the people. For advanced economies like Singapore in Southeast Asia, for instance, the system tends to be stable because of the high purchasing power of the workers. In the case of the Philippines, the billions of pesos of remittances sent by the over eight million OFWs during the Christmas season somehow contribute to the stability of the system. The remittances prop up the purchasing power of their beneficiaries. But of course, this structure is not without contradictions; it is still precarious and susceptible to class conflict between rich and poor especially in a plutocratic society such as the Philippines.

Studying Christmas as a cultural norm – a mode of regulation – within the general system of capitalism, is indeed one interesting intellectual endeavor for students of political economy. Another equally interesting endeavor would be to study the strategies of capital in appropriating surplus from culture in general and from cultural differentiation in particular. For example, capital has ways of extracting surplus from the observation of people on cultural holidays such as the Christmas of Christians and the Hari Raya of Muslims, in which practices of these occasions may vary in some ways from society to society within the capitalist geography, and hence promoting the principle of market choice.

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Yesterday, I sent Christmas e-cards to family and friends saying in general: ‘Merry Christmas Greetings from KL! This is my first time to spend Christmas away from home. It's sad. But it's not sad at all. Christmas is not about me anyway. It's about God. (",) My Christmas wishes for you are success, peace, happiness, love, good health, and more blessings. MARY Christmas!’.

Indeed, there is a need to bring ‘Christ’ back in Christmas because there is a terrible hunger for love in this uncaring world. Merry Christmas everyone!

Pursuing My Personal Legend

Three months ago I ‘physically’ left my hometown, resigned from my relatively distinguished post in our office, and bid goodbye to my dear family and close friends. I said to myself I must miss my hometown, family, and friends so that I may not miss other wonderful opportunities and beautiful things the world is offering for young dreamers like me. Indeed, I have to go; I also have to pursue my ‘personal legend’. Life is, after all, about letting go and letting God.

Leaving the Philippines, a country that could be characterized as a sentimentalist ‘society of families’, is truly heartfelt. Yet, I hope that the teardrops of my loved ones were tears of joy. I would like to share with them this beautiful Prologue from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist:

The Alchemist picked up a book that someone in
the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages,
he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth
who daily knelt beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty.
He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell
into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower
was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the
story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the Goddesses of the
Forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh
water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
"Why do you weep?" the Goddesses asked.
"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.
"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they
said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you
alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."
"But..... was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.
"Who better than you to know that?" the Goddesses said
in wonder, "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each
day to contemplate himself!!"

The lake was silent for some time.

Finally it said:
"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus
was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my
banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty
reflected."

"What a lovely story," the alchemist thought.

As I’m giving a good game in pursuit of my personal legend, I do hope that my family and friends – people dearest to my heart whose existence are truly part of my nurturing – could see in the depths of my eyes, my heart, and my spirit their own beauty reflected.

Starting 'A Good Game'

And now I'm starting 'A Good Game' - a reflection of my thoughts and sentiments as I play a good game to the the greatest game of all, LIFE.

'A Good Game' is for someone and for some purpose. In this Game, there are neither winners nor losers, only learners. It is hoped to be a game of learners of politics and the social sciences in particular and of life in general. In a word, 'A Good Game' is dedicated for learners and for learning.

As reflections from me and from ka-blogistas are posted on 'timeless time' at this 'spaceless space', 'A Good Game' comes into being. Looking forward to a challenging good game with ka-blogistas that will stay with us all our lives, let 'A Good Game' begin....