Power Not by Desire, But By Right

Written on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 pm | by cocoy

Elliot S. Maggin penned in 1997: “Our proper response to the inexorable march of progress that has brought us to this place and time in the history of civilization is to find a way to confront it responsibly. Not modestly. Not unself-consicously. Not with faith in a power greater than ours to descend from the sky and set things right despite our best efforts to screw up. We have an obligation to know who we are and where we are, and what we can do. We have an obligation to understand the ramifications of the things we do, and to choose to do them— or not— with our eyes open.”

Those words summed up the premise of the graphic novel, “Kingdom Come” but when one thinks about it, how true, don’t you think, given where this country is and where it needs to go?

I thought about Maggin’s words when I read this comment from Benign0 from my post “Empower Tomorrow“:

I think the inability of Pinoys to comprehend this conceptual party that is underpinned by a a solid philosophy and that is forward-looking is understandable, given that Pinoys generally are:

(a) generally not an ‘ideas’ culture; and,

(b) generally not forward-looking.

First of all (referring to Item ‘a’), the lack (or inability to endure) of political parties that have solid philosophies behind them is more a symptom than a cause of the non-delivery of democracy on its promise of a prosperous Philippines. The Philippines’ portfolio of VACUOUS political parties merely reflects the thinking faculties of an electorate whose duty it is to EVALUATE their merits. Obviously, a national debate dominated by speculation about people rather than an evaluation of IDEAS will favour political parties organised around personalities rather than ideas.

Second (referring to Item ‘b’), you need look no further than Mr. cvj’s true-to-form comment:

Cocoy, the party that you are proposing will, because it is new, have no track record to speak of. How do you overcome this initial hurdle?

I think the point I make by citing the above quote is self-evident.

Furthermore, in the last five to ten years, when was the last time you heard a political slogan that alludes to the future? At least Marcos had his “New Society” and Ramos his “Philippines 2000″.

Where are these visions now? The only future-looking talk I hear of nowadays is a sudden focus on food security and population growth.

Too little too late in my opinion.

Benign0’s, Jon’s and others’ reactions both on twitter and privately have been encouraging. With regard to the other set of comments I got, keep pointing to the same questions, formed differently. And when I looked at my answers, it was the same post rephrased. It reminded me really how lawyers do it, when they cross-examine. And I had to ask myself, did I overuse my literary license at poetry? Was I writing in gibberish? Was I such a terrible writer that I could not get my point across? Do I need to simplify? Maybe I don’t get the language of our time, the language of our people? Perhaps it was I who didn’t get it?

Another trip around the block, shall we?

I am a geek. People who know me, know that fact. Beyond the stereotypical image of the geek in pop culture, we’re the kind of people who like to tinker with things just because we can. We’re the kind of people to try out the really crazy stuff, long before anybody would dare use them. We open PCs to make them go faster, to do great things. When a problem arises, our natural response is, “why did it do that and what can I do to make it better”.

One of the things I’ve experienced in my rather short life has been my share of embassy parties and chamber of commerce meetings. Cocktails really, where people network and talk business. I understand how power plays work. I understand people’s motives. Though I dread those events, when I did go, it made me understand how things are when you live in the stratosphere. I have no blinders that cover my eyes about how things are actually run in this country. I know how deals are made. But I’ve been to remote parts of the country too, to where tourists don’t normally venture. Some believe in superstition I can not begin to fathom. Yet oddly enough, whether in company of high society or common people, they want change in the way things are.

Being geek, please allow me yet another pop culture reference to open my next point. The quote, I’m sure you’d recognize. As Yoda said:

“Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.”

The geek in me has always asked the question why our country works the way it does. Benign0 is correct: it isn’t an idea-centric culture and it isn’t forward-looking. Our country for example is generally adversed to technology, and many look at its ill effects and irrationally judge that if something must be partly bad then everything is wrong with it: Internet, genetically modified organisms, television and so many things. Perhaps, it is because of our deeply conservative Catholicism. Perhaps it is fear of the unknown.

I’d like to think it is because we are too comfortable with the status quo, with the way things are.

I think it is the same thing when you are asked a question: do you like how much sex and violence there is on Television and would you like the networks to stop? The answer, surveys would show: people don’t like ‘em, but the the ratings spike whenever there is a sex scandal. So, of course the networks would make programs that cater to that! Sex sells after all.

Oddly enough, when people yammer about Change and Truth, I think it is the same as when people are asked about if there is too much sex and violence on television. Our rational brain tells us that Change and Truth is good. But that part, deep in the Filipino psyche is afraid. It fears change, of destroying the status quo.

My daily routine is lighting fast. A day on the Internet is like a year in real time. Looking at all these advances held in the back rooms of the web, and a few chronicled on the global watering hole that is Twitter and the interaction with all these optimistic, insightful people is an amazing experience.

There is so much we can learn and borrow out there that this country can use. If only we dare. If only we can set aside our fear and make our country better.

I read MLQ3’s Daily Dose, Jester’s, as well as countless others, and though at times, my writing may not reflect it, you can’t be more wrong: I respect the opinion of all these people. I have over 360 feeds that my Google Reader tracks for me and Daily Dose and countless other blogs of similar swing, is on that list. After all, I strongly believe in the value that every Filipino is essential to making this country better.

In “It Doesn’t Compute,” MLQ3 wrote:

“If this requires refighting old battles and re-stating old issues again and again, even if it drives some people up the wall, because some things have to restated until properly internalized, then so be it. One big difference in perspective: in his April 18th, 2008 5:42 pm comment, cocoy speaks of “aging 20th century playbooks,” and if your perspective believes a mere 100 years is, indeed, enough to make ideas obsolete, then of course the frustration will be intense. But a few centuries here or there don’t invalidate ideas, to my mind, just as generations passing serves to underscore certain basics about human behavior -including the behavior of those with power and those challenging power and the way it’s wielded. But it may be that the battles that need to be fought today -and they need to be fought, sometimes along tried and tested lines but also, recognizing that people change and what worked yesterday won’t work today, I’ve also pointed out often enough why this is happening- make some people think that the Reform Constituency isn’t coming together.

It is, and there are tangible signs.

The most tangible of which is Anti-graft bloc, law schools to catch big fish (this effort goes beyond catching big fishes; it’s also establishing the good will and sense of a common cause that will bear fruit in other projects, too; I’m involved in a sub-project that aims to produce charts and diagrams that will help make sense of evidence as its gathered, and also, help illustrate to school kids and citizens how government institutions and procedures ought to work, and show cases where they haven’t worked, or have been subverted by officials). “

I want you to taste something. Sir Ken Robinson talked about creativity and schools and what would it be like facing our unknown tomorrow. He asked in his talk (video): Do Schools Kill Creativity? and he makes a case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it, which I find is worth looking into and executing. 

Then, I want you think about this: the web was born unremarkably at the end of the 1980s. About 15 years ago, Yahoo was a nobody. About 10 years ago Google was nothing. In less than 20 years, our technology has made leaps and bounds and there is no sign that it is abating. The change is constantly on that no one knows exactly how the landscape will look in 5 years.

Perhaps it is different from my point of view simply because everything works lighting fast from where I stand. A hundred years, from my perspective, is more like what 65 million years ago is, for most people. This country needs to spin faster. My point being: I look at the challenges this country is going to face that it is already facing without knowing it and not our government, not our society, not our best and brightest, not our people is doing enough to face them. Our country is too slow like provincial-life is slow compared to Manila-life slow.

Our country needs to spin faster to do the things people dream about: become a better country.

I hear noise about cheating during the last election in the Barangay level. People spending hundreds of thousands to millions of pesos to stay in power at the barangay and sangunian kabataan level. This is the kind of society we’re promoting today and it is already extending itself into our country’s most basic level. 

Teaching school kids and citizens how government ought to function is well and good but how will they fight back? How will they have the tools and mechanism available to them when all they need to look at is how successful the perverting system is. 

Don’t you see the imperative of giving the system a clear cut response?

No kid, no citizen can match the Power and Wealth of the status quo. Good People need to band together to take what they want and there needs to be a system in place to give them that opportunity.

You speak of “Anti-graft blocs and law schools out to catch big fish.”

And I’ve been called an idealist, numerous times? Ironic.

Seriously? To fight the kind of tactics Arroyo and her kind uses? Not in a country when it is FAR too easy to manipulate the system. In a society that is fair and perfect– maybe it’ll work. But not in this country, not yet anyway. Neither Arroyo nor her kind fight fair— you’ve seen the depth and breath of it. She will use her power. 

People in this country do pervert the system all the time, with the most basic things like getting a driver’s license. Arroyo and her ilk recognize the use of power. It is why they run for election. It is why time and time again, they’ve beaten the crap out of Civil Society. Arroyo and her ilk are Alpha Dogs! It is for this very reason that if Civil Society ever want to make real change, they have to take that fight door to door and persuade people to sweep them into power. That’s the only way to make changes Civil Society and what normal people want to be permanent. 

It isn’t just graft. It isn’t just corruption. Every country in the world has had the problem. It is about building the future.

On a side note, video blog superstar Lindsay Campbell and host of Moblogic.tv posted a few days ago (a well-written, well produced and well presented, if i may add, totally awesome video), “Outsourcing the Government“. It was about how much the US Government outsources jobs and contracts to various private corporations. Especially the dirty work.

In a moment of humour, I thought, “maybe, perhaps, one day we should seriously consider outsourcing our own government. Not just the police and military or the toll ways or schools, and whatnut, but let’s go crazy! Let’s privatize Congress and the Executive Department. Privatize everything. We might even save money in the long run. The Chinese seem to be doing pretty darn good with their government, maybe we should hire them?” 

Okay, that was neither here nor there.

Moving on, let me quote MLQ3 again from the same blog post as he talked about Political Parties:

perhaps we also differ, deeply, in our attitudes towards parties. By instinct, I oppose the idea of political parties, period, because I believe by their nature parties exist to secure jobs for their members, and you have centuries of human behavior and party histories to prove this. In the Philippines’ case, see my Arab News column, The Same Mistakes Eventually. I am more inclined to Making political parties obsolete and exploring Partyless Democracy as a concept (as some people from India are doing), and tying it all together as much as possible, see Politics is a continuum:

1. Politics is a continuum.

2. Politics is about both issues and personalities.

3. When an government is subjected to a referendum the totality of its actions are

what’s being judged.

Our democracy is already a Partyless Democracy one. It exist now. It exist when Senators campaign and even amongst their so called coalition-mates they feel threatened. They feel threatened to be backstabbed. They raise their own money anyway and Party is more like a lose confederation whose alliance only worth is access to protection and more money when they do get elected. This country’s political parties? Even though grown men gather together every so often, they’re technically parties in paper.

But if we judge a Political Party by the merits that it secured jobs for their members, and be judged by human behavior executed by its members, then we should do the same for every Community, every Corporation, every Organization in the world. Organizations form because their members have the same goal, same objectives. People form countries, corporations, in much the same way. If Political Parties are organizations, how is a Political Party any different from the Rotary Club or the Catholic Church or Labor Unions or Civil Society or Microsoft for that matter except that its business is Politics?

And yet the Political Parties in the Philippines seem to exist only in paper. Perhaps, it is because the players hold only their own self interests, which is why, time and time again they fail to deliver results and the only consensus they seem to agree on is when they have to protect one of their own to safe guard their modus operandi. That, I believe is the root cause of the problem and not with organizations, per se.

I’ve never been much of a team player. But even loners recognize that sometimes, banding together is good. I’ll make it simple and very pop culture: for when the threats and challenges are too great for just one man, even Batman knows and recognizes the need for a Justice League.

Perhaps, the term “Party” needs to be changed. But whatever you call it, doesn’t take away that Good People need to come together to fight for a cause.

This is the part where my point of view was misunderstood by MLQ3 and Jester and others with similar slant:

I’d suggest, boils down to whether cocoy’s belief that old methods must simply be scrapped, or whether the reason they exist points to their efficacy and efficaciousness; and whether the priority can be binding the nation’s wounds, on the basis of letting bygones be bygones because a larger, more abstract, problem needs to be attended to. The abstract problem, after all, has a pretty big consensus behind it: that it exists, and that what exists is a political system out of whack because society’s out of whack. Can you nudge it back into shape? There’s the rub.

Of course the most extreme view, and a large part of the problem, are those expounded by New Philippine Revolution: that elections are a sham, that no change has taken place; the justification for revolution by insisting there’s no such thing as evolution.

We agree on the Gorian Knot of our time: “The abstract problem, after all, has a pretty big consensus behind it: that it exists, and that what exists is a political system out of whack because society’s out of whack. Can you nudge it back into shape? There’s the rub.”

Benign0 points to the language of the Filipino, who is not forward looking nor idea-centric. This is the status quo.

Like it or not, our world spins faster than ever. Our country laments time and again why we’re not on top of the food chain. Our people are smart, hardworking and our country is rich with culture and the beauty of our land. Hard for most people to understand, we have to be forward looking. We have to be idea-centric to face the challenges of the 21st Century. 

Abstract and unattainable a forward looking, idea-centric worldview may be, how is it any different from every Catholic Filipino’s desire to be in heaven? Don’t you want our people to taste what heaven could be like on Earth? We need a goal, we need a dream to focus our drive, our attention, for no matter how many generations it would take to achieve.

At the beginning of this post, I quoted Elliot S. Maggin: “Our proper response to the inexorable march of progress that has brought us to this place and time in the history of civilization is to find a way to confront it responsibly. Not modestly. Not unself-consicously. Not with faith in a power greater than ours to descend from the sky and set things right despite our best efforts to screw up. We have an obligation to know who we are and where we are, and what we can do. We have an obligation to understand the ramifications of the things we do, and to choose to do them— or not— with our eyes open.”

Beyond a Dream, we need to see what we could be and at the same time understand the ramifications— be responsible for the things we do, or do not do, to the environment, to our people and be accountable to the children who will inherit these islands and inherit our success and our mistakes. A group of Good People, as I’ve said in Empower Tomorrow, must have that focus and be held accountable for future generations. And that, I believe is a proper response, not just for today, but for unborn Filipinos yet to come. 

This is my answer to the Gordian Knot of our time.

I believe Civil Society failed and continue to fail to understand the Language of Power, it must learn to do so, if it is really sincere in its quest to Fight for Truth and Battle for Change. What it does now, is not enough! People seem to constantly mistake that I mean to let bygones be bygones. On the contrary, taking Power through an election is a maneuver to set things right on Our People’s terms.

My proposal is all about taking responsibility.

I want to give Our People the means to try Arroyo. Step One is a political party, a real honest to goodness organization, which (if i have to spell it out) is just a mechanism to get Good People elected because I want to give our people and all those Anti-Graft and Law Schools the opportunity to bring Arroyo and her ilk to court. The only way to ensure that without threat of intimidation, without threat of Arroyo’s wrath falling down on the poor investigators or worst, losing evidence is by taking the Reigns of Power through an Election. That I believe is fair to Arroyo and fair for our people. Being in power guarantees full access to everything, It means to take control. Good People have to do this.

More importantly, Step Two, if a true grassroots movement is ever successful, gives Good People the opportunity to actually do something about the problems everyone seem to always complain about but never really solve. We must face tomorrow by proactively engaging it rather than simply reacting to crisis after crisis.

Believe me— it won’t be long before Oil is at US$200 a barrel. All signs seem to point to that. It was only last November (2007) that people said it was not a question of if, but when oil would breach US$100. How long do you think before oil would be priced at US$200?  

That’s just oil. What about water? What about power? and myriad other concerns?

Isn’t it time to give ourselves the gift, of a chance, for something we’ve never had?

Arroyo and the status quo uses power for power’s sake. They take it and use it by desire. We need Good People to solve serious problems, who are more interested in building a nation than squandering it. Call this momentum, for lack of a better term, People Power 2.0: we need Good People— Civil Society taking the Reigns of Power through an election. The only way I see how such collective good can be focused and to achieve, is when Good People band together. Do not be afraid to take and use power. Take and use Power not by Desire, but by Right.

Naturally, you get to ask Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Answer: Isn’t that why we live in a democracy?

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About The Author: cocoy is a twenty-something neoliberal, Linux & Mac user, technology geek who enjoys a good cup of Coffee and who believes in New Media. He hangs out on twitter as @cocoy and blogs at Big Mango.

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6 Responses to “Power Not by Desire, But By Right”

  1. benign0 on April 23rd, 2008 10:33 am

    Cocoy,

    Lawyers’ cross examination techniques only work when the cross examinee is being inconsistent in the first place.

    when you are consistent and true to yourself, dishing out re-phrases and re-statements of what are essentially the same principles comes naturally, becomes instinctive, and (not surprisingly) annoys the cross-examinERS.

    I beg to differ a bit on your assessment that Pinoys are averse to technology. On the contrary the tech take up in the Philippines is quick.

    The big BUT here is that the application of said technology is intellectually-bankrupt and DEVOID of imagination.

    To be fair, though, hi-tech nowadays can be used by any moron. That’s a lot different from the days when you really needed to be a geek to get a computer to work for you.

  2. cocoy on April 23rd, 2008 11:22 am

    i suppose thats true enough, Benign0

  3. cocoy on April 23rd, 2008 11:36 am

    hmmm…

    yeah. i wasn’t being fair.

    with regard to people’s use of technology. the philippines isn’t exactly that different— network access-wise from the rest of the world. For example the prevalent use of mobile phones and its use isn’t being applied by most people the way some of the digerati do, it’s the price of going mainstream.

  4. Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose » Blog Archive » Organic vs. Programmatic on April 23rd, 2008 12:28 pm

    […] story was brought to mind by Power Not by Desire, But By Right , in which cocoy continues the dialogue that’s been taking place between himself and various […]

  5. benign0 on April 23rd, 2008 3:36 pm

    That’s right. Just because one can use a computer doesn’t necessarily mean one can appreciate the powerful beauty of the technology at their fingertips.

  6. Partido ng Pandaigdigang Pilipino New Philippine Political Party | Filipino Voices on May 11th, 2008 4:15 am

    […] “Because We Can“, “Because We Can Change the Dynamics of the Game“, “Power Not by Desire, But By Right“. Tags: filipino attitude, filipino society, Philippine politics, political parties Add to […]

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