The Anchor for Morality

Morality = manner, character, proper behavior.

Joe Am doesn't like statistics, but he'll deal with the little rascals from time to time.

• “For simple replacement of the population to keep up with deaths, most people assume that the average family size should be 2 children, or perhaps 2.1 or 2.2 to make up for human error. But these figures are too low, as has been shown by Prof. Hubert Campbell of the Department of Medical Statistics, University of Wales. Campbell came to the conclusion that the figure should be over 2.4 children per family. His reasoning was based on the premise that every woman should leave behind her at least one fertile daughter. To achieve this, allowance must be made for the fact that at birth there is a 1-percent preponderance of boys; there is a high infant death rate in the first year or two; about 10 percent of the girls will not marry; and of those who do, some 10 percent will prove to be sterile. These figures add up to about 2.43 children per family. If this is the figure needed for replacement, that for healthy growth must be about 4.0.” Fr. Desmond Morrison, Missionary Society of St. Columban, as reported in the Inquirer

So the good Father is arguing that the current Philippine growth rate of 4.0 is healthy. Never mind that he got from his "sustainable" number of 2.43 to the "ideal" number of 4.00 on a huge wing and a prayer. His moral statement is based on "the sanctity of unborn life" and he shapes his statistics accordingly.

World Population Growth - Historical

Fr. Morrison brings the population argument into the RH debate even though politicians want it out. That is akin to bringing the abortion debate into the argument about contraceptives. Fight reason with fire and brimstone, an commonly Catholic way of arguing. Ask Tito Sotto about that. 

The RH Bill has been sanitized to remove any kind of population planning goals in order to focus strictly on women's health. This is the result of political game-playing, the challenge of what a Congress must do to pass responsible legislation when a loud voice of moral outrage from the Catholic Church inserts itself into the legislative process. Bop and weave, duck and cover, sanitize and pray.

• An estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. wikipedia

That suggests a moral imperative based on "the sanctity of  a woman's life". You either want to end this condition  of suffering or you accept it. The Catholic Church has no suggestions as to how to end it other than natural birth control, which creates the condition. In other words, no workable suggestions.

We can get dizzy on statistics, eh? Link up to that wikipedia article and you will read the most elaborate review on overpopulation imaginable. You like facts, go there. Or go here.

I want to discuss the foundations of morality. What should we use to anchor our values?

• The bible, and what the Catholic Church says? Or a competing religion, Islam? Or Mormonism like U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The religion anchor.

• The suffering of the poor? The suffering of women, burdened with ignorance and babies they can't feed or teach? Or the suffering of the disadvantaged in Africa, in insane asylum, or in Topeka, Kansas? The Mother Teresa anchor.

• The macro-view of a planet being eaten alive and slopped full of pollution by its people-rodents? Ecology and sustaining our miserable little lives? The eco-anchor.

We get to choose, so what is the best anchor of our values?

Well, I choose the family as the foundation of my moral initiatives going forward. And emphatically, specifically, the kids alive today.

Not the sperm or the hatchling that endangers a mother's health or will be raised as an object of hatred and resentment destined to become terror on earth.  I don't like abortions. I like even less presuming I know better than others what hard choices they need to make. And I detest when the State steps in to shove its morality into mine, thereby giving Friars or communists or idiots the right to make decisions that I have to live with.

I choose the family - the mother, the father and the children - as the foundation of my moral initiatives.

The two important facets of family life that need to be built and preserved and even held precious are. (1) health, which encompasses safety, security, sanitation, and means (money), and (2) enlightenment, which encompasses education and good living.

Health

I believe that the health of Filipino families is connected directly to having readily available supplies of food, water and jobs. The planet and the nation are slow-moving ships, difficult to turn, and they are on a course where resource limits slam into the bow like an ice berg. That's dangerous.

We have a lot of people living in an increasingly risky climate with untold disasters awaiting the unprepared. Water shortages already abound with sometimes violent competition, farmers versus cities. We encounter more and more food shortages with whole crops placed at risk by violent and sustained swings in weather.

Other nations have adjusted direction, pulling population growth down to levels they can support. The Philippines has only now recognized that it has a steering wheel and ought to be using it. The RH Bill and the dialogue around it are already helping the Philippines. Passing the Bill would help it more.

I am confident that a great enlightenment is slowly spreading across the Philippines, and the population explosion will start to moderate. I'm taking this off of my carping agenda because I think responsible people will get the ship to turn.

Projected population growth rates

However, there is so much more to do to assure the health of Philippine families. To get kids off the trash dumps scrapping for food, to get them bathed, to give them clean water and soap, to get them to competent doctors when they are sick.

If you put the child's health at the center point of your morality, and look around the Philippines, you stand aghast, absolutely agape, at the enormous failings of Philippine values. Young girls sold for sex. Kids age nine sent to the cane fields. Homes on the mud banks, filled with kids. Kids packed 45 to a room in open air school buildings then released into the civilized world, still ignorant about the finer details of obeying laws, being courteous and living responsibly.

It does no good to complain, to accuse, to excuse.

It only does good to get to work to do a better job of fending for the kids.

The goal: health of the family.

Enlightenment

This is difficult. The opposite of enlightenment, ignorance, occurs at two planes. One is among the wealthiest of Filipino citizens, the oligarchs and political families, the politicians, the movers and shakers. The other is among the poorest of Filipino citizens, the squatters and day workers who can barely make ends meet.

• Ignorance of the elite. I consider the oligarchs and their brothers of ego ignorant because they prize a harmful value, the value of self-interest over community. They fail to grasp that their kind of achievement, wealth and good living, is done on the backs of a lot of good people. It is a short-term achievement, the glory and satisfaction they personally get during their lifetime. It is a long term disaster for the nation's well-being, a well-being long suffering, long ignored. Favors and cheating and who-you-know become the blanket that suffocates good deeds. How do you infuse an oligarch with the compassion and generosity and patriotism that brings progress to a hidebound nation? It is, after all, a hidebound nation. ("hidebound" = stubborn, narrow minded; as in unable to change)

• Ignorance of the poor. How do you break the cycle? Poor uneducated parents setting poor examples for kids who have to compete in a world that gives few breaks. Poor education. No reading. Superstition ruling medicine and faith. Kids 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 getting precious little nurturing. What kind of self esteem, what kind of psychological composition, do we expect from this family? Achievement or anger? Giving or taking? Thinking or thoughtlessness?

One thing I know is that you cannot remain the same and change. You can't hang onto the ignorance and become enlightened.

There is a huge mandate for the Department of Education to do more, and do it better. Not just build buildings and hire teachers or bicker about English vs. Tagalog. To CHANGE what is taught and how it is taught.

And there needs to be a mandate for laws that separate oligarchs from governance, and the Church from governance. And to break up the goliath corporations that block wholesome competition. To break up the cozy self-serving patronage of the society of good old boys. There also needs to be a way to impose responsibility on legislators and judges.

But how?

These institutions are burdening Filipino families in ways we can't easily see. In time, and given a few blogs, I'll point out some of the connections.

The goal: enlightenment of the family.

The Family as the Center of Morality

You'll start to see some new themes in Joe Am's articles. I'll set aside over-birthing and population growth, and even my ragging on the Catholic Church, for a different set of priorities.

I've already done a lot of writing about education. And will do more.

But I really want to attack some of the roots of the failure of the Philippines to change. To progress.

To take care of its kids.

Joe Am Deletes a Comment

Sometimes our aspiration for high ideals goes astray.

The introduction to The Society of Honor, up there at the top of this page, tries to express an ideal, an openness to expressions pro or con on any issue, without need to descend to personal insult. After all, personal insult is rather like people washing dirty laundry in public or throwing turds on the wall of someone's home. It is not the highest representation of a kind and civilized people.

I am rather of the belief that if we (writers and commenters) strive to set a constructive tone for this blog, others will pick up on that tone and participate in the same vein. Open, for sure. Not pinched and high-falootin' with some kind of air of superiority. Just open and open-minded. With humor. With perspective. With intelligence. Critical but non-judgmental, if you catch the distinction. Leaning on the myriad of experiences and impressions that are available among a large group of smart people. Very different from those mud-slinging sites that aspire to be sensationalist  and popular rather than inventive and constructive. Sites that just can't seem to separate issue from personality, as if it were a concept their minds can't grasp. Issue. Person. Different.

I do presume that the people who read this blog are intelligent. That is the target audience. They have a high school degree, probably some or a lot of college, and are interested in intellectual growth. And they are interested in the well-being of the Philippines.

So that's the idea, and I think if you read the comments on the article threads you will find that they generally live up to this ideal. Comments are insightful and they add a lot to the blog article. The article, after all, is not meant to be a definitive statement on everything. It is meant to provoke thinking.

The comment I deleted was placed beneath a note to JoeAm from Kris Aquino thanking Joe for a recent blog expressing confidence in her brother, President Noynoy Aquino.

Until now, I have not published an e-mail address so that I can receive such private messages. The only way Ms. Aquino could reach me was via the blog thread.

As of today, people have an e-mail address should they choose to contact JoeAm directly. It has been added to the introduction at the top of the page. I also welcome guest submissions - articles from others - at this address.

 Anonymous replied to Kris Aquino with an insult to the President of the Philippines. I was originally going to put the remark in this article, separate from its original context, but . . . sorry . . . it is too personal, too insulting, and absolutely not necessary.

Now here is why I deleted the comment, my second deletion in four years of blogging.

The message from Kris Aquino was  a thoughtful personal note to JoeAm. It started off "Dear Joe" and was clearly written directly to Joe. She's a busy lady. She did not have to write.

Kris Aquino is a guest of this blog, she is not the principal.  She is in my internet home, behaving graciously, and I will not allow some heathen to use my hospitality to besmirch her or her brother.

What kind of person would insert his or her personal angers and obnoxious views into a courteous personal note like that?

I don't know.

Low class, for sure. About as low as a person can go. Especially since the message from Kris Aquino reflected on Mr. Aquino's subdued mood due to the plane crash involving Interior Secretary Robredo. Clearly, this was a serious and sincere message.

The remark from anonymous shocked and dismayed me.  This particular anonymous is a very angry person, I would guess. He or she is certainly not nuanced as to courtesy and dignity. In reading this article, I would guess he or she will strive for rationalizations about how JoeAm is an idiot and it is his rightful and constructive duty to slam the president. It's the same kind of perverted logic you get from the thugs at GRP or Anti-Pinoy.

 

I debated for a short time as to whether or not to delete the message. Maybe I should let it stand so people can witness this disgusting display of incivility. It is what it is, eh? I don't need to protect Kris Aquino or President Aquino. They are public figures out front in a world that is less than kind. They probably deal with this kind of obscenity all the time.

But, no. I can't leave it there. It is too far removed from the tenor of the blog site that I aspire to produce. It dirties the blog. I don't want it there.

So I sigh a deep sigh, a real big deep, disappointed sigh. And punch "delete".

Sometimes we trust in others.

Sometimes they do not have the character to live up to that trust.

"My Mind is a Blob"

When I was teaching high school for one frightful term, education was moving to a "New Math" which involved set theory; unions and intersections and ways of looking at mathematical truths. I never quite got the hang of it, beyond drawing circles, nor did anyone else, for the schools quickly tap-danced away from that teaching trend as too theoretical. And I tap danced away from the blackboard and into army green.

But the set concept has good application as we try to understand one another and the East/West cultures that sometimes collide. I don't think "collision" was a New Math term . . . but it seems to fit for East/West cultural overlap. The union of our cultures - the place where values are the same -sometimes seems small. The place where they collide seems huge.

All of us, both East and West, are alike in one way. We are limited in our ability to understand that which we have never experienced. That is, we both pack our ignorance. Usually, we simply don't have enough good information. We only see what we see, which is sometimes shaded by seeing only what we WANT to see. Or what others TELL us to see.

"Uh, Joe. You're getting kinda thick here. Watchu drivin' at?"

Grossly generalized opinion: Americans are more adept at accepting their own ignorance. Filipinos deny theirs. Americans learn, adjust, grow. Filipinos resist change. (Exceptions abound.)

I think most of the writers at Get Real Post (GRP) believe in what they write, about the limitations of Philippine culture and the incompetence and vindictiveness of President Aquino. I believe the yellow hordes supporting President Aquno also believe what they say, that this is a good man doing a lot of good things for a good nation. The opposing parties are firm in their respective views. Rigid.

But JoeAm can believe what he writes, that there is a bit of "beggar soul" in the cultural habits of the Philippines. And he can believe simultaneously that the Philippines is a rich, wholesome, interesting place to live, a nation that may be on the way to its welcome place as a respected, productive economic force. He can argue either point on a different day, or even merge them as one.

Each viewpoint - one by GRP, one by the hordes, and two by JoeAm - is a true slice of the pie, but none is the whole pie.

The error is when someone insists he has the whole pie.

The question is, do we draw hard and fast lines about our ideas and opinions. Are they thick lines that can't be dented or re-drawn with new information? Are they brick walls? Or are we flexible, fluid, open minded.

Often, the need to save face or maintain reputation leads people to refuse to see or acknowledge new information. They look for information that reinforces their beliefs and skip over information that might oppose their beliefs. They defend a position long after the validity of that position has been called reasonably into question.

You look at all the good things happening in the Philippines now. The call center boom fueling high-rise construction in Manila. New casinos coming in. A strong tourism program. Debt ratings up two ticks in a year, and likely heading to investment grade next year. Corrupt people heading for jail, or like 31 DENR people, getting fired. Strong peso. Booming stock market. International reports largely positive. It is hard to sweep that under any kind of rug.

Yet GRP scribes CANNOT acknowledge the good trends at risk of losing their entire platform. So they keep flailing away, one arm whipping in the air the other whacking at a rock, throwing up arguments that get ever more bizarre or off the point. How do you spell desperation? "GRP".

I'm a believer of soft lines, myself. Indeed, mine are so soft and flexible that the label "hypocrite" or "inconsistent" thrown my way by the thugs at GRP holds up as true, in a certain light. I have no problem with changing my mind if shown new information or the errors of my ways. That is not commonly done in the Philippines. Many a Filipino would find my tappy feet and flip-flopping mind to be weak. About as un-macho as you can get.

Well, you see, I don't see what words have to do with manhood, and I see little need to ridicule someone who tells me my arguments are half baked or out to lunch or nutso. I'd only want to grasp why we look at the same object but see different colors and shapes.

A great many Filipinos pride themselves on superior knowledge. Unbending, self-certain knowledge. They are relentlessly argumentative, throwing up diversions or tangents or truths apart from the real discussion, to prove the certainly of their standing.

Losing an argument does not go down well in the Philippines.

Ridicule follows in short order. Humiliation is thrust down other people's throats with glee.

It is not exactly a forgiving society.

And yet. And yet, in a different reality, it is. It forgives Enrile, a coup master, it forgives Ms. Marcos, the wife of a failed dictator, it forgives a corrupt Estrada and lets him run for President again. But that is partially because these people are MASTERS of word wrestling, of shaping realities to their liking and benefit. And they are masters of the "Get Out Of Jail" trade of favors.

• Mr. Estrada: "Yes, Glo, I won't criticize you while you are in office, even if you try to become a dictator.

• Ms. Arroyo: "Okie dokie. Here's your get out of jail free card."

It is like listening to VP Binay defend getting P 200 million in pork for play money. There's no stated purpose for the money. Just "here, have some, because you are our Number 2 guy". These legislators and rulers act like this is just a Monopoly game and they can buy Boardwalk or all of Makati on a whim. They act like they EARNED the money, that's what bugs me about it.

It is figured that Binay will run for President. I hope he gets pulverized. He defines his realities too slickly. I don't trust him.

Well, this all seems artificial to me, the Filipino hard-headedness and slippery arguments. This need to hold onto views, even if incorrect, because one's ego is vested in the argument. The twisting of realities by tangential arguments and half-truths.  Surreal. Absurd.

So my own personal challenge is to wade through the artificial realities that are thrown up everywhere in the Philippines, from biased newspaper reports to emotional tantrums from a certain senator to GRP propaganda. I choose to find my own reality and refuse to line up to follow an ideology, or political party's view, or a given religious faith. Mine is a blob of a reality, a truth that shifts and drifts according the information available.

I don't like being cemented in place. It doesn't feel right.

I prefer to fly, and welcome it when others straighten out my occasionally crooked trajectory.

It is not a humiliation to be wrong. It is merely an unfortunate information warp in the space time continuum.

In other words, a mistake.

My bad.

Grow. Move on.

The Innocence of Ignorance

I live in a poor sitio of a hillside barangay on an out-of-the-way island that is wholesome and clean and gorgeous.

Most of the men who live here are rice field workers or construction laborers. There are two or three masons and a carpenter of no real skill. The women take care of the kids and play bingo. Surprisingly, there are a good number of college students, maybe four or five. They work to go to school.

I like kids who understand that college is the way out, the way up, the way forward. But sometimes they aren't that inspired about the future. Ask their major and they apologize because they know it is likely to head nowhere. "Business administration." "HRM."  The guys who believe they are on a working path are the marine students, the future sailors, pilots and pirate hostages.

I find it fascinating how much my neighbors hereabouts both know and don't know. Most of their knowledge comes from two sources: (1) the two channels of public television piped in via a bent antennas wired to a wobbly bamboo pole and smallish, well-used TV set, and (2) gossip. So they know about Chief Justice Corona and like their President. They hear about Lady Gaga and her Christian problem. They want Palmolive shampoo and whitening creams but settle for soapy water and the sun. They understand about the HR Bill but it means nothing to them. Their lives are what they are.

What they always have been.

There is an innocence to ignorance, where ignorance is not something to be condemned, for it is simply the current state of education for those who are cut off from broader pipelines of knowledge.

No one wakes up in the morning and exclaims: "I'm going to go out and stay ignorant today!"

It is an accidental fate, in the main. The roll of God's dice.

Their condition is just their condition. Just as yours is yours, and you cannot match Einstein or Jobs or Gates or Joe up the street who manages the grocery market. Where does he get his stocks anyway?

I dunno.

So I am ignorant as to that point.

There is a definite innocence to ignorance. It is why I reflect on how things were in the United States in the 1950's before JFK was shot. Oh, we had the tensions of the cold war with Russia and learned to "duck and cover" in the even atom bombs starting raining down on our burg. But we were incredibly ignorant and incredibly innocent. Computers did not exist. A robust internet was 30 years away. We were racist through and through and biased against women and did not know it. We were in awe of television.

JFK's assassination somehow ripped our innocence from our soul. There it was, on TV, surreal and horrible. Our President being murdered.

Electronics started shaping our world big time. Undermining our innocence, our ignorance.

We spent the discordant 60's and 70's in social upheaval, learning to love freely, smoke dope and hate wars. The tensions were thick and uncomfortable, innocence being pecked away one disillusionment at a time. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Kent State, Selma, Richard Nixon. Viet Nam. We learned that we discriminated against a lot of people, blacks, browns, females, handicapped, other religions, fat folks . . . and we watched too much TV. We ate unhealthy things and raped the seas and lands in the name of rich living.

Computers and the internet and science came along just in the nick of time. A new hobby, a new age of discovery and awe, a new set of knowledge. For 20 years we rode that cruiser, and it was wonderful. I-pods and notebooks, memory and speed and new games. Kids once more. Innocent once more.

Until 2001.

Now we Americans seem generally angry, cynical, no longer quite the happy campers we once were. We seem tired with the effort. Tired of the killings, theirs and ours. Tired of looking for jobs and being independent of spirit. Tired of all the grime fed to our faces on the news.

Our leaders have the values of a hyena, feeding off the carrion of deceit and manipulation. We're tired of them. We're tired of not being able to do anything about it. Not able to go back to a wholesome sense of what our country is about.

That's why I like living in the Philippines. It is like starting over. Knowing the promise ahead is big, alive, real. That we have not yet tapped into our potential.

The Philippines is rather like the U.S. in the 1950's.

Largely innocent and ignorant. Again, ignorant bears no condemnation. It just is.

Huge segments of Philippine population don't have access to the internet. They for sure don't read this blog, an obscure set of articles pounded out daily by some farm boy from Colorado, USA.  Concepts that stretch the brain rather than Roman Catholic ones that nail the brain into a narrow, dark, superstitious coffin.

Filipinos are racist and don't know it. They discriminate against women, and most women of the Philippines don't understand how. They discriminate against other religions and think they are pious. They go to church but remain highly superstitious, worshipping this little impish devil or that. Most have never read 90 percent of the Bible. But they can preach its values to the well read.

The Philippines is awash in ignorance. As yet, there is no modern Thomas Jefferson to put the oligarchs in their rightful place, out of government but in charge of making money and growing wealth for the nation. Not just for themselves, but for their country. There is no Bill Gates to light a technology fire and put to death the overabundant paperwork required everywhere, to close all the holes in the economic sieve through which tax moneys escape, and to track the strange financial transactions of chief justices and scoundrels.

There is no awareness that if I fish the seas dry, I have nothing to eat in the future. Or if I take the little fish out, they never become big fish and 75% of the meat never gets to anyone's table.

The future is a condition that is never imagined.

That's why the president has no real plan, other than populist slogans.

Filipinos are largely reactive to the past and ignorant of the future. They use their words to paint pictures that are more imaginary than real.

Real is a blank slate of potential, a great deal of innocence.

How to connect the innocence to the potential. That is what Filipinos need to figure out.

Filipinos are ignorant of psychology, the study of the mental-emotional connection. They consider it a shame to admit, umm m m . . . maybe I don't need to be as angry as Senator Santiago or depressed with a lack of opportunity. Maybe if I understand my emotions, there is a chance I will be stronger, not weaker. Maybe I'll achieve more if I don't overlay my personal self esteem on everything.

That's a distortion, you know? When personal sensitivity warps objectivity, as if Filipinos were children, the center of the world. It is like corruption. It drains personal wealth.

But there is an awakening going on in the Philippines. I believe that. It is inspired by a good President, crystallized on the internet and in mass media, and takes the form of new institutions akin to those formed in the United States in the 1960's. Institutions promoting better values and advocating good social causes. Like the HR Bill, or higher minimum wage, or even anti-Gaga moral values. It is incited by active internet advocacy, which influences mass media and opinion leaders. Social media form the framework for new awareness. And less ignorance.

The 1960's was when America developed a conscience, built on a recognition that buying things and getting rich is as much in the heart as the wallet. America started doing a better job of taking care of Americans.

I'm looking forward to the next 20 years as the Filipino blank slate, the slate of excessive self involvement and innocence, gets filled with conscience and outreach, achievement, hope and opportunity.

As Filipinos do a better job of taking care of Filipinos.

It's like a flower coming to blossom.