Life’s deeper meaning

We are living in a terribly unstable world. This is supposedly the era of globalization and yet we continue to see violent clashes between cultures and religions. Also we constantly hear the mantra that the principal goal in life is to get a high-paying job or migrate to other countries because consumption of luxuries has become everyone’s life’s dream. I wonder if there is anything else in life that we should all care for it? Is there no such thing anymore as a deeper meaning in life? But perhaps the pandemic has made us think of what should really matter.

It is hard to believe that the environment has changed so dramatically in just one generation. In my college years in the 60s and the martial law decades that came after, conversations on the search for a deeper meaning in life were the standard hallmarks of most discussion groups.

Poverty and social injustice were the issues then, just like today. But the ideal response then was to join in the effort to change society. Thus, there was a variety of responses. Some went to the mountains, others went into political work while others participated in mass organizations.

There was a general feeling that righteous causes would triumph if they were advocated by courageous and principled people. Even before Ninoy Aquino phrased it so poignantly, there were already many people – both peasants and college graduates – who were offering their lives for the Filipino people.

It is hard to tell what went wrong. All we know is that we are seeing a generation of intellectuals or potential leaders deciding that migration is the ideal life. But the most cynical part is that these people blame everyone else, including the so-called “system” for their flight.

Some believe that the cynicism was caused by the rise of two competing ideologies that have somehow monopolized the discussion on the correct formula to remedy our nation’s ills. At one end is the ideology of the Left, which is really a zero-sum game that dictates that the poor must battle with the rich for any gains. Then there is the trickle-down ideology of the conservative Right, which says that as the rich gets richer, wealth trickles down and raises everybody’s standard of living.

Neither one of these models is correct. It is actually the ideology that falls in the middle that works. Unfortunately, this missing ideology needs to be better articulated, better understood.

The articulation of ideas and the dialogue that ensues is critical to any crusade for social change.  Throughout history, any dialogue has been led by men and women who have communicated their thoughts through their writings. These were people who judged nations and societies and proposed the changes that revolutionized society.

These were Voltaire and Rousseau of France, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin of the United States and even fiction writers like Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

There were great speeches that moved people into great movements. Think of Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address and Winston Churchill during the Second World War.

In the Philippines, there was Jose Rizal and his Noli and Fili novels. Then there were the speeches of Manuel L. Quezon advocating independence and Claro M. Recto espousing nationalism. Then Jose W. Diokno articulately speaking of a nation that our children deserve.

Unfortunately today, this dialogue has become monopolized by television commentators who, at best, substitute charisma for wisdom; replace ideas with sound bytes and mistake criticism for social critiques.

Someone told me once that the overwhelming majority of our television personalities, especially the ones who have turned politicians, are intellectual vacuum weights.

Although I am puzzled and mildly disappointed with the new generation, I continue to remain hopeful. This new generation is much more educated and their minds, more scientific than mine. They also appear to be better designed for this new age.

Perhaps they are simply at a “pause of will.” In time, they will go through their own search for a deeper meaning in life that goes beyond green cards and green bucks. They will probably have new values based on a new identity.

But there will always be certain unchanging values, those that will endure forever. All men and women have a right to a life of human dignity, which means social justice and economic security. Those that God or a Higher Power has endowed with superior wisdom and ideals have an obligation to lead in this task of building a society where every person has an equal opportunity to live a life of human dignity.

That is something to work towards in today’s Philippine society where the disparity between the rich and the poor is wide and embarrassing. How can our consciences live with this?

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Young Writers’ Hangout via Zoom on Feb 26, 2-3 pm., with Jacqui Franquelli, author of newly released title, Anak ng Tinapay.

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