Well, if you must …

Written on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 2:00 am | by Rom

Marocharim (fierce name, btw. Love it.) wrote:

I could, if I wanted to, just get the hell out of this computer shop, go to Timezone in TriNoma, and play Tekken 6. I could, if I wanted to, SMS my friends right now for an afternoon at Gateway and forget about the Philippines.

And if you did go to play video games and hang out at Gateway, would that make the Philippines sink any deeper into the cesspool? On the other hand, if you did vandalize money, or get into an argument with someone who believed different from you, would that make our situation any more tolerable?

Everyday, I hear people bemoan the obvious: the rape of the rule of law, the lack of honesty in government, corruption. In the next breath, they talk about grand plans to change the world. Two minutes later, they’re driving around not wearing seat belts (against the law), texting their buds while driving (against the law), running a red light (traffic lights seem to be optional here, so … LOL, alright still against the law), and slipping the cop a fifty to get out of a citation (against the law).

Every time I walk down my street, I pass people loitering about the street corner slamming government to pieces. Whenever I stick around to hear what they say next, I hear what I expect: what they would do if they were in charge. They would subsidize gas, they would subsidize rice, they would send the Chinese ambassador to jail for refusing to appear before the Senate, they would elect Jun Lozada to the Senate and make Ed Panlilio President of the Philippines.

(The last one may not seem so absurd, until you realize that these people don’t even know Ed Panlilio. Nothing against the priest, but shouldn’t a president be chosen on something more substantial than someone’s media-crafted image?)

And after spending hours talking and talking at the street corner they go home jobless and blaming the government for it when in truth, 4 out 5 stay bums because they didn’t go out to look for a job, or because they found an employment opportunity but passed it up because it was “beneath them” or because “it wasn’t what they studied in school.” Or maybe because they were just too effing lazy.

All that immersion has led me to decry mini-protests; they just have too much in common with plain and simple whining. Call me old school, but I like people who quietly plug away - nose to grindstone - working to better their lives and the lives of those around them.

Close as I can figure, those folks over at CFC did exactly that with GK. For them - near as I can figure - whining about poverty isn’t number one on the agenda. Concrete action is. And not grand sweeping action either, but one little victory after another; one triumph over poverty followed by another and another.

This, I think, should be the wave of the future. People working to better their lives and those around them, instead of making the taking over of governments (no matter how legally or peacefully) the main item on the plan of action. If you take a long hard look at the “we can do better” thinking that motivates this course of action, you realize that you might just be trading one government for another, and not actually trading one paradigm for a better one. If we were to focus on doing better in our individual spheres, we will definitely not make the big news, but we will have done good. And in the future (distant to be sure), we might see that people have taken back the power from the government, relegating government to the role of functional coordinator, rather than leader. That government would then be more respectful of the people’s will, simply because it is no longer more powerful than the people.

(I think Cocoy’s idea is wonderful - the creation of a Political party by the people (for the people of course). But I think it’s a bit too Utopian, calling for so many things to fall seamlessly into place for the whole thing to work, requiring too many assumptions about people based on nothing more than their public personas. It’s certainly a goal worth working towards, but for 2010?)

So, like I said, if you must, then go ahead and protest. I still say that we should give other strategies - more positive ones - a chance. No offense to those who don’t agree.

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About The Author: Rom is the writer behind the blog Smoke. In her own words, "I write better when I smoke. Don't ask me to reduce it to a science."

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Comments

2 Responses to “Well, if you must …”

  1. cvj on April 20th, 2008 3:30 am

    I believe the answer to both questions would be yes.

  2. cocoy on April 20th, 2008 9:28 am

    And yeah Rom, I would be the first person to say, that my idea is utopian and complex. So much so, that’s part of “what’s wrong” with it to begin with.

    Input from people is definitely needed to make it all fall into place, to iron it all out. I certainly don’t have a monopoly of ideas. Everyone should be involved.

    Yes, I quite agree with you that the wave of the future is people working to better their lives. I share that sentiment. That is a very important element. And everyone should be on that bandwagon, 100%.

    I do not trust government to be respectful of the people’s will. They’ve shown us, time and time again that they could care less what the will of the people is, what our opinion is or what’s in our best interest.

    I know time is short but the chance to get people to do something, something positive for a change, I think is worth it.

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