james.soriano

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 29 October 2008 Issue (Page E-3)

---

Halloween is the only time of the year when we can afford to take the notion of death lightly.

This was what I realized after watching my neighbors prepare their spooky decorations, after hearing many of my friends talk about the costumes they plan to wear to parties, and after witnessing the kids trick-or-treating around our village during the annual Halloween celebration which, strangely enough, isn’t usually held on the day itself.

It’s an interesting contradiction of sorts. Sure, when we think Halloween we think of scary apparitions and ghost stories. But we also think of pranks, parties, and pastries. I guess death isn’t as fearsome or painful to think about when we don’t associate it with a sense of loss.

We now associate it with merrymaking and celebration. Halloween is a time to go dress up as your favorite villain or movie-inspired creature and go partying with your friends. It is a time to be lively and to be alive.

But when you think about it, it is also a form of escapism. After all, what is Halloween but a convenient form of recreation to relieve the unpleasantness derived from death?

When we celebrate it, we remove ourselves from the reality that death is often painful, mortifying and incomprehensible. And by turning it into a form that is entertaining, we are able to grasp and cope with it. Perhaps Halloween is also an opiate of the masses.

This is made even more effective by the advent of media and commercialism. After all, our image of Halloween comprises mostly of what the filmmakers and artists in this last century have constructed for us. It has become largely commercialized and tailor-fit to the desires of the market. In this sense, not only have we desensitized ourselves from death’s reality, perhaps we’ve also commodified it.

Hence, it seems to me that whenever we celebrate Halloween, we run the risk of trivializing what it stands for.

’m not saying, though, that we ought not to celebrate it, or that we ought to celebrate it in a particular way. Nor am I saying that it’s bad that we try to associate death with happier things. But I do think that the true spirit of Halloween is lost on most people.

To remember what that is, it might help to go back to what the holiday originally was. In ancient Celtic tradition, it was a festival celebrating the end of harvest season. Since it was also considered the end, or the ‘death’, of the year, the Celts used to believe that the boundary between the living and the deceased would disappear, and spirits could come and be among the living. Thus Halloween, then called Samhain, was a time for the dead to commune with the living and vice versa. It was something that was to be taken very seriously, if in a festive and celebratory manner.

If the eve of Halloween prepared the people of old for the beginning of a new year by marking the end of a cycle, in modern times it prepares us for the morning after. It is, after all, directly followed by All Saints Day and All Souls Day, holidays which commemorate the faithful departed. And the fact that these three holidays are strung together is neither random nor coincidental. These were deliberately situated alongside each other by the Catholic Church.

Since that’s the case, I would like to think that Halloween is a time to remember the importance of honoring our dead and keeping their memory. It doesn’t matter so much if we choose to celebrate it in a particular manner. What matters is that we know what we are celebrating it for.

It is so easy to boil down Halloween to candy apples, jack-o-lanterns, or dressing up as Rihanna from ‘Disturbia’. A large part of what makes Halloween is what media and pop culture has propagated. But what is truly important is to remember that behind the candies, the costumes, and the merrymaking, is the spirit of Halloween.

Halloween is there to celebrate the importance of commemorating death—and therefore, the importance of a meaningful life.

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 22 October 2008 Issue (Page F-2)

---

I’ve always been genuinely interested in learning about the relationships that my peers have with their parents. Sometimes I wonder if my friends find me weird for asking about them: family background, characteristics, degree of closeness, and the like. It’s certainly not a topic my peers would normally bring up. After all, there are lots of other things to talk about, like music and sports and who they’re dating.

Some don’t find it difficult to talk about their parents at all. This usually means that they either share a really good relationship with them, or it’s so bad that they just have to talk about it. Others prefer not to share. Still, others talk about them in a superficial way, giving answers that lead to dead-ends in the conversation. In any case, hearing, or even not hearing, about them is always interesting.

Maybe it’s because the relationship you have with your parents tells something about the kind of person you are—regardless of other outside influences that might exist.

Some people end up remarkably similar to their own fathers and mothers. If you look at me and my father, for example, you could make a couple of observations. We’re both left-handed, we both like our coffee black, and we dress up in almost exactly the same way—that is to say, with almost blatant disregard for common fashion sense. We also think the same way, to the point that we ponder things in the exact same position (someone once took a picture. It’s true.) Also, I find that my fun, boisterous, heavy drinker friends, more often than not, have fun, boisterous, heavy drinker fathers or mothers. I find it very amusing.

On the other hand, other similarities can be a lot more subtle, and not quite as amusing. People talk about how they don’t want to end up being like their moms and dads, yet end up becoming exactly like them. I have a couple of rebellious friends who have some insanely strict parents, who in turn were rebellious in their own time as well. I hope it’s not an indicator of what kind of parents my friends will wind up becoming.

Sometimes the influences are tragic. One of my good friends once noted the behavior of her womanizing uncle, saying that maybe the reason why her uncle is such a womanizer is because he never had a mother figure, so he started looking for affection in other places. Maybe she’s right.

It would be wrong for me to generalize all forms of parental influence as bad. Just because your parents complain that you’re going out too much this sembreak does not mean that their advice isn’t sound, or that they’re raising you the wrong way. Besides, who am I to speak about parenting?

But I guess parents should take time once in a while to think about the kind of kids they are raising—or leaving behind, as the case may be. Sometimes we might be a little bit hard to understand, but it might help to look at it in our point of view once in a while. After all, parents were children—and hormonal teenagers—too, once upon a time. And hormonal teenagers don’t often take lightly to moralistic sermons.

On the other hand, I think we have to meet them halfway. The reason parents can sound so moralistic is because they do have some wisdom to impart. They have experience. If we can respect and listen to our teachers, then I think we can do the same for our parents. It’s a matter of balancing between the extremes of youth and experience, I guess.

In the end, I’d like to think that as people with independent minds, we have the greatest capability for forming ourselves, quite apart from outside influences. But if our parents’ influences are inescapable, then they have a pretty huge responsibility, because they might be dictating the way our lives play out without even knowing it.

It’s the same responsibility we’ll have when we become parents.

Oh no.

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 15 October 2008 Issue (Page F-4)

---

Is anyone beyond pardon?

In answering that question, perhaps the case of Claudio Teehankee, Jr. would be a good place to start. Should he be pardoned? He’s rich and influential; no less than the son of one of the great chief justices in Philippine history. He clearly committed a heinous crime, and he has (purportedly) not shown any signs of remorse. He is, in short, the perfect example of a person whom you shouldn’t pardon.

There are other issues as well. Many have complained that the process was not transparent. Some individuals have even claimed that money changed hands in this case. The victim’s family declared that they were not informed. It seems glaringly evident to everyone that this is not just a case of a lapse in judgment—this was a deliberate act of political indiscretion.

In fact, no matter what way you look at it, this can’t be anything but political. Our very own Justice Secretary did admit that Teehankee’s brother, ambassador and representative to the WTO, ended up being a factor in the decision. Considering how even impeached Presidents get pardoned nowadays, I guess the issue is not just about one deliberate act of political indiscretion, but rather, a whole system founded on it.

Also, we shouldn’t forget about the victims’ families. If there is anyone against whom this crime has been committed, it is to them, who are in themselves victims, first and foremost. Why should they—or we—forgive him? Some things that have been taken away can never be returned. If it were our friend, our parent, our brother or sister, whose life had been taken on a whim, would we not feel the same way? We don’t have to undergo their experiences to be able to grasp they are experiencing. Forgiveness does not come easily for wounds that will never heal.

If so, then is every other pardon just as objectionable?

A decade ago, a lot of controversy surrounded the case of Flor Contemplacion, who purportedly murdered a fellow OFW as well as the son of their Singaporean employer. We claimed that she was framed, that she was innocent. We demanded that she be pardoned. Our then-president went so far as to personally appeal her execution sentence. It was denied. Her execution strained our country’s relations with Singapore for some time. Even if the facts of the case were never fully established to us, our then-president went so far as to call her a hero.

But in contrast to Teehankee, Flor Contemplacion was a poor Filipina forced into an abusive working condition. If so, then is pardon simply a question of race or social class?

Say a poor, oppressed farmer murdered his usurious landlord, who happened to be a wealthy and corrupt politician. Assuming he did his country a favor, does that make his murder any less objectionable? Would you call him a hero? Would you think twice about saying that he deserves pardon?

Maybe it would help us answer the question if we turned our assumptions around for a minute. Let’s say that pardon is acceptable and justifiable under certain circumstances. If our administration can do it, and regularly, for the rich and influential, then it is fair to say that the same standard should be applied for those who are poorer.

But assuming there was a case parallel to Teehankee’s, where the murderer a poor drunkard, the victims in question from the slums and the scene of the crime was in an obscure street alley rather than a high-class subdivision. Would that man have a right to be pardoned, too? Would there be an outcry if our president pardoned him?

In the end, however, the question of pardon is about morality, more so than about politics, race, or social class. It extends to our conscience as individuals who live in a state which respects rights, including the benefit of the doubt.

But if we were to talk about morality, then it goes back to the question: Is anyone beyond forgiveness?

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 8 October 2008 Issue (Page E-3)

---

It seems to me like the only issue hitting the global headlines these past few weeks is the financial crisis that the US is currently facing. It strikes me as funny in a scary sort of way. It’s funny because I don’t recall any other instance in recent history of our world leaders coming together to agree that

a) There is a problem, and
b) We all have to do our part to solve it.

I guess money talks in a way that global warming doesn’t.

Nonetheless, it is an issue that everyone should rightfully be worried about. This crisis has drawn comparisons to no less than the Great Depression, and the world’s leading economists figure that things won’t be getting better anytime soon.

While our president tells us that there’s nothing to worry about because we have ‘fundamentally sound economics’ (whatever that means), it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the US slows down, then so do we. They’re easily our biggest trading partner, not to mention that our currency is tied to theirs.

It is precisely this dependence on the United States—and not just by our country—which makes the measures they will take a very big deal. There are mixed reactions to the $700 billion bailout that was approved-shortly-after-it-was-rejected, but the international community generally sees it as a good move. After all, if the US government doesn’t bail these big companies out, then the rest of the world is in for a very painful crash. It’s their responsibility to clean up the mess they’ve made, isn’t it?

If this were true, then I wish we could say the same for the companies we’re bailing out, because it’s not their money that they’ve misused, its other people’s. And it’s these ‘other people’ they’re relying on to bail them out again.

I think this is the height of injustice.

In the first place, a large part of what made this crisis possible is the fact that these investment banks and mortgage-brokers kept on taking questionable loans, in the illusion that profits would continue to expand unstoppably (which sounds an awful lot like history repeating itself).

Simply speaking, they kept on lending money to people who couldn’t necessarily pay them back, so that when times got hard and people started defaulting on their loans, these companies were left with a lot of compensating to do. They compensated using the money that other people entrusted them with, and that’s how they became bankrupt.

Practically speaking, this means that money invested in these companies is lost. Pensioners cannot look forward to a stable retirement. Jobs will continue to vanish. Incomes will also disappear, and in our case, this might mean OFW remittances. Investors will be more afraid to invest, and as they grow more averse to risk, losses will occur in the stock market.

Most importantly, whichever way the world economy goes, it is our generation who will be facing the brunt of its effects.

In the end, however, these companies and the people who run them are very lucky people. They stand to lose but a few luxuries: one of their many houses, probably a yacht.

On the other hand, the rest of us are going to have to buckle up, because our money is going into saving their businesses. What do we stand to lose? A life’s worth of savings, a stable retirement, maybe a house you haven’t fully paid for—what could easily be a life, so to speak. This, apparently, is our reward for putting our trust with them.

If you don’t think that’s the height of oppression, think about this: we’re bailing out these companies because we have to. They’re simply too important to be allowed to fail; their collapse will deal a huge blow to the world’s financial system, which could easily mean another, Greater Depression. And after we bail them out, we’ll still be subject to the same system.

The old saying goes that you should never bite the hand that feeds. In this case, it’s also that we can’t. But if there’s any consolation, it’s the fact that the big people now have to put their money where their mouth is.

Oh, but wait—they don’t have it anymore.

---

PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 1 October 2008 Issue (Page E-3)

---

I’ve been looking forward to the Obama-McCain debate for quite some time now, but I must say that after watching CNN’s coverage of it last Saturday, I was rather disappointed.

I expected someone to take the lead in this campaign, but no one did. More emphasis was seemingly put on antagonizing the other candidate’s stances than on a fruitful discussion about policies. In particular, the debate became very intense when it came to the issue of Iraq and the Middle East. Obama continued to depict McCain as a supporter of the Bush administration; McCain continued to paint Obama as an inexperienced candidate. Afterwards, both campaigns released statements saying that their candidate had won. I don’t know who to believe.

Nonetheless, if there’s anything I admire about the political culture of the United States, it’s the fact that citizens continue to value these kinds of exchanges. Debates are an excellent avenue for presenting platforms and comparing policies. As far as government goes, these are the most important things we need to look out for when we elect a country’s leaders.

Funnily enough, while we’ve based much of our own system of government on theirs, this tradition of discussing platforms and policies through an intellectual clash is something that we’ve never inherited.

In our country, not much value is placed on the practice of debate in elections. Instead, our political culture (if it exists) is obsessed with pandering to images– and images only.

In the Philippines, the practice of elections approximates American Idol: it is mostly a battle of personalities. It explains why campaign jingles work, why actors win, and why few candidates seems to pay attention to making a real platform– which might also account for why there are no political parties here in the real sense of the word. We might as well turn elections into a reality show.

Then again, it’s not like there’s much we can do about that. If it’s true that history repeats itself, then this phenomenon of voting for the most handsome candidate is merely a repetition of how we used to select our datus based on who seems most charismatic. It’s all just a cycle that will continue to recur, and there is nothing we can do to change it.

Also, the idea of making Juan de la Cruz listen to some boring debate about whether candidates support the E-VAT is not quite as convincing as, say, the monetary ‘handouts’ that politicians would give to voters. The harsh realities of politics in the Philippines will continue to be there, and they will be much stronger forces than the force of reason.

It’s not like they’ll take these ideas seriously, anyway. Their ideas will not matter if they don’t put them into action. And it’s hard to put faith in a system that has promised us so many big things before, but have continued to fail us today.

But maybe that’s the problem. Since when did ‘progress’ or ‘poverty elimination’ become platforms? Why does no one ever talk about concrete measures, like the reform of relief programs, the passing of laws, or the repealing of policies? Allow me to be crazy and say that the reason why we there is no hope is because we’re not given something real to believe in.

I believe that there is a value in re-engineering the way we think and go about elections. I believe that more emphasis should be placed on the platforms and ideas put forth by candidates, instead of selecting leaders based on, literally, face value. I believe that there is room for the growth of a real political culture in the Philippines, that this will eventually ensure that we select the appropriate people for office. I believe that while there are many obstacles along the way, it is not yet too late to start. It took four centuries for the United States to get to where they are, and I think we have the capacity to do the same.