Side Comment on Shirt Violence

As my experience, some engg students (not all of them) dirty dig the social sciences and my discipline. They say social sciences are too impractical, easy, uno-able, commonsensical and just a form of wordplay-to-make-sense discipline. As if they could do the things that we do. Well I could not blame them if they are being made to believe they are the paramount of all discipline just because they can earn higher wages. There are explanations why ‘uno ka nga, engg ka ba?’ shirts swarm the campus. Those shirts don’t intend to establish an identity of excellence but instead impose symbolic violence on non-engg students. These kids might not be aware of that and most of the times they are not careful to prejudicepeople.

Deproffesionalizing Sociology: A Reflection


Randy David’s works continues to inspire me. Recently I have read his essay ‘Deproffesionalizing Sociology.’ It hovered on the paradox of the intellectuals’ stand as an agent for social and political ‘problems.’

He basically identified the distance of sociologists and social scientists towards reality. Students and intellectuals are imparted with theories and methodologies. David’s question was: does too attention on these, effect to distance knowledge away from practical use. Praxis is compromised. What happens is that the intellectual is a dysfunction of her ends—to change something.

He suggests that sociologists should strive to use that knowledge and training to change what is seen as a problem. She [the intellectual] should pay an active involvement for social invention and legislation. She should propose changes and plan how it will take effect towards certain ends—to quench the drought of society. These ends would be related to social justice, social equity, national autonomy and others than point towards a better Philippine society.

The problem only is that the distribution of symbolic goods neglects the importance of sociology as a discipline. I believe that sociology can suggest ways to lift us from the self-perpetuating and quick-sanding problems that are considered as an impasse. The only problem is that pragmatism (being practical) kills the inducement of people to indulge in the discipline. You can count how many sociology departments there are in the Philippines and how limited the students are.

So it suggests that social scientists should have a special understanding from the people. People should understand that theory is meaningless without practice. Practice is the final end of the social sciences’ fulfillment of function.

I just hope the people will be aware of these things. I hope that stigmatism will lessen towards the sociologists who indulge in social legislation who most of the times break the law and mores. (I presuppose that the legitimacy and conventions will not be the sole guideline for social design.) In relation with this, there should be an increase attention for the social sciences—make it available for the public and make it a beacon of trust for the people, institutions, and whole society’s well-being.


Note: I may not have a complete or correct interpretation of the reading. So readers of Randy David, ping me if I messed up the ideas. Comments are always welcome.

The Dysfunction of Individualistic Freedom

The university community is open for new and diverse ideas. The problem is, being political is being compromised. Democracy and academic freedom has been arbitrary for everyone.

In my experience, when it comes to student convocations, auditoriums are hardly occupied. Convocation is a form of exercising democracy. This is the place where vast kinds of people merge to indulge into an activity of information exchange and a place where students are ideally united according to their collective interests. So, if the mass of students are present, every partition of the population will symbolically feel involvement into a community. Such scenario will ideally create an invisible tie of responsibility towards each other and the bigger group.

People, who don’t attend community activities, will feel detached to the system that it should belong. Thus, apathy branches out and self-perpetuates. When people or groups are devoid of the idea that they belong to that bigger group will ideally end up to social distrust and distance.

I knew a friend that said that the people who don’t vote for the student council’s election will have no right to complain about anything related to the student welfare. I was kind of accepting his idea.

When people are given enough autonomy and freedom that they can skip student community gatherings and instead go to the mall, there is something sacrificed.

A student convocation made a difference just few days ago. The UPD USC cancelled the classes for time when convocation was about to be held. Reasons not to attend were narrowed down. Aside from that, organizations will be forced to attend the event. Attendees would be counted for points for the UP fair. So people were crowding the Educ Auditiorium.

A little push would gather parts of the community together. The student body was able to address issues to the kids present there.

So, before we celebrate any freedom, we should also put in mind what we may lack to give back something for that freedom. Freedom what we are talking about is to allow ideas and not exactly to allow us to be using that freedom for something else that does not return to a related end intended for that freedom. Freedom is not meant to sacrifice and destabilize the involvement of constituent groups and entities in the community.

Student academic freedom is fought for the students’ collective interests by the students themselves. So, we have a little due to pay—help that freedom to keep on.

No fight won

Well, right now I don’t feel the sense of community and the existence of public realities with some kids of my age. There are some instances that when I am in a group opening a discussion for a social issue, people tend to be quiet and seem to be uninterested. In my experience, my friends’ stamina in talking rise up when talking about gossips, cell phones, branded clothes—things to brag about and people to get envy with.

When I try to put a finger on social issues, silence comes—urging for a topic change. Sometimes I am considered to be overly concerned with things that I can not change—things young people should not be touching in a conversation. They think such topics are irrelevant and inappropriate.

Well, the standards have changed. Young people are more individualistic. They are more concerned with their own dispositions on how they want to manage their lives.
If it isn’t for young people who fought for the rights of their age class and other dominated strata years way, way back, these kinds of choices everyone is crazed to be putting much attention with would not exist today.

I argue that if there are struggles already won few decades ago by our fellow youth, then we should stop there. There is no such thing as a state of completeness. We can not be sure of an absolute social justice. If the youth of the past generations fought for the struggles of their time, then we have our own struggles also.

We should consider every bit of hardship, inconsistencies and contradictions that we feel in our daily realities. Let us consider also our own interest. The battle is never been over unless we try to move. No battle has been completely won.

Meaning social issues that seem so distant from our concerns might actually be ours. They are not hard to find. We just have to realize every bit of questions that we set aside everyday. We should envision our own interest—the youth—part of society which ideally should have been questioning the existing way of things.

Well in some sense, part of the youth is regressing and rotting for conformity and consumerist individualism. Still, there are some who know how to stand on their own interest and active in their role as responsible kids struggling to make history to the Filipinos.

Typhoons

I panicked when I could not text my parents the day when the storm was announced to hit the country. I was wondering what happened at home. I got no clue whether people there were safe or what.

I texted my ‘kababata’ studying here in Manila if she had any idea how was our province. Then, she just confirmed that, yes, the typhoon hit our province. Neither of her relatives were reachable by phone.

So I just thought my vacation will be wrecked. And that impulse was just too selfish. My personal concern there was, that our phone line has just been restored, after two months of waiting, after Milenyo ripped the communication systems apart. So when I go home for the Holidays, there might be a difference between spending it with city services than with none. Pretty weird. Actually, the reason behind that is during my semester break, just right after Milenyo’s doom of horror, there was neither DSL signal nor dial tone. And I am ashamed to confess that—not a social issue though.

Just this noon, my mother called me over the phone. She traveled to Daraga, Albay because communication in Sorsogon was dead and she was checking up on my Auntie there. I was relieved to know that our house was fine. Our phone line which I was crazed to care about was fine. There was a dial tone.

Compared to the damages brought by Milenyo, Reming was not as destructive in our place according to ‘ma. Compared to Albay’s condition, where 300 and rising dead bodies found, we were pretty lucky. She was visiting my Aunt in Daraga.

What was very alarming was that the majority of my batch mates in high school are studying in Bicol University Campuses, which are located among the seriously affected areas (Legaspi City, Daraga, Tabaco, etc.) in Albay Province. And there were reported cases of students which were dead. The mudslide, brought by the excessive rainfall over massive ash deposits formed on Mt. Mayon’s slopes, was pretty much too convincing to be destructive. I saw on the television that some houses were buried up to their ceilings—trapping people inside. It is far more that what happened in my province in late September though finding trees in the horizon was tricky during my sem break in Sorsogon.

People here in NCR might be celebrating typhoons coming in the country because they bring ‘classes suspended’ announcements. But there are some people suffering the loss of property, livelihood, and life in some places they might not take to consider.

Provinces on the pacific side of the archipelago suffer the worst because they serve as the frontlines or receptionists of typhoons. People there might have just recovered from Milenyo. Some of them could not bear to witness the trauma of another typhoon.

Natural calamities have been a part each Bicolanos life—not just siling labuyo, pili nuts, or Peñafrancia Festival. They have been part of mine too. I don’t mean to really embrace the fact that destruction is something cute or exotic. It just feels uneasy for me not to be with my family in times of calamities. I was used to power-downs and water fetch-burdens.

We can’t change calamities. They don’t need a revolution for them to: halt, go around our borders and hover to China. We can not blame any president for these. We just have to pick up what is left and put them up together.

Moving on is slow and painful. The problem is, the quality of living here in the Philippines does not compensate for the loss and damage the affected people discouragingly trying to endure.