Ah, The Youth

Passion For Reason : On teaching the Nintendo generation

Raul Pangalangan
Inquirer News Service

IT USED to be easier to teach the public law cases on martial law and human rights. I began teaching law in 1984, the year I became a lawyer, and my students at the University of the Philippines then truly felt what they were studying. Over the next decades, it was no longer enough just to assign the traditional judicial decisions, which are the daily grind of law students. I took to assigning the more literary and moving journalistic accounts (more reader-friendly too); or a 1970s vintage human rights update by the Association of Major Religious Superiors; or a martial law-era autopsy report saying that the "patient" drank a bottle of acid while confined at the V. Luna Hospital. If the topic was comfort women, I'd show a sepia-toned photograph of the aggrieved grandmothers in their teens, their age when they were kidnapped and enslaved.

I do not think this is because today's youth care less, but it's more because their minds work differently. We must not judge them by the metaphors of the grim and determined activists of the 1970s and early 1980s.

First, we have provided them only a sparse record by which to remember the past. Elsewhere in the world, periods of impunity were documented through truth commissions organized by the state, e.g., South Africa, El Salvador or Argentina. We have deliberately avoided the truth, believing it more expedient to forget. There was never any closure, judicial or popular, to that dark chapter in our nation's life, and our collective psyche is forever hobbled by the questions left unanswered.

Second, today's youth may be attuned to their own way of "remembering." Historically, societies have done their remembering through huge public monuments, around which humongous public rallies gather annually to mark important events. The French have their magnificent statues, like Napoleon's giant tomb; we have our own, some of them imposing like Jose Rizal's at the Luneta and Andres Bonifacio's at Monumento, others a bit too literal and unimaginative, like that sculpture of Ninoy falling down the steps to the tarmac. Mao used to have his grand parades at Tienanmen Square, where he mobilized millions in well-choreographed displays of mass control; we have, of course, our own Manila-scale attempts at the Quirino Grandstand.

I doubt if these ways of remembering "connects" with the Nintendo (or Playstation) generation. The sheer passage of time may have reduced the annual September 21 commemoration to just another boring ritual, long on speeches, short on heartfelt meaning. Yet, precisely, the Nintendo generation is impatient with speeches and more attuned to the yearnings of the heart. It has been said half in jest that theirs is the age of "Oprah-fication," when the great public questions of the time are answered in human, personal terms. The goal is to be able to say, as Bill Clinton did, "I feel your pain."

That is why we must explore fresh new ways to make them feel our martial law-era pains. Last year, I brought my kids to the Ayala Museum, where they saw (in addition to the diorama of Philippine history) a documentary on the martial law years. By their questions, I realized that what was "current events" for my generation is classroom history ("Araling Panlipunan") to theirs.

But that wouldn't have been a problem for the oldies, because for us, it was okay for history to be boring and distant, nourishment for the mind but not for the heart, something we studied because it would be "asked in the exam." The Nintendo generation is more demanding.

To start with, the oldies were satisfied with books without pictures, all the information presented in linear form, black-and-white text written from left to right, top to bottom. The newbies think in wild vibrant color. If you describe an event, they want to see the photos, not someone else's description of what happened. They want the facts, not someone else's spin-doctored summary. And while statistics are okay, they prefer to hear a person telling his story. The older generation might hem and haw that that story is just one man's, and is therefore biased and personal, but the new generation says, "That's exactly why we want to hear it! That is what makes it authentic!" The older generation searched for objective standards before which the public must bow. The newbies seek personal causes by which they can stand firm before a cold and unforgiving public. Oldies want to be true to a cause; newbies prefer to be true to the innermost self.

The Nintendo generation remembers best through audio-visual media, or what the oldies might see as People Power through PowerPoint. You see, when kids play videogames, they control everything, just by using their thumbs. When at play, a kid lives in that separate universe constructed inside their heads. That is why my kids love watching "The Matrix," and then they turn around and explain it to me.

Recent reports say that our youth wouldn't mind a return to dictatorship, presumably more benign than in the 1970s, while becoming increasingly indifferent to activist elders (or should I say elderly activists) who memorialize the glorious battles in the democratic struggle in times past. The kids know not whereof they speak, but we must tell them more stories, and tell those stories better, if we expect them to remember. The future is in their hands, more specifically, their thumbs. Judge Learned Hand said: "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."

The French

Sense and Sensibility : The French in the Philippines (2)

Bambi Harper
Inquirer News Service

ALTHOUGH our relations with France may not be as comprehensive as the ones with China, Spain and the United States, France was the first country to have a consul here, a certain Adolphe Barrot, in 1835. He rented a house in the district of San Miguel, beside the Pasig River, where eventually toward the end of the 19th century, a large brewery that we all know was located and took the name of the church and the district. Eventually, it relocated to the Malate district and then to Escolta Street, in the same building as La Estrella del Norte, which belonged to the Levy family.

At the time of Barrot's tenure, there were fewer than 10 Frenchmen in the country: "two doctors, one planter (la Gironier), one trader (Vidie who eventually bought Jala-Jala from the former), one agent, Genu, one plantation manager, one gold seeker, and one military man in the service of Spain. In 1843, there was a carriage-maker who did very well; in 1847, a band master who left his ship to supervise the music of the Manila Garrison, and in 1853, an engineer, F. Gabaud, was awarded the Legion of Honor for building the first suspension bridge in the country." By 1857, their number had grown to 26, with 20 living in Manila, two in Iloilo, one in Cebu, one in Jala-Jala, one on Negros Island, and one in Camarines Province. In 1891, there were seven jewelers, a drapes-maker, a dressmaker and three professors.

You'd be amused to learn that the ladies wanted a French couture house to be established in Manila and that the three jewelers, the Ullmans, Greilsammers and Levys, "struck it rich…through Mexican piaster-smuggling, the sale of French perfume imitations and flooding of cheap German goods under the French label."

In May 11, 1805, Captain Motard of the ship Semillante, while escorting a galleon to Acapulco, was forced into combat with a British cruiser, Phaeton, and a brig, Harrier, in San Jacinto Bay (Ticao Island, Albay). With the help of the parish priest and the people, he succeeded in subduing the enemy but lost four men with 10 others wounded. Upon leaving, he presented the priest with 12 guns and 200 pounds of gunpowder. The priest was also invited to the burial of one of the soldiers who died. Engraved in copper over his tomb in the church was an inscription: "Francois Gois, ensign of the frigate Semillante, led by Captain Motard, officer of the Legion of Honor, killed in battle, which this frigate of 36 cannon fought against a British frigate of 44 and a corvette of 20 cannonade … in San Jacinto of Ticao, of the Philippine Islands, on 14 Thermidor Year XIII. His body lies here and his comrades offered this token of their memories and regrets."

And if that church has not been remodeled beyond recognition by some zealous and ignorant parish priest or felled by an earthquake or gutted by fire, Ensign Gois' bones should still be lying beneath his inscription under this foreign sky.

I did say I wasn't going to dwell on Gironiere since many of you are already familiar with his book, "Vingt Annees aux Philippines" (1853), except to mention two things. One is that he left the Philippines in 1836 after a series of misfortunes where he lost his first daughter, his wife, his son and his brother. He returned to the Philippines in 1857 where he managed the sugar plantation of the Roxases in Calauang town in Laguna province. Apropos of nothing but curiosity, in connection with Calauang, in the church is a marble sepulchral tablet with an inscription to a lady with the surname Punzalan Vda. de Roxas. Since her name does not appear in the genealogical tree of the present-day Makati Roxases, could she be of the Hidden Valley Roxases?

Discouraged by a policy that wasn't particularly friendly to foreign investors (during the entire period of Spanish domination, there was never a French bank, their consuls had no jurisdiction over their nationals and there were numerous impediments to trade; to be fair, other foreigners had difficulties as well), the French also regarded natural calamities as another drawback. In 1880, an earthquake leveled agricultural developer Daillard's enterprise as well as the consul's residence. The latter reported that his furniture which may have had some value once "no longer has any."

The following year, a cyclone tore off the roof of the French consulate and shattered doors and windows. The consul sat on a pile of furniture writing his report. "I camp here," he wrote, "as if in the field of battle..."

The cholera epidemic that broke out in the same year claimed 100,000 victims, including the American consul and 10 French nationals. A scandal swept through the small foreign community in 1890 when the consul Nodot died in office, leaving behind a debt of 27 piastres and 300 unpaid empty bottles of wine!

The opinions of various French observers also make interesting reading. Here is Lavolee's take: "From the purely material point of view, are the Spanish friars not correct to say that the inhabitants of the Philippines are the happiest beings in the world?"

That was more than a hundred years ago. And Time Magazine recently reported the same thing: We're still the happiest idiots in the world. Nobody's attributing it to the fact that we might be laughing because it's too painful to cry.

(Data from Denis Nardin's thesis, "France and the Philippines," 1974.)

Expect The Worst

Youngblood : Pessimistic but happy

Skilty Labastilla
Inquirer News Service

I'M NOT really a big fan of philosophical discussions. In college, whenever classmates or friends would start to argue over some philosophical ideas, I automatically tune off. I'd rather count the hair on the back of my hand than involve myself in debates that generally go along these lines:

Friend 1: What do you call that thing that you're sitting on?

Friend 2: Uhh, a chair?

Friend 1: Are you sure that it's a chair and not just some idea of a chair? If I tell you that you're just sitting on a word, would I be wrong? What if I tell you that without words, you're just sitting on air? It's all semantics, man.

Friend 2: The problem with postmodernists like you is that you turn everything on its head. You're, like, the philosophical version of the League of Filipino Students: you go against everything the system does. I'm sitting on a chair, period. I don't have to lose sleep over whether the chair I'm sitting on is really an elephant. I have other things to worry about, thank you.

Friend 1: You don't understand, man. I'm not even being a postmodernist here. It's closer to existentialism, actually. Man is the pilot of his life. He doesn't need a system to live his own life. He defines things around him and manipulates these things to achieve his goals.

Friend 2: Whatever, man.

Well, the last line is not what Friend 2 would normally say. That's what I would've said had I taken part in the conversation. And usually, the argument would go on and on and on.

That's why it's funny that I would want to share the philosophy I subscribe to these days. But then I want more people to feel happy amid the present difficulties. The gist of my philosophy is: Expect the worst. To illustrate the point, I will cite some examples:

You wake up in the morning, expecting a splitting headache. When you realize you really don't have one, you become happy.

You go out of the house, expecting a heavy downpour. But then the sun is shining brightly and it puts a smile on your face.

You ride a jeep, anticipating heavy traffic. It turns out that the jeepney driver is a Michael Schumacher wannabe and you arrive at your destination in no time. You feel so blessed.

You expect higher prices of commodities but still get your money's worth after shopping. You're on Cloud Nine.

You court a girl and expect to be turned down. When she finally turns you down, it doesn't sting as much.

You don't expect to finish your thesis on time. Months after the deadline, you still don't fret too much about it.

You elect a president and expect him/her to be corrupt. When corruption is exposed, you don't go to the Edsa highway anymore because you had expected it to happen, in the first place.

I'm sure you get my drift by now. By expecting the worst of everything, you prepare yourself to be disappointed. When something bad happens, you don't feel so awful because you anticipated it. When something good happens, it cheers you up because you expected something bad.

If more people would only think this way, then more people we meet on the street would be wearing smiles and whistling lively tunes.

Tom Cruise has attracted more people to Scientology. I hope to attract more people to Skiltology. If you think what I'm saying is nonsense, you can still tell your friends about it. Maybe they'd be more willing to try it.

But of course, I am not expecting that they would.

Skilty Labastilla, 25, is taking up MS Social Development at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Ghosts of History

Commentary : The ghosts of history in East Asia

Antonio Chun-nan Chiang
Inquirer News Service

THIS year marks the centenary of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and last Aug. 15, many countries commemorated the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific.

Of course, Japan's military dominance in East Asia, which began with the Russo-Japanese War and led to World War II, is no more. But the ghosts of this history still hangs over in East Asia, with each country struggling to find ways to deal with the past.

China is a benchmark. Over the centuries, Japan and China have taken turns dominating East Asia, and both now seek to assert regional hegemony. Historically, the Korean Peninsula was the playground for this rivalry, but, with North and South Korea appearing to make peace with each other, South Korea is also staking a claim to regional influence.

Resentment over past wrongs buttresses all of these rival claims for influence.

During his visit to the United States in June, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told President George W. Bush that China had invaded Korea over 100 times in history. His remarks shocked China, which views itself as the victim of invasions (most humiliatingly, by the Japanese) and has forgotten its own history of bullying its neighbors.

Roh also openly criticizes Japan for its cowardice in not facing up to its historic war crimes, saying that it does not deserve a seat on the UN Security Council. Japan long colonized Korea, and during World War II, Koreans were forced to join the Japanese Imperial Army-a situation similar to that of Taiwan. But, whereas the struggle between China and Japan for dominance over Korea was the focal point of the East Asian drama, Taiwan was but a side-show, a mere outpost to the Imperial Qing Dynasty, while Korea was a vassal paying tribute to China.

After defeating both the Qing Dynasty and Russia, Japan not only gained control over the Korean Peninsula but also extended its reach deep into Northeast China. As East Asia's "Big Brother," Japan's Kwantung Army founded Manchukuo, in Northeast China, in 1932. Japan wanted Manchukuo to become what India was to Britain or what Algeria was to France-a crown jewel of the empire-and sent a million immigrants (800,000 of whom died there after post-war Manchukuo was taken over by Russia) while investing huge sums to develop heavy industry.

Japan's Nanjing government in China under Wang Jingwei was like Germany's Vichy government in France under Henri Philippe Pétain. Both men were treated as traitors after the war ended. By contrast, as a result of long colonization, Taiwan and Korea had developed a complex of both resistance and reliance toward their rulers. With only a few exceptions, the local elite was assimilated into the colonial system.

But the outcome was similar throughout the region following Japan's defeat in World War II. Civil war broke out in China, the Korean Peninsula was divided and the other Southeast Asian colonies, with the sole exception of Thailand, resorted to military force to achieve independence.

China has still failed to face up to the history of Manchukuo and its civil war, not to mention opening the secret files concerning Mao Zedong's decision to send almost a million soldiers into the Korean War. South Korea initiated talks with the Japanese government only recently on retrieving the remains of Korean slave workers. More than 20,000 Taiwanese and about the same number of Korean soldiers who died for Imperial Japan are worshipped in Japan's Yasukuni shrine. And recently, some civil groups in both countries started to demand the return of the remains of their countries' soldiers interred at Yasukuni.

Taiwan's delayed reawakening reflects the early reliance of its nationalist government on protection from the United States and assistance from Japan. Chiang Kaishek had no choice but to return good for evil by abjuring compensation claims on Japan, as well as by secretly arranging for the Kwantung Army's ex-chief of staff to join Taiwan's efforts in confronting the communists. Japan has never apologized for its colonization of Taiwan, and the Taiwanese had no opportunity for historical reflection during 30 years of martial law.

This spring, anti-Japanese demonstrations broke out almost simultaneously in both China and Korea, with both countries seeking to place the memory of Japanese dominance in the service of building a new national identity and strategic position. So we can expect that, like the events in May to mark 60 years since the end of World War II in Europe, Asia's commemoration of the end of the war in the Pacific will expose lingering -- and still raw -- historical sensitivities. Unlike in Europe, however, historical memory in Asia continues to be wedded to current strategic ambitions.

One hundred years ago, the rise of Japanese military power changed the fate of Asia. Sixty years ago, the demise of Japanese power changed Asia's fate again. Today, as China rises in wealth and power to rival Japan, Asia holds its breath, waiting for the ghosts of history to disappear.

Antonio Chun-nan Chiang was deputy secretary general of Taiwan's National Security Council from 2000 to 2004.