Ecownomiks (lifted from niliwen.livejournal.com)

This was originally posted in and lifted from http://niliwen.livejournal.com/ without permission from the author.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and
then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk
of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow
has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed
company, using letters of credit opened by
your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a
debt/equity swap with an associated
general offer so that you get all four cows back, with
a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an
intermediary to a Cayman Island
Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who
sells the rights to all seven
cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows,
with an option on one more. You
sell one cow to buy a new president of the United
States, leaving you with nine cows. No
balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL
You have two cows.
You shred them.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the
roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an
ordinary cow and produce twenty
times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called
'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat
once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of
vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high
bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real
situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you
and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part
of a Democracy... .

A SPANISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Your cousin is jealous and wants one, so he starts a
civil war over it!

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to
celebrate.

PHILIPPINES (version one)
You have two cows---but that's because you re not in
the Philippines . You left because
someone has to send money to your relations back home.
They are stuck with three pigs with voracious
appetites-- Mikey, Iggy and Piggy.

Grades

    I need a lot of work for the coming semesters for me to reach a cum laude honor by the conclusion of my degree program next year. I would probably need to have a semestral average of 1.5 for the coming two semester to meet up the cum laude requirements. It would be hard but I have to try.

    The problem I have observed from my studying habits and attitudes is that I always complain before working on anything. This happens every time. In the end, when deadlines come, I could see that no matter how I hate doing these 'stuff' (as how I perceive them), I would still be still obliged to comply by the rules and requirements to pass the courses. In the end, I am the loser. I miss blessings and opportunities that should have been taken advantage of in the name of academic success.

    I dismiss the dogma that grades are not the true basis of knowledge and learning. At the end of the day, who becomes successful? They are those who were able to get high grades. A cum laude title in the resume is an advantage to employability in the competitive arena of industries, office spaces and academes. Who wins after all?

    I am not suggesting that we extremely set aside everything, but still grades are the most important things to worry about in college. It doesn't matter how you gain them, but the question is: would one be able to get them? I completely sound like a liberal.

    There are of course, faults and dents that the universities conceal behind the facades of center-of-excellence titles and traditions. These are in terms of the nature of the learning process (the means of pedagogy) that student's experience. Most students comply. Some do not. Those who don't are still divided to two. They are (1) those who have learned enough to know and articulate the imperfections, and (2) those who are just… like me… whiners. Without a little effort of trying, dissent has been an excuse for not doing anything.

    At this point I consider the fact that, grades are the most important reified artifact of ones whole scholastic performance because, in fact a person can not see every aspect of another in a small span of time. Grades have the formal credibility of explaining scholastic performance. Accordingly, most people we will meet, from different points in our lives, won't really care about the other things because if truth be told, they really don't have to.

Ending the Semester

The year is ending. These are the days when we, UP students, count on coffee, energy drinks, cigarettes and lots of heavy fastfood to keep us awake and kicking through the coming sleepless nights.

It is actually painful to see people—busying themselves around for those important requirements of their classes' conclusion, while I still don't feel guilty of doing just nothing. Well, I guess eating and surveying undone work is still something to do. I hated it. I have been in this whole year of wondering why I have been such a sluggish student when it comes to my work ethics. I don't have a summa cum laude work ethics, by the way and the achievement it corresponds to.

And this is knew, just today, that I felt really bad to hear one of my GE (general education) professors asking me whether I was still serious about the course he was handling. Yeah, I guess, with his personality, it should not have been taken too seriously. However, it is almost the same as pretending to have heard nothing.

I get busy and booted up for work when I am told off harshly. It worked with how my father had raised me. I need to have myself checked with someone I trust. And I guess I could say that, more than the freedom a dormitory student has, parents are still the best companions while still growing up in college. I missed my dad looking angry whenever I am seen like a tourist bum in front of the TV or the PC.

I get a lot of these kinds of drama these days. It is hard to get support. I don't even know how to counter being idle and feeling idle—having to know that deadlines will arrive a few days from now. AHhh. This really is complicated! It makes me want to quit everything and start over again. Hmm. I wonder if other students have this kind of issue.

And I still have a wish, though hopeless, considering the present context: I hope life after college will be better.

Bitter me.

The Thinnest Portable: Macbook Air

    And as expected, Apple never disappoints a consumer about an upcoming product. New releases and innovations often come a few duration of time apart from another. Today, I went over their website and it was on their home page that says that they will sell the world's thinnest computer which they call, Macbook Air.

    Honestly, it certainly was astounding not only in first glance but even incredible when someone would go over the technical specs of the product. The key feature is its: nanonization of the product. This has been what happened to one of their products: the Ipod. It has gone thinner. The MacBook Air looks like a piece of biscuit snack which has a flip-top lid. It could actually be conveniently slid inside an envelop as what the ads were illustrating.

    Why am I talking about this. I am not an apple user. I didn't ever own a mac in my life because I can't afford one. But this is not jealousy, but rather a form of a thought accompanied by some sort of pity.

    In the Philippines, a few have these machines. I don't know the figures. At school, I spot a few library goers sitting on the reading areas with their Apple computers. Though, much that I could see (untintentionally) on their extravagant glossy widescreen LCDs was Safari showing a few non-academic content, I long thought about the fact that it is not my business to make a criticism out of such extravagant consumption with of 'useless' utility. Well, wifi is free at the library and everybody can use it for any purpose.

Pity is what I feel to those people who has just recently bought their not-so-new powerbook or macbook. Especially those which do not really intend to use it for specific specialized end (music, research, film which requires specific platform w/c is the mac)—those who are after the brand and the feel of owning a piece of sophistication. Tell me who will buy a P16k Macbook Pro for blogging and so that he or she could arrange his/her photos. There are some. Those are which aren't sober for such consumerism.

    Well, if you are really going after this prestige thing, make sure you have a lot of money to consume every fresh release of Apple's new line of products. They are crazily shooting up the ground when sometimes you least expect it. If you are not that wealthy enough to cope with the demands of an ideal Apple consumer, maybe Apple is not the great brand. If the brand is the end of this consumption, it definitely creates an insatiable need for the new products.

    Apple has a great deal of advertising. Ads aren't false at all but rather, overstated. The tone, that 'you need these' and 'life needs simple things,' resembles a false-need fabricator and reproduces it. Yeah. I don't know, I haven't used yet one for a whole day. I don't know how it works in extreme, heavy situations either. So I couldn't tell.

    All I can say, though this is far off the topic, Safari sucks on windows. And some are telling over the internet, a few Mac users observe that it slows in a considerable amount of their Apple machines.

To Change

I have met last morning the scariest time of my life. At about 4 am yesterday, when I was about to go to sleep, I started to feel a palpitation. I had just put myself to bed already and I couldn't sleep. I could feel my chest pounding fast. Then, it suddenly stops and follows a jerking and blowing pump. I couldn't sleep because I was afraid of not waking up again.

I did not sleep until morning. I waited up until dawn so that I could attend my 7 AM class. From that day on, I promised to cut the iced tea, coffee, and soda beverages…

It is kind of a hard thing to do but I think it will be the perfect calling to entirely change because; I am not in total shape right now for a student. I am not sleeping in the right time nor sleeping adequately. Also, I have to make it an effort to associate it with other changes like room tidiness and study habits so that it will not drift back to what I had been for a year already of pure laid-back student life.

The Grand New Year Resolution

I have been for quite a time distrusted this whole phenomenon of listing down wishes of what to improve or change for the coming year ahead. For a period of time, I have been like this… divorcing myself to things which are popular. I know this might not intend to mean very sound but… what the hell.

 

1. Avoid procrastinating
   
2. Avoid avoiding things which I have irrational attitudes about like speaking in public
   
3. Start speaking English in a more 'part of my life' basis
   
4. Never give up the time Management Struggle Plan v5.10.1.3 …hahaha
   
5. Control Sleeping Patterns
   
6. Finish tasks one at a time
   
7. Don't think excessively and wastefully in planning what to do
   
8. Don't forget leisure time
   
9. Talk to friends and classmates
   
10. Stick to the well planned schedule on the daily planner

Have been Busy for Nothing Lately

How clever was I was to ditch the annual UP Lantern Parade in hurrying to go home. I live inside the campus and it was sad to leave while seeing the festive tradition was about to start. Honestly, the bus trip schedule wasn't really intended to avoid the happy activities for the month. I was forced to take the sched because I did have more choice. I needed to go back home.

There is really nothing much exciting about the reason because I am staying away from fun. It was just that there are a lot of things to do. I will have to submit 3 major requirements in different subjects by the start of this upcoming year.

However, this certain confidence saying "I will have things done early" is getting eaten by my realization that I am not doing today anything relevant to what I planned. Maybe I get too much time spent on the Internet. Perhaps, i still need to manage the precious time.

Anyway, there is nothing much interesting... hahaha. It is all about me again this time. I don't know what is happening to me... i hope i could post my magazine-type exam in sociological theory subject.

Internet Explorer Loses Popularity

Now, this is not a news headline nor a hype we hear from the television. Instead, this is just an observation on what people use as their browser nowadays.

Well for me, when I had a new computer just last June, the first thing I did was to download Mozilla Firefox. Firefox wasn't new to me that time. I started to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox when I was in 3rd level high school. That was about four years ago... I was still using dial-up connection. There are of course reasons why I found still am still finding Mozilla as useful than Internet Explorer.

The main adavantage that Firefox had given me at that time was its tabbed browsing. It greatly helped me get rit of the clutter on the taksbar. Also, having a slower connection, I was able to switch back tabs to watch pages loading simultaneously. With that, I was actually saving time.

It was just new nowadays that more and more people use Firefox. Well maybe because it is fast and more safe to use. Internet Explorer are more risky to vulnerablities in terms of privacy and unwanted software. There has been a shift of preference which is to abandon Internet Explorer because in most internet cafes they already inlcuded desktop shortcuts of Firefox and even to some, made it as their default browser.

Right now, I am experimenting on Apple's Safari Browser which already opened for Windows users. One of the impressive things to look for in this browser is its good-looking and clean typography. The text on the pages looks better in safari than internet explorer and firefox. However, it is still on its beta distribution and still for trial for end users.

For a time now, I haven't used Internet Explorer. And I think this will be IE's destiny.

Being Down!

The last parts of the semester have always driven me nuts. I see a pattern that whenever these times come, I always have more reasons to get lazy and not to do work, out of the piling school requirements. And I always have these pitiful realizations on my self that really make me feel down.

I don't know how can I get a way out of these. The more work I have queued, the more I hate to start at least a piece of the tasks. Anyway, writing for me doesn't need to be rushed. I am always looking for a fresh start. After all, the semester is ending and academic requirements have to be done somehow. Good luck to me!

UP students, I hope you are feeling me.

Which belongs to the university? to UP?

This question has been really hot among discussions with some students, in my experience

Does CBA (college of business administration) deserve to be in the University?

Background:

• The purpose of universities before was to produce knowledge. Seems like these days the meaning of a university changed into an institution which provide only diplomas for the professions.
• Can CBA help for the benefit of the university and the country; or for the transnational corporations waiting for docile graduates to work for them?
• The current officials of UP admin were from this college. How do they see the university? Didn't Roman and Cao focus only on the perspective of economics and efficiency while neglecting important aspects of university life and the core role of UP in Philippine society?

TOFI's humming beneath the floors

A friend texted me one day during the summer term this year, which has just ended days ago, that he was a facilitator in the freshman advance registration. He said that he saw and heard a woman, which he speculated to be a mother of an UPCAT passer enrolling in UP, pleading on the registration or assessment desk for a down payment of her son/daughter's tuition.

To those who might not know, the tuition increase in the campuses of UP was approved (though with questionable processes) by the BOR last December. This was said to be applicable to the incoming freshmen and transferees having the student number 2007 above.

The tuition rose from more or less P 6,000 to more than P20,000. The rate per unit has risen from P300 to P1000 (Diliman,LB,Manila - average STFAP bracket).

Well, I will not play on the numbers. I just want to express the sentiment that it is a mistake to say that UP will affect only those 07 students--the belief that the upperclassmen who have been excluded from the proposal's scope, will be totally unaffected. I guess not.

The freshie registration was held in Melchor Hall. It was observed that most who enrolled had come from the high class, the majority. Another funny gossip was that, a maid was being asked by the student facilitators or the UP staff in charge where is the enrollee. The maid answered that the enrollee was in boracay or abroad for vacation. Well, pretty normal in a private school I guess, but from how I have been culturally brought about in UP, freshmen have got to deal with their own matters in the university.

Dorm Hell
A lot have gone furious about the change in admission of dormitories in the campus. Well, a proposal was passed to put the job of admitting all years level for the dormitories to the Office of Student Housing. Before, dormitories were the ones to accept applications and admit students.

However, a lot of students already residing in the dormitory will be displaced due to a change in the standard or indices in ranking the deserving students for the privilage. Also, the freshmen were already been accepted by dorms other than Kalayaan. Before the results of the new dorm admission process, a considerably large number of freshmen already have been enlisted in Ilang-ilang, Yakal, etc.

So, why were the freshmen, a chuck of their number, put in the upper class-men dormitories? Well, of what I had heard, it was a form of an aid for the students who will have problems in residence because of the cost of the tuition. Well, the problem might not had been the residence but the tuition fees.
We were made to believe the about the effects of this TOFI among the upper-classmen.

Well the only issue is that, we will always be affected by the effects of TOFI. More and more come each day--from the real-time manual enlistment (just turned out to serve the benefit of some), to the dominance of BAA students in student privileges, no ID no Entry,unexplained increase in misc fees, displacement of students from the dorms, and the admin's incrementing neglect on providing fair privileges for the studentry.

Still we struggle or at least believe in that struggle to make UP an equitarian and just institution.

I'm in my hometown right now. I am a little bored. These following days I have a lot to write and blog about but I don't get the drive or even the attention to write the thoughts down. I know writing skills tend to fade out. It is such a waste to have ideas not being expressed--at least even in my blog which I doubt to be having readers.

I really find it depressing not to be able to express myself in my genuine intent. I could only try in term papers or scholarly papers. God, it is really frustrating.

I don't have the drive to write these days...

i am coming back to manila

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.

We Can Not Be Apathetic

In times like this that the identity of our beloved university will be knocked off its feet by its nearing neo-liberalization, we have the role as students—the youth—to act.

It would be shameful for us that on this time that we have witnessed a big turning point of big social conflict of the community that we can not unite for a common interest. Yes we will graduate and leave the campus soon but it will be far from what it is now in the future.

We can not let the grown-ups tell us what to do, even if they were in the frontline of every picket line during the Marcos’s time. They faced a different reality far from ours today. Simply we can not be living to start on what they left behind and finish what they failed to do. We have the role to create and see our own world according to how we see it.

What is the unique of being a youth? When we graduate we can not be really free. In fact, when we leave the university we will be more tied down. We can not just subvert things, for such point of time, because—chances are—our concerns would be finding a job, working on our savings and helping our families. We get to be more submissive and become docile warm bodies. We are aging and we are realizing the structure and we lose the youth spirit to express our innocent questions.

Ever spent a time with a 3-year old child? If you would spend a day with her, you would probably think of gluing her lips together because of her ‘to the nth power’ number questions. She would never stop asking about everything. The expected crude answer for the questions is simple: ‘That is how it works’. Basically the child challenges things because she has not yet assumed structure on her reality. However grown-ups already did—choices are reduced—norms are familiar and accepted. Think about it. We lose pieces of our huge and numerous aspirations of who we want to become bit by bit as we ladder age groups.

When I was very young I wanted to become a doctor—as clichéd as it sounds—or as a film director. As I stepped in high school I realized that hard sciences aren’t for me and film requires a lot of creativity and capital. Considering also my family’s capacity to spend for the education I needed for the road to any those professions. Other factors also put effect on my decisions. There is just no such thing as serendipity. Fate is weaved not by coincidence but in subtlety.

The more we age, the less we feel for agency over our reality—the more we realize prohibitions and limitations to our childish fantasies. When we grow up we have all the time to be ‘obedient’ to norms (which are presumed to be ‘just’) because we have to deal with ‘real’ things.

The saying that: ‘Ayusin mo muna sarili mo bago ang iba,’ can not be firmly applied. See, it is very hypocritical and it expounded no exact standard of what is ideally acceptable. If we are meant to conform to the norms, then why should we put effort to change it? If we give in, it would be hard to challenge it later. It doesn’t even follow that what is wrong is justifiable just because we are not yet that ready to be ‘right’. When can we say we are ready enough?

We should not be afraid to be over-angered by things around you that threaten youthful values. We have to prove where we stand. Antagonisms are everywhere—with our parents, the academe, media, fellow students and the grown-ups. We are not brainwashed just because we deviate from their standards. In fact those who call corrupted are the ones who readily gave up their youthful ideas to the ideological apparatuses. They were the first to be corrupted. They are the ones got brainwashed in the first place.

Yes we believe in academic freedom, but not all of our ideas are made out of a genuine preference of our subscription. Academic freedom ideally should function not to divide us among political camps but to help us define our own emancipation with less stigma for the interest of a student community. I believe that being cynical and apathetic is not inborn. We are conditioned to act so. Before we become apathetic let us at least know the interest of our cultural class. How can we be responsible citizens if in the first place we pay neglect to our own category? Before we become apathetic and hypocritical, let us first envision our reality in the perspective of a youth, as a UP student—that each can not be isolated from our bigger social concerns.

Let us not allow our freedom to be reduced to the freedom to consume goods or the freedom to park a vehicle. Let us not allow others do significant choices for us. We want to do it on our own. The saying ‘Ang kabataan ay ang pag-asa ng bayan!’ still holds though it sounds sappy and passé. Apathy will not lead us to anything worthy. Let us know how to stand upon these overwhelming social issues we are currently facing. Let us be involved and be conversant.

When you get stabbed, the least you could do is to be aware of it.