i dreamed about Kafka
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.
WALKING DOWN column by Michael Xiao Chua, Good Morning Philippines, 19 August 2011
Dahil kaarawan ngayon ng Pangulong Manuel Quezon na nag-adhika na magkaroon ng isang Pambansang Wika na batay pangunahin na sa Tagalog ngunit kabilang dapat ang mga salita mula sa ibang mga wika sa Pilipinas, kaibigan, tara, usap tayo… sa Filipino.
Madalas ako makakita ng mga karatula sa mga paaralan ngayon na ipinagmamalaki na “This is an English-Speaking Zone.” Diumano upang tayo ay maging “globally-competitive,” ipinatupad ng nakaraang administrasyon ang polisiya na halos lahat ng asignatura ay dapat itinuturo sa Ingles. Dito, kapag ikaw ay nagsasalita sa Ingles, kahit wala namang laman ang sinasabi mo, ang tingin sa iyo ay matalino. Sa isang mamahaling kolehiyo aming nakita minsan ni Dr. Zeus Salazar, “English is the language of leaders.” Sabi niya, “Bakit? Si Napoleon ba iningles ang mga Pranses? Si Mao ba iningles ang mga Tsino?”
Kahit marami ngayon ang “wrong grammar” sa paggamit ng Ingles, ipinagmamalaki natin na mas marami pa ring nagsasalita ng Ingles dito sa Pilipinas kaysa sa Inglatera. Kung totoo ito, bakit tila hindi tayo mga pinuno sa daigdig? Bakit tayo naghihirap? Bakit walang sapat na marangal na trabaho sa bansa na kinakailangan na matuto tayo ng Ingles upang magsilbi sa pangangailangan ng mga dayuhan sa mga kasambahay, nars at caregiver at tagasagot ng telepono? Bakit ang Hapon, Tsina, Europa ay mayaman kahit na maging ang mga CEO ng kanilang mga kumpanya ay bobo sa Ingles? Sapagkat ang biyaya ng edukasyon, ekonomiya at pulitika dito sa Pilipinas ay nananatili lamang sa mga marunong mag-Ingles. Ang may kontrol sa wika ay may bahagi sa kapangyarihan. Maraming dahilan kung bakit tayo mahirap, ngunit hindi ba’t kabilang dito ang katotohanang hindi talaga makasawsaw ang mas nakararami sa mga isyu ng pagkabansa? It’s the language, stupid.
praning
The dark and often ignored side of globalization is that it’s the process of manipulating an entire country by a ‘corporate empire’ through the use of debt, bribery and political overthrow by means of devising and creating political conflicts through clever propaganda, such as coup de etat or war, and when the target county’s in disarray, the empire quickly imposes conditions that are so-called as ‘reform’, for profit.
Examples of such “conditions” are:
- Currency Devaluation, to lessen the price of the target country’s raw materials that are being exploited.
- Cutting Social Welfare Programs like education and healthcare, this combined with media manipulation to make the target country’s people unaware and vulnerable to the most obvious of exploitations.
- Privatization, so that government-owned infrastructures of the target country can be purchased by the empire’s multinational companies to be regulated in such a way to make profit, and
- Trade Liberalization to make way for the empire’s transnational companies’ mass-produced goods, whose raw materials most likely came from the country it’s selling to, for again, profit, while killing local businesses.*
*Even if that could mean more employment, worst case scenario is majority of those job opportunities will get people hired to sweatshops and other jobs that require them to do mundane, repetitive tasks, with virtually no chance of career or socioeconomic growth.
PS: That “corporate empire” is what most people stereotype in my country (and other countries) as “USA”. When in fact, it’s not the US government nor the people themselves who hold such power and ingenuity, if they were, then they should’ve foresaw the debt crisis they’re dealing with now many, many years ago.
So that leaves us to those culprits whose presence is as discreet as “money stashed away inside reinforced, air-tight, steel vaults”, haha.
(via iamnothingami)
What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.
(via fuckyeahexistentialism)
One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived…What do you know in advance of the character of existence to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of the unconditionally mistrusting or of the unconditionally trusting?
(Source: totrulyexist, via fuckyeahexistentialism)
