Twenty-five and twenty-six September, 2009, Metro Manila and most of Central and Southern Luzon got a disastrous whipping from a storm locally given the name Ondoy. A few days later, came another one—this time named Pepeng—that didn’t almost want to go away and in the process heavily devastated Northern Luzon. It was not the last as another followed suit—Quedan. Then, the last which was called Ramil came rushing down to wreck havoc over the provinces of Cagayan and Isabela. Hundreds of human lives were lost along with the massive destruction and ultimate loss of properties worth billions of pesos.
The common and typical response of the religious Filipino to tragedies of such magnitude brings to mind the notion that God is behind it—that it is a demonstration of God’s chastisement. But the thinking ones retort with a query: Why would a God, generally regarded to be full of compassion and pity, punish a country whose majority of its population have long been suffering in intense poverty—a people who have long been experiencing the exploitation and oppression perpetrated by an opportunistic government whose unilateral goal is solely the enrichment of them who run it as well as their subservient minions? The truth of the matter is, God—for those who believe in God—did not punish the Philippines in the calamities that have befallen it. Events like these should have been seen in the context of Nature. And we Filipinos have long been suffering because we haven’t actually learned to properly deal with Nature which we, in reality, cannot resist, fight with and defeat. In other words, we Filipinos, as we deal with Nature, are a bunch of stubborn and imprudent people. We have never learned and as time goes on, we have continuously ignored certain undeniable realities. And this is the very reason why we have never been able to master the ways of Nature by way of our intelligence despite our humanity that is supposed to be uniquely endowed with it. It is one thing to be gifted with intelligence and it is another to be able to use this intelligence in real life.
First: We Filipinos know that the Philippines is an archipelago amidst the Pacific Ocean and China Sea. That being the case, the Philippines is storm- and typhoon-prone, and this we know very well. But the six-million dollar question is why have we failed to make significant steps to protect ourselves against the constant threat of storms and typhoons year in and year out? Thousands and thousands of houses are devastated time and again when storms and typhoons enter the Philippine area of responsibility. Yet, we have never learned to build houses that can stand the fury of a storm or a typhoon. (Excluded from this consideration are the people of the Batanes group of islands because they have learned to cope with the typhoons that regularly visit them by constructing abodes that cannot be whipped and toppled by storms and typhoons.) A great number of Filipinos in places visited very often by storms and typhoons are thick-headed enough to put up their houses right along the seashore. However, city-dwelling squatters rationalize their poverty to advance the notion that it is almost next to impossibility for them to construct houses that can stand the fury of typhoons. The most fundamental question we ask is, Why, in the first place, are they in the city? They are originally from the provinces and the most basic decision they should make at this most crucial moment of their lives is to go back to their respective provinces of origin and restart to make the best of what they can and transform the farmlands into an immense source of agricultural bounty.
Second: Cities like the ones in the Metro Manila area get flooded even when there is no storm or typhoon because of the very grave defects in the drainage system that has been malfunctioning since time immemorial. What has caused the defects and the malfunction? Enormous mountains of garbage whose major sources are the very localities where there are concentrations of squatters, specifically those found along the banks of vast rivers (e.g., the Pasig River) that flow towards the sea. The joke that circulates around is: The drainage system of Metro Manila is so terribly clogged, it only takes ten dogs to urinate simultaneously and the metropolis gets instantly flooded. The majority of Manilenos are still ignorant of the fact that the city of Manila is below sea-level. And despite the succession of administrations that have run the city government, not a single one has seriously taken yet the determined initiative to get focused on the city’s drainage system.
Third: Filipino stubbornness is yet an unbroken barrier as none has really critically considered the risk of putting up houses in places that are actually impossible to be housing areas like in places made into housing subdivisions in the city of Marikina. Marikina is a valley—an area surrounded by hills and mountains from which the waters that flood the city originate. Why, in the first place, does it happen? The hard reality is: the surrounding mountains have long been denuded forests that have lost the natural formations to barricade the onrush of waters during heavy downfalls. In this consideration, the local city government should have constructed first a series of waterway systems to divert the waters away from the valley before whatever plan to transform portions of it into housing areas was implemented.
Fourth: Since time immemorial, the utter fear, unqualified stupidity and sheer lack of principle of many Filipinos located in and proximate to uplands and mountainous areas have led to an outright neglect of large-scale criminal operations of illegal loggers under the patronage of unscrupulous politicians to devastatingly rampage the forests. In many instances, these irresponsible Filipinos are even “allies” of these wicked politicians and illegal loggers. This is the most primary factor why formerly lush mountain forests in the Philippines are now generally denuded. This, in turn, is the main cause of massive inundations not only in urban but likewise in rural locales.
Filipinos, often in a condition of mourning due to the ferociousness of calamities that recurrently hit the country, have not essentially learned their lessons. The general aftermath consistently creates a scenario of mendicancy where queues of calamity victims are common as people have become habitually too dependent on relief goods in evacuation areas where they have been hoarded: A people who wants to be pitied by the rest of the world.
The most important questions that linger now are these: When will the kairos of the Filipino be realized as s/he ultimately becomes the master of her/his states of affairs? When will s/he be able to learn to be in harmony with the motions and flows of Nature without getting into a futile battle against her for the absolute reason that Nature is formidable and hence a horrendous adversary? When will be the ripe and imminent time for the individual Filipino to develop a courageous disposition to stand on her/his own two feet without depending on the mercy of others? These are questions that challenge the sanity, intelligence and tenacity of the individual Filipino. It is of the essence here and now to face the challenge at hand and put an end to a kind of showbiz mentality of the Filipinos which is the premier culprit why we have consistently failed to see, analyze, evaluate and act on the present and real circumstances that have long been besetting us.
© Ruel Pepa December 2009
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, March 9, 2009
Arne Naess, Norwegian philosopher, dies at 96
By William Grimes
Published: January 15, 2009
Published: January 15, 2009
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
Naess, a Norwegian philosopher whose ideas about promoting an intimate and all-embracing relationship between the earth and the human species inspired environmentalists and Green political activists around the world, died Monday. He was 96.
His editor, Erling Kagge, confirmed his death to Agence France-Presse.
In the early 1970s, after three decades teaching philosophy at the University of Oslo, Naess (pronounced Ness), an enthusiastic mountain climber and an admirer of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," threw himself into environmental work and developed a theory that he called deep ecology. Its central tenet is the belief that all living beings have their own value and therefore, as Naess once put it, "need protection against the destruction of billions of humans."
Deep ecology, which called for population reduction, soft technology and non-interference in the natural world, was eagerly taken up by environmentalists impatient with shallow ecology — another of Naess's coinages — which did not confront technology and economic growth.
It formed part of a broader personal philosophy that Naess called ecosophy T, "a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium" that human beings can comprehend by expanding their narrow concept of self to embrace the entire planetary ecosystem. The term fused "ecological" and "philosophy." The T stood for Tvergastein, his name for the mountain cabin he built in 1937 in southern Norway, where he often wrote.
Arne Dekke Eide Naess was born in Slemdal, near Oslo, in 1912. His older brother was the shipping tycoon Erling Naess, who died in 1993. After earning a degree from the University of Oslo in 1933 Arne Naess continued his education in Paris and in Vienna, where he became part of the Vienna Circle, a philosophical school dedicated to empiricism and logical analysis. In the belief that philosophers should be self-aware, he also underwent psychoanalysis.
After completing "Knowledge and Scientific Behavior," his dissertation, in German, he was given a teaching position at the University of Oslo, where, as Norway's only professor of philosophy until 1954, he was the animating figure in the Oslo School. Working in teams, the Oslo School's adherents used questionnaires to investigate the meanings that ordinary people assigned to terms like "truth," "free enterprise" and "democracy." In 1958 he founded the journal Inquiry.
Over his career, Naess progressed from a radical empiricism to pluralism and skepticism. In his many publications, he took on a wide variety of philosophical problems. Harold Glasser, the editor of "The Selected Works of Arne Naess" (2005), has called him "the philosophical equivalent of a hunter-gatherer." He was interested in language, meaning and communication, a subject he wrote about in "Interpretation and Preciseness" (1953) and "Communication and Argument" (1966), and in the relationship between reason and feeling. He also wrote books on two thinkers central to his worldview, Spinoza and Gandhi.
In 1969 Naess left the university to develop his ecological ideas, which, he believed, demanded political action. With other environmentalists, he chained himself to rocks in front of the Mardal waterfall, successfully pressing the Norwegian government to abandon plans for a dam on the fjord that feeds the falls. He also wrote extensively on the ethics of mountaineering, a field in which he had considerable expertise. In 1950 he led the first expedition to climb Tirich Mir, a 25,000-foot peak in the Hindu Kush in Pakistan.
His ideas on ecology and ecosophy were developed in numerous books and articles, notably "Freedom, Emotion and Self-Subsistence" (1975), "Ecology, Community and Lifestyle" (1989) and "Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World" (2002).
Surveying the continuing destruction of the environment, Naess was pessimistic about the 21st century but optimistic about the 23rd. By then, he predicted, population control would show results, technology would be noninvasive and children would grow up in a natural environment. At that point, he said, "we are back in the direction of paradise."
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEEP ECOLOGY
WHAT IS DEEP ECOLOGY?
Deep ecology is a recent branch of ecological philosophy (ecosophy) that considers humankind an integral part of its environment. It is a body of thought that places greater value on non-human species, ecosystems and processes in nature than established environmental and green movements. Deep ecology has led to a new system of environmental ethics. The core principle of deep ecology as originally developed is Arne Næss's doctrine of biospheric egalitarianism — the claim that, like humanity, the living environment as a whole has the same right to live and flourish. Deep ecology describes itself as "deep" because it persists in asking deeper questions concerning "why" and "how" and thus is concerned with the fundamental philosophical questions about the impacts of human life as one part of the ecosphere, rather than with a narrow view of ecology as a branch of biological science, and aims to avoid merely utilitarian environmentalism, which it argues is concerned with resource management of the environment for human purposes.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
READ
the TRUMPETER
Journal of Ecosophy
The Trumpeter is an environmental journal dedicated to the development of an ecosophy, or wisdom, born of ecological understanding and insight. As such, it serves the deep ecology movement’s commitment to explore and analyze philosophically relevant environmental concerns in light of ecological developments at every relevant level: metaphysics, science, history, politics. Gaining a deeper understanding involves a comprehensive set of criteria that includes analytical rigour, spiritual insight, ethical integrity, and aesthetic appreciation.
Friday, February 6, 2009
A Review of Angela Blardony Ureta’s A PILGRIM'S DIARY, PASSAGES AND INNER LANDSCAPES
A Pilgrim’s Diary, Passages and Inner Landscapes mirrors the highly evolved soul of its author, Angela Blardony Ureta. The language, which at times is magical and at others philosophical, is generally spiritual in its obviously effortless fluency and spontaneity expressive of a synthesis: the honed experience of a journalist and the fantastic talent of a born litterateur. The wide ranging appeal of this small volume carries the reader right to the light-hearted person of the author by way of her infectious sense of humor that brings warmth to one’s feeling. It likewise projects the cerebral depth of her penetrating insights that challenge the equal depth of one’s understanding.
A Pilgrim’s Diary uncovers and outpours postmodern spirituality which Charlene Spretnak in her State of grace: the recovery of meaning in postmodern age (1991. San Francisco: HarperCollins) calls ecological postmodernism—“a passage beyond the failed assumptions of modernity and a radical reorientation that preserves the positive advances of the liberal tradition and technological capabilities but is rooted in ecological sanity and meaningful human participation in the unfolding story of the Earth community and the universe.” It is likewise a strong affirmation of what David Ray Griffin calls constructive or revisionary postmodernism [“Introduction to SUNY series in constructive postmodern thought” in D. R. Griffin (ed.) Spirituality and society (Albany NY: SUNY Press)] which synthesizes modern and premodern truths and values including the latter’s notions of divine reality, cosmic signification and the enchantment of nature. It is a construction of a postmodern weltanschauung through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts uniting scientific, ethical, aesthetic and religious intuitions.
The author has in a sense “circumnavigated the globe” and the book gives us the rare chance to feel the exhilaration that goes with serendipity and the awe-inspiring mystery of life in a tapestry of varied cultures and peoples, environs and emotions, idealities and realities. Her encounters with “celestial” personalities were golden moments that no material riches in “all possible worlds” (Leibniz) could ever match. Just like Paulo Coelho, Angela Ureta is an “adventurer of the spirit” who has allowed herself to be swallowed by the mystery of the unknown which is the essence of honest-to-goodness adventure—someone who’d rather pass the time in bars rather than patiently march with typical tourists in a procession to museums. Ben Okri of The Famished Road fame agrees: “The bar saw its most unusual congregation of the weird, the drunk, the mad, the wounded and the wonderful.”
But the seemingly indefatigable globetrotter has deeper impressions of and a more poignant attachment to her geographical roots. Her stories of local engagements allow us to discover things that are supposed to be known to us but unfortunately not quite and hence bring us to near-embarrassment and humble acceptance. Her Batanes sojourn transports us to “Shangri-la” so that we now know in that picturesque locale “[c]rime is practically unheard of and homes are left wide open at all hours of the day because theft is a strange word to the Ivatan.” On second thought, however, an anxiety pervades the soul for “reality is in constant flux” (Heraclitus) and in that light, Michel Foucault had long realized such anxiety: “At the end of the 18th century, people dreamed of society without crime. And then the dream evaporated. Crime was too useful for them to dream of anything as crazy—or ultimately as dangerous—as a society without crime. No crime means no police.” (Power/Knowledge)
Romanticizing is almost certainly a weakness of a writer enthralled—paradoxically, a weakness that strengthens one’s power to express in vivid terms the passion of a mystical encounter. But too much transcendence can also be disorienting to the point of amnesiac forgetfulness. So that in Nietzsche’s reminder, too much celebration in monumental history and excessive romanticizing in the antiquarian could blind us of the gains of liberation in the heart of the critical. The author’s paean to the “Heavenly Treasures of Laguna” is so captivating it almost unresistingly pulled me to the apeiron and numbed the critical in me. But at the point of recovering my senses, lessons of history had rehearsed itself before me the blood, sweat and tears of cruelty and oppression—the inhumanity of the human being to another of the same species—upon which most if not all of these “houses of God” had been erected by the colonial power of a dark era.
However, by and large, A Pilgrim’s Diary is truly a “journaling” of a traveler’s search for her Self. Thank you so much, Angela, for the “tiny sparks” of your journey in this lifetime have exceedingly inspired an incorrigible romantic in me to go on in this very same lifetime venturing the unknown on my own, alone.
© Ruel F. Pepa, 02 September 2005
A Pilgrim’s Diary uncovers and outpours postmodern spirituality which Charlene Spretnak in her State of grace: the recovery of meaning in postmodern age (1991. San Francisco: HarperCollins) calls ecological postmodernism—“a passage beyond the failed assumptions of modernity and a radical reorientation that preserves the positive advances of the liberal tradition and technological capabilities but is rooted in ecological sanity and meaningful human participation in the unfolding story of the Earth community and the universe.” It is likewise a strong affirmation of what David Ray Griffin calls constructive or revisionary postmodernism [“Introduction to SUNY series in constructive postmodern thought” in D. R. Griffin (ed.) Spirituality and society (Albany NY: SUNY Press)] which synthesizes modern and premodern truths and values including the latter’s notions of divine reality, cosmic signification and the enchantment of nature. It is a construction of a postmodern weltanschauung through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts uniting scientific, ethical, aesthetic and religious intuitions.
The author has in a sense “circumnavigated the globe” and the book gives us the rare chance to feel the exhilaration that goes with serendipity and the awe-inspiring mystery of life in a tapestry of varied cultures and peoples, environs and emotions, idealities and realities. Her encounters with “celestial” personalities were golden moments that no material riches in “all possible worlds” (Leibniz) could ever match. Just like Paulo Coelho, Angela Ureta is an “adventurer of the spirit” who has allowed herself to be swallowed by the mystery of the unknown which is the essence of honest-to-goodness adventure—someone who’d rather pass the time in bars rather than patiently march with typical tourists in a procession to museums. Ben Okri of The Famished Road fame agrees: “The bar saw its most unusual congregation of the weird, the drunk, the mad, the wounded and the wonderful.”
But the seemingly indefatigable globetrotter has deeper impressions of and a more poignant attachment to her geographical roots. Her stories of local engagements allow us to discover things that are supposed to be known to us but unfortunately not quite and hence bring us to near-embarrassment and humble acceptance. Her Batanes sojourn transports us to “Shangri-la” so that we now know in that picturesque locale “[c]rime is practically unheard of and homes are left wide open at all hours of the day because theft is a strange word to the Ivatan.” On second thought, however, an anxiety pervades the soul for “reality is in constant flux” (Heraclitus) and in that light, Michel Foucault had long realized such anxiety: “At the end of the 18th century, people dreamed of society without crime. And then the dream evaporated. Crime was too useful for them to dream of anything as crazy—or ultimately as dangerous—as a society without crime. No crime means no police.” (Power/Knowledge)
Romanticizing is almost certainly a weakness of a writer enthralled—paradoxically, a weakness that strengthens one’s power to express in vivid terms the passion of a mystical encounter. But too much transcendence can also be disorienting to the point of amnesiac forgetfulness. So that in Nietzsche’s reminder, too much celebration in monumental history and excessive romanticizing in the antiquarian could blind us of the gains of liberation in the heart of the critical. The author’s paean to the “Heavenly Treasures of Laguna” is so captivating it almost unresistingly pulled me to the apeiron and numbed the critical in me. But at the point of recovering my senses, lessons of history had rehearsed itself before me the blood, sweat and tears of cruelty and oppression—the inhumanity of the human being to another of the same species—upon which most if not all of these “houses of God” had been erected by the colonial power of a dark era.
However, by and large, A Pilgrim’s Diary is truly a “journaling” of a traveler’s search for her Self. Thank you so much, Angela, for the “tiny sparks” of your journey in this lifetime have exceedingly inspired an incorrigible romantic in me to go on in this very same lifetime venturing the unknown on my own, alone.
© Ruel F. Pepa, 02 September 2005
THE EARTH IS ALIVE
The Earth is alive . . . yet.
The Earth is alive and yet she is in a very serious condition.
The Earth is alive, yet she is likewise dying.
The Earth is dying and unless we do something imminent at this point in time, we shall surely perish with her.
This is the most pressing and present reality we face in the 21st century. Unless we reverse this tragic flow of events, we are heading toward disaster.
A foreboding atmosphere of impending devastation dominates the landscape for we have gradually systematically poisoned the Earth: prevalent pollutions of the air and waters; holes in the ozone layer; massive destruction of the flora and fauna. We—Earth and humans—are in the worst of times.
Through generations, we have failed to acknowledge the fact that the Earth is a living Super-Organism—a macro-mirror of our own delicate humanity that should have been taken extra care of with the best of our tenderness and protected with the resoluteness of a kindred spirit always ready to defend one of its flesh and blood.
The Earth has always faithfully sustained the most basic of our needs, wishes and desires. The Earth has constantly been a trustworthy patron of our sacred humanity making her the source of that very sacredness.Yet, we have not positively responded to her loving kindness with sincere gratitude. Instead, we have become purveyors of abuses and exploitative acts.
In the modern era, humanity has declared war against nature. In the process, modern technology has been harnessed for exploitative purposes leading to heavy environmental devastations and ecological imbalance to the detriment of the human species. In the final analysis, we humans are at the losing end.Now is the most fitting moment to reconcile with nature.
Now is the most proper chance for us to bow down in humility and accept the magnitude of our misdoings with repentant hearts and total mindfulness of a new worldview that will at last redeem us from the mire of an impending destruction. Now is the era of a new world order pushed and carried by a responsible humanity with all the willingness to renew what is yet renewable on Earth.
The challenge before us therefore is to work together and let a new Earth—now an eco-system where humanity becomes a part of nature—evolve and metamorphose to create a new humanity that does not only appreciate the spiritual but also the natural for they are not two but a unity.
The Earth is alive and yet she is in a very serious condition.
The Earth is alive, yet she is likewise dying.
The Earth is dying and unless we do something imminent at this point in time, we shall surely perish with her.
This is the most pressing and present reality we face in the 21st century. Unless we reverse this tragic flow of events, we are heading toward disaster.
A foreboding atmosphere of impending devastation dominates the landscape for we have gradually systematically poisoned the Earth: prevalent pollutions of the air and waters; holes in the ozone layer; massive destruction of the flora and fauna. We—Earth and humans—are in the worst of times.
Through generations, we have failed to acknowledge the fact that the Earth is a living Super-Organism—a macro-mirror of our own delicate humanity that should have been taken extra care of with the best of our tenderness and protected with the resoluteness of a kindred spirit always ready to defend one of its flesh and blood.
The Earth has always faithfully sustained the most basic of our needs, wishes and desires. The Earth has constantly been a trustworthy patron of our sacred humanity making her the source of that very sacredness.Yet, we have not positively responded to her loving kindness with sincere gratitude. Instead, we have become purveyors of abuses and exploitative acts.
In the modern era, humanity has declared war against nature. In the process, modern technology has been harnessed for exploitative purposes leading to heavy environmental devastations and ecological imbalance to the detriment of the human species. In the final analysis, we humans are at the losing end.Now is the most fitting moment to reconcile with nature.
Now is the most proper chance for us to bow down in humility and accept the magnitude of our misdoings with repentant hearts and total mindfulness of a new worldview that will at last redeem us from the mire of an impending destruction. Now is the era of a new world order pushed and carried by a responsible humanity with all the willingness to renew what is yet renewable on Earth.
The challenge before us therefore is to work together and let a new Earth—now an eco-system where humanity becomes a part of nature—evolve and metamorphose to create a new humanity that does not only appreciate the spiritual but also the natural for they are not two but a unity.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
