Just random 8.6.9

August 5, 2009

 

Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree*

(Max Bygraves)

 

 

No matter what my professors say, I still believe that Cory Aquino is a great person and one of greatest presidents our country ever had just by being our president during that tumultuous time in our country’s history. She may not have done much as a president, either because her powers were constrained by the circumstances or her own class, but she certainly did much to the hearts of the Filipinos. It may be illusory, but it was that faith that gave people confidence and the will to end 20 years of dictatorship. She lived a life of simplicity, integrity, determination and heartfelt love for our country. 

 

My father, though an ethnic Ilokano, hated the Marcoses and used to rally for Ninoy, and then, Cory. He still has his only remaining yellow shirt he used to wear whenever there was a rally at Ayala (my father was working then for Rustan’s Makati, a high-class department store chain owned by the Tantocos). He told me that he was one of the two male employees who would take part in those big Makati rallies, shredding old yellow pages to confetti and throwing them from the Rustan’s rooftop (roughly the 7th floor).

 

My father, the activist he once was, wanted to establish a union at Rustan’s, which would be possible after Marcos has gone. Well… he was sacked a year before EDSA (the Tantocos used to be Marcos cronies.) My elder brother died of septicemia because of the chaos that temporarily paralyzed the hospitals. My parents were in Pangasinan, busy with my elder brother’s funeral, during the February revolution. My mother has only few good words for Cory. She could only see our family’s misery after the Marcoses were forced out of Malacanang.

 

My father isn’t sorrowful that Cory has died. In fact he is happy. “People are meant to die anyway. Cory is so lucky to have died in such a dignified, albeit painful, way. She has lived long enough; it’s time she rests in peace. And look, no one but the likes of Cory and Ninoy would die with the streets packed with so many people! She would have been proud.”

 

We’re proud of her. And I’ll make her proud of me too. We believe in the same thing: it’s better to die a meaningful death than live a meaningless life.

 

* My father loves this song. After hearing that Cory has died, he unearthed (yes, that’s the word) his cassette tape collection and played this song for so many times. I got bored listening to it last Sunday, but then, for an old Ninoy-Cory loyalist, the magic never fades. My father’s only sadness was that Cory died 20 days before Ninoy’s anniversary. It would have been more dramatic if she could have just held on for at least 2 weeks. 

 

*****

 

“Preachers who take themselves too seriously end up preaching to an audience of one.”

- George Dyson, Darwin Among the Machines

 

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

- Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

 

*****

 

According to the neurologist Terry Deacon all domesticated animals appear to be less intelligent than their wild ancestors or even contemporaries. Also, based on my own observations, domesticated organisms are more vulnerable than wild types (I borrowed this term from genetics). Wild cats are bigger and more muscular than my pet cat. Jack London’s wolves look more capable of living anywhere without guns and bullets than my neighbor’s high-maintenance Labrador.

 

“Taming” involves a trade off where the “tamed” loses the qualities that would make it unwieldy to humans. Humans are such insecure creatures that we will not tolerate any form of rebellion to our rule (even if our kingdom spans only the six sides of our condo unit). In exchange for a secure source of food and greater probability of surviving, the independent wolf surrenders her freedom and becomes a leashed dog. But a leashed dog enjoys a society, a new form of existence that a wolf pack can never provide. In a society a dog learns of her various meanings to man and gains a degree of respect that is not necessarily equivalent to her biological endowments.

 

Man may have similarly lost individual intelligence in the process of “taming” ourselves and exchanging our hunt-and-gather lifestyle for agriculture and civilization. But what we may have lost as individuals has been replaced, and in ever greater quantities and qualities, by socially-transmitted knowledge and collective intelligence.

 

*****

 

According to the paleontologist Steven Stanley in his book Children of the Ice Age, medicine has led to “unnatural selection”. People who would never have survived in the “wild” are now treated and allowed to breed. Many genetic diseases are now on the rise because those carrying it (homozygous or heterozygous) are allowed to have offspring.

 

I am quite sure that it will have profound effects on our society in the coming future.

 

*****

 

There is a field called behavioral genetics. It is mainly concerned with the genetic basis of what makes us humans. I would like to explore this idea more.

 

*****

 

Underprivileged people are those who are materially poor but are striving or working hard. Poor people are those who are materially, intellectually and spiritually poor. The only thing they diligently do is to clamor for everything and think that the world owes them everything. And the only thing they are useful for is their votes.

 

*****

 

I now know how to tie a necktie correctly and flawlessly.

 

The next step is to get a matching tie (a maroon or dark red tie looks good on a dark navy blue shirt, don’t you think?)

 

*****

 

To Prince Charles:

I like your new blog! Keep it up!