Our Filipino Christianity and Our God-concept (UPDATED)

"I helped the poor and they called me a saint, I asked why they were poor and they called me a Communist’" – Brazilian Bishop Helder Camara

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that's my RELIGION.” - Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA

"Many Filipinos are what I call Sunday-religious, that is they go to church every Sunday, take in confession and communion, but the rest of the week they bribe and do corrupt deeds..." - Dr. Pura Santillan-Castrence

**********************

Hi All,

I do not consider myself religious in any way - lest someone charge me as riding the high morality horse; here-under  I only want to highlight many, if not most, believers' inconsistency to their professed Christian religion or belief system. 

I address all Christians, though Roman Catholics are the majority, our homeland. Not our Muslims who generally see their religion as a way of life and internalize their beliefs, and therefore not comparable to the "split-level" or compartmentalized Christianity exhibited by native Filipino Christians, i.e. Catholics and/or those of Protestant varieties..

Sometime ago, I attended a wedding ceremony. I normally do not attend such happenings but can not say no this time. During the Mass, I guess it's part of the churchy game plan, the officiating priest talked about what is labeled as the two greatest commandments of God, that is, love of God and of neighbor. 

I will not elaborate on the first love though I believe many so-called/professed Christians concentrate on that. God is supposedly all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, etc. (as I remember my grade school Baltimore Catechism rote); therefore God must be so self-sufficient and thus should not want more love and attention.

My interest is in the second love, the teaching of loving one's neighbor. This exhortation refers to loving in the Good Samaritan-sense, per one of Jesus' parables. This parable teaches and encourages Christians to be helpful or charitable (to total strangers that is, beyond family, relatives, friends). It is on this account that many self-proclaimed Christians, native Filipino Christians, fail.

One sees inconsistency or outright hypocrisy when people, especially those who have "made it," i.e. attained material success or wealth and thus ability to help, claim that they love their God, but at the same time not really care about their neighbors, most importantly, the neighbors in need.

It seems many native Filipino Christians (Catholic, Protestant, Evangelicals/Pentecostals, Fundamentalists, etc. varieties) spend so much time on God trying to buy their "salvation" by saying "Praise the Lord", "Love God", "Jesus is Lord", mouthing special prayers or incantations, etc. Such exercises remind me of the biblical Pharisees and Sadducees.

Our so-called Christians seem to remember their God when they feel the need to directly ask for more favors; or appeal for intercessions by their favorite saints,  praying -for more financial "blessings," to be free of sickness, etc. (such impressions remind me of the Bruce Almighty movie character which made me really have LOL). 

Native Filipino Christians see their God as a sort of granddaddy or Santa Claus and their saints as facilitators (when saints should be seen as role models to be emulated). Essentially Filipino Christianity as escape from reality.

Thus, if our so-called Christians are materially successful or other, they attribute it to their being "blessed," same if they are physically normal, unharmed in an accident, etc. It makes one wonder about those who are sick, harmed in accidents, born physically abnormal, killed/murdered, etc. Are these latter ones, not blessed? And those Africans, young and old, dying of hunger or being massacred; are they not blessed that they therefore suffer or die prematurely? All those victims of natural disasters, i.e, earthquakes, floods, etc.

With these mindsets, those who have become wealthy or have attained upper middle class or higher economic status, seem to profess, knowingly or unknowingly, a sort of "prosperity theology." They think God loves them because they are successful in their material pursuits. 

Those who have "made it" are oftentimes enthusiastic supporters of Globalization or Neoliberalism in the homeland, and often suggest or imply that the poor are poor either because these latter folks do not work hard enough, or are sinners; or at best, deservingly destined to be impoverished and to suffer. I have personally heard this sort of statements from people I know who are either Catholics or "born again.".

Such claims exaggerate and twist the Bible's teaching on blessings by God, affirming and upholding the rich --without analyzing systematically why in our kind of society some are rich and many others are poor. This individualistic and self-centered distortion of beliefs soothes the conscience of the affluent, but poses radical challenges in the articulation of social and economic justice.

Overall, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) hierarchy and its lay leaders in our homeland to date, have failed to properly send the Christian message -- called the "good news."  Remember, the RCC as an institution has historically been identified as a chief defender of the status quo and as part of the Establishment. It has been and is mainly a church of, for the rich and educated elite and left the impoverished to bear it.  While being very influential as a cultural and sociopolitical force, potentially for good or bad. 

However, I qualify that it is not equal to or as powerful as the Catholic hierarchy during our Spanish colonization or vis-a-vis Spanish Catholic Church during "El Caudillo" Generalissimo Franco's 37-year fascistic rule in Spain (whose legacy and memory are still controversial since his demise in 1975; and present-day Spanish dislike of the Catholic Church as an institution, in sharp contrast to its historical prominence.).

The Church teaches its starving faithful that they will inherit the kingdom of God via the "beatitudes". I see that teaching as disgustingly cruel, a perpetuation of the God-concept that is cruel and narcissistic, of creating and expecting humans to spend their time praising God and asking for salvation while they suffer in their existence.

I do not think the present church leaders and ministers conspire to mislead the poor. But it appears these men-of-God learned erroneously or inadequately themselves and therefore taught badly throughout the centuries.

It is only after Vatican II in the 1960s (and thanks to then Pope John XXIII a saintly priest with an authentic, simple peasant background) that some in the hierarchy became concerned about social realities, especially the predicament of the poor and tried to impart social consciousness for the ignorant masses and social action, e.g. through Basic Christian Communities in the Philippines and even more radically, Liberation Theology as widely preached and practiced in Latin America in the late 1960s-1980s. 

Unfortunately the long reign of Pope John Paul II and now succeeded by his former "dogma-hit-man" (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) Pope Benedict XVI,  turned back all these enlightened beliefs or interpretations of Christianity and the gains of Vatican II. 

Thus, the Roman Catholic Church in general and the hierarchy in our homeland is back to being for the status quo, more a church for the rich despite its lip-service of being the church of the poor.

If one is to believe that man was created in the image of the christian God, then that God in the preceding must be discarded since it is a cruel and distant God -inasmuch as many of his supposed creatures are left to suffer. 

It is therefore the urgent and primary task of the Catholic Church in the Philippines to emphasize and demonstrate the "love of neighbor," of the neighbor in need; to teach more fully this critical or major part of Christian teachings.

It behooves the RCC hierarchy to stress the need for internalizing this teaching so that each native Filipino Christian, and especially those who have power to change or influence the direction of the homeland will actively lead with honest, utmost social concern and moral ethics in their governance and business dealings, but most especially towards the poor native majority.

The world is not just a stage on which man works out the eternal salvation of his "soul." Forget the emphasis on loving God with incantations and formulas or staying within the confines of otherworldly or afterlife concerns, or spending most time protecting the church as an institution. 

Instead the Catholic Church in the Philippines and its members should be responsible and put emphasis on loving one's neighbors, that is, by seeking and fighting for social justice, by informing themselves and teaching the ignorant mass about their rights for a just society.

For no social system is just if it deprives its people of those earthly goods which are necessary for a truly human existence, whether the system is market-driven capitalism or socialism or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-what-have-you communism. It is by teaching/informing. striving and acting for a just society can believers demonstrate their love of their christian God.

Oftentimes in the history of man, cults or movements led by great men with their great teachings/ideas are revolutionary. But as they proliferate and become a major part of society, of the Establishment, those movements become reactionary and pillars of the status quo, if not moribund. That is how Christianity since the 4th century started to gradually change, that is, when Constantine made it the official religion.. 

To me, much of the authentic Christian followers were from that long past earlier era.

- Bert

**********************************************************

NOTES:

1. Colored and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posts/articles. Forwarding this and other posts to relatives and friends, especially those in the homeland, is greatly appreciated). To share, use all social media tools: email, blog, Google+, Tumblr,Twitter,Facebook, etc. THANKS!!
2. Read on Scribd mobile apps: iPhone, iPad and Android.
3. Free download as PDF, TXT or read online for free from Scribd, point-click to open-->SCRIBD/TheFilipinoMind

4. Click the following underlined title/link to checkout these Essential/Primary Readings About Us Filipino Natives:
   Primary Blog Posts/Readings for my fellow, Native (Malay/Indio) Filipinos-in-the-Philippines

***********************************************************

PLEASE DONATE CORE SUBJECT BOOKS TO OUR HOMELAND (i.e. your hometown public schools, Alma Mater, etc.). Those books that you and/or your children do not need or want; or buy books from your local library during its cheap Book Sales. Also, cargo/door-to-door shipment is best.  It is a small sacrifice.  [clean up your closets or garage - donate books.THANKS!]

***********************************************************

" Fear history, for it respects no secrets" - Gregoria de Jesus (widow of Andres Bonifacio)

THE TRIUMPH OF IGNORANCE

"What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler

***********************************************************

PLEASE DONATE CORE SUBJECT BOOKS TO OUR HOMELAND (i.e. your hometown public schools, Alma Mater, etc.). Those books that you and/or your children do not need or want; or buy books from your local library during its cheap Book Sales. Also, cargo/door-to-door shipment is best.  It is a small sacrifice.  [clean up your closets or garage - donate books.THANKS!]

***********************************************************

" Fear history, for it respects no secrets" - Gregoria de Jesus (widow of Andres Bonifacio)

The following previous posts and the RECTO READER are essential about us native, Malay Filipinos and are therefore always presented in each new post. Click each to open/read.

1. WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW:
2. WHAT IS NATIONALISM [Filipino Nationalism]?
3. Our Colonial Mentality and Its Roots 
4. The Miseducation of the Filipino (Formation of our Americanized Mind)
5. Jose Rizal - Reformist or Revolutionary?
6. The Purpose of Our Past, Why Study (Our) History?
7. Studying and Rethinking Our Philippine History
8. Globalization (Neoliberalism) – The Road to Perdition in Our Homeland
9. Resisting Globalization (WTO Agreements)
10. Virtues of De-Globalization
11. Our Filipino Kind of Religion
12. Our Filipino Christianity and Our God-concept
13. When Our Religion Becomes Evil

THE RECTO READER is presented in several postings. Click each to open/read:

• THE RECTO READER: Nationalism,Internationalism,Ultra-Nationalism, Part 1A of 6
• THE RECTO READER: Mission of Nationalism, Part 1B of 6
• THE RECTO READER: Economic Independence,Economic Nationalism,Part 2A of 6
• THE RECTO READER: Economic Nationalism Means Industrialization,Part 2B of 6
• THE RECTO READER: Industrialization: The Alternative to Poverty, Part 2C of 6
• THE RECTO READER: The Fallacy of "Philippines First," Part 2D of 6
• THE RECTO READER: Parity Rights, Currency Dependence, Foreign Loans versus Foreign Investments, Part 2E of 6

NOTE: Recto's cited cases, examples or issues were of his time, of course; but realities in our homeland in the present and the foreseeable future are/expectedly much, much worse. Though I am tempted to update them with current issues, it's best to leave them as they are since Recto's paradigms about our much deepened national predicament still ring relevant, valid and true. In short, Recto saw the forest and never got lost in the trees.- Bert

Hi All,


It was about 20 years ago, while at our Bechtel office in London that my project manager asked how come we had chosen a stupid President. He was referring to Ronald Reagan. His query was a welcome surprise to me since I have learned to hate Reagan, whose Reaganomics demolished most of our federally-supported synfuels mega-projects that caused me to experience, for the first time, being laid-off.

It was Reagan who began the destruction of labor unions, the dismantling of federal regulations in business and industries, etc. At the same time/period, he encouraged the flaunting of wealth and privilege (starting with historically the most lavish American presidential inauguration that made the true and respectable conservative Barry Goldwater comment: " When you gotta pay $2000 for a limousine for 4 days, $7 to park, and $2.50 to check your coat at a time when most people in this country just can't hack it, that's ostentatious.") It was Reagan, who publicly lied that he did not trade arms with the Iranians for hostages, plus other lies and "I do not recall" excuses.

Fast forward to late last year, a Belgian I met in Valencia, Spain expressed disgust about George Bush Jr.; the latter's stupidity, connections with the religious fundamentalists and neoconservatives, his lies presented to rationalize American invasion and occupation of Iraq, etc., ad nauseam.

The lying by Reagan then, by George Bush Jr now.

[And of course, we Filipinos do not have to wonder about all these political shenanigans, to describe them lightly, in the deteriorated quality of American politics. As we Filipinos constantly witness them in our homeland politics where we all watch and sadly, just be indifferent and/or make jokes about them. And thus, thanks especially to us so-called educated and selfish cowards, we deserve what we got, i.e. Marcos-Aquino-Ramos-Estrada-Arroyo; as Americans as well deserve what they got in the last eight years. But Americans may have a better chance and luck for changes they need today with Barack Obama and his team.]

Below article by George Monbiot briefly addresses this issue of ignorance among the current breed of the American electorate; its ignorance primarily due to: illiteracy, religious fundamentalism, corporate media (TV primarily) and the failure of American school system to instill critical thinking.

- Bert


***********************************

The Triumph Of Ignorance
By George Monbiot
29 October, 2008
Monbiot.com


How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numb-skulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?(1)

Like most people on this side of the Atlantic I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The US has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived; but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan’s response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. 

Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said “there you go again”(2). His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he (Reagan) had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

It wasn’t always like this. The founding fathers of the republic - men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton - were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W Bush and Sarah Palin?

On one level this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves around the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15 year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD(3).

But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so dumb, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby’s book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for example, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin’s theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as Social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. 

Spencer’s doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people from being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary(4).

Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable to the public from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. “In the South”, Jacoby writes, “what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order.”(5)

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest Protestant denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the South stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. 

A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state’s public school biology teachers believed that humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time (6).

This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishisation of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln’s career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary: all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. 

This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment it is a recipe for confusion.

Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason why intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly rage against the “liberal elites” destroying America.

The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite - like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush - has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the right-wing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.

Obama has a good deal to offer America, but none of this will come to an end if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.


References:

1. For a staggering display of ignorance and bigotry, see: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lPg0VCg4AEQ

2. You can see this exchange at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=
px7aRIhUkHY&feature=related

3. All these facts are contained in Susan Jacoby, 2008. The Age of American Unreason: dumbing down and the future of democracy. Old Street Publishing, London.

4. Susan Jacoby, ibid. Chapter 3.

5. Susan Jacoby, ibid. Page 57.

6. Susan Jacoby, ibid. Page 25.



Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/monbiot291008.htm



‘I helped the poor and they called me a saint, I asked why they were poor and they called me a Communist’ – Brazilian Bishop Helder Camara

NOTES ABOUT THIS WEBLOG:

1. THE FILIPINO MIND blog contains 532 published postings you can view, as of December 12, 2012. 
2. The postings are oftentimes long and a few readers have claimed being "burnt out."  My apologies. The selected topics are not for entertainment but to stimulate deep, serious thoughts per my MISSION Statement and hopefully to rock our boat of  ignorance, apathy, complacency and hopefully lead to active citizenship.
3. All comments are welcomed for posting at the bottom window. Comments sent by email will also be posted verbatim. However, ANONYMOUS COMMENTS WILL BE IGNORED.
4. Visit my other website, click --> SCRIBD/TheFilipinoMind, or the SCRIB FEED at the sidebar, or type it on GOOGLE Search to read or download ebooks and PDFs of essays I have uploaded.  Statistics for my associated website:SCRIBD/theFilipinoMind : ALL FREE AND DOWNLOADABLE: 123 documents, 207,458 reads
5. Some postings and other relevant events are now featured in Google+, BMD_Facebook, BMD_Twitter and BMD_Google Buzz and Google+.
6. Translate to your own language. Go to the sidebar and Click on GOOGLE TRANSLATOR (56 languages - copy and paste sentences, paragraphs and whole articles, Google translates a whole posting in seconds, including to Filipino!!).
7. Forwarding the posts to relatives and friends, ESPECIALLY in the homeland, is greatly appreciated. Use emails, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc. THANK YOU !!!
8. Songs on Filipino nationalism: please reflect on the lyrics (messages) as well as the beautiful renditions. Other Filipino Music links at blog sidebar.  Click each to play.:

• BAYAN KO by Freddie Aguilar 
• ”Bayan Ko” by KUH LEDESMA 
• ”Bayan Ko” by a Korean choir 
• ”Sa Kuko ng Agila” by Freddie Aguilar 
• ”Huwad na Kalayaan” by Freddie Aguilar

Use of Religion in Desperate Times (Updated)

"Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ~Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

***********************************************************

PLEASE DONATE CORE SUBJECT BOOKS TO OUR HOMELAND (i.e. your hometown public schools, Alma Mater, etc.). Those books that you and/or your children do not need or want; or buy books from your local library during its cheap Book Sales. Also, cargo/door-to-door shipment is best.  It is a small sacrifice.  [clean up your closets or garage - donate books.THANKS!]

***********************************************************

"I helped the poor and they called me a saint, I asked why they were poor and they called me a Communist’" – Brazilian Bishop Helder Camara (1909-1999)

NOTES:

1. Colored and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posts/articles. Forwarding this and other posts to relatives and friends, especially those in the homeland, is greatly appreciated). To share, use all social media tools: email, blog, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. THANKS!!
2. Read on Scribd mobile apps: iPhone, iPad and Android.
3. Free download as PDF, TXT or read online for free from Scribd, point-click to open-->SCRIBD/TheFilipinoMind

4. Click the following underlined title/link to checkout these Essential/Primary Readings About Us Filipino Natives:
   Primary Blog Posts/Readings for my fellow, Native (Malay/Indio) Filipinos-in-the-Philippines

REVISED/UPDATED 10/17/2019


Hi All,

We realize the growing alienation, i.e. increased feelings of indifference, helplessness and deep despair among fellow native Filipinos when people turn solely to religion or praying as the only way to the betterment of the Filipinos in the Philippines.

This act of withdrawal gives validity to what Karl Marx has stated a century and a half ago, his famous description of religion as–though incompletely quoted and understood- “the opium of the people”.

Karl Marx’s complete statement is: “Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.” (Italics in original text.)

If one reads Marx as such completely, we see that Marx meant that religion creates illusory fantasies for the poor. Economic realities prevent them from finding true happiness in this life, so religion tells them that this is OK because they will find true happiness in the next life. Marx agrees that people are in distress and that religion offers solace. [Just as physically injured people receive relief from opiate-based drugs, i.e. codeine or morphine.]

Marx’s statement is a critique of a society that has become heartless. For him, the problem lies in the obvious fact that an opiate drug fails to fix a painful injury – it merely helps you forget your pain and suffering] which is fine to a point, but only as long as you are also actively trying to solve the underlying problems causing the pain in the first place.

In a similar way, religion does not fix the underlying causes of people’s pain and suffering- instead religion only helps the alienated forget or not want to understand and/or act on why they are suffering; and instead gets them to look forward to an imaginary future when the pain will supposedly cease rather than working to change circumstances now.

Given the Filipino predicament and in the absence of other dominant or significant factors/forces, aside from religion, i.e. Christianity(Catholic}, for fundamental changes; the task for pursuing such changes should fall on the Catholic Church, its hierarchy and followers; to lead, make a greater effort ; make time to promote and put into action its social teachings:
1) seeking justice for the weak and poor [Pope Leo XIII -1891];
2) creating greater awareness and pursuit of the common good of society [Pope John XXIII -1963]; and
3) participating in social and political reform for their liberation from the structural roots of injustice [Pope Paul VI –1971], etc.

The immediate tasks of clerics and leaders of the Catholic Church in our homeland:
1) stop treating its followers as children,
2) stop preaching that being miserable, impoverished and oppressed in this world are good for their souls and that they will be rewarded in the hereafter. 

Their mission to themselves and their educated followers:
1) gain knowledge and understanding of the causes, not just the symptoms, of the Filipino predicament; and
2) share with their impoverished fellow citizens this acquired knowledge and understanding. The churchmen do not have to run for public office to accomplish such.

Note that this social goal for the common good is in contrast to many members of mainline Protestants, and especially religious fundamentalists (Pentecostals or Evangelicals) whose sole concern is their individual salvation [not correcting society’s ills]. 

We should not be surprised as this position is consistent with the foundational Protestant doctrine, i.e. Sola Fide, invented by reformer Martin Luther that led to the Protestant Reformation  According to this doctrine, one is not saved by his good deeds but by faith alone. If carried over to our national predicament as such, I call this attitude and behavior of indifference towards the struggle for social justice as "selfish individualism."

However, that is another story.

- Bert


Click to see also --> Our Filipino Christianity and God-concept 

"We receive and we give not to others. We praise generosity, but we deprive the poor of it. We are freed slaves, but we do not pity our companions who remain under the yoke. We were hungry, and now have a surfeit of possessions, but we ignore the needy. While we have God as a magnificent patron and provider, we have been stingy towards the poor and refuse to share the goods with them. Our sheep are fruitful, but more numerous are the people who go naked. Our barns are too small to contain all that we possess and yet we do not pity those who anguish." - St. Basil

Ignorance, Apathy, Social Justice/Morality, and the Nationalist Revolution (Updated)

"Those who profess to favor freedom
and yet deprecate agitation
are men who want crops without plowing up the ground;
they want rain without thunder and
lightning.
They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one
or it may be a physical one
or it may be both moral and physical
but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a
demand
It never did, and never will."- - Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist, Author, Slave (1817-1895)
[from Fr. Pedro V. Salgado, O.P.,The Philippine Economy: History and Analysis, 1985]


WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: (Note: Bold and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked postings/articles. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated. To write or read a comment, please go to the bottom of the post and click on "Comments.").

We are poor and in ever-worsening predicament because the majority of native Filipinos are functionally illiterate and most are ignorant.

Majority of native Filipinos are apathetic about socio-economic problems because they are not informed; and lack of information (ignorance) reinforces apathy.

People can be aroused to action with a well-formulated presentation of the problems that evoke their sympathy. Thus we Filipinos need first to eliminate our illiteracy and ignorance, to educate ourselves so as to gain knowledge of the fundamental causes and remedies for social problems, including the economics, politics, and ethics of the problems and solutions. Then when we educate others, we must at the same time invoke their antipathy to the problems and arouse their sympathy with the remedies.

When the impoverished majority, that is the "masa," are roused with sympathy and armed with knowledge of the remedy, the greedy in government, business and military who benefits from ignorance will either be swayed themselves to join the righteous battle, or be overwhelmed by the greater force of the righteous revolution.

It is and will not be an easy task. There are internal and external forces constantly at work to keep the majority ignorant. The internal forces (native Filipinos with economic and political powers) and external forces (foreign businessmen and TNCs). They all remind us of the Spaniards who kept us (indios) uneducated, or the white Americans who kept the Negroes/Blacks illiterate for slavery.

In a previous post, I wrote about the subtle changes that neocolonialism/neoimperialism imposes on our private and state universities (our foreign loans are predicated on following its conditions):

".....As to the present goals of the educational system: during the Dictatorship, Marcos followed the dictates and plans of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank/Asian Development Bank (IMF/WB/ADB) as to the direction of our Public School System (PSS) and educational system as a whole; that is, to provide cheap and trained labor to multinational/transnational companies."

This was confirmed to me by a Spanish friend whom I visited last December in Madrid; he mentioned about Marcos inviting and speaking to them about such a direction for Philippine schools (my friend was a former priest and principal at a Catholic school).

Stressing only technical vocations, though practical since they put food on the table, will only lead to the "dumbing" of the new generations of Filipino minds, to keep the majority ignorant; unable to comprehend the root causes of their predicament (note that nowadays, the American mind has closed and its youth is getting dumb) which in turn will lead to perpetuation of the injustices in the socio-economic and political status-quo.

Thus, the primary imperative is to educate the "masa," in terms of understanding "what's going on;" thereafter we can change what has been keeping us down; preferably peacefully; if not, by radical means, i.e. a revolution that is neither communist nor anticommunist, but a nationalist revolution.

Below article is a brief by our famous writer F. Sionil Jose on the "who, why, what" of a real revolution, necessarily nationalistic, for the common good.

(see also: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2006/01/education-deterioration-of-public.html

http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/06/ang-sistema-ng-edukasyon-sa-pilipinas.html

http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/08/meaning-of-illiteracy-paul-harrison-is.html

http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/third-worlddefinitions-and.html,

http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/education-and-social-change-rev.html,

http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/11/education-for-independent-thought.html,

http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/12/dumbing-down-audience-by-ralph-nader.html )

“Nations, whose NATIONALISM is destroyed, are subject to ruin.” - Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi, 1942-, Libyan Political and Military Leader

“The true Filipino is a decolonized Filipino.” – Renato Constantino

"Upang maitindig natin ang bantayog ng ating lipunan, kailangang radikal nating baguhin hindi lamang ang ating mga institusyon kundi maging ang ating pag-iisip at pamumuhay. Kailangan ang rebolusyon, hindi lamang sa panlabas, kundi lalo na sa panloob!" --Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina (1898)

***************************************
Revolution and the University of the Philippines
by F. Sionil Jose

What is an old man like myself doing here, talking about revolution? Hindsight is the lowest form of wisdom. I can tell you what it was like when your campus was nothing but cogon waste, when all those trees that line your streets were just saplings.

I can tell you, also, why we were left behind by all our neighbors when in the fifties and the sixties we were the richest, most progressive country in the region, when Seoul, Tokyo, were ravaged by war and Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta were mere kampongs, when Bangkok was a sleepy town criss-crossed by canals.

I never was in China till 1979, but I know in the forties that country was always threatened by famine. It had a population then of only half a billion. Now, with more than a billion people, famine is no longer a threat, although hunger still lurks in some of its distant regions.

Hunger has always been with some of us, too, but not as much as it is now when so many poor Filipinos eat only once a day. Altanghap, I wonder how many of you know what that word means.

So then, why are we poor? Why do our women flee to foreign cities to work as housemaids, as prostitutes?

We are poor because we have lost our ethical moorings, this in spite of those massive religious rallies of EI Shaddai, those neo-gothic churches of the Iglesia ni Kristo sprouting all over the country, in spite of the nearly 400 years of Catholic evangelization.

How can we build an ethical society? We must remember that so-called values are neutral--that so much depends on how people use them. James Fallows' thesis on our "damaged culture" which many of us understand is neither permanent nor inherent.

Ramon Magsaysay infused public life in the fifties with discipline and morality, Arsenio Lacson as mayor of Manila cleaned up City Hall. Even today, shining examples of honesty among our public officials exist, but they are few and far between and they are not institutionalized.

And it is precisely here where the university comes in with its courses in the humanities. Of all the arts, only literature teaches us ethics. Literature presents us with problems, complex equations that deal with the human spirit and how often the choice between right and wrong is made. In this process, we are compelled to use our conscience, to validate the choice we make, and render the meaning, the pith of our existence.

The university then is the real cathedral of a nation, and its humanities particularly its literature department, the altar. But how many of our teachers know this crucial function of literature, how many teachers themselves possess this sense of worth, and mission?

To know ourselves, to make good and proper use of our consciences, we must know our own history. So few of us do, in fact, we nurture no sense of the past. If our teachers know our history, if they soak it in their bones, then it follows that they also impart this very same marrow to their students.

If this is so, how come that when Bongbong Marcos visited UP Diliman some time ago, he was mobbed by students who wanted his autograph? How come that in La Salle, business students cited Marcos as the best President this country ever had?

Not too long ago, I spoke before freshmen at the Ateneo and was told that since so many practice bribery, it must be right, or how could anyone get things done if palms are not greased? In this university are professors who served Marcos. Have they ever been asked what their role was?

We are poor because we are not moral. Can this immorality as evidenced by widespread corruption be quantified? Yes, about 23 billion pesos a year is lost according to NGO estimates.

We are poor because we have no sense of history, and therefore, no sense of nation. The nationalism that was preached to my generation by Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo Tañada was phony; how they could have convinced so many intellectuals is in itself the failure of those intellectuals to analyze that inward, socially meaningless nationalism.

Recto and Tañada opposed agrarian reform, the single most important political act that could have lifted this country then from poverty and released the peasantry from its centuries-old bondage.

We are poor because our elites from way back had no sense of nation--they collaborated with whoever ruled--the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Americans and in recent times, Marcos. Our elites imbibed the values of the colonizer.

And worst of all, these wealthy Filipinos did not modernize this country--they sent abroad their wealth distilled from the blood and sweat of our poor. The rich Chinese to China, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, the rich mestizos to Europe, and the rich Indios like Marcos to Switzerland and the United States--moneys that could have developed this nation.

How do we end this shameless domestic colonialism? The ballot failed; the bullet then? How else but through the cleansing power of revolution. Make no mistake about it--revolution means the transfer of power from the decadent upper classes to the lower classes. Revolution is class war whose objective is justice and freedom.

Who will form the vanguard of change? Who else but the very people who will benefit from it. Listen, when I was researching for my novel POON at the New York Public Library, I came across photographs of our soldiers of the 1896 revolution felled in their trenches by American guns. I looked closely and found that most of them were barefoot. They were peasants.

The peasant is the truest nationalist. He works the land with his hands, he knows instinctively what the term Motherland means. He loves this earth, even worships it. The Ilocano farmer calls it Apo Daga.

But never romanticize the poor. Once, a group of Ph.D.s lamented the futility of their efforts in organizing and motivating them. When the elections came that year, the poor sold their votes, or voted for Erap.

Understand why they are often lazy, contemptible, fawning, cheating and stealing. Imagine yourself not having a centavo in your pocket now, and you don't know if you will eat tonight. There is nothing honorable about poverty--it is totally dehumanizing and degrading. But once the very poor are roused from their stupor, they become the bravest, the most steadfast. Remember those Watawat ng Lahi followers felled by Constabulary guns on Taft Avenue in 1965? They believed that with their faith they were invincible.

It is with such faith and righteousness that our peasants rebelled in living memory, the Colorums in 1931, the Sakdals in 1935, and the Huks in 1949-53.The Moro rebellion, the New People's Army--the cadres of both are from our very poor, just like it was in 1896. And now, here is the most tragic contradiction in our country.

Our Armed Forces--its officers corps--many come from the lower classes, too; they got to their exalted positions through public examinations and entry to the Philippine Military Academy. Our Armed Forces enlisted men--most of them come from the very poor. When the poor kill the poor, who profits?

The Ideology of the Revolution
Revolution starts in the mind and heart. It alters attitudes to enable us to think beyond ourselves, family and ethnicity to encompass the whole nation. If the communists win and I don't think they ever will, they will rule just as badly because they are Filipinos unable to go beyond barnacled habits of mind, hostage as they always are to friends and family and to towering egos. The same egos aborted the revolution in 1896, the EDSA revolution in 1986, and now, we see the same egos wrecking havoc on the Communist Party. We see these egos eroding our already rotten political system.

The core belief that should guide us in redeeming our unhappy country is in our history, in our peasantry. It is not in textbooks, in foreign intellectual idols, in Marx. And what is this ideology which Bonifacio believed in? Which those barefoot soldiers killed by the Americans believed in? Pedro Calosa, the peasant leader who led the Colorum uprising in Tayug, Pangasinan in 1931 said it is this: "God resides in every man. God created earth, water and air for all men. It is against God's laws for one family or one group to own them."

God and country; translate this belief into your own words and there you have it in its simplest terms the creed with which the unfulfilled revolution of 1896 was based, and which should be the same creed that should forge unity among us.

Who will lead the revolution?
Certainly, not the masa, but one from the masa who understands them, who will not betray them, the way our leaders betrayed the masa. Estrada is the most shameful example of that leadership that betrayed.The leaders of the revolution could be in this university, who have the education, but who are not shackled by alien concepts, or the attitudes of superiority that destroy leadership. Such leaders, like Ho Chi Minh, must lead by sterling example, with integrity, courage, compassion and willingness to sacrifice, who know that when the revolution is won, it is time to change from conspirators to even better administrators, remembering that they have become conservative, that they must now work even harder to produce better and cheaper products.

And this massive work of modernization can be achieved in one generation. The Koreans, Taiwanese and the Japanese did it. It is not the Confucian ethic that enabled them to do this, they understood simply the logic of government which is service and that of commerce which is profit.

By what right do I have to urge revolution upon our people who will suffer it? What right do I have to urge the young to sacrifice, the poor to get even poorer, if they embrace the revolutionary creed? I have no such right, nor will I call it such. I call it duty, duty, duty. Duty for all of us rooted in our soil, who believe that our destiny is freedom.

Not everyone can bear arms, or have the physical strength to stand up, to shout loudly about the injustices that prevail around us. Those who cannot do these, who cannot be part of this radical movement, must not help those who enslave us. Do not give them legitimacy as so many gave legitimacy to Marcos. Recognize, identify our enemies and oppose them with all your means. This will then test integrity, commitment.

Nobody need tell us the exorbitant cost of revolution, the lives that will be lost, senselessly even as when Pol Pot massacred thousands of his own countrymen in Cambodia. We who lived through the Japanese Occupation know what hunger, fear, and flight mean.

Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus and Jose Rizal--writers I admire deeply, all warned against revolution because it breeds tyrants, because it does not always bring change. But look around us, at the thousands of Filipinos who are debased and hungry, who are denied justice. Be shamed if you don't act.

And as Salud Algabre, the Sakdal general said in 1935-- "No rebellion fails. Each is a step in the right direction." Revolution need not even have to be bloody. How many lives were lost at EDSA I? Not even 20. So Cory goes around telling the world that she had restored democracy in the Philippines.

Sure enough, we now have free elections, free speech, free assembly but these are the empty shells of democratic institutions because the real essence of democracy does not exist here. And that real essence is in the stomach--as when the taxi driver in Tokyo eats the same sashimi as the Japanese emperor, or the bus driver in Washington who can eat the same steak as President Bush in the White House. Contrast these with that jobless Cavite laborer whose two children died because he fed them with garbage.

No, Cory Aquino's EDSA revolution could not even have our garbage properly collected. Worse, nineteen farmer demonstrators were killed near Malacanan because she refused to see them. True to her oligarchic class, she declared a revolutionary government without doing anything revolutionary; instead, she turned EDSA I into a restoration of the old oligarchy. So today, we are reaping the results of her negligence, ignorance and folly.

Yet, even capitalism can be very helpful. South Korea is a very good example of how capital was formed by corruption, and how a single-minded general lifted that nation from the ashes of the Korean War, into the thriving modem economy which Korea is today.

Remember the slogans of American capitalism--a chicken in every pot, a Ford in every garage. Money is like fertilizer--to do any good it must be spread around. Those robber barons at the turn of the 19th century were rapacious, they exploited their workers, but they built industries, railroads, banks, the sinews of American capitalism.

And the most important thing--they kept their money home to develop America. Unlike our rich Chinese, our rich mestizos and the likes of Marcos who sent their money abroad to keep us poor. They are the enemy.

It has been said again and again that we are, indeed, a young nation compared with other Asian countries whose august civilizations date back to two thousand years or more. Indeed, so are the Filipinos who shaped this nation--those who led the revolution against Spain--they were all young, like you are, in their twenties or early thirties. Rizal was 34 when he was martyred.

How then do we keep young without having to grow old only to see the fire in our minds and hearts die? How does the nation's leading university maintain its vitality, its youth against the ravages of consumerism, of globalism?

How else but to keep the mind ever healthy, ever alive by empowering it with those ideas that nurture change and revolution itself, by ingesting the technological age so that we can use technology for realizing our ideals. How else but to embrace the ideas that make us doubt technology, society, even revolution itself, but never, never about who we are, what we should do and hope to be.

We cannot be beholden to any other nation. Jose Maria Sison doomed his revolution when he turned to China for assistance; he ignored the "objective reality"--the latent anti-Chinese feeling among Filipinos, in fact among all Southeast Asians who fear a Chinese hegemony. We must mould our own destiny, infusing it with the strength of a sovereign people. The Americans, the English, French, Russians, Cubans, Chinese, Vietnamese--all achieved their unique revolutions. We must have our very own, defined only by us.

How to build it, direct it, use it for the betterment of our lives, the flowering of liberty--I see all these as the major function of the university which, after all, shapes our leaders. I pray that UP will graduate the best doctors, the best engineers, the best teachers, the best bureaucrats. The revolution needs them all. But most of all, let this university of the people produce the ultimate modernizer, the heroic nationalist revolutionary--we need him most of all.



Source: http://www.up.edu.ph/fsioniljose_lecture.htm









“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." . – Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Lecturer, Author and Slave, 1817-1895)





Neocolonialism - The dominance of strong nations over weak nations, not by direct political control (as in traditional colonialism), but by economic and cultural influence.





"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain" - Thomas Jefferson, 1809





posted by Bert M. Drona @ 11:28 PM 9 comments links to this post

9 Comments:
At 12:56 AM, Anonymous said...
I agree that the masses should be educated. Churches and schools are agencies that can help but the leaders of these organizations are also ignorant. Listen to their sermons - they do not teach people to look at facts, to think and how to make dicisions in terms of the general good of the community and the country.- DrPaz
At 1:01 AM, Bert M. Drona said...
Thanks for your response. Yes, when one steps back and think, educating the masses is crucial. Else, no fundamental changes can happen. The "masa" will be simple pawns and duped as in the past,present,in the near future. You also are mainly correct in inferring that the is ignorant. The church is essentially part of the establishment; as a former seminarian and catholic, I am to put it very mildly, disappointed with it.
At 1:04 AM, Anonymous said...
Hi Bert!We are poor because this People's Power government believed in the lie propounded by the free trade economist that all poor nations will be eliminated if only all economies practice free trade. This is a blatant lie propounded by professional economist who is more interested in propaganda rather than truth.When NAFTA was implemented in Mexico, the average growth rate of Mexico fell from 5.9 per cent to 3.9 per cent, and yet free trade economist refuse to recognize these facts and keep on insisting that poverty will be eliminated in the planet if free trade is practised everywhere -- inspite of all the evidence to the contrary.Because our People's Power government economic planners believed in this obvious lies of the free trade economist, the People's Power government has failed to take off our country inspite of their promise that they will do better than President Marcos if allowed to run the country. Because of the institution of free trade in the country, our average growth rate has fell to one half that was achieved by Marcos and all his predecessors.Inspite of these facts, the Liberal Party in its official website has called for the continuation of free trade in the country and made free trade as the principal economic platform of that party.Free trade was the principal economic policy of the American colonial administration. When the United States acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the Americans instituted a policy of free trade on all its newly acquired economies. Because free trade was keeping the Philippines as an agricultural economy, nationalist like Manuel L. Quezon and Sergio Osmena demanded independence from the United States. It was the election of Manuel L. Quezon as President of our Commonwealth that finally put an end to the policy of free trade imposed by the Americans on the Philippine economy.One of the principal reasons why the Nationalista Party was able to easily obtain the passage of the Tydings-Mcduffie Law which granted independence to the Philippines was because the American labor backed the independence move of the Philippine government. The American labor unions is opposed to any free trade in the United States between its colonies or any other independent nation.When the commonwealth administration of Pres. Quezon put an end to the colonial policy of free trade of the Americans, we saw the emergence of Philippine industrialization. However, because of the devastation in the Philippines caused by World War II, the Americans again imposed free trade as a condition for the American assistance in the reconstruction of the Philippines. This free trade was embodied in the Bell Treaty.This Bell Treaty again did not improve the Philippine economy but only fanned the hatred of Philippine political leaders against the Americans. The Bell Treaty was denounced by leading luminaries in both the Liberal and Nationalista Parties.Inspite of all these facts, the Liberal Party and the People's Power government believed all the lies that was propounded by the free trade economists. Neither did the lessons of Philippine history nor the warnings of economists who saw through the lies of the free trade economists could convince the economists of the People's Power government that free trade will stultify the economic development of our country. They kept insisting on believing the lies of the free trade economists that free trade is the solution of the poverty of the planet -- inspite of all the evidence to the contrary.Very truly yours,RAMON A. DEL GALLEGO
At 1:24 AM, Bert M. Drona said...
Ramon,I agree with you. Absolute free trade, which the WTO/economic globalization is all about, is disastrous for our poor country. Free trade is great only for the rich nations. WTO rules are made by the rich nations to be followed by the poor nations; and in reality, not necessarily by the former.Free trade/WTO is one of the fundamental aspects in our political economy that needs to be dismantled. The mixed economy that we had before martial law was workable and could be improved on. But essential too is a change in our way of thinking and behaving, a need for a "cultural revolution;" especially towards nationalism within our homeland, our territorial boundaries. It is only when we have attained national unity can we be able to stand on our own and be able to deal other nations with confidence and strength; and be treated fairly and with respect. Without nationalism, we will be where we are now and going nowhere up but continually spiralling down, i.e. increasing impoverishment for the expanding majority (declining native middle class). That is why the ruling elite, i.e. the native and local politicians/technocrats/businessmen/military and their foreign partners and TNCs want to keep the "masa" ignorant. Knowledge is power. To maintain slaves and slavery, our majority have to be kept ignorant of what's really going on.
At 6:49 AM, Anonymous said...
"The mixed economy that we had before martial law was workable and could be improved on. But essential too is a change in our way of thinking and behaving, a need for a "cultural revolution;" especially towards nationalism within our homeland, our territorial boundaries."This is precisely the reason why I am encouraging you to keep on writing your ideas. Nobody will help the Philippines except Filipinos. We cannot rely on the Americans, the Japanese or any other foriegners to help us. We Filipinos have to learn to help ourselves because no foreigner will do that for us. We will obtain happiness or misery because we Filipinos have collectively chosen happiness or misery as our goal.In the ultimate analysis, only Filipinos are to be blamed for anything that is happening in our country because we have allowed it in the first place.- Ramon
At 6:57 AM, Anonymous said...
Because I failed to see in your blog little bio on Luis Taruc, I am forwarding what I wrote on the day I learned about his death.A REQUIEM TO SUPREMO KA LUIS TARUCThe peasant farmer depends on the fruit of his labor to the land he toils to support a family. But even when fertile fields become fertile grounds for discontent, there is incongruity between the basic needs he yearns and the impossible demands from the landlord. Pity the poor abused sharecroppers for they shall inherit bloody agrarian revolution.One man understood the plight of hapless farmers. He witnessed the abuses of absent landlords and incensed on the inept and often biased government army soldiers who were supposed to protect them. He saw the birth and demise of the Sakdalista movement and its peasant origin. He also witnessed the litany of abuses temporarily halted during the Japanese occupation but not the occupiers’ brutal treatment to the citizens deserted by MacArthur. That man’s vision started an effective answer to oppressive regimes of what we now know and what it spawned other violent groups by their acronyms, HUKBALAHAP, primarly against ther Japanese, HUK (urban and rural guerillas during Roxas, Quirino and Magsaysay) and HMB Hukbong Magpalaya ng Bayan of the Garcia and early Marcos administration. Now NPA is getting its share in the struggle.Like Andres Bonifacio of the 1896 revolution, this man can also speak the language of the masses. He even adopted the title Supremo. If I remember correctly, while the first supremo has the equivalent of second grade elementary education, this other supremo attended two years at the University of the Philippines. Call him Bonifacio re-incarnate!