What Truly Matters to Filipinos

I don't know if it's an annual thing, but this year, the College of Law initiated an Academic Congress, a sort of fora mainly for the faculty of UP, although students are invited (or required) to attend as well. It's a week long event, spanning Feb 1 to 5, and kicking off the entire "intellectual celebration" was Randy David's lecture this morning, which he entitled "What Truly Matters to Filipinos". As always, I meticulously kept notes (in my beautiful handwriting, if I may be so vain) detailing almost every idea Prof. David pointed out during his 45-min speech. Now, however, there are only a few ideas that have implanted themselves in my head - blame it all on a short memory.

Three points, the first of which is Diaspora. According to Prof. David, what truly matters to Filipinos (without us fully recognizing or appreciating it) is our families. With the phenomenon of Filipino migration, however, (9.1 million to 192 countries, in barely 3 decades) our greatest resource, what truly matters to us, falls apart. Economically, there is no doubt OFWs contribute to our GNP. But culturally, the results of the OFW Phenomenon are ambiguous. On one hand, as Prof. David mentioned, Filipinos who have traveled abroad are able to set themselves apart from Philippine society and inspect it - weaknesses, strengths, and all. Also, because most of them are immersed in "mature" democracies, they imbibe the political culture of their host countries - the principle of initiative, the value of one's voice, etc. - and they become assets to nation-building once they return to the Philippines. On the other hand, parents, children, brothers, sisters, are forced to leave their families behind. Personally, among these groups, I think the absence of parents are the most difficult to bear with.

My mother has been working abroad for a considerable part of the last decade; I won't say I mind, because when she left for Hong Kong, I was too young to understand what the implications of her departure were, and now that she's in Israel, I'm studying away from home, anyway. Honestly, I think I have an attitude problem, although I'm not sure if this is because of my genes or the fact that I've been raised by a father who loved me a bit too much such that I grew up pampered and clueless. My mother has told me though, during her brief stay at home in between her two overseas postings, that she's handled children of OFWs - most of them grew up without parents, because either their moms or dads or both had been working abroad since they were tiny tots. And my mother, although she often comments on others' behavior, was firm in her belief that kids whose parents left them early to work for a living grew stuck up, and selfish, and pampered. They were true-blue consumerists, whose ideas of their parents were summed up in balikbayan boxes sent home to compensate for the absence of parental guidance. They were spoiled, and impatient, and general nothing like the traditional masunurin Filipino kid. And although I'm all that, too, I feel disgusted that my generation's come out like this.

And although I know my mother's probably not reading this, I'd like to thank her for turning down that overseas job she was offered in the early part of her career; I was not even ten years old. She wanted to watch me grow, she said, and for that I'm thankful. I may not remember, but I appreciate it.

Second point - the role of the academe. Sir Mike Falgui of DECL fame once told our Eng12 class, "If you go out of this classroom thinking what I think, then I will have failed you as a teacher." That statement hit me hard, committing itself to my memory even after all these years, long after derivation techniques from last year had vanished from my thoughts completely. From that point on, I began to respect him even more, because, from the very beginning, he knew that his mission was to teach us to think, not to teach us what to think. In Prof. David's lecture earlier, he tackled the same issue, saying that the academe must not dictate what should be, or how things should be done - think of the entire academic body as an adviser to politicians' king. If the academe dives into the political arena, too actively taking roles it is not meant to take on, it drags itself down - it changes people's perception of it as an institution. According to Prof. David, if it commits that mistake, there will come a time when people will regard the academe not as a institution of knowledge, but as an institution of opinions. And as the sole sector in society that must uphold the truth above all else, that connotation simply will not do.

Honestly, I don't understand this point fully. My classmate Mahon, who asked the final question in this morning's open forum, pulled the words out of my mouth when she asked Prof. David to explain further what he meant by the academe keeping out of "the heat of the moment" - the political arena, so to speak. She said that each time she read "moments of history" when students took an active role in nation-building (and I think she was referring to the Martial Law era, among other histories) she felt empowered. But if she understood Prof. David clearly, then it would mean that students shouldn't march down national highways screaming bloody "topple down dictatorship", right? For his part, I don't think Prof. David answered the question very clearly - or maybe I was just drifting off above the clouds, as usual? I'd love to make a clear distinction though - not that I'd follow his advice even if he cleared things up.

Final point - a true intellectual. This point is a very shallow one. Basically, I just think Prof. David is an absolute genius. If he were forty or fifty years younger, perhaps I'd even have a crush on him. When he lectures, he seems to be evoking emotions out of you - for a moment during his speech about effects to families of diaspora, I actually felt my eyes prickle with invisible tears. He's mild-mannered, he says things simply without being simple, he speaks of human experience with a blend of someone who's up there but down here, of someone who knows things and someone who sees things. And I know my final point of reflection should be about the lecture, or the open forum, but honestly, the man left a deep impression on me as well. Others did, too. In that room, surrounded by eloquent, intelligent, humble individuals, sharing different ideas, demanding answers to their questions, I found myself thinking I want to be like them. I want to contribute something to this world. I want to be a true intellectual - one who thinks, but one who doesn't think only.

Is there hope for one whose GWA is barely a notch above 2-flat?