children

Children
By Conrado de QuirosPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 05:08:00 12/23/2010

IT WAS some weeks ago. It was early evening, the traffic light had turned red at an intersection on Congressional Avenue. I saw a couple of kids on the sidewalk. They hadn’t joined their companions who had gotten to the head of the line, which was the columns of cars idling in front of the traffic light, streaming around them like floodwater as soon as the light turned red. The two had stayed behind, and they were playing.
They couldn’t have been more than 5 and 3 years old, though you can always be wrong about these things. The soot and grime of a hard life can play tricks on age, masking it in a way that no make-up ever can. The older kid, a boy, was cradling the other one, a girl, in his arms, and he was tickling her with his chin, rubbing it on her face and body and sending her into spasms of giggling.
They were barefoot. All they had on were shirts that were too large and too long for them, blackened now by dirt and mud and smoke from the exhaust of cars. Their own skins were blackened by the hard knocks of life, which are probably not completely metaphorical, and blackened even more by the deepening dark. If their Fagins had been around to see them, they would have gotten a savage tongue-lashing or a few more hard knocks for goofing off when they should be hard at work earning their keep, or scraps at the table.
But there wasn’t one—or one in view. And the two kids, under the influence of something more powerful than rugby, had lapsed into what they were doing. That influence more powerful than a drug was childhood. For an instant, driven by the compelling force of what they were, they had forgotten what they were supposed to do, they had forgotten what the world bid them do, which was to work. They had remembered only they were children, and they had remembered only that children played.
And so for that one instant of time, for that one respite in time, they played, the older boy tickling the younger girl with his chin, their oversized shirts lying loose on their bodies, the hems of them splayed out on the ground, dragging dirt along as they moved. For that one instant of time, for that one dazzling, mesmerizing, magical crack in time, they were happy.
I was filled with mixed emotions when I saw this.
The first was a flash of anger and a fit of depression. It brought back memories of why I became an activist a long time ago and why I have remained so, in spirit at least if not in body, all these years. Why something as cruel as this can happen in this world, the abject deprivation of the kids emphasized by the fleet of cars gleaming in the lamplights—that was what drove me to go underground during martial law, the first couple of years full-time, the rest part-time while maintaining a government front (to which I was assigned), and remain so long afterward. You’ve got to rebel, physically and mentally, at this oppression.
To this day, I cannot look at a child that knocks on the window of my car without feeling a sense of dread. I don’t know, maybe some people have learned the trick of rendering them invisible, they are no longer bothered by the sight and sound of them, except when they become threatening or annoying. Or maybe they don’t even have to play mind tricks, they truly can no longer see them, comfort in the form of an air-conditioned car with lush sounds pouring out of the speakers making them blind and deaf to the fleeting shadows around them.
I still can. And I dread looking at them in the face because they cease to be a generic huddle, a tangle of arms and legs and appurtenances flitting by me, and turn into human beings. They become persons, they become individuals, they become flesh and blood. They become real. They become children. They become the brood that might have been my own, my daughter, my son, but for an accident of fate, or life, that plunged them into this maelstrom, that birthed them into this lot. Like these two tots playing on a curb one early evening in a busy street.
My second reaction was to wonder what in Christ’s name has turned Christmas into the plenitude-amid-want it has become. Or to the abundance and superfluity and gift-giving (or gift-wanting) it now is. The songs are pretty much gone now, replaced by the sounds of ads talking about the latest laptop, the latest car, the latest television you need to get for yourself for the holidays, you deserve it, you worked for it, you can pamper yourself with it without guilt, without even a down payment. I can’t get no satisfaction, “Wowowee” on a grand scale.
When the original Christmas had to do with a couple that was so penniless they were turned out by the inns on a cold wintry night the woman had to give birth to a child in a stable among the animals. How has an event that encourages contemplating the plight of the poor turned into raising a toast to the life of the rich? How has a season that is meant to make one rich in spirit even if poor in body turned into making one rich in gifts and impoverished in soul?
The sight of two kids who had nothing playing, and in that one instant of time having everything, made me a little ashamed of myself for falling into the trap of wanting way too many things over the years. It’s probably true: you’ve got to be a child again to enter the kingdom of God, however you interpret the kingdom of God for the non-religious. Children do tend to see things with simplicity, enough to tell emperors they are not wearing finery, they are in fact stark raving naked. Maybe all it takes to be blessed these days is to hug your loved ones a little more tightly, to be thankful for life’s little kindnesses, to play with your kids, or your apos (for those of us who have one). But I ramble.
Merry Christmas everyone.

Immorality by Conrad de Quiros

Theres The Rub
Immorality
By Conrado de QuirosPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 04:05:00 09/28/2010Filed Under:

MIRIAM SANTIAGO got her facts wrong, says Archbishop Oscar Cruz. Atong Ang is not into jueteng, he is into jai-alai. He is not a jueteng lord, he is a jueteng scourge since jueteng competes with his favorite vice.

Earlier, Cruz’s group, Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng, criticized the Small Town Lottery for promoting jueteng instead of killing it. The STL is the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s answer to jueteng, a perfectly legal and government-controlled operation. All it has really done, Krusadang Bayan says, is to strengthen jueteng because of a faulty system that allows franchise holders to remit only 10 percent of total earnings to the government. In effect, the STL merely fronts for jueteng.

The archbishop is a sterling person and his crusade to rid this world of corruption from jueteng is praiseworthy. But my question is: What on earth is the difference between jai-alai, STL and jueteng?

Every time I ask that question, I get the answer: Well, jai-alai and STL are legal and jueteng is not. Which in fact only raises the question: Why on earth are jai-alai and STL legal while jueteng is not?

That’s what bowls me over about all this. Not least the use of other forms of gambling, such as STL, to stamp out jueteng. What makes jueteng so especially evil it has to be stamped out and the others not so? What makes jueteng so immoral, so disruptive, so much a scourge of humanity it has to be wiped off the face of the earth and the others not so? Why is the group called Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng and not Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Sugal?
In fact, why do people assume this state of affairs as though it were the most natural thing in the world? What is the difference between STL and jueteng? What is the difference between off-track betting, which is the favorite haunt of tricycle drivers near where I live, with them adding drinking to gambling while at it, and jueteng? What is the difference between the bingo parties, which the parishes themselves sponsor to raise funds, the mahjongg that takes place in porches and yards in plain view of passersby, or the pusoy that goes on in wakes, with real dead or rented corpses, and jueteng?

All of them are forms of gambling. All of them involve laying out sums of money in the hope that the combination of numbers printed on one’s ticket is pulled out by whatever it is that pulls these things out—a horse race, an exciting game from Spain, a not very exciting spinning of numbered balls. All of them involve wasting time and resources, fueling spousal disputes, reducing the indio to ignorance and sloth, vices Jose Rizal railed about in his time.

In fact the only quality that distinguishes jueteng from the others is the very extrinsic one of its being more popular than the others, being more widespread than the others, being more prevalent than the others. And the reason that is so is that it pays better, or offers better odds. And the reason that is so is that it is run by gambling lords who are able to offer those terms because it is extremely profitable. And the reason that is so is that, like alcohol during

Prohibition in the United States, it is illegal.
You make it legal, you make jueteng just like the others. You make it legal, you stamp it out in a manner of speaking.

The fact that no one, priest or layman, is complaining about the other forms of gambling, indeed the fact that everyone, Church-based or State-based, seems perfectly willing to accept the other forms of gambling, must suggest that there is really no moral argument against jueteng. If gambling is morally wrong, then why militate against one form of gambling and not against all forms of gambling?

Frankly, it astonishes me why we have to go through the tortuous and torturous route of spreading STL to stamp out jueteng, which is really just substituting one form of gambling for another. If the argument is that STL is legal and jueteng is not, then why on earth not make jueteng legal as well? You make it legal, you stop the bribes. You make it legal, you abolish the gambling lords. You make it legal, you regulate it. Same as STL.

Like I said last time, gambling is like cigarettes and alcohol. Like them, you may, and ought, to discourage it. But like them, you may not, and ought not, to outlaw it. Outlawing it will do more harm than good—as we are seeing right now with jueteng.

In any case, banning it, or some forms of it, is futile. The only form of gambling you should really ban is Russian roulette, and you won’t be able to punish the guilty anyway—they’ll be busy being dead. The only thing that will really stop gambling, or curb it, is not law, it is education. The poor are naturally prone to gambling because they are uneducated. You are uneducated, you will not want to read a book, you will want to play pusoy. You are uneducated, you will not want to go to the columns section of the Inquirer, you will want to go to the “hot tips” section of a tabloid, or consult Madame Auring on the numerical interpretations of dreams. You are uneducated, you will not want to contemplate “Waiting for Godot,” you will want to indulge jueteng for luck.

Indeed the poor are naturally prone to gambling because their very poverty makes of their lives a daily gamble. The predisposition is there. The instinct is there. Gambling is what a family does when it refuses to leave the foothills of Mt. Mayon when it is about to blow up, when it pitches shanties that jut out on creeks that swell each time it rains, when it allocates the children to different destinations: the brightest to school, the prettiest to a beerhouse, the toughest to a gang and a life of crime. They are gambling, with far higher stakes than they’ll ever bet in jueteng.

That’s the real immorality of it.

Taleb and Hume

"It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear."

"A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point."

"History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds."

David Hume: "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

"And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition." — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)


"the only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other. " — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

Diary of a Cynic Kid

I will vote for Noynoy, for the vp, it's too close to call between mar and binay. For senators, will try to vote for (1) non-trapo and will bring at least a semblance of what they are supposed to be -- legislators. These could include (not in any way in order of importance) Lim, Querubin, Hontiveros, Lacson, Drilon (for consideration: Satur, Guingona, Biazon).

But after the euphoria passes, after moneys change hands, after the masa receive their occasional dip to the peoples' money (by receiving money from the incumbents who have more money to spend given the breakdown of our morality and political ethics), after all campain materials are dismantled......... is there a hope that this electoral exercise will be a step forward to finally eradicate the current elitist system. That the current institutional infrastructure are exclusively for the haves will be reformed towards moving to an inclusive system. Hmmmmm.

ruptures in ideology

The country’s downward spiral accelerates. When a country is ruled by a president who can’t separate the reel from the real, deposed, and replaced by an equally inept and greedy creature, ruling for nine years through bribes, anomalies and scandals, can the country recover like a Phoenix rising from the ashes?

I don’t think it will be a swift recovery, if at all. GMA’s shameless disregard of laws, be it moral or legal, really makes the society vulnerable. If the president, the supposed leader of the country, is so garapal, unpopular and viewed with contempt, then, the citizens will have no incentive to follow laws. Kung sya nga ginagawa un, kami pa. And this has very wide structural implications.

Which makes me question whether this democracy – Western style – is really the kind of government or ideology or whathaveyou for us. Hey look, our neighbors have already overtaken us in terms of economic development. Malaysia has Mahatir, Thailand the king, Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. Does it mean that the more free and democratic a society is, the less its economic developments. Don’t think so. I guess what makes us politically stunted (aside from the obvious economically stunted) is the prevalence of elite democracy and the Filipinos’ lack of faith to EDSA. We deposed ERAP to have another bigot occupying his place and at a longer time with the possibility of extending it further (prime minister-in-waiting?). From the looks of it, 2010 elections will just be another election. In national level, there may be some hope that change will be effected, but in the local level, patronage still prevails. And with an SC subservient to GMA’s whims (given that she has more appointees to the bench), well parliamentary government is just a nay and aye away.

Just letting my thoughts wander. Say, if Trillanes and his idealistic officers have succeeded in their drastic means to seize governmental powers, will it usher in a new era? Is it time to explore another form of government, one that can produce a mahatir or lee kuan yew?

Keeping rust off my memory

There is no better way to say it than borrowing from Gary Granada’s Balon: Ang ating karununga'y nakatali Sa hangin at buhanging ilusyon. Or Nassim Taleb’s argument that we are all after all ignorant and there’s a limit to what we can know. Black swans – or the occurrence of highly improbable but with high impact events – litter our collective histories. Whatever you want to call it – be it fat tails for statisticians, unknown unknowns for military strategists or outliers to econometricians – these are things often taken out into equations to simplify the process. But, in a way, taking the most important part of the story to make it “tellable” ex post facto. Yes, I agree with Taleb that our brains are wired to search for fitted stories after an event has happened, as if we can predict the story beforehand.

A friend once emailed me this story. A young Harvard MBA graduate, brimming with ideas (or so he thought) once approach a fisherman on his proposal to make him happy. He said he is interested in making the life of the fisherman more profitable by maximizing his catch. He said he will arrange a loan so that the fisherman can buy a bigger boat so to catch more fish; arrange selling distribution for his catch and invest in latest technology in fishing. Then, he and the fisherman can expand it, hire more people and establish a plant that will process their catch to canned fish. The fisherman asks why? He said that if this proves to be successful, they can devote less time – he to his fishing and more time to his family. Oh, the fisherman said, “You went to Harvard, just to be at my current position?”

Which brings me to the overstatement of having degree programs. Filipino psychology tells me that Filipinos are awed by labels and titles associated with the person. Thus, people in the education industry are so fixated to have a PhD attached to their names as if this will transform them from being a simpleton to super genius. Or we hear from poor people that they are resolved to move heaven and earth – and possibly even hell – just to ensure that their children end up as propesyonal.

But does this amount to an indictment of formal education. Not at all. Good education is a solid foundation for our happiness, but it does not mean that it can provide us knowledge to advance the human race or morality that will strengthen the moral fiber of the society (we have so many crooked officials with advanced degrees). Sometimes, education (or lack thereof) is contingent on the field one has chosen. For one, I believe that my chosen field, economics, need a lot of revision for its failure to anticipate economic crisis after economic crisis. There are fields of specialization that is simply to simplistic that it needs tinkering. You just cannot predict human behavior both in the micro and aggregate level. Economics must be a social science and should not pretend that it can rank among the physical sciences of the world. Hey, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations does not have a single equation on it. An author argued that were he to publish his book today, it may end up being labeled as a sociological work. Economics has become enamored with equations, maths and numbers that it even attempts to generate models after models that find little or no practical and real application at all!!!

There are also many institutions here that are bereft of knowledge transfer but just function as diploma mills. But this is another story.

Of course, I only raise questions to stimulate discussions on this, but it does not mean that I know the answer to this question. Does that make me a reactionary pig? Or does this make me more of a deep thinker. As Gary Granada puts it (I begin with Gary so I will end it with Gary as well), feeling mas magaling ka habang hindi ka naiintidihan.

The Living Years - Mike and the Mechanics

Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him
In the living years

Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I'm afraid that's all we've got

You say you just don't see it
He says it's perfect sense
You just can't get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defence

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die

To admit we don't see eye to eye
So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts

So don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different day
And if you don't give up,
And don't give in
You may just be OK

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye

I wasn't there that morning
When my father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say.
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I just wish I could have told him
In the living years

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye