Behind the excesses is an excess

Behind the excesses is an excess.  If I am a bit less conscious with how this entry will go, I will commit the error of having an excess with the way I speak and the volume of words I encode.  The world would not plunge to the imminent economic turmoil and down-spin to the rock bottom it is heading to if it put a bit of restraint and held back its excesses.  Both I and the world at large is a victim of some form of excess. Another case in point, should I have held myself from a couple or so stacks of rice then I would not have suffered from this bulging tummy I have been carrying with my weakening knees over the past years. You are guilty of having some excess.  I am certain there was something you took in an amount a tat too much for you.  Perhaps it was the last spending spree in the mall using that swiping card of yours.  Perhaps it was the word you should have not said, leaving all the doubt in the world as you left that person after a heated argument.  Perhaps it was the amount of tan on your skin that would have eventually led to skin cancer.  Perhaps it was the volume of your ipod that eventually deals you an impaired ear.  Your dealt a hand, you take the hand and the other one too.

Such is the waste for a person who lives in the world of excess.  A moment too soon becomes a moment too much.  An impulse becomes a compulsion.  A seemingly warranted motive becomes a habit in need of no forcing.  When one could have just said “no” and lived better the next day, one says “yes” and dies the other.  I came across a movie the other night that celebrates the world of excess.   That movie was and is Tropic Thunder featuring Downey Jr., Black and ofcourse Stiller.  It gave me a few seconds of good laughs, a lot of chuckles and a ton of fancy thoughts crossing my mind.  The acting was superb and the message was dead on despite long monologues on culture and on a life on the shallow lane.  I like the switching of references to icons and to modern thinking.  I like the dash of morality and righteousness if forcefully injects despite being on a sea of profanity already.  It could have done more overall but it was as it is — a satire, a comic one at that.  It was a satire of Hollywood movie-making and when the word satirical crosses your mind, you know an excess of sorts is about to happen or maybe has happened.  But I am not about to toast to the excess of a satire, I am here for the excess the movie deals with — the excess of the self.  Robert Downey Jr. is a method actor here who goes over the top and gets skin pigmentation procedure to make himself brown enough for his black role.  The diction, the moves, the cultural references all point to a convincing Vietnam War soldier.  According to his character, Lazarus, he does not drop character until the DVD commentaries are over.  Over the top indeed!  Black here is a heroine-sniffing comedian known for his loud farts.  He is the white Eddie Murphy minus whatever versatility he has gained over the years.  And Stiller is a falling star whose action movies and recent attempts at drama have been failing.  Here, he is a bit desperate and again, a bit over the top.  So are the dimensional characters in play.  Truly a joy and tragedy! 

We have been beating around several examples already of how we can think so much of the me, myself and I and forget about everybody else.  Most of the time it’s just us and our conscience doing the battles.  But every decision resonates in eternity as the proud warrior would say.  I do believe even the smallest ones have that effect.  We know of the damages that a mind bent on excess self-service can do.  Just look at the economic plunging of our times and you’d wish you had bashed the home-buyers, home-sellers, stock brokers and lenders who were as Chuck Norris and company would say — greedy. Have it your way, the fundamental problem with this downturn and crisis that is about to get worse is not some mathematical imbalance in the equilibrium.  I dare ask, does it ever head that way in the first place?  We can have the facts, lay down the figures and master the devices of prose and policy and still fall short of finding the answers.  When you put a headstrong and self-serving society gone beyond and overturning its convictions and principles and add a dash of temptation to blow up spending, you get a disaster.  Excess has that effect.  Better have more of anything than less. Better be in advance and have more time than be late.  Noble as it is an objective, it is still a celebration of what excess does.  We love excess.  We save it in our banks.  We chew it from our plates.  We take it to the market and brandish it in front of our peers.  

So how do we fix it?  Don’t ask me.  All I know is that it is a fundamental human problem from a basic human error — pride and selfishness.  All I know is that it is catalyzed by the effect of one word: “love” or the love of it. I am sure a lot of the readers here have already had their fair share of beating even before taking caution.  But then, I leave a caution and some hope.  We are in search of a solution.  But we have to first be sure of the problem and the cause.  Diagnosis works this way.  Healing works this way.  If we are to put some patch of resolution and redemption to our daily causes, if we are to absolve ourselves from our worries and troubles then address the issue.  Simple as that.  And here, the issue is excess.  Intellect alone is useless.  Wealth alone is useless. Youth alone is useless, as a good teacher once said.  Put them together and they amount to nothing.  I strive for something beyond my tangible world of excess. It has done me little good other than giving me a passing joy.  But I am in search of happiness.  So is the world.  Therefore I break free from the chain of excess and the love of it.  I say that I also have to break free from the very source of this —myself.  

Absolved.

As the Pendulum Swings

Make no mistake about it, the pendulum does swing. Yesterday, the Olympics opener in Beijing, proved to the world that the pendulum has swung back to the right — the east, the orient. If your professor once wrote the west as the West, then brace yourself as the East has proven itself worthy of both attention and admiration. To think that fifty years ago, the Asian continent just wanted respect and self-determination from its Western administrators. It has gone this far and in so fast a time. Indeed, the tigers of Asia have awoken and it has taken a number of prolific Western academicians to bash others in the head of what is about to happen. We should all enjoy this ride. But first, just how did we get here?

Let’s set our point A 500 years ago. The pendulum swung from the east to the west. Europe and moreover the Americas were in a time of darkness and unrest. Knights in metal clanged each other’s helmet looking to deliver that killer blow for a feudal lord fattening himself with large beef cuts and with the wives of slaves waiting in his bed chamber. Farther west, the Incas and the Aztecs were flourishing in their own way and in a remarkable light but still the action there was disconnect from the rest of the world. The action was in the east and had been there for some thousands of years. China was the darling, the Middle Kingdom and rightfully so as its emperors conducted themselves as emperors — pushing for the refinement in the culture and letters hitting the peaks of exploration with scientific and military advances. Arabia was then but a side story with desert routes paving the dangerous way for silk and spices to hit small and rivaling Italian city-states, notably Venice. India was isolated by towering mountains but also took pride in its Indus roots. Southeast Asia was another collection. So was the remaining Oriental empires. And let us not forget that Genghis Khan and the Mongols had devoured the Eurasian continent some centuries ago.

Then some supposedly crack pots of men in some small laboratory in Europe risked life and limb to find or concoct an all the more ludicrous artifact called the elixir of life actually came to the fold. They were the side show however for something deeper was allowing such changes to happen. It was nearing the time of Reformation and the establishment known as the Church was turned upside-down by the propositions of another seemingly crazed man named Martin Luther. People were changing and they were led to more productive lives. There is this argument that the Protestant ethic drives men to work harder and live more righteously. There is also this argument that people in the colder sides of the hemispheres are productive out of necessity. The latter I will argue against anytime for leaps in logic. The former however has been considered outlandish as it on the surface can not sum up or categorize in general all wealthy countries of the world. I will get back to this later. So the crackpots, trying to find the truth and hopefully for a divine meaning, became legit. So the princes and their subjects, though structurally in a backward mode of government, began to see the meaning of profit and enterprise. The mighty East simultaneously became stagnant as both China and Japan closed their doors to external contact and internal reforms. The outcome of Zheng He’s navy is the screaming example of this betrayal to progress. The Middle Kingdom, the empire capable of sending 30,000 men all for friendship and goodwill in Africa became the side show and declined to humiliation. Progress now was the battlecry. The establishments of morality and industry had to be overturned and sometimes it had to be done by the sword. Lives had to get much better and in the West, its speed was mind-boggling. It is to be understood that progress was the byproduct of deeper understanding of human existence. Indeed, why bother to excel if it were for nothing? The West found the deeper answers they long had been looking for. Progress in the West was reflected in the Scientific Revolution climaxed by the Principia book of Sir Isaac Newton and the Age of Exploration (and brutal expansion). I believe that it is not a coincidence that this coincided with the rise of the Protestant faith. Again, if it not had been for a profound change in a group of men, big as a society or as small as a denomination, progress in Europe would have been stunted growth. But it ceased to stagnate. Reforms were adapted. And by divine will, kingdoms who shared the same beliefs and the commitment to progress dominated the political arena. Which brings to mind the case of England. The once weak England, thanks to Queen Elizabeth and again, a changing worldview of the grassroots citizens, rose to unthinkable power and prominence.   Just how prominent?  It owned 1/3 of the world at its peak! This catapulted Europe to newer heights. Action shifted faster. The East lost its answers.   It was swallowed by the Western tide. The pendulum had swung.

Allow me to skip the Modern Age as this was also fueled by the advances made in the West. Point B is set on the present. We just need to examine the two faces — the representatives by default of the East and the West to find out that the pendulum has swung.  So how?  I say an irony.  I say a betrayal has done this. The West has been betrayed by its notion of progress; furthermore, by its notion of being human. Just what is that again? I identify three elements: speed, openness and diversity though not consistently over history.   Now, my case in points. The United States is a bastion of the three as it is the sole country that can be the face of the West…or shall I say, its battlefield and laboratory. Speed and technology, though most of the time beneficial, is slowly betraying the U.S. People are living a poorer quality of life because of compromises they have taken in the name of productivity and that elusive material abundance. Openness has enabled the United States to adapt to the changes around. By embracing other cultures, it has kept its labor force strong and challenged. However, it has paid the steep price of losing its founding character be it patriotism or a deeply-rooted faith in God and country. We need not cite examples of how many lives has been lost to the American thinking of rights and too much liberty. I am not talking about equal rights here. I think it has saved American from further shame. I am talking about liberties given without a clearer explanation of why they are given and at what cost. Diversity has also betrayed the U.S. as it has allowed organized groups to operate near halls of power with an agenda to turn its people against itself. I am talking about terrorist cells no longer some urban legend but a reality inside America’s campuses. I am talking about the youth, using the same liberties due to them, to bash their government and weaken their stance all the more. The United States is on a decline. My explanation? It has lost its answers. It has used the three elements that has made it so successful to turn away from the absolutes of its being a nation — the principles laid out by its Founding Fathers. I weep for the West because of this betrayal to its spiritual call. I weep because Harvard University has lost its identity — let me remind me of its mission: which is to send out missions and reform the world in darkness and shambles. Now, it is the self-righteous liberal-thinking loose cannonball of human-centered genius.

China has found its answers. It is in resilience and commitment to country. It shames me that the Philippines —my country touched by such a profound belief in Christianity has failed in its purpose of building a nation. Though I have not given up hope after seeing China. What more for us? China, though not and I say not outright in its Christian faith is actually the one succeeding in one of Christianity’s biggest experiments: building nations. On the side though, let me make one thing clear about China and Christianity: there are reportedly 500 million (not 70 M) of them in small, house-based churches. Even Yao Ming has to be so proper and politically correct to say that God has very much blessed him over in CNN. Reminds me of the proportion of Protestants in the whole of Europe. Not a big percent, but a considerable force. And no, I do not think it’s merely political and economic reforms that has brought China to that prominence again. I think it’s because… it has found deeper answers. It has found its moral absolutes and it is sticking by it. Christians or not, China has resorted to strengthening itself from within instead of turning its strengths against itself. Cheap labor, poor quality, human rights, Tibet (oh which has been a Chinese backdoor province anyway since centuries ago) and the endless list of criticisms will always be there. Given the scale with which the pendulum of history has swung, one might consider these as exit costs or collateral. Now, millions are better off. The Olympics is the break-out party for the new face of the East and its cohorts in Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia are strong. Throw in the “Middle East” or Western Asia and you have the rise of the Asian Century. The West knows this. It is giving way. Even the one in the middle known as Russia has, at least in paper, chosen a side. The action is going to the East. Again, when the dust settles and history moves again, what be this force behind the scheme of things and in our lives? I dare say it has to be beyond human. For what changes a man to seek for progress and for a righteous way of living? Where do our absolutes come from? Let me go beyond what is religious and what is spiritual in pretense. I believe in encounters of another kind. Martin Luther had more than one. The Founding Fathers had glimpses of their own no matter their shortcomings at times. We have to find the deeper answers. We have to find them for the absolutes come from the truth that is out there. This truth is rational and is certain. And from it, nations rise and civilizations fall. What more in our lives, our simple and at times senseless lives? Let us take that Olympic leap towards certainty. As a marathon runner, let us endure. Then can we find progress. Then we can find peace. Then we can find meaning. Then the pendulum will finally be on our side.

Absolved.

Delicacy of Complexity: Why so serious?

I really had to include the newly celebrated question of the half-year: “Why so serious?”  I had to because I wanted to make it clear that this entry concerns themes surrounding and at the heart of the latest potential record-setting movie smash The Dark Knight.  I also added this in relation to my first statement because this is the question of the half-year or perhaps the year that has gone by: the world has gone serious, too serious, me, you and all of it gone serious and this has done little to better our situation.  So, why so serious?  Yet, why not be serious?  To be or not to be?  Not exactly.  The question begs an examination of the reality we live in as much the movie that borrowed it.  I have not written about a topic that so much excited me and yet so much demanded me to be so delicate with thoughts and words as this one outside my lesson plans.  And as much as I don’t like ripping off another line from the movie: “Here we go.”

The Dark Knight is awesome.  It allows cool and popular dwell in the neighborhood of magnificence.  Take it as it is, it is a summer movie, a popcorn movie or so we all thought.  Then add the death of Ledger and the darkness of Christopher Nolan’s vision and everything becomes artistic, so visual, so in taste or out of common taste already.  That’s how things are in the world.  Add a dash of intrigue and the mundane becomes worthwhile at least.  But in this case, and for the benefit of my analysis, I would not have it any other way.  This movie is the bomb and yes I put justice by using this word.  It is not the best one in ages and won’t be so unique in the end, but it will set an unbelievable benchmark for several genres at the same time.   Here’s my surface-level take for those expecting me blogging about a movie review:

Story/plot — Excellent. 4.5/5 stars.  That you will sit there and be bombarded by so many twists and turns and not notice that 2 hours and a half have passed is a statement already for a supposedly shallow-level superhero flick.  Now I tell you, this is no shallow-movie, not a superhero movie and certainly not a flick.  It is a masterful stroke for good or for bad however you see it.  There are those small instances when I asked myself ”Why doesn’t he just end this madness now and instead, go through the motions?”  Instead of disappointment, I get another plot twist that all convene in the end and I am left more than satisfied.  Pacing is alright.  The lines are sensible, rational (at times too much thought already) and even humorous or comical.  Yes, dark and morbid humor can be entertaining, but partly because I love those things. Sorry.  Lastly, I will decapitate via argument anyone who does not get this movie or its story and by deduction say that it does not live up to its hype.  Please.  =) 

Acting — Superb.  4.5/5 stars.  Heath Ledger as Joker should decide Oscar attention.  But so do the other actors.  Some are so in the background doing their thing well that they’re so good at it.  Rachel Dawes was played better.  Then Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are great as the voice of reason and morality (though at times ambiguous) in the chaotic world of Gotham City and in the troubled life of Bruce Wayne.  The lines that divide Batman’s two lives are becoming blurry in this one.  Christian Bale convinces us that Bruce Wayne’s troubles are not far from Batman.  In fact, they are one and both him and the bat in the night share a manifest destiny— a shared destiny that the Joker exploits.  Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent the power-player is believable, as an idealist is passable and as two-face really moving.  He is really unsung in this movie but since many have said he is unsung here, I say he is celebrated already.  Gary Oldman as the up and coming anchor of the mob-blowing police force is just as good.  He is convincingly lost in the chaos of things and the anarchy building but he actually has a trick or two out of his sleeve mainly because of his convictions as a character.  And then, there’s Joker — the voice of anarchy and the crusader of seemingly random destruction (it’s too random that you would think it was all “part of a plan”).  You will not think Ledger is dead in this one.  He’s so alive and so haunting. 

Directing — Need I say more?  4.5/5 stars.  The vision behind this movie is in the man behind the camera who happened to co-write the script with his brother.  I never imagined a crime-drama out of Batman.  It’s as if the X-Men were in a country-western movie.  He has outdone his other movies and he has outdone some of the best in the industry.  He proves that with an $ 185 million budget, the last thing you can do is blow your movie up with prosthetics and pretense.  He does not need that budget.  It’s so real he could have simply asked for volunteers in Chicago to give their cars (as gas goes up anyway) for blowing up in smokes and glory.  He just needs the evening skyline and the lack of light to visually haunt us.  He is in control and is above his cast and team.  I wonder how he will finish off this supposed trilogy.  I can’t wait.

Aesthetics (visuals and sounds) — Uberly real, it hurts. 4.5/5 stars. The Gladiator sound team gives us a meet-up between 300 and Gladiator in a present-day dark setting.  There are eerie guitar sounds, the percussion beats and ofcourse, the heart-pumping and tear-driving orchestration of the Batman theme.  They add moments of silence when say Batman is gliding from a building but it’s okay as the wind and the propulsion can be heard.  Visually, and since I am no artist-interpreter, I’d say it was a very real take on a city in jeopardy and a world drowning in corruption.  It has to be dark and it has to be real.  That they pulled this off with almost no CGI is astounding.  It is how movies should be done even in the present age. 

And now, my real concern THE THEMES.  I am the kind of person who comes into a cinema house or listens to a CD with as less bias as possible, save for my Judaeo-Christian worldview.  But even the latter does not get in the way of me trying to dig some, not all, material.  This movie is one of those “material”.  I think we should not be offended or be turned-off by the themes and the presentation because they offer us a complex and yet simplistic painting of how the world is.  It is a clash of ideas, of codes and of lives.  And this is not simply on the scale of good against bad, this is in the scale of good going bad and the world of bad people who try to make bad things good.  The former is Dent who becomes the tragic Two-Face later and the latter is no less than the Joker (forgive the spoiler).  Trapped between the world of twisted men and men who become twisted are us.  We are at the mercy of forces of men.  Furthemore, as a Christian, I am led to think that we are at the mercy of things beyond our control.  Characters in the movie present a way to deal with the uncertainty of the times, but none will give you the desired answer.  The Joker is the man with no plan.  He schemes for the minute later, not the years ahead.  It’s so random that again, it seems everything falls into place.  What impressed me about this psycopath is not that he is unique and a class apart in terms of how he does things, it’s in why he does it.  “It’s not about the money.  It’s about sending a message.”  Impressive.  The real answer to uncertainty is not the Joker’s randomness and lack of convictions, it’s the superlatives and the absolutes we cling on to.  It’s about being a class apart in living and living because we want to send a message.  The idea of leaving a legacy is so differently presented in the movie that one can easily miss it.  We leave a legacy.  We send a message.  We set a standard.  Sadly, it’s the Joker who does these and in an unforgiveable evil way.  He reaps his rewards but ultimately, crime does pay.  One way or the other, the forces beyond us hold sway. 

There’s Harvey Dent’s complexity.  He is as closest we can get to an elected public servant.  He is aggressive, he has a vision and he is willing to be the bullet to a gun in the face of corruption.  So he succeeds initially and with some help.  But what happens to good men when small bad ants bite them slowly?  What happens when that itch comes along?  What happens when compromises are gleaming bright?  They collapse. They are left in outrage and the contradiction to what they are.  Good men who lack the absolute faith, and rightfully the Christian faith in my worldview are easily pulled down.  Need I present cases?  I need not.  So they built their great house on shallow bedrock and see how things happen.  Without a firm human foundation in things of eternity, one is easily tormented and one is easily proven wrong.  Harvey Dent becomes the tragic character here, more than the Joker, because of his collapse, because of his undoing, because when his house of sterling is tarnished or uprooted from the core he is left in the shadow of evil.  He was the best of them, the closest to being the hero.  It pains me to spoil out that he becomes the worst of the good men, nullifying his rightful right to be called one.  The world needs saints more than heroes after all.   

There’s the Batman’s complexity.  He does not want to be a hero because he believes blood is in his hands.  He does not take that right because he believes he has crossed the line.  If the Joker represents chaos, the Batman is an agent of control.  It’s liberal thinking gone array against authoritative establishments gone paranoid.  Yes, he goes paranoid.  Ergo to him, he is not the hero and so he deserves to be chased by cops and sooner pay for his crimes.  He is not the hero but he is the protector Gotham badly needs.  He is the protector who is also a masked vigilante (I will make no apologies for that) and a projected playboy during daytime.  It’s alright with Alfred.  It’s alright with Lucius Fox.  It’s what Gotham needs according to them — an imperfect vanguard.  I love the character of Batman for he, of all them “super”heroes are representative of human struggles I feel and breathe.  But I always end up in trouble and second-guessing when I think he settles for this, when he settles for being a protector and denies his throne.  It’s a form of sacrifice to him, to lead double lives and put all on the line in both lives.  Perhaps in this world, Batman would have to do.  Sadly, this is reality.  For though Bruce Wayne has made big forms of sacrifice, he is but human in sin and shame.  He falls short of being hero so he becomes acclaimed protector.  I like it that he faces his charges but I don’t like it that he is not what I want him to be. But you know what?  I can be fine with that.  Sometimes, the world scorns you for the things you do but in the end, you will be measured by choices you make and their degree of difficulty.  In the end, Batman does set the standard and he is better than a lot of them not just because he has no superpowers.  He reminds me of forces and people a notch better than all of us and those willing to make that sacrifice.  

Maybe it’s my problem and the problem we Christians and the faithful all around face.  We are confronted with a world lower than what our moral yardstick demands it to be.  In The Dark Knight, I am reassured of a better world, a world better than either free chaos or controlled paranoia.  I reiterrate loudly than ever: the answer to the times of uncertainty that we all face as they do in the movie is simply a belief in the eternal and the submission to the absolutes ever present.  For if we do not have the eternal, we descend into compromise and frailties of Harvey Dent.  If we do not have absolutes, we find ourselves in Batman’s moral dilemma—the vigilante and the fundamentalist’s dilemma.  If we do not have both, we become the Joker and live lives as a joke.  We have to confront these three types of people around and in all of us.  We have to succeed.  I guess that’s why they just don’t get us.  That’s why we have our own Gothams cut out for us. 

We are not of this world, but perhaps for this world.

Absolved.

The Cycle is Never the Same

Our Political Methodology teacher once said that there is no such thing as “a point in time”.  Amazing metaphysics at the time and I was left in thought.  Today I contest that idea.

There is also this saying that goes “nothing happens the same way twice”  and yet “history repeats itself”.  I am a product of a language training in many aspects and this craft of mine still ably amazes me.  The way that I get to a misunderstanding with another person over SMS without smileys is the same way with which I write the fiction of life.  I am still learning in many ways.  I am thankful that I am still left in awe though more times I am left questioning when seeing images and hearing ideas that at the end of the day escape me.  It is unfair that we men let these great insights, great moments and great lives pass by.  Oftentimes we seek for more happy moments.  But it is with the same frequency that we let go of marvels beyond notice. I recall telling a colleague and friend that I enjoy making poetry and forms of literature for self-enjoyment.  I call it my cross-training if amply it is one.  It is such a crime to be a slave of forget, specially in creative writing.  It is a crime resulting from self-indulgence.

Tomorrow we celebrate the birthday of our national hero Jose Rizal.  Articles are out there for public view.  I am curious about him now than in any point of my life.  My professors in the university, if they indeed have this tombstone of good things I can share with them, left me with a tainted view of our national hero.  There was one in particular who I hold in high respect and am proud to have been under whose tutelage in vividly left a Jose Rizal of contrasts.  Yes evidence suggest that he is a one-of-a-kind gem.  And then when you are about to celebrate your being Filipino, you learn of his flaws as a person.  Then you think that character is as important to your judgment in things and people more than any yardstick.  Ah, the standards we have! In the writing of things, we like destroying our own heroes because we claim that in truth, they can’t be that good.  Sad. I suppose they were.  I suppose Rizal was that good and is a standard we Filipinos seek and do not find.  Perhaps born out of this frustration, we choose to unearth and see things that are not desirable —these things that make him human and thus like one of us.  We like it that way.  We don’t like altars anymore.  Sad that sometimes it is for this reason that we let great moments and greater people slip by.  Though I believe that man is as human as he goes in thought and action, I also believe that some human beings make the cut to glory and deserve a break.  Rizal is one of them.  He has been studied and known for his short-lived and retractable relationships that he has been labeled a “playboy”.  O how many readings I still have on his private life!  This man, this glory of the university in Europe and the hope of the brown race has been reduced to being a man in need.  Do we let this go on?  I say no.  For what we learn now, we pass on to the next generation in the form of hope.  It is for this reason that I say we give Rizal more slack and give him his due.  If our people has this image of a good-looking guy putting on the moves on women instead of a man of letters and a man of genius as most of our children no longer appreciate, then we are doomed as a people.  The British, when making movies, have this same failure of turning their heroes to mere humans.  Cut them some slack.  Give them their due.  Give our kids what they deserve — a hero, valid and invalid yet redeemed.

This is but a reflection of the desperation of our times.  We are but human and that is as close as a valid excuse one can issue now.  I made a mistake and so was rewarded with STD and so I blame my being human.  I made a mistake of not checking under the hood twice so I lost my brake and killed your son.  These statements become valid and since they are treated so under law, they are taken as such.  Remorse is one thing we have forgotten in this cycle.  Penance, what is that?  I now understand more than ever, not in hope of generalizing, but presenting an approximation of a clear picture why our children are this way.  We have made excuses.  Are standards, the moral and even the academic, are on a low.  This is the Roman Empire circa 2008, when morals and standards were left in exchange of shame and scandal.  We know that Rome eventually got its shame — it was sacked more than once. We know of its scandal — that of men persecuting fellow men in the name of entertainment.  This is what we have for our children — shame and scandal.  We have forgotten and thrown in the cycle things that were good and used to work for the entirely new and reckless.  This is a generalization.  Perhaps we have gained new insight in being a human being, but also we lost insight in living human.  So we make excuses and so we say life and context are different from then and now.

I used to be a fan of finding the context.  I helped draft political statements in college and in certain progressive movements and volunteer organizations with the context as my prelude.  Then I went on the loose, partially emotional, partially founded as I bashed the opposition or proposed a grand new idea that I soon learned was repackaged heap.  That was, for a time, the cycle of my life.  I enjoyed it for the most part.  But now, I have parted away from this path.  I used to be a fan of things of power.  I still am and I wear this grin when such matters are brought to the table.  Exuding confidence and flare were things I know I have.  Things are just different now.  Now, I find less reason to be where I am not supposed to be.  I do not claim to have been saved from the vicious cycle that we are all subjected to, but somehow I am enjoying the ride.  I need not find the deepest justification found in minced words and diced intentions.  I am living as a man.  But I need not make excuses.  Truth has an all new appeal to me — not that it is tainted, manipulated and subjective.  It is clear, absolute and rational.

I dream of days when I would come up the podium and deliver speeches I kept in memory and paper to a large assembly.  Now I realize I am living this dream — addressing the multitude of young minds and maturing minds and the multitude they speak to.  I dream of days I can have all that I need and somehow make life easier for me.  Now I realize that I have to be patient and I have to be sane.  I once dreamed for the things of this world I can touch.  Now I feel warmth even in the most indirect smile of a child.  I never imagined the day I would end up in this institution, in this movement, in this honor.  It was perhaps because back then, I was dreaming too low and setting the bar at the same level.

What am I trying to say?  Perspective is important in the cycles of our lives.  We loose perspective and we are taken off course.  We enjoy things we have and dream for things we think we will not have because we believe it to be possible and for the right reasons.  We are at peace in knowledge of the one truth because we see and do not make our human excuses.  Call me unfair but then again, this is a perspective.  If there’s this thing I like about these individualists is that they can say :it’s my life and my point of view anyway.  I don’t have to argue at this level.  We need to seek the universals of things.  I guess I am a sinful piece of rubble but I know this too, not just this thought, but this guilt will come to pass.

So is the cycle for us the same or never the same again?  We share life’s moments of ups and downs as if life happened again in another time.  But then again, it should never be the same.

Live. Absolved.

Absolution Goes to the Movies

I am more than thankful to have had a three-day weekend or as I’d like to think, a “transition phase”.  I like to think of it as much because I am able to assess how far I have gone as a living being more effectively.  I see progress or the lack of it in both the simple and complex things I accomplish.  I think that I made a good transition when I finished reading a 350-page book in a span of the weekend. That rarely happens though as I have this bad reading habit of moving from book to another book after a chapter or so.  This also explains why I have the Erasmus Complex— I save my money, to the point of giving up basic needs for books.  I love books!  They take me somewhere else, they mold my perspective, they deepen my faith.  But in my realm of popular culture, movies rival books.  I love movies!

Movies rival books more than music or any other form of art.  I am being dishonest if I tell you that I go to movies purely or mostly for academic purposes. Unlike some of my colleagues, I don’t take much time deconstructing meanings and structures in movies.  I take them for what they are and sometimes, we hit the conveyed message this way better.  I take the movie for its story, its visuals, its music, its theme and its overarching message and worldview.  I know.  That would be tantamount to over-thinking already. But forgive me for processing movies in a matter of two minutes or less.  There’s much to think about in my noisy world.  But movies and books are special—they are more than just passing fancy.  And so I had this long transition weekend, I took the opportunity to watch two movies.  Curiosity?  Mainly, yes.  Sheer desire to be updated?  Absolutely.  So in I went Sta. Lucia’s well-renovated cinemas and so I brought along my taste and desire for perspective—one to reaffirm mine as it is attempts to break it down.  Yes, masochist indeed.

I feel blessed to have chosen and encouraged my family to see “Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” and “Kung Fu Panda”.  As for Caspian, it was a must-see as our church supported a “block” screening.  I enclosed it in quotation marks as we really didn’t watch as one block but in batches.  See, we reserved the theater for the whole day so anyone could come in anytime and could repeat the movie for much as their eyes allowed.  An ingenious way to cater to mass audiences and raise more funds indeed.  I wasn’t disappointed.  Not at all.  I had the passed-on impression that it deviated from the book’s main thing and was in fact, bastardized.  I have to contest that.  It didn’t miss the main thing in content.  Perhaps in how it was delivered, there was an attempt to make it palatable and digestible to the mass consumers.  There would be worldly scenes so to speak and those not appropriate for children.  But the message and sub-messages, all in C.S. Lewis’ grand intention were clear.  Allow me to comment on some scenes and lines:

1. The Lion was there all those times.  Aslan was there!  He was leading them on.  He was making things fall into their rightful place.  Though it would be very conditional.  He appeared to those who chose to see him and believed he still was there.  That would be Lucy.  Edward, learning from past experience, followed suit.  But Susan and yes, even High King Peter were there in the shadow of their doubt.  And so Lucy saw him over the cliff  (which later turned to be a valuable shortcut to the right place).  Lucy saw him in a dream (need I say more?).  Lucy believed he was out there in the deepest parts of the forest.  To those who believe, seeing shall be their gift.  And to those who surrender (as Lucy points out later in the time or their desperation), can true victory can be possible.  Amazing that ironies aren’t so cruel when in perspective.

2. The dwarf companion of the four, lost his name, remarked: “I wouldn’t jump over for someone that doesn’t exist.”  In relation to the first point, isn’t this a classic failing of men?  It’s all over.  It’s in creation.  It’s in how our lives unfold. The more we resist, the more we are disappointed by the magnanimity of what is happening around our resistance.  Many of us have taken refuge in the security of our calculations and in the capsule of our reason.  Many of us just lost it in translation as we became mesmerized by what he or she said.  Many of us have lost our souls in this comfort.  This is why someone would say that faith tramples all.  It does because it is the rarest of all devotions.  It is so rare that most of us choose the opposite path of denial, noise and lies instead.  We need faith.  It is more than belief.  It is born out of love.  Yes faith out of love and out of reason is a very powerful, all-moving thing.

3.  The Lion to Prince Caspian on awarding him kingship over the dominion: “It is for this reason that I am choosing you (someone who is unprepared as you).”  Brilliant.  This world is enthralled by the notion of being prepared for anything and everything.  We seek the comforts of our gadgets, our friends and our possessions.  Elementary issue?  Think again as it is so persistent actually.  The realist in me yearns for the security of the world—its embrace reassuring your position and your reputation.  Wrong move.  Humility above pride.  Brokenness above wholeness of being.  Many seek to be the complete package.  We seek perfection.  But whose perfection? Ours?  Wrong move Narnian!  We may actually be heading the wrong way.  Humility and the spirit that drives it are what are needed.

4. The Lion tells Ripicheep the valiant mouse to not think so much about his honor when he again saves the day.  Aren’t we, in the rigidity of our morals and perhaps the lack of the true sense of it, attempt to be so proper and so virtuous all the time?  Not that it is at all wrong.  It is actually a manifestation of how great we have become as humans.  It’s great to live by codes, rules and by an order.  It’s just that sometimes, by wanting to do the right thing we are actually attaching some things that shouldn’t be already.  It takes other people to notice but we ourselves don’t feel so sure anymore.  When we give our devotion to some idea, sometimes we believe that we do so out of our honor or loyalty.  It’s so easy to say that you love an idea, and that you are impressed by a vision so why bother attaching labels that go much deeper than our obvious reason.  In other words, let’s be straightforward or else we mask our good intentions and our good deeds in pretension.  No more mincing.

With Panda, I was mostly in the light and forgiving mood.  Nothing much was to be forgiven.  Oriental tradition and oriental virtues are all around in abundance!  Some reminded me of my own faith and the simple lessons that form the rock foundation of my faith.  I like that the movie preaches about appreciating who you are and knowing that you are the secret to your becoming.  I like it given today’s context.  We are taught to like ourselves and yet taught to be the best in a certain yardstick.  I prefer to become the best I can be and for good reason.  I think it is simply put and better off that way.  I also like the scene when Master Shifu attempts to teach the turtle master a lesson or two from the peach tree.  All this noise about us being sufficient enough to change the world brings out a basic problem or two.  Perhaps I hear this from so many activist, particularly environmentalists who propagate this sure-headed battlecry.  Sure at all?  By whose authority and strength do we actually determine the course of history?  And do we indeed change the world or simply allow it to self-fulfill?  Try as Shifu tried to move the peach fruit, he could not change the course of the peach tree.  It is bound to grow sometime.  It is bound to blossom and give fruit.  It is not being simple-minded to believe that there is something far greater than ourselves who or which is in control of our destinies. Why counter the flow?  We just need to be with the unraveling of the times and keep true to our mission in life.  Is it simply perceived?  The peach tree tells us otherwise.  

Art and its various media teach us so much about what is and what should be.  I’d like to think that my past entries on lies, denial and noise amount to this—if we can’t see truth, acceptance and peace in the simplest of things like movies, then there is something wrong with either one or all the three in the way we are.  This is where I bash those that say that the truth is still out there.  It isn’t.  I am not closing the door on debate.  I am simply making a declaration by which I know I can live by.  It isn’t.  It’s been in the stars for so long now.

And as the turtle master says:  think of the present as a gift, that’s why it’s a present.  

So we move on in transition to another phase—the amazing future.

But first, absolve. 

Absolution From Noise

When there is no noise, there is silence.  When there is no noise, whatsoever, there is silence.  Noise and silence are both literal as they are symbolic in this discussion.  They can be tackled at various levels.  I wish to encourage the reader to absolve from noise and move into silence in a far more deeper arena.  The transition is never simple and as The Last Samurai suggests, it is not for everyone. I take back.  It IS for everyone but not all find it or inch closer to it.  Given today’s givens and the kind of lives we live, double, triple and even cyber lives, it is not hard to understand why we live in the domain of so much noise.  The art of moving to inner silence has been both underestimated as an endeavor and fully-blown as a mission.  Not everyone has time for it and so it somehow follows that people don’t value it as much.  At the same time, some people look too much into it that they forget to live in the now.  I do not wish to go into the realm of philosophical thought but in reality we can never be so devoid of right to engage in this arena.

World religions have their versions of this reaching for inner peace.  Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and even the most fundamental of Islam promote this peace as an end goal.  Fascists and anarchists fought their fights well and in their own right to seek this larger scope of peace.  Both men and nations move towards this peace.  Not all find it.  Some have given up to bother.  In college, I was taught a lot of this idea of security at various levels.  We can feel secure in our personal realm.  We can feel secure at a national level.  We can feel secure as a world. Sadly, this is not the condition of the present. This is what I want us to address— a new idea of peace that is not so surprisingly new in the first place. This “peace” is not the end-all of my conversation.  And by this I save the idea of peace from the overly commercialized, bastardized and de-sensationalized idea that the world order promotes.  I refer to peace as something more of than just an ends and a means.  I refer to a state of being that may not necessarily coincide with our priorities but what we need so constantly.  I wish to think it as that and that alone.

We live in the time of noise.  It is so true that worrying won’t add a single day to our lives, won’t solve much of the problem and is a complete waste of energy and good will.  But I guess we all know these.  We take it to heart.  We turn it into a philosophy.  We just have to look at Oprah’s beloved New Earth series to see how far this search has taken.  However it gets worse.  Why?  I could only attempt to explain why as I am not solidly planted in any paradigm or any framework capable of providing a plausible and impressive explanation.  Yes, I am no priest or scholar but something in the same sphere.  I do however have a narrative shared by many.  We start our journey into the realm of thought with the simplest of thoughts.  We start with a question. Then we have an answer.  And as we live our lives, our answers become a compendium of beliefs that become our philosophy.  Our narratives feed our philosophy.  Allow me to assert that the world’s philosophy has gone array.  The problem with the New Earth and this New Age movement is fundamental in both philosophy and common living — the problem of not addressing the main issue.  We do not confront the issue and so we cannot possibly come up the conclusive response.  This is the disillusionment of our times.  This is the big smokescreen on some things that should have been cleared up first.  And so we live in noise of our souls.

Yes, I assume that men have souls.  I am the kind of man who seeks the point in living.  A lot share this belief.  A lot share this narrative.  There has to be a point in living and that point is found in the depths of the soul.  This is what Darwin could not understand and those highly-exalted names that are now, ever so ironically, being demolished from their plaqued pedestals.  Man has soul.  Man had soul before reason.  By this we exist first and think later.  And by this I assert that the spiritual man cannot be detached from the rational man and the rational man cannot exist without the spiritual.  Darwin and many scientists believe this detachment of spirit and reason.  So we are mere monkeys evolving over time. So the humanist responded by saying that man, even at his primitive state, is distinguishable by the soul and his abilities.  It is no surprise that a lot of the founders of this kind of thinking were deists.  There had to be a deity.  There has to be one or else everything that makes us human crumbles.  Meaning is lost.  Truth is distilled only to be twisted anew.  

And as I attempted to think about last post, that man now lives in the postmodern.  This is absolute betrayal then (or so hang me for it) of our being man.  There has to be a definitive reason for living.  That reason is rooted in the soul and its existence.  We find the truth through reason but also guided by the spirit.  It cannot be done by ourselves.  A democratic examination of mankind will only show what anarchy we can be if we honored everyone’s thoughts and tried to live by a compromise.  We need the spirit within and the spirit that brought us here.  I do not wish to be so transcendental if only to sacrifice clarity.  My point here is simple: Man cannot exist fully alone.    His existence has a source.  His meaning has a source.  Meaning and thus truth are absolute and defined by the source.  You know where I am heading to.  You know where my car will collide.  You may want to raise the finger and stop my argument at this point.  This is my philosophy.  My narratives, my experiences, my thoughts support this.  So has it been for many who share this train of thought and living.

Does it result to peace, this acknowledgment of the soul and reason?  It should.   Those who did not live by the dictates of the soul lost their minds.  Those who lived by the dictates of the mind alone lost their souls. Peace comes when we live fully, in full recognition of how volatile our lives are and how incomplete we are.  I will leave the filling of the missing blanks to you.  As for me, I ascribe to a set of defined absolutes.  I live by rules and this is how it should be.  Sure, that’s what I say.  But I think for many of us, this is the better way of living.  This is “us” coming full circle back to the embrace of our source.  There is no denying that my happiness resides with my philosophy, that shared by my brethren whose pursuits and narratives are shared and intertwined.  I am happy here.  I am productive here.  I maybe living to the fullest this way.  I believe it makes me complete.  It makes me strong by not necessarily empowering me but by saving me.  

Going back to Darwin and even Oprah’s company, I say strongly that they do not confront the issue at hand.  The problem lies in the corrupted soul.  It needs not a lot of thinking through.  Changing lifestyles is not enough.  It does not come from a personal “eureka” moment. It does not come from a book alone.  It is a ripple from the soul that changes us.  I am reminded of my days serving in the college council.  We debated on structures and policies.  I kept still and could not put into words this view of mine.  My words were easily mistaken for conservative, structuralist and even rightist.  I do not mind being labeled as such in some arenas for some of my beliefs reflect similar thinking.  But take me for my whole and my ways as part of my whole.  Sadly, not a lot of our ways tap the reality of the soul.  The soul is calling out and it is just us.

I am taken back to a still and quiet moment.  How good it is to be on a mountain when the valleys are in chaos.  I am led to a small room where sparks can indeed fly.  It’s so hard to leave the echoing noise of the valley—our fast and glorious lives, our shabby selves.  It’s so hard to abandon the noise of past victories.  But I offer the peace, the inner peace found in the silence of the mountains.  Someone once did the same for me.  Try the mountains where thinkers, heroes and even hermits are born.  The mountains offer the silence. The room offers purging.  Absolution never was so needed.  So let us take it.     

Absolved.

 

 

Absolution From Lies

Pay a close attention to these two illustrations.  Took these (or a rephrasing of these) from an advertisement promoting a US sitcom entitled “Eureka”:

WORK – DREAMS = JOB

HOPE – LOGIC = FAITH

There was another equation, but I forget.  Anyway, these two are the ones I wish to highlight and they strike me as two equations that best summarize today’s postmodern paranoia.  I have made it clear to my friends and brethren, there is something dangerous about treading the postmodern highway.  For there is no highway at all, it’s more of a web.  I give this paradigm or way of approaching studies credit if it resembled a web of thought.  But actually, postmodernism is something more than that, more chaotic that is.  The main issue here is about what the truth is all about and all the jargon that include epistemology and ontology in the list.  Truth is relative.  No this is not Einsteinian relativism and I do wish it spelled as such.  That’s why I call it something far worse than a web.  A web has structure.  Postmodernism is the perfect chaos theory, and this one doesn’t even consider a unified telling of history to it.  I do not have good schooling in this perspective (that’s what I call it and that’s as high a pedestal I am willing to give it).  But I do have an appreciation of its fundamentals (there aren’t many) and a knack of where it is leading the world (particularly the West).  I studied Richard Rorty very carefully.  I reported on him during my methods class.  He is a leading authority in postmodernism and its view of the truth.  I consider it  both a blessing and a curse to have delved into his world.  But I indulge the idea that I did and came out stronger in grip of my principles as ever.  This is what is so dangerous about this kind of thinking.  Come in a made man and come out arguing that everything is a matter of personal appreciation of the situation.  Yes, your principles are yours and yours alone.  Individualist, check.  Amoral, check.  And the two equations are but interpretations of the time allowed in a postmodern analysis.  Okay, I’ll even throw in the modern analysis of things in its political and economic. Blah blah indeed. Meaning? It all goes out to bite the dust.

A job is what you make it, that’s a presumption.  Let’s take it further.  A job is work without fulfilling your dreams.  Tragic.  Actually, this statement is as just a product of modern thinking as it is postmodern.  I say a job is me having work but not living my dreams and it’s mine to live, that’s postmodern.  Notice the”I”.  I say a job is me having to work because living my dreams and working don’t go together and so I choose practicality and utility and live, that’s modern.  Notice the tragedy of the circumstance the modern man is in.  Actually, if we trace the philosophy of modern thinking and credit due to Francis Schaeffer for such a beautiful retracing of thought, we find that modernism is a product of breaking-away from time-old and established basics.  The basic being, the concept of me, myself and I don’t work.  It simply drains life away and isolates meaning, the meaning of existence, to a jar that we open up during college and leave it there.  The other basic being, we are not alone.  We can’t be alone.  It simply, including science, does not point to man being alone.  Goodness, even evolution is crumbling.  So the tragedy of man is such.  He tries to make it all about himself, serving himself, utilizing the world all for himself and he fails.  Communism and religion are not man’s greatest experiments.  Sharing in commune is a time-old basic that man is commissioned to do by nature or by nurture.  Religion is a manifestation of a time-old basic that man believes and ought to believe in things not known to him and a creator that directs his existence towards eternity. Man’s greatest experiment is trying to live on his own and in denial of what are basic to him.  It is also the greatest failure of mankind.  And so comes in postmodernism, the grandchild of this project.

Postmodernism is the second or third-generation step towards chaos.  We began with an established basic.  The Greeks disputed by disputation.  The Christian churches grounded man’s life in a vertical connection to God and a horizontal one to fellow man.  Simple.  Truth also was established.  Truth is God and is through God, nothing fancy.  We next moved on to what the equation Hope-Logic= Faith is saying.  We made faith a commodity either marketed or genuinely experienced from an ivory tower.  Faith began as something logical.  We believed in something out there or a deity above us because of reason and this was faith.  We knew it was true.  We felt it and so we believed.  Faith made sense.  It was not dismissed to hermits and zealots.  Thanks to the modernist and even people like Kant, we slowly imagined a dichotomy between reason and faith.  Rousseau and company even suggested we become primitive and primal.  This is not what it should be.  We separated both and it becomes ever so clear in science.  I spent my college days defending the social sciences as a legitimate science more than an art.  Realizing the ties that bind thought and soul in the basics of things made them clear and interconnected.  Science and art? They serve a grander picture, a greater glory preordained.  The mind and the heart, they complement not contradict or present an option of one or the other!  It all makes sense. For a comprehensive illustration of how this mess came to be, read “How Should We Then Live?”    Now, we move on to postmodernism and dismiss truth as both imagined and relative.  This is our fall from grace.  This is our undoing.  It’s not the global warming crisis.  It’s not nuclear proliferation.  Our doomsday shall indeed come from ourselves and it indeed will be more of a “I knew this but did not take it to heart.” lesson.  The cycle is complete.  The lies we believed and propagated are coming back to us.  And yes, it was foreseen ages ago.  It’s self-fulfilling!  How can we be so blind?  How can we be so in denial?  

We look at ourselves in a mirror and watch television.  How are we?  Where are we going? Do we actually still feel and see the meaning to our lives?  Do we see the short-term as important as the long-term?  The truth is not out there. It is not self-serving.  It is not relative.  I will be bashed in the academic realms for attacking this emerging paradigm.  I will be called many brands.   But I take to heart that I have to let out a perspective if only to challenge a perspective.  I play by the rules of the world to emerge sane, let alone renewed.  Let us cleanse our minds of lies we impose or others have shaped in us.  It is not inextricably hard. Mankind once had a feel for this.  It chases it still.  Time is wasted.  Lives are lost.  Let’s not be part of the body count.  Let us truly be enlightened.

Absolved.

 

 

 

Absolution From Denial

I happened to read the May 5 issue of Newsweek Magazine.  Jessica Zafra (give or take her dues) came up with an article, a well-compressed one, on Philippine relics of gold supposedly 10th Century or even way earlier than that.  I was partially amazed, partially indifferent—and no I am not arguing we can be so indifferent about anything.  Now I know better.  And now I do, I think I can put old ghosts of college past in the closet.  Studying Philippine Institutions 100, a required elective mainly about our national hero Jose Rizal, in my beloved stint in the University of the Philippines admittedly tinted and wiped clear my view on a grand project—that of finding or remaking or perhaps imagining the Philippine identity.  Finding it, remaking it or imagining something as grand, something as essential to my existence as my national identity all imply or assume one thing among many—that there is a form of denial.  I deny certainty to my being Filipino and so I am all but part of the greatest crime no foreigner can ever commit against us.  Call it the lack of pride.  Call it disillusionment, I had that tainted view as well as I had a sense of how I should view things.  A mouthful, isn’t it? 

Thank God I knew how should I view things. 

I lay all these on the table to absolve myself and urge my readers (whoever comes across my lay-low blog) to do the same from denial.   I can’t help but bring to consideration Tony Stark—Iron Man.  Sure, he’s more fiction than man.  Or isn’t he?  I appreciate the humble touch Jon Favreau put to the movie as well as how the role suits a Robert Downey Jr.  Let’s leave the film at that.  But go deeper into the man behind the actor and the comic book and you find someone living in denial.  To deny our mission, our real reason for being is again, a great crime.  Cowards commit it.  Proud men do.  Need I wonder about the outcome?  Tony Stark denied his mission and his purpose, plain and simple.  It is not that he wasn’t aware of either.  It was because he did not give the opportunity for either to act in him.  He could not fly literally and figuratively.  No fly, no game.  End of story.  That is how we are to be measured.  How high do we fly and not how big our engine for flight determines what we become ultimately.  Rather cheesy?  Think again.  This is more than your self-realization juice.  Tony Stark denied the opportunity to be someone to more people because he chose preoccupation.  Yes, I say preoccupation.  Isn’t it sometimes good, to have a plan or a long-term path to take?  Isn’t it better to be prepared for the worst and have our lives set in calcuable units?  Most of the time, yes.  Sometimes, some important stretch down our lives, no.  Preoccupation with things that matter less for example is a clear detriment to this fly I am talking about.  Trapped in our comfort, the trappings of our former glories and claims to fame and perhaps what remains of what high self-esteem we carry from past trophies, we are susceptible to the elements of denial.  The result consumes.  It takes years.  It takes years of what could be. 

Ergo, we need absolution from denial.  I am talking about things that go as wide as national identity to as narrow as the self.  Tony Stark needed a new heart and he got one, rather in concrete terms.  I like it that now, Tony Stark draws his strength from somewhere near his heart.   It is a beatiful metaphor indeed, amusingly from a movie icon.  See, it is more than a mental process, more than intelligent justification.  We need to find some new heart somewhere and in some better time.  If I deny who I am and where I belong, then I will be vulnerable to shallow things of gossip and intrigue to deeper more legitimate questions such as answering for my character flaws.  If I deny what I need, then I am committing suicide.  For if I deny what I need, that emptiness, that force in me that is not of me and cannot be by my judgment or my feelings, than I am taking away breath from my lungs.  If there’s anything worse than a character flaw, it’s a character gap.  We don’t need holes.  We need a complete package of what we have to offer.  If I paid no attention to this simple lesson, I would not have made the right decisions and ended up convicted as I am to pursue what mission now lies ahead of me.  If I knew less, I could not look a person in the eye and say that I know what I am doing and this is best for me.  If I knew less, I would have ended up chasing the wrong kind of dream.  Short of saying, I am an educator now (and all the good things that come extra) because I say I need to be such and I am called to be such.  Period.

We desire peace.  We desire clarity.  We want to fly.  It is sometimes more than just having the right aim in life. Sometimes, we have to consider more the launchpad from where we fly.  Without being sure that we are safe and secure, we will be vulnerable to attack.  Without being clear on the terms of flight, we will be lost.  Absolve ourselves from this denial and be free.  Furthermore, be free to chase a dream and live a purpose.  That is your fly.  That is your game.

At the end of the day, I may be just preaching from common knowledge or personal experience.  But I better serve a reminder, a lighthouse among men so to illustrate, than to keep mum and let time pass by.  I will have this opinion in all my blog entries.  I am but one voice.  I am pleased to know that I am one voice in a small movement and in a small organization compared to the larger demographics outside.  Because of this, because of the perspective I have in mind and the presuppositions renewed in my heart about how things should be—I publish on.  I have many plans.  Some of them I have shared, some of these plans I keep to myself and some are in the works.  And no, I am not talking about getting another degree here.  I have to fly.  The game is on my court.

Self-gratifying PS:  Go Los Angeles Lakers!  (Don’t mean to destroy this blog by putting this on top =) )

Absolved.

 

 

 

Welcome to the Absolution Paradigm

Welcome one and all to my new and still senseless at times blog.  I have been off the blogging community for a year and to my recollection, my last entry was about getting bored during college graduation.  A LOT has happened in that short a time and it has been almost a year indeed.

So what is this blog about?  Usually, we want to project a version of ourselves through such mediums.  We may want to show a thinking self, or simply us for all that we are—our sentiments, our fashion, our experiences and all that.  I plan to most of the time get out of the trap of talking about the self in this blog.  This absolution is not only one I seek but one I wish the readers can share.  From what are we to be absolved from?  Perhaps we can start from our preconceived notions about blogs and cyberspace.  Though my knowledge of this technology is limited, I intend to put it in good use.

This blog will be my way of offering a view, or a point of view that may match or be the opposite of yours.  Arguing with the reader is not really my thing.  Perhaps arguing on the plane of ideas is better.  With ideas, we can indeed absolve each other of the wrongs we have caused.  The world needs absolution.  You need absolution from something.  I am thankful that my personal life has been one that has let my ideas and my potential fly.  A lot of us are pinned by this inner realm of ours, our person and our identity.  Perhaps, we can absolve ourselves from ourselves…our shallow and incomplete being that can NEVER be in full comprehension of things.  What we cannot comprehend, we cannot master.  Amazing how many people in time have fallen because of self-imposed ignorance of this reality.  Absolve yourself from yourself…the pride, the intrigue, the feeling of lack.  I do not intend to be so original or be so instrumental.  Goodness, I am just defining this space.  =)

And perhaps, when we do absolve ourselves and those who have gone before and with us, then we can talk of bigger things.  Our people, our race, our society is in deep need of absolution.  Amusingly, we have more to share than what we think.  Setting ourselves apart is at times a pointless enterprise.  We can never do that absolutely.  So why force such a thing to the waste of our resources?  Bigger things await.

I will be kind and I will be truthful in this space.  I will be at times biased and at times out-of-my-mind.  But that’s me and this is my space.  I will enjoy what right I have to express but be responsible for what duty I have when I express.  I will be in your face, my face, the world’s face and it will not hesitate to take a look back in both glory and sadness.

That is why dear readers I declare the end of my old blogging life…as if I had one.  As the Green and Black Paradigm that was the growing me is torn down to give way to the new…I herald in both hesitance and conviction the entry of the Absolution Paradigm.  May we live with the goal in mind to absolve ourselves from our baggage.  It is in our nature to be fallen.  It is also in our nature to seek salvation.  That, dear friends is absolution.  Absolution is the present.  Without acceptance of the present, there can be no bright future for us and the pictures we shall paint.

What right does a teacher have to paint pictures of reality and of opinion?  I have every right.  Just as I say that fishermen and slaves changed the face of the world, so I say a teacher is in the forefront of the battles of our times.  Converse with me, as a professor of mine would say, and together, live our lives with the aim of absolution always in mind and heart.

God be with you.

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