Post by dredpooh on Jul 23, 2006 7:48:13 GMT 8
What freedom?
CHAMBERS By Korina Sanchez
The Philippine STAR 07/23/2006
".... One of us is chained, none of us are free. Now I swear your salvation isn’t too hard to find, None of us can find it on our own. We’ve got to join together...so that every soul who’s suffering will know they’re not alone..." – Solomon Burke
Watching Braveheart for the nth time on HBO, the word – repeated a hundred times in two hours – reverberates in my head long after the movie... "Freedoooommm!" Masses of people throughout the stories of humankind have killed and died for it. Living legends, heroes, icons and the greatest of men have stood by and fought for it. Nations and continents define themselves by it. Families have disintegrated for the love of it. History’s textures and patterns are carved by the pursuit of it. Freedom has inspired too many of novels and movies and, yet, has always managed to, as a theme, create a blockbuster out of it – the rebel without a cause, the oppressed and suppressed wife longing for a new life, the rise among the ashes of a provincial ugly duckling breaking from the shackles of poverty and, of course, the biographies of Filipino hero Rizal, Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, or Hustler magazine’s Larry Flint.
It begins at the very start of conception – by day 1 of fertilization say pro-life, by after 21 weeks gestation say pro-choice... We are created, maybe by design, possibly by fate but... who asked us? (If I had a choice I’d be born in the 1940s when less people had cancer. Or maybe in 2050 when they would have probably discovered the cure for it.) And then we are immediately dependent on nutrition from our biological mothers. Our mothers were most probably dependent on our fathers for support or on some job or source of livelihood. And then we are delivered into this wonderful world of bondage, irretrievably so, henceforth.
So early we lose freedom, or rather, we were never really born free, were we?
We all always needed someone to feed us, cure us, bathe us, hold us, and guide us through our first step – to our last. And everything in between, except for those fleeting, stolen moments, smack of the utter lack or absence of independence.
1986 saw the rebirth of democracy in this country when it was paradise for the Third World journalist. God-wannabes were born in radio, television and print out to save the world from all societal ills and every form of injustice. In the exercise of newfound freedom – thawed from having been frozen from where it stood at the height of activism in 1972 – journalistic liberties were misused and abused as each institution tested the limits of its powers under the newly liberated sky. It was a new kind of warfare. Yes, bridges were built but, also, much was burnt and destroyed.
And, as in any war, no one is winner. Another 10 years later, in 1997, I was a student in the US attending talks and lectures on Investigative Journalism. University of Missouri Columbia in Illinois is best known throughout the US for its Journalism curriculum. And set in the country where democracy was born and continues to thrive, there we were listening to a professor on ethics in journalism and how lives are made and unmade with the utterance or publication of a single word – factual or otherwise. We are free but not, never, absolutely.
Journalists often cry foul against any and every form of influence but reality dictates that most, if not all, of the biggest, most powerful and influential newspapers and broadcast networks around the world are owned by people who do require or enjoy protection from pursuit unspoken of – the same media organizations certainly bound by the impositions of commercial appeal, unwittingly influenced by bias. This word "freedom" is the misnomer in that its absolute value does not exist or it somehow needs qualification.
I just happened to mention journalism because this is where I am and where the unending quest for sovereignty is daily fare. But in every area of our lives I suspect there might be that need to come to terms with what exists and what does not, what the ideal is and what the minimum requirement would be, what is attainable and what should be stricken off the menu. It might just determine whether we move forward or get stuck and spell the difference between happiness and misery. Hence St. Francis’ prayer, "grant me the wisdom to know the difference."
They always say the free spirit is the happy person. The spirit might be willing but the flesh just can’t. Aside from external forces we are all also bound by our own desires and self-imposed limitations. Aside from her obligations to the marriage and to her children, the housewife also often tells herself she can’t speak out or do what she wishes. The employee is required by rules of a company and is often convinced by himself or herself that there’s no way of moving out and up. Inside the school the student is trained to "pass your test papers, finished or not finished." Outside school, still, compelled by peer pressure and couldn’t say no. What about the single woman who takes on two jobs and two more projects but can’t seem to be free enough to invest in worthy acquisitions because she "just has to have it" – the 60-thousand-peso GUCCI bag, that is. Even self-determination is often adulterated and infiltrated and we don’t even know it.
Our conscience is mostly all we have to honestly tell us what’s real and what isn’t. It is the same conscience that reminds us that for every action there is a consequence. And with what we think is freedom comes the price of responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. While others suffer we can’t be too frivolous. While others are in need we can’t not give. While others are in pain we can’t inflict more of it. While others can’t eat we cannot be wasteful. While others are unhappy, we can never entirely be happy the way we probably were when, as a child of three or four years, we received our first toy from Santa. The unequivocal happiness manufactured for us by people we depended on.
By the time we are ready to part this world we continue to depend on someone – to hope for a cure when we have no hope left, to get us up and lay us down when we have no more strength to, to promise us our dreams will be realized, our advocacies continued, our wills carried out, and our legacy seen to live on. And then, as what we depended on others to take care of the last of what needs done, at last, freedom... when it ceases to matter.
www.philstar.com/philstar/lifestyle200607239601.htm
CHAMBERS By Korina Sanchez
The Philippine STAR 07/23/2006
".... One of us is chained, none of us are free. Now I swear your salvation isn’t too hard to find, None of us can find it on our own. We’ve got to join together...so that every soul who’s suffering will know they’re not alone..." – Solomon Burke
Watching Braveheart for the nth time on HBO, the word – repeated a hundred times in two hours – reverberates in my head long after the movie... "Freedoooommm!" Masses of people throughout the stories of humankind have killed and died for it. Living legends, heroes, icons and the greatest of men have stood by and fought for it. Nations and continents define themselves by it. Families have disintegrated for the love of it. History’s textures and patterns are carved by the pursuit of it. Freedom has inspired too many of novels and movies and, yet, has always managed to, as a theme, create a blockbuster out of it – the rebel without a cause, the oppressed and suppressed wife longing for a new life, the rise among the ashes of a provincial ugly duckling breaking from the shackles of poverty and, of course, the biographies of Filipino hero Rizal, Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, or Hustler magazine’s Larry Flint.
It begins at the very start of conception – by day 1 of fertilization say pro-life, by after 21 weeks gestation say pro-choice... We are created, maybe by design, possibly by fate but... who asked us? (If I had a choice I’d be born in the 1940s when less people had cancer. Or maybe in 2050 when they would have probably discovered the cure for it.) And then we are immediately dependent on nutrition from our biological mothers. Our mothers were most probably dependent on our fathers for support or on some job or source of livelihood. And then we are delivered into this wonderful world of bondage, irretrievably so, henceforth.
So early we lose freedom, or rather, we were never really born free, were we?
We all always needed someone to feed us, cure us, bathe us, hold us, and guide us through our first step – to our last. And everything in between, except for those fleeting, stolen moments, smack of the utter lack or absence of independence.
1986 saw the rebirth of democracy in this country when it was paradise for the Third World journalist. God-wannabes were born in radio, television and print out to save the world from all societal ills and every form of injustice. In the exercise of newfound freedom – thawed from having been frozen from where it stood at the height of activism in 1972 – journalistic liberties were misused and abused as each institution tested the limits of its powers under the newly liberated sky. It was a new kind of warfare. Yes, bridges were built but, also, much was burnt and destroyed.
And, as in any war, no one is winner. Another 10 years later, in 1997, I was a student in the US attending talks and lectures on Investigative Journalism. University of Missouri Columbia in Illinois is best known throughout the US for its Journalism curriculum. And set in the country where democracy was born and continues to thrive, there we were listening to a professor on ethics in journalism and how lives are made and unmade with the utterance or publication of a single word – factual or otherwise. We are free but not, never, absolutely.
Journalists often cry foul against any and every form of influence but reality dictates that most, if not all, of the biggest, most powerful and influential newspapers and broadcast networks around the world are owned by people who do require or enjoy protection from pursuit unspoken of – the same media organizations certainly bound by the impositions of commercial appeal, unwittingly influenced by bias. This word "freedom" is the misnomer in that its absolute value does not exist or it somehow needs qualification.
I just happened to mention journalism because this is where I am and where the unending quest for sovereignty is daily fare. But in every area of our lives I suspect there might be that need to come to terms with what exists and what does not, what the ideal is and what the minimum requirement would be, what is attainable and what should be stricken off the menu. It might just determine whether we move forward or get stuck and spell the difference between happiness and misery. Hence St. Francis’ prayer, "grant me the wisdom to know the difference."
They always say the free spirit is the happy person. The spirit might be willing but the flesh just can’t. Aside from external forces we are all also bound by our own desires and self-imposed limitations. Aside from her obligations to the marriage and to her children, the housewife also often tells herself she can’t speak out or do what she wishes. The employee is required by rules of a company and is often convinced by himself or herself that there’s no way of moving out and up. Inside the school the student is trained to "pass your test papers, finished or not finished." Outside school, still, compelled by peer pressure and couldn’t say no. What about the single woman who takes on two jobs and two more projects but can’t seem to be free enough to invest in worthy acquisitions because she "just has to have it" – the 60-thousand-peso GUCCI bag, that is. Even self-determination is often adulterated and infiltrated and we don’t even know it.
Our conscience is mostly all we have to honestly tell us what’s real and what isn’t. It is the same conscience that reminds us that for every action there is a consequence. And with what we think is freedom comes the price of responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. While others suffer we can’t be too frivolous. While others are in need we can’t not give. While others are in pain we can’t inflict more of it. While others can’t eat we cannot be wasteful. While others are unhappy, we can never entirely be happy the way we probably were when, as a child of three or four years, we received our first toy from Santa. The unequivocal happiness manufactured for us by people we depended on.
By the time we are ready to part this world we continue to depend on someone – to hope for a cure when we have no hope left, to get us up and lay us down when we have no more strength to, to promise us our dreams will be realized, our advocacies continued, our wills carried out, and our legacy seen to live on. And then, as what we depended on others to take care of the last of what needs done, at last, freedom... when it ceases to matter.
www.philstar.com/philstar/lifestyle200607239601.htm