Part Two On Romantic Love

In his book "We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love", Robert Johnson distinguishes committed love from romantic love. When we yearn for a forbidden, passionate romance like in “The English Patient” or "The Bridges of Madison County," we are often blinded from the beautiful, committed love that is with us in every day life, the "stirring-the-oatmeal" love.

As Johnson writes: "Stirring oatmeal is a humble act--not exciting or thrilling. But it symbolizes a relatedness that brings love down to earth. It represents a willingness to share ordinary human life, to find meaning in the simple, unromantic tasks: earning a living, living within a budget, putting out the garbage, feeding the baby in the middle of the night."

Committed love awakens the ego to the existence of something outside itself. In its very essence, it is appreciation, a recognition, of another person’s value. Romance is not love directed at another human being; the passion of romance is always directed at the lovers' own projections, expectation and fantasies.

Romantic love can only last so long as a couple are "high" on one another. True love is content to do things that the ego is bored with. It is wiling to work with the other person’s moods and unreasonableness. It is willing to fix breakfast and balance the checkbook. It necessarily includes friendship within a relationship between husband and wife while in a romance it's not necessarily true. In fact, many often say "I don’t want to be friends with my husband (or wife); it would take all the romance out of our marriage."

Couples never really settle into relationship with each other as real human beings until they are out of the romantic love stage, until they love each other instead of "being in love."

So, if you really think deeply about it, the dreaded "I Love You but I’m Not in Love With You!", considered by many (including even some family therapists) in the western world the ten-word sentence most likely to end a marriage, may not necessarily be a bad thing. It could mean a transition to a more mature committed love. Of course, many who did not really transition into the more mature phase just want to get out of the relationship that now runs out of romantic energy. The "I love you" part in the sentence is just a consolation.

I like N. Yee's conclusion on this issue:
"In the end, the basis of a stable relationship is founded on a love that emerges not in spite of but because of the other person’s flaws and weaknesses, because ultimately it is our imperfections that make us human. We can seek out [romantic love] with angels, but we can only find true love among mortals."

To read more on the subject of Romantic Love Versus Committed/True Love, check this blog by Dr Will Meek:

http://willmeekphd.com/item/romantic-vs-committed-love

Reference:

Yee, Nick. Love in 4 Acts: What is Romantic Love?

Johnson, Robert A. We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love. Harper San Francisco. 1983.

Is Romantic Love True Love?

From Fiddler On The Roof

Social media changes the way people interact with their friends and family including their love interests. Young people nowadays commonly express their intimate feelings creatively in cyberspace. You can easily tell when they are "in love" by what they post on their timelines, including pictures.

People have always fallen in love, and throughout the ages many couples have loved each other deeply. But romantic love as the sole or primary basis for marriage is a modern, western invention, beginning to get popular only in the 19th century.

Many people assume that it has been this way for ages and find it odd when some people from places like India still prefer arranged marriage over "love marriage", as the Indians would call it.

In the Broadway musical "Fiddler on the Roof", Tevye was struggling to understand "romantic love" as three of his daughters broke with their Jewish tradition when, one by one, each of them "fall in love" and wanted to marry on that basis. He asked his wife whether they, too, had that experience after 25 years of marriage.

For years, Filipinos, being heavily influenced by western culture early on, had a different experience on this issue compared to some of their Asian neighbors such as the Indians. But, over the years, our Asian neighbors also fell to that fairy-tale "happily ever after" narrative, as they too succumbed to the influence of western literary and other media like movies and songs that bombarded us daily. "Love" marriages are starting to get a foothold in the urban areas of India.

According to Robert Johnson, a Jungian psychoanalyst, we grow up to believe in the irrational assumptions of the fairy tale script of romantic love. He differentiates romantic love from true love – “Romantic love is not love but a complex of attitudes about love – involuntary feelings, ideals, and reactions."

Johnson added: "When we are “in love” we feel completed, as though a missing part of ourselves had been returned to us; we feel uplifted, as though we were suddenly raised above the level of the ordinary world. Life has an intensity, a glory, an ecstasy and transcendence." 

From Titanic

Elaine Hatfield differentiates romantic love and true love this way: passionate love is "a state of intense longing for union with another" and 'companionate' love is "the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined."

Dorothy Tennov noted that true love is an emotion that is acted on while romantic love (she coined a new word “limerence” to describe it) is more of a transformed state that people go into - the difference in the proverbial “I love you, but I’m not in love with you." Some of the symptoms of being "in love" mostly notable among women:

1. Acute longing for reciprocation
2. An aching of the “heart” (a palpable heavy sensation in the front of the chest).
3. Buoyancy (a feeling of “walking on air”)

According to Johnson, the greatest paradox of romantic love is that it never produces human relationships as long as it stays romantic because we are in love with our own fantastical creations instead of the other person for who they really are. Romantic love is a kind of primal religious experience – both revelation and rapture - that is a fundamental part of our collective unconscious. The tragedy of our understanding of romantic love is that it makes us put unreasonable demands on our romantic partners because we believe that they have the responsibility for making our lives whole.

Nick Yee commented on Johnson's observations: "The romantic couples who have been together for half their lives have something quite different from romantic love. Johnson calls it “stirring-the-oatmeal” love – it represents a willingness to share ordinary human life, to find meaning in the simple, unromantic tasks … to find the relatedness, the value, the beauty, in the simple and ordinary things, not to eternally demand a cosmic drama … or an extraordinary intensity in everything.
In a strange way, this is true love because it can be everlasting, but this is not the love script that we are bombarded with from every literary or entertainment form in our lives."

For Tevye and his wife, theirs is not “romantic love” as we know it. They don’t impose the same ideals on their relationships, nor do they impose such impossible demands and expectations on each other.

Yee added: "The tragedy derives from the simple fact that romantic love always fades, and most people do not know how to derive a sincere, human relationship from one that is fantastical and rapturous. And if they learned anything from fairy tales, they learned that a relationship without romantic love is worthless.

All their lives, they have had a vision of what love would be, and they now believe that their 'true love' must then still be out there waiting for them. Many people are stuck forever in this wash-and-rinse cycle of romantic love because they believe that fiery romantic love can be everlasting."

So in "Fiddler On the Roof", the following dialogue is indicative of true love, not just romantic love.

TEVYE "But do you love me?"

GOLDE "Do I love him?"

TEVYE "Well?"

GOLDE "For twenty-five years I've lived with him
Fought with him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?"

TEVYE "Then you love me!"

GOLDE "I suppose I do"

TEVYE "And I suppose I love you, too"

It doesn't change a thing. But even so - after twenty-five years, it's nice to know.

Me, too.

Reference:

Yee, Nick. Love in 4 Acts: What is Romantic Love?

Hatfield, E., & Walster, G. W. (1978). A new look at love. Addison-Wesley.

Johnson, Robert A. We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love. Harper San Francisco. 1983.

Lieberman, Marcia K. "'Some Day My Prince Will Come': Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale." In Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Methuen, 1986, pp. 185-200.

Tennov, Dorothy. Love and Limerence. Scarborough House. 1979.

Non-violent Resistance: What Part Leo Tolstoy And The Pacifist Christians Played

               Almost three years ago, I posted on Facebook about the "Arab Spring"  that swept across the Arab world and on how I admired the non-violent "people power" revolution that toppled the dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and  Egypt. Well, it turned out to be premature because the next country bugged with the democratic reforms fever, Libya, had less than peaceful transition. In fact, it was a bloody conflict that was only cut short with the help of the West. It then spread into Yemen and Syria. The war in Syria turned out to be very ugly and bloody, killing thousands of innocent civilians up to the present. 

               Even the initial success in Egypt turned out to be premature, too. The Muslim Brotherhood appeared to have hijacked the gains of the people power revolution as soon as they were voted into power. They were later overthrown by the military and a lot of uncertainties followed. Despite the setback, there were those who hope that real democracy will finally take roots in the Arab world. They are specially encouraged by what's taking place in Iraq after so many years of total control by Saddam Hussein although big challenges remain. In the West, the hope was that, if President Obama continue to play his card right, the United States will reap the benefit that comes with the spread of democracy across the Arab world with gentle prodding and guidance. 

                    A similar political wind swept the Eastern bloc of communist regimes in Europe over twenty years ago that led to the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. A decade ago, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and similar "color" revolutions also brought down unpopular regimes. All these are achieved through non-violent resistance. In 1986, the people power movement in the Philippines ended Marcos' iron rule for over two decades with minimal fatalities. Here in the United States we remember Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement of the sixties. King and other non-violent resistance leaders like him ( Nelson Mandela comes to mind) were influenced by the original non-violent resistance advocate, Mahatma Gandhi of India. Yet few people realize that Gandhi himself was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian author of such classic novels as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In fact, the two were in constant communication up until Tolstoy's death.

              In 1894, he published a book titled "The Kingdom of God Is Within You", the culmination of Tolstoy's years of Christian thinking.  In it he argued that the mainstream Christian churches were the ones who deviated from Jesus' teachings and are the real heretics. When Jesus says to turn the other cheek, Tolstoy asserted that he simply means that and rejected the interpretations of church scholars who attempted to limit its scope, writing: “How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shalt not murder’?” His interpretation of the sacred books may be controversial but it is interesting to note that the origin of non-violent resistance has a religious undertone, Christian in fact. Tolstoy "advocated non-violence as a solution to nationalist woes and as a means for seeing the hypocrisy of the church." In this respect, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Amish and other pacifist Christian churches are way ahead of most mainstream Christian churches including the Roman Catholic Church. Add to it their plain dress code, simple living and emphasis on humility and equality, these groups seem to understand better the teachings of Jesus. They were also among the first to oppose slavery and giving women equal part in ministry as men.

            The next time you pick up a copy of War and Peace, it is worth remembering that the guy who wrote it was the same guy who influenced Gandhi, MLK, Mandela and others like them who, instead of waging a bloody war to topple a bad leader or government, took the "road less traveled" that make all the difference. The next time we visit the Amish in Pennsylvania, it behooves us to remember that the Plain people are practicing the teachings of Jesus possibly better than most Christians. I'm not advocating conversion but it will not hurt to emulate their good traits to become better Christians or, at least, better persons ourselves.

The Real Wolves Of Wall Street

With the addition of the movie "Wolf of Wall Street", the public are now more keenly aware how the stock market can be a mad house, especially Wall Street. Many of the small individual investors are emotionally affected by the gyrations of the market and easily "herded" into the slaughterhouse, hence the term "herd mentality", like those wildebeest of Sarengeti in Africa driven like mad into their death while crossing a river full of hungry crocodiles.

Smart people like Warren Buffett know this particular psychology of the market, hence his famous advice "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."

From Business Insider

There's a new kind of craziness in the stock market and this abnormal behavior in recent years is related to the Federal Reserve("Fed")'s quantitative easing program that keeps borrowing in the United States at historically low rate for many years now. Because of that, investors fled the bond market into the stock market. Since the US economy is showing signs of recovery, the Fed in recent months indicated that it will start unwinding the program and stop feeding new money into the circulation by buying long-term bonds. So, now, every time there are good news about the economy, investors in Wall Street - the big guns with the big herd of small investors following them - get the jitters and immediately unload their hot stocks (including those from emerging markets like the Philippines) and move into bonds or at least those stable boring stocks for fear that the Fed will stop the quantitative easing program. When there are good economic reports, the stock markets nosedive, and when there are bad reports, they surge. That's crazy!!

This is how Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, described it and I agree with him:

"In case you didn’t notice, the stock market surged yesterday after the lousy jobs report. Why does bad news on the jobs front cause the stock market to rise? Because investors assume
(1) the Fed will now continue to keep interest rates low (despite its announced intention of reducing the amount of long-term bonds it buys monthly);
(2) which will continue to push savings into shares of stock rather than bonds;
(3) and make it easy for big investors (including corporations) to borrow money to buy back their shares, thereby pushing up their values; and that
(4) employees, desperate to keep their jobs, won’t demand raises, thereby keeping profits high.

But that's bad for Main Street and good for Wall Street in the short term is bad for both in the long term. The American economy is at a crawl. "

When, if ever, will Wall Street learn? 

The sad part is the Big Kahuna of Goldman Sachs and other big shots of Wall Street have enormous power in Washington regardless of who sits as president. When Wall Street finally paid the steep price of their follies in 2008, Washington let the taxpayers bail them out at the tune of trillions of dollars. The Fed, for example, created a secured credit facility of up to US$85 billion to prevent the collapse of AIG, the parent company of Phil-Am Life in the Philippines.

Duterte: Davao's Dirty Harry and His Brand of Justice

Duterte's brand of justice seems to be getting praises even in the national capital region, a reflection of the people's frustration over the slow pace of justice and anti-crime activities throughout the country. His apparent endorsement of extra-judicial killings (whether he was behind them or not), Davao Death Squad vigilantism and cowboy mentality to keep peace and order in his city seems to win the hearts and minds of many Filipinos. Will these justify the killings of innocent victims, for example, the collateral damage in his war against the lawless elements of society?

At first glance, it seems that Duterte's remarks during the recent senate hearing make more sense than the CHR and the justice secretary's. But be careful what you wish for. If Filipinos allow vigilantism and extra-judicial killings to thrive and go unchecked, they are creating a monster that will bite them back in the future and then the problem of keeping these militia groups in line will be gargantuan. 

Remember the 1980s when Marcos used paramilitary groups to counter the growing threat from communist rebels? The Lost Command in Agusan, Alsa Masa in Davao and Kuratong Baleleng in Misamis are just few of them. The people also heaped praises on them back then. Later, they became uncontrollable and many engaged in criminal activities. Lost Commands all over the country were terrorizing the same areas where they were once praised as heroes by the people years earlier. 

Same thing happened with the New People's Army rebels. Some of us who live and grew up in the rural towns and provincial cities of the Philippines in the 1970s and 1980s had witnessed the kangaroo courts and summary executions by the rebels. At first, the rural folk welcomed them as better alternative to the slow-grinding justice system that favors the rich and powerful when they swiftly punished to death local thieves, crooked government officials, even philandering spouses. Later, members or sympathizers who have ax to grind used the movement to execute their personal vendetta. The people were disillusioned and in fear they might become innocent victims of malicious rumors.

My point is: allowing and even encouraging vigilantism and extra-judicial killings as part of the strategy to combat lawless elements is a two-edge sword that will hurt criminals and innocent bystanders alike and cannot and should not be kept as government policy for the long term.  If Duterte cannot guarantee that there won't be any collateral damage, then he should stop these activities. Nobody is above the law. Even alleged criminals should have their day in court. They are assumed innocent until proven guilty. It is a tedious process and can be frustrating to both law enforcers and the families of victims but it is fair. There are other ways to combat criminality without resorting to extra-judicial killings. 

China's Aggression and Sinophobia In Southeast Asia

Sinophobia or anti-Chinese sentiment often targets Chinese minorities living outside of China. It is complicated by the disparity of wealth between the Chinese minority and the local 
majority. Sectarian violence against ethnic Chinese had happened in post-war Southeast Asia.

In May, 1969, for example, ethnic Malays killed hundreds of ethnic Chinese in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Indonesia's experience is even worse. Thousands of ethnic Chinese were killed between 1965-66, the year of "living dangerously." The latest one was in May, 1998 when over a thousand Chinese got killed or raped in Jakarta. Many properties were burned down.

The Philippines has a different experience. Except for racial slurs, the Philippines seems to have no recorded history of racial violence against the "chinoys" or Chinese Filipinos during the post-colonial era. The 1990s saw a spike in criminal activities against ethnic Chinese in the form of kidnapping. But these were mostly carried out by organized crime groups interested for ransom, nothing more.

I expect Sinophobia to increase in an alarming rate in the Philippines and neighboring Vietnam and Malaysia, all three of which are currently involved in territorial disputes with China over some oil-rich small islands in South China Sea, as China turned unusually aggressive in bullying its smaller neighbors in recent years. The standoff in Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal between China and the Philippines somehow caused many Filipinos to hate China for its 'greed' towards these isles despite its already massive current territory. Campaign to boycott Chinese products began in 2012. Protesters were holding rallies in front of the Chinese Embassy in Manila.

As the Filipinos become desperate with ever-increasing Chinese aggression and the United States not flexing its muscle enough to neutralize the Chinese, will this anger spill over against the local Chinese community and possibly resulting in racial violence similar to what had happened in Malaysia and Indonesia?

On Ethnocentrism And Of Being A Good Christian

The message of Jesus was universal and most likely opposed to racism and ethnocentrism. Yet a recent large study conducted by the University of Southern California found that religious people tend to be more racist. It observed that "members of religious congregations tend to harbor prejudiced views of other races." There are a lot of anecdotal evidence that support that assertion in the Bible belt of the Deep South.

A quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi goes like this: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Sadly, it certainly describes the disparity between Christ's teachings and many of his proclaimed followers. 

Of course, this tendency is not limited to "Christians." The report concludes that “all religions offer a moral group identity, and so across world religions — including Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Judaism and Christianity — the religious in-group is valued over out-groups.” This human tendency is often the driving force in tribalism and nationalism. In social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group to which an individual does not identify. Ethnocentrism is defined as "the view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it" often leading to pride, vanity, beliefs of one's own group's superiority, and contempt of outsiders. 

Ideally, when one becomes a Christian, he is supposed to become free from the shackles of many societal constructs, among them racism and ethnocentrism. "The truth shall set you free." St Paul was one of the early Christians who "got" it early on. In the famous "incident at Antioch", due to St. Peter's reluctance to share a meal with Gentile Christians in Antioch because they did not strictly adhere to Jewish customs, St Paul publicly rebuked St Peter: "When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas [Peter] in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?" [Galatians 2:14]

There are biological and evolutionary underpinnings behind this human tendency to ethnocentrism. Scientists call them "kin selection" and "kin altruism." But as we strive to become better Christians, or simply better persons, it is our duty to become aware of this tendency and transcend above it.

Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel?

from insideislam.wisc.edu

My question related to the Israel-Palestinian issue is "Why evangelical Christians strongly support Israel?"

This is aptly answered by Rev. Pat Robertson's own speech titled, you guessed it, "Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel?" that appears on his own website.

This is how he described it: "If God's chosen people turn over to Allah control of their most sacred sites-if they surrender to Muslim vandals the tombs of Rachel, of Joseph, of the Patriarchs, of the ancient prophets.....then in that event, Islam will have won the battle. Throughout the Muslim world the message will go forth-'Allah is greater than Jehovah. The promises of Jehovah to the Jews are meaningless. We can now, in the name of Allah, move to crush the Jews and drive them out of the land that belongs to Allah."

I'm amazed on how ignorant Pat Robertson is about Islam. Is his view representative of most evangelical Christian pastors? I don't know that for sure but I will not be surprised if that's the case.

The simple truth is that Christianity is far closer in faith to Islam than Judaism. All three religions are considered monotheistic, believing in one living God. Apart from the fact that Jesus and his early followers were Jews, that's about it. The Jews of today don't believe that Jesus is the messiah, much less the Son of God. Their faith is predicated on how well they follow the letter of God's law, not the spirit of the law (as Jesus emphasized). The Gospel's "offer the other cheek" is a big departure from the Old Testament's "an eye for an eye." Forget about virgin birth, or Jesus' miracles or the second coming of Christ.

On the other hand, Muslims believe on the virgin birth narrative. Mary ["Maryam"] is considered "one of the most righteous women in the Islamic tradition. She is mentioned more in the Quran than in the entire New Testament and is also the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran."

Jesus ["Isa"] is considered to be a Messenger of God and the Messiah ["al-Masih"] in Islam who was sent to guide the Children of Israel with a new scripture, the Gospel ["al-Injīl"]. They believe that Jesus performed miracles, including the power to raise the dead, all by the permission of God rather than of his own power.

Muslims believe that Jesus will return to Earth near the Day of Judgment to restore justice and to defeat the "false messiah" or the Antichrist ["al-Masih ad-Dajjal "]. As monotheists and unitarians, they do not believe that Jesus is God nor do they believe that he claimed to be. But so do many unitarian Christians including Iglesia ni Cristo. They also believe that Jesus did not actually die on the cross. Rather, he ascended into heaven, like Mary, as believed by Roman Catholics, and will come again at the end of times.

Why Robertson is trying to distinguish the many names used to describe this one living God ("Allah, "Jehovah", "Yahweh") is an indication of his ignorance or prejudice or both.

Posts From My Facebook Timeline In 2013

December 21:

One thing is sure to all clear-thinking Filipinos: corruption pervades all levels of government in the Philippines. But we must realize that corruption and political violence are twins that feed each other in a vicious cycle. 

The Ampatuan mass murder in Maguindanao four years ago that killed so many journalists, the never-ending killings of radio commentators mostly from Mindanao, the unsolved rubouts by policemen trying to cover up their involvement in criminal activities, the recent assassinations of a mayor and his family right outside the capital's airport and the recent shooting of Atty Fortun's wife just outside her home, to name a few, are evidence of the sad state of democracy in the country. The violence serves its purpose of intimidation to terrorize the people and silence any opposition.

Many politicians are somehow linked to these criminal elements and terrorists. They finance, maintain and sustain them. And all that using taxpayers' money through corruption. Unless these twins - corruption and political violence - are somehow mitigated, the country will never be able to achieve genuine democracy. Freedom of expression is one guarantee of a true democracy and the right to hold opinion without interference is universally recognized among the basic human rights.


December 20:

This one is a clear version of the CCTV footage of Junjun Binay's incident. It's a prima facie evidence that's difficult to controvert by the Binays on how abusive the mayor and his sister of their power. 

What bothers most concerned Filipinos is the likelihood that the father will sit as the next president of the country in two years. Erap all over again? One giant step forward, two giant steps backward?

December 14:

Dr Jose Rizal's "Noli Me Tángere", written more than 127 years ago, remains the most influential political novel in the Philippines to this day. The title is Latin for "touch me not", a reference to the bible's John 20:17 ("touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father"). It exposes what ails Philippine society back then - the injustice and deep-rooted corruption committed primarily by Catholic priests and government officials of his time. He exposed "matters...so delicate that they cannot be touched by anybody." One of the early English translation of the novel has this title: "Social Cancer."

Corruption is indeed a malignant social cancer that has far-reaching effect across Philippine society. Rizal's "Noli Me Tángere" remains relevant to us Filipinos particularly this year. How deeply rooted corruption in the Philippines is can be gleaned from the turn of events this year. A few months ago, it was revealed that many senators and congressmen are involved in a P10B pork barrel scam. The revelation convulsed the whole country, disgusted by the alleged crime committed by no other than the country's lawmakers, among the highest officials of the land. Recently, it's been revealed that a certain Arlene Angeles Lerma is the alleged “decision-broker” in the judiciary bribing judges and justices into issuing rulings favorable to her clients. The fixing of high-profile cases include those of the Court of Appeals. Lerma is supposedly the equivalent of Janet Napoles in the judiciary. And the executive branch? We all know that Erap was convicted of plunder, jailed and later pardoned by his successor, GMA, who is now facing similar charges. Unbelievable, not one branch of government up to the highest level is spared from corruption.

It's time to revisit Rizal's Noli Me Tángere. I hope it is still required reading for our students. Time for all Filipinos to examine our convictions and do a deep soul-searching. What can we do to at least minimize corruption in the country?

December 10:

This video may be taken out of context but Roxas clearly said "You have to understand [that] you are a Romualdez and the President is an Aquino so.. so we just want to legalize it. if not legalized, well, then, ok, you are in charge. we'll just help you. bahala na.... [unintelligible]."

I'm not a lawyer but what Romualdez told Roxas makes more sense: "Why is it illegal? As far as I know, the President of the Philippines is also the President of Tacloban City. I don’t see anywhere in the law that says you need a letter, an ordinance, from me for you to come in and do what you’re doing."

Last month, the administration was clearly engaging in patronage politics even in the midst of total chaos post-Yolanda. Even the snail-pace casualty count up to now did not escape the watchful eyes of the international media.

"International aid agencies find the official figures low, as flights over the region three days after Yolanda struck on Nov. 8 reported thousands of bodies floating in the water. The missing now number 8,000, but the NDRRMC counts only reports passing through the approved official layers. NDRRMC in Manila reported the death toll at 5,924, with 1,779 people missing."

Are the president's men trying to artificially lower the casualty count to save the president from further embarrassment as the figure inch closer to what was estimated by the police chief who got sacked by the president as a result? It seems to look that way and, if true, his men actually erode his credibility even more. Clearly, this administration's response to the disaster is itself disastrous.

December 9:

"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again." ~Nelson Mandela

As the world is mourning and getting ready to bid farewell to one of its finest, we also remember that even the best among us stumble. Mandela stumbled when it comes to HIV and AIDS. When Mandela became president of South Africa, the rate of HIV and AIDS in his country was less than 1%. But his government's indifference to the plight of AIDS victims was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's when AIDS first started to break out in San Francisco in 1981.

Reagan's pathetic response to the budding epidemic in the early 1980s was influenced by the religious right at the time and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. AIDS became a tool for the politics of fear and discrimination. Instead of helping them, the victims were being blamed. Falwell: "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals." Reagan's communication director, Pat Buchanan, argued that AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men." As a result, AIDS became a full-blown epidemic. When AIDS started to infect everybody else, that's when the public realized that it is not just a "gay thing." That's very unfortunate. The outcome could have been different had the US government been very aggressive at the start of the outbreak.

Mandela's similar mistake in the 1990s was made worse by his successor, Thabo Mbeki, who believed that "AIDS was not fatal, that HIV did not cause AIDS, that home brew treatments could cure AIDS and that life-saving antiretroviral drugs were being promoted so the West could profit at South Africa’s expense." Ignorance can be fatal. South Africa now has the worst epidemic of HIV in the world.

When it did come close to home, Mandela finally realized his mistake. In 2003, he started to voice out his concern. He created the Nelson Mandela Foundation to fight AIDS and it became his top priority. In 2005, he announced that his son died of AIDS.

The tragedy resulting from the mistakes of world leaders while dealing with AIDS seems to get repeated by our current world leaders when it comes to climate change. I hope they will open their eyes soon and rectify their mistakes before it's too late. Just like the AIDS ignorance of Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan and Thabo Mbeki years ago, no need to drag God into the climate change issue.


December 7:

According to Sec. De Lima, Santiago "sent her a letter on Thursday asking her to tap the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate Enrile.

Santiago wanted Enrile placed under investigation for alleged involvement in smuggling, illegal logging, gambling, as well as the death and disappearances of thousands of people during the martial law years when Enrile was defense minister."

I'm totally flabbergasted. Didn't the government knew since the time of Cory the sins of Enrile especially the death and disappearance of thousands of people during the martial law years when Enrile was defense minister? Is the government that inutile that they have to wait for Miriam to "spill the beans" on Enrile before realizing the need to investigate the other sins of Enrile like smuggling, illegal logging, illegal gambling and so on?

What about Miriam? If she truly has the moral high ground, then why wait to spill the beans until she gets insulted by Enrile for being so full of herself, bragging about her achievements at every opportunity, when she could barely passed the bar examination as cum laude law graduate of UP? If she truly believe that the sins of Enrile need to be investigated, she should have pursued this relentlessly a long time ago. Why just now Madam Santiago? Is it because Enrile badly hurt your feelings?

Most Filipinos knew that Enrile is an old sly fox. When he sensed that his boss Marcos' grip to power was declining, he launched a disastrous coup d'etat, only to be saved by the people at EDSA, later betrayed Cory by attacking her government in a series of coup attempts through his proxy, Honasan. The two of them never really paid for their sins to the people. Interestingly, they even became lawmakers post-EDSA. Only in the Philippines.

The Bliss of Being Poor (Why We Need Spiritual Poverty To Be Truly Happy)

          "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God."  Matt. 5:3

          This is possibly the most famous of the beatitudes by Jesus. But what does it really mean to be “poor in spirit”?

         The truly poor in this world are usually described as those who live without any possession of their own. They own nothing of value and, therefore, they simply have nothing to get attached to. They are generally carefree. Unlike the poor, the rich and the not-so-rich are always preoccupied with many things and are anxious, even fearful, that they might lose their possessions.

          In my humble opinion, to be poor in spirit means to behave like one and thus have no attachment to all kind of possessions, material or otherwise. That is, we must be willing to part ways with anything (or anyone) we have in this life that will hinder us from receiving the kingdom of God. Jesus himself said “No one of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” (Luke 14:33).

        I'm sure Jesus did not mean that we should start giving away anything of value even at the expense of our own families. Instead, I believe it is related to the concept of detachment. To be honest, many of us will find the biblical passage quite difficult to understand and to follow. But, by learning certain philosophy of Buddhism (and, to a similar extent, those of the other religions from the Indian subcontinent like Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism), the same phrase gets a bit easier to understand. Let me explain further. Buddhists believe that nothing in this life is permanent and that the root cause of all our sufferings (dukkha) is our craving for these impermanent things. Our material possessions, the people close to our hearts, all our pleasurable experiences, even our own bodies - all of them are impermanent and will go away.

       If we can only fully comprehend and be mindful of this truth and then learn to cease

1.) our attachment to material things
2.) our attachment to pleasurable experiences
3.) or its opposite, our "attachment" to NOT experiencing any unpleasant feeling or experience like pain (avoidance is the better word).
4.) our attachment to the people we love and even to ourselves (narcissism)

then our sufferings will cease. This is not a suggestion to become a cold and distant person (who ignores the world) nor an exhortation to stop loving the people around us, especially our significant others. Quite the opposite actually. We are rather being encouraged to be "mindful" of this truth. Buddhists believe that suffering will continue to be experienced (from this life to the next) in perpetual cycle until one reaches nirvana, a blissful state where one is liberated from all these attachments. Among Hindus, they believe that when you achieve nirvana, you actually become united with the Supreme Being.

       In this context, we can now bring ourselves to understand one of the most controversial statements attributed to Jesus, "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" (Gospel of Matthew 10:34). I believe Jesus was only stating the truth on how we are going to "receive the Kingdom of God": that we must learn and be willing to detach ourselves from anything and/or anyone (including our loved ones).

       He went on to say "...for I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34–39). At first glance, it appears contradictory to what Jesus always preach to his disciples. In fact, when I first came across this passage, it was quite shocking to me to say the least. But once you put it in the context of Buddha's concept of detachment, you will start to understand where he was coming from.

       At a practical level, understanding the concept of detachment will actually help us to quickly recover from  tragedies that sometimes cross our path. You can just imagine, for example, the terrible experiences of  the people who survived the devastating earthquake and giant tsunami that hit Banda Aceh, Indonesia in 2004 who also lost most, if not all, of their loved ones during the catastrophe. For the years that followed, many of them surely must have felt extreme guilt and got severely depressed for being the sole survivors of their respective families. It's easy to imagine that some of them end up losing their minds or, worse, committing suicide. But when you deeply understand and absorb the concept of detachment, if a similar tragedy will strike at you, I'm confident that you will learn quickly to move on with your life. You will still be the same loving and concerned parent, spouse or sibling to your family. Nothing else in you will change. Except that you are no longer "attached" to them. In the eyes of God, you have no more possessions and therefore have gained "spiritual poverty" and it's actually a good thing.

      It must have felt quite liberating for Warren Buffett when he decided some years ago to donate almost all of his wealth to charity. Or, St. Francis of Assisi, for that matter. Or even the Buddha when he decided to let go of his wife and son, and all his wealth in his quest for spiritual enlightenment.