Two-way street
Two-way street
Posted 10:31pm (Mla time) Feb 23, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the February 24, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I REMEMBER something a much disillusioned friend told me recently. He wasn't going to join another Edsa, he said. He had played an immense role in the two previous ones (he doesn't consider "Edsa 3" an Edsa at all, it is a complete misnomer, he says), only to see both yield bitter fruit. It was not unlike Christ's injunction not to sow seeds on barren ground, he said. For some reason, this country seems to offer only barren ground. You can't have a more potent seed than Edsa, it beats miracle rice any day, he said, but for some reason it keeps failing to grow here. Edsa has just become another word for futility.
I can understand his frustration. But I don't know that I can subscribe to his sentiments. Notwithstanding what my critics would like to believe, who imagine that my unrelenting campaign against the unrelenting iniquities of the current government is a sign of jadedness. The day I stop being angry is the day I start being cynical. Or the day I start growing old.
The fact that something doesn't turn out the way we expected doesn't make doing it unnecessary or not worth doing all over again. Or indeed, the fact that heroic action produces un-heroic results doesn't make heroism superfluous, or not worth embracing all over again. Human beings are not blessed with prescience, however some people like to think they are. We have only the gift of imagination and foresight, neither of which can always prepare us for impending tragedy. In any case, we also have the gift, or curse, of hope, which tends to drown out anxieties and propel us headlong to God-knows-what, believing things can, or should, be better than what they are.
The Revolution waged by Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio and Apolinario Mabini was not any less worth undertaking because it was appropriated by the elite and went for naught anyway because the Americans usurped their impending victory and turned their country into their colony. Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini did what they had to do. They saw tyranny and fought it, they glimpsed freedom and reached for it, they dreamt of a better world and died for it. Or at least Rizal and Bonifacio did.
The same is true of the revolution waged by the student activists and those who took to the hills or burrowed underground in the 1970s. It was no less worth undertaking because it was appropriated by the elite and went for naught because its own leaders subverted it by their own predilection for repressing and stifling dissent, a fact they drove home with their killing fields. The sacrifices of those who died, many of them in the flush of youth, were not in vain. The phrase "Hindi ka nagiisa ," which accompanied Ninoy Aquino to his resting place, is far more prescient than we think. It can't just mean, you are not alone the victim of this tyranny, or you are not alone to lie there, we lie there with you. It can, and should, also mean, you are not alone to have taken a bullet in the head for raising a fist at tyranny, others did before you. Without the resistance before Aug. 21, 1983, there would have been no Edsa.
You'll hear some people say, "I have no regrets, if I had to do it all over again, I would." I am one of those who do say it. The reason is simple. At the very least, the reasons for which I took up the causes I did remain as valid today as they did then, however those causes themselves ended. You refuse to fight tyranny because you could always birth a worse one, you will see no end to tyranny. Worse, you will not move at all. Life is a risk even at its most calculated, every action contains as much the seed of destruction as it does of creation.
At the very most, that is because the sacrifices never really go for naught, however the cause for which they were made was thwarted. What made the struggle against Marcos possible was the struggle of Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini against the Spanish and Americans. That was the inspiration that animated it. What made the two Edsas possible were the struggles that went before them as well. The late Renato Constantino's thesis in "The Philippines: A Past Revisited," now standard college history textbook, was that what made Rizal's and Bonifacio's revolution possible were all the failed uprisings against Spanish rule in the past. It is a very good thesis. What applies to Rizal's and Bonifacio's struggles apply to those that came after.
No, I don't mind joining another Edsa, and still another, if that is what it takes to pull this country by its bootstraps. Which in any case, as I keep saying, is not the easiest thing to mount: You don't just gather bodies in one place and call it Edsa. Truly, "Edsa 3" is a misnomer. What I do mind is that we, the people, keep going back to where we were after each Edsa, patting ourselves in the back for a job well done, assuming things will start getting better by themselves. What I do mind is that we, the people, keep falling back into mediocrity at the end of brilliance, lapsing into veteran smugness, telling stories about the "war" in the bar, leaving "others" to do the rest.
The work of Edsa does not end with Edsa, it just begins with Edsa. The problem has never been joining Edsa, the problem has always been fulfilling Edsa. We have no problems rising to heroic levels to defy tyranny, why can't we rise beyond ourselves to build a better country?
It's no small irony that we also call Edsa "people power" when it is the people who disappear after Edsa. Certainly, whose power disappears after Edsa, the ensuing government imposing its will on us rather than the other way around. Well, take it from its provenance: Edsa is a very long road.
It means nothing if we can't traverse the entire thing. Or turn it into a two-way street.
Posted 10:31pm (Mla time) Feb 23, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the February 24, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I REMEMBER something a much disillusioned friend told me recently. He wasn't going to join another Edsa, he said. He had played an immense role in the two previous ones (he doesn't consider "Edsa 3" an Edsa at all, it is a complete misnomer, he says), only to see both yield bitter fruit. It was not unlike Christ's injunction not to sow seeds on barren ground, he said. For some reason, this country seems to offer only barren ground. You can't have a more potent seed than Edsa, it beats miracle rice any day, he said, but for some reason it keeps failing to grow here. Edsa has just become another word for futility.
I can understand his frustration. But I don't know that I can subscribe to his sentiments. Notwithstanding what my critics would like to believe, who imagine that my unrelenting campaign against the unrelenting iniquities of the current government is a sign of jadedness. The day I stop being angry is the day I start being cynical. Or the day I start growing old.
The fact that something doesn't turn out the way we expected doesn't make doing it unnecessary or not worth doing all over again. Or indeed, the fact that heroic action produces un-heroic results doesn't make heroism superfluous, or not worth embracing all over again. Human beings are not blessed with prescience, however some people like to think they are. We have only the gift of imagination and foresight, neither of which can always prepare us for impending tragedy. In any case, we also have the gift, or curse, of hope, which tends to drown out anxieties and propel us headlong to God-knows-what, believing things can, or should, be better than what they are.
The Revolution waged by Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio and Apolinario Mabini was not any less worth undertaking because it was appropriated by the elite and went for naught anyway because the Americans usurped their impending victory and turned their country into their colony. Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini did what they had to do. They saw tyranny and fought it, they glimpsed freedom and reached for it, they dreamt of a better world and died for it. Or at least Rizal and Bonifacio did.
The same is true of the revolution waged by the student activists and those who took to the hills or burrowed underground in the 1970s. It was no less worth undertaking because it was appropriated by the elite and went for naught because its own leaders subverted it by their own predilection for repressing and stifling dissent, a fact they drove home with their killing fields. The sacrifices of those who died, many of them in the flush of youth, were not in vain. The phrase "Hindi ka nagiisa ," which accompanied Ninoy Aquino to his resting place, is far more prescient than we think. It can't just mean, you are not alone the victim of this tyranny, or you are not alone to lie there, we lie there with you. It can, and should, also mean, you are not alone to have taken a bullet in the head for raising a fist at tyranny, others did before you. Without the resistance before Aug. 21, 1983, there would have been no Edsa.
You'll hear some people say, "I have no regrets, if I had to do it all over again, I would." I am one of those who do say it. The reason is simple. At the very least, the reasons for which I took up the causes I did remain as valid today as they did then, however those causes themselves ended. You refuse to fight tyranny because you could always birth a worse one, you will see no end to tyranny. Worse, you will not move at all. Life is a risk even at its most calculated, every action contains as much the seed of destruction as it does of creation.
At the very most, that is because the sacrifices never really go for naught, however the cause for which they were made was thwarted. What made the struggle against Marcos possible was the struggle of Rizal, Bonifacio and Mabini against the Spanish and Americans. That was the inspiration that animated it. What made the two Edsas possible were the struggles that went before them as well. The late Renato Constantino's thesis in "The Philippines: A Past Revisited," now standard college history textbook, was that what made Rizal's and Bonifacio's revolution possible were all the failed uprisings against Spanish rule in the past. It is a very good thesis. What applies to Rizal's and Bonifacio's struggles apply to those that came after.
No, I don't mind joining another Edsa, and still another, if that is what it takes to pull this country by its bootstraps. Which in any case, as I keep saying, is not the easiest thing to mount: You don't just gather bodies in one place and call it Edsa. Truly, "Edsa 3" is a misnomer. What I do mind is that we, the people, keep going back to where we were after each Edsa, patting ourselves in the back for a job well done, assuming things will start getting better by themselves. What I do mind is that we, the people, keep falling back into mediocrity at the end of brilliance, lapsing into veteran smugness, telling stories about the "war" in the bar, leaving "others" to do the rest.
The work of Edsa does not end with Edsa, it just begins with Edsa. The problem has never been joining Edsa, the problem has always been fulfilling Edsa. We have no problems rising to heroic levels to defy tyranny, why can't we rise beyond ourselves to build a better country?
It's no small irony that we also call Edsa "people power" when it is the people who disappear after Edsa. Certainly, whose power disappears after Edsa, the ensuing government imposing its will on us rather than the other way around. Well, take it from its provenance: Edsa is a very long road.
It means nothing if we can't traverse the entire thing. Or turn it into a two-way street.
posted by Dante at 4:40 PM
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