Justify It. Not.

We are in a world where we fight for subjective rights, rights for Blacks, rights for women, rights for the minorities, and rights for homosexuals. We live in a world of subjectivity and weighing the means and the ends is very objective, is very mathematical. You can’t just subtract hundreds of political activists, journalists, labor union workers, lawyers, etc. just to maintain the political stability in a country of over 80 million and then declare a greater good.

We are humans, we have feelings, and we are subjected to things like love and other emotions. If we voluntarily sacrificed ourselves for the political stability of this country, then the end did justify the means. But if we were kidnapped, tortured, killed, or put under pressure for the sake of a country’s political stability, then I don’t think that the means were justified no matter how great the good is in the end.

Just a passing thought, Philosophy is way better minus the A to Fs..

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Gossip

Thou shall not gossip. This took back my attention. My mind was starting to wander during the sermon when our pastor recounted one story of a woman who was fond of gossiping in our church before. And the story goes like this.

There was this woman who spread bad rumors regarding one pastor. The latter found out about it and the woman also found out that the rumors she was spreading never had the slightest piece of truth. So she pleaded to the pastor saying that she’ll do everything in her willpower for the complete acceptance of her penitence.

The pastor said, go get a chicken, kill it with your bare hands, remove all the feathers and spread it with the wind. Then come back to me with the chicken.

To keep her word, she did what she was told to do. She went back to the pastor with the bare dead chicken. But the pastor said that she should go back to where she undressed the chicken and gather every single feather that belongs to it. Of course she thought that it was absurd; impossible. Everyone should think that it is beyond reality unless you’re some kind of weird. But then the pastor knew that there is no way she could do it. What he did was he left her an essential moral lesson.

He said that just like gathering all the feathers she spread everywhere, it’s just as impossible to gather all the rumors about him that she once spread, impossible to bring back everything where it was.

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Off Topic:

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Congratulations Manny Pacquiao! You made Filipinos proud! Just don't think of yourself as the only hope of our country just like you always say. And please for the love of all that is good in this world, don't think of running for public office again!

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Communications II Ad Project

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River Chronicles

In President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address delivered on July 23, 2001, she mentioned three Payatas children named Jason, Jomar, and Erwin whose letters formed into paper boats reached the Malacañang Palace through the Pasig River. The letters made by the children are intended for the president to heed their simple wishes, a permanent job for Jomar’s father, Jason’s education, and Erwin’s wish for a piece of land. This may only be fabricated by our president but the truth is children making letters formed into paper boats hoping it would reach the highest abode of the land is more than possible to happen in real life.

The grandeur that is Malacañang Palace, 70,000 families living in slums in the riverbanks, these two have a common ground: Pasig River. As I rode the ferryboat, it was really heartbreaking to pass through these two extremes, seeing the huge disparity between the lifestyle of the masses and the elites.

Try to make a letter formed into a paper boat and let it drift through the vastness of the river and see if you have that one in a million chance for the letter to be read by the highest official of the land. That is how complicated it is for an ordinary citizen to reach out to most of our supposedly public servants. Well, you still have that rare chance, but most of the time, the letter will be lost forever, the chance will be lost forever, drifted away to the methane riverbeds of San Juan River and become another piece of pollutant.

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Rather Myth Than Reality

The monotony inside the ferryboat was felt. As I went outside to feel the river breeze, the gushing wind swiftly whispered songs and tales of its glory. I heard and read them during the length of my research and these songs and tales of beautiful spirits, evil mermaids, and a fat enchantress immediately summoned into my mind. But these are a lot less dangerous than the perils of reality: the government, the people, and the industries. This river deserves to be respected with all its historical, cultural, and economic worth and magnitudes. But sadly today, it is not just politically-manipulated in certain ways but is also deprived of its significance.

Nearby important establishments are considered not to face to this once glorious river with high walls and specified viewing designs because of its unattractive viewpoint. Rapid modernization made us not look back to what Ilog Pasig was and this, I believe, basically destroyed the river. It made me think and think again, and now I’d rather want an evil mermaid swimming through the river with all these legends and myths and no rejuvenation in any ways than a modernized and industrialized one and not seeing any living creature at all.

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photo courtesy of http://www.purplemoon.com/Stickers/mermaid-moon.jpg

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