I could never express what i have been thinking as clearly as the article below, which appeared in today's PDI issue. Raul Pangalanan, together with Conrado de Quiros and Randy David, has been gifted with the ability of conjuring words like a magician pulling off tricks after tricks. He's one great writer. Since i'm part of the middle class, torn between the lennon-esque attitude, or dream, of the world to be as one, and the demanding side of being a family man in a consumerist society, i can definitely relate. Plus- when i saw him in ANC together with other law deans discussing the garci tape and all in dong puno's show, saludo ako sa iyo. Indeed, what utter shamelessness one has to cling, epoxy-like to boroow e quiros' term, to a post!
Passion For Reason : Starbucks and the class struggle
First posted 00:01am (Mla time) July 22, 2005 By Raul PangalanganInquirer News Service Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the July 22, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
WHEN political analysts ask, "Where are the middle forces, they who triumphed at the two Edsas [people power uprisings]?" I am tempted to answer: "At Starbucks, drinking an iced venti latte."
Now, don't get me wrong. I love the coffee they serve at Starbucks, and I give them eternal credit for bringing good decaf beans to Manila, where until then waiters thought that decaf had to be "instant" powder. They are an exemplar of globalization teaching us how much value we are prepared to pay for a well-made product. And, no, I do not insult the great crimson revolution when I suggest that the class struggle that was supposed to be won in the countryside can now be silently waged over the barrista's counter.
It's just that whenever I enter Starbucks and see students sipping P100 cups of cappuccino, I wonder: At the very least, their daily allowance must be P250 (if they squeeze snacks, lunch and transportation in the "sukli" [change]), which must be larger than the daily food budget
of entire families in this country, where I am told there is a high estimate of four million families eating less than three meals a day, and those meals consist mainly of noodles from Lucky Me and Payless. This suggests the mindset of the so-called middle forces, to which I suppose a university teacher like me belongs.
One: We have been numbed to absolute levels of poverty. Normally we as human beings recoil when we see fellow humans eating off trashcans, where one man's refuse becomes another family's feast. We should be shocked to see slum dwellers, women bathing on busy city streets with barely a "tapis" [wraparound] to lend them a veneer of privacy and dignity. There is a line, a standard of decency, below which human beings cannot live. When that line is crossed, it is we who stand idly by who must feel chastised. It is our shame, not the garbage man's or the bathing woman's. The next time you have visitors from abroad, imagine what goes on in their minds: My host dresses well, sounds decent, eats in classy places -- but if he can passively accept the surrounding squalor, there must be something wrong with him if he feels no pangs of conscience over spending P100 for coffee that would feed a family a good meal.
Two: We have been numbed to huge gaps between rich and poor. Assume that outside the Starbucks window there is a "taho" [soybean meal] or "balut" [boiled duck embryo] vendor (my, I'm exposing my gourmet tastes here). Do the latte-sippers ever wonder how much these guys earn for each P10 cup of taho, or each P9 aborted duck fetus? I pose no indictment of the truly rich, who after all have brought philanthropy down to a science, but of the new or middle rich, who assume a Darwinian sense of triumph over those they have left behind. It is the sense of "K"-the sense that they have earned the right to enjoy the fruits of their labors-that deadens their conscience.
Third: We have been numbed into doing nothing. Life has become so complicated that doing good -- something that should come naturally to all of us, I hasten to assure you -- becomes so difficult. So you care about those kids peddling in the streets at night under the rain? Buy sampaguita at P10 a shot. Your car smells good, you use non-allergenic, organic fragrance -- but wait, your smart son tells you, aren't the children being exploited by syndicates? That's what Teacher said in school!
So you want to help the poor by paying your taxes? But there are aspiring Jose Pidals waiting in the wings to get their two cents' worth and much, much more. So you want to give to an NGO? But haven't they earned enough with their Peace Bonds?
We shun government because it is corrupt. We shun organizations because we find them shallow and, in their own ways, self-serving. We end up turning inward, yet before long we realize the limits of individual striving. There was a time when conspicuous luxuries caused a bit more discomfort in Third World settings. It requires a sense of oneness, of empathy, with those who cannot afford, and a sense of conserving and giving by those who can. That organic bond has been shattered. Globalization, for instance, has attuned the educated Filipino to cultivated tastes and standards abroad. Contrast the full nutritional information available for foreign goods, and that available for, say, taho or fish balls. Contrast too the prices; we do not bat an eyelash at paying more than P100 for coffee (for which prices are globally fixed) while inflation pushes the cost of local balut by timid P1 increments because it is limited to a local market (but just you wait until it goes international with "Fear Factor").
It is the restoration of that communal sense that I think the middle forces seek. They have not found it in any of the political movements that have presented themselves. Nations, scholars say, are "imagined communities," and the danger is that some caudillo will rise to embody for us the sense of nation that we have imagined for ourselves.
By golly, writing this will really change my life. From now on, each time I go to Starbucks, I will savor each sip of cappuccino with an extra shot of caffeine, but make sure I do so with more guilt. That beats walking on my knees in church with my arms outstretched, and I can even become a truly medieval Catholic without calloused knees, though it might lead to a calloused heart.
