< hmmm... >

   Today found me in the school library researching everything I can about my least favorite topic to rant or rave about: religion.  On Wednesday, our class will hold a debate on religion.  First, whether religion is an instrument of change or of oppression.  Second, whether the world needs religion or not.

   Not that I'm a hardline Marxist, but I subscribe to Karl Marx's opinion of religion in "Toward a Contribution to Hegel's Philosophy of Right:" religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of an unspiritual situation, the opium of the people, yadda yadda yadda.

   The problem about debating about religion, in my view, is that it all basically boils down to doctrine and not reason.  Which is why I am an avid fan of "Ang Tamang Daan," broadcasted by Net 25 (which is owned by Iglesia Ni Cristo), and I just love it when they use the glass-breaking effects whenever Eliseo Soriano, the leader of the religious sect Ang Dating Daan, speaks out.  Not that I have anything against both sects, but it's just funny how people can debate over interpretations of a single Bible.

   You might be asking, "Hey, Marocharim, aren't you an atheist?"  True: while I write down "Roman Catholic" on forms whenever required, the truth is I don't participate in organized religion.  The falling-out that I have had with religion results from a disillusionment in a religion that believes in many different Christs.

< mcluhan on an entry on activism? >

   Somewhere around Entry #807, I wrote a letter to a freshman activist in UP Manila by the name of Gerome.  It's one of the sickest and lowest entries I have ever written in the native language, but I believe it's one of the most truthful.

   I would like to add to that: "Hindi lahat ng Iskolar ng Bayan ay tibak."  In English, not all the Scholars of the State - students of UP - are activists.

   Why?  I just realized that the medium is, after all, the message.  If there's anything more poignant from such a boring author like Marshall McLuhan (media critics: my opinion), it's precisely that statement.  Lately, the new breed of activists in my part of UP have resorted to disrupting classes and literally banging on walls just to make their point.  In Diliman, some activists have resorted to throwing eggs at high-ranking police officers, damaging UP property and disrupting events like the Malcolm Madness.  I echo the statement of Atty. Ted Te: "if you are weak on the facts, pound on the law; if you are weak on the law, pound on the facts; if you are weak on the law and the facts, pound on the table."

   Again, whe medium is the message.

   Before I lose you in repeating McLuhan's statement all over again, it's this simple.  If you bang on classroom walls, screaming on megaphones in the corridors, disrupting classes, all the while having a legitimate message to send to students like being against tuition and other fee increases (ToFI) or calling for greater democratization in the use of facilities and equipment, nobody gives a crap.  Not because UP students of today have turned apathetic, but because of a reason of a completely different nature.  Nobody gives a crap about scholars who walk out of their classes and sloganeer in the streets with a public outcry for greater state subsidy (such a student has earned 6 absences).  The clear message sent by an activist who disturbs classes in a "voluntary" walk-out (where the call is pasted all over bulletin boards in sizes not prescribed or condoned by those in charge of the walls) is not his/her gripe against the government or whatnot, but the fact that he/she disturbed the peace.  It's hooliganism: I don't do it, I don't endorse it, and I certainly don't condone it.

   Heck, I'm an activist (sort of), but as a student I stopped believing that there is something to be learned going out on the streets rah-rah-ing for whatever cause disturbing the flow of traffic.  If you happen to rally on Session Road, I can honestly say that the kind of passion you feel is only made much more poignant by that colorful Andok's eatery dominating the view: a passion brought about by hunger.  A hunger not only that's deep seated in one's stomach, but a hunger for knowledge.  True knowledge - real knowledge - is founded on standing on the shoulders of giants.  Those giants, you would never get to know on the street.  Those giants are the classics and the imperatives you get to read and study in class no matter how much of a Marxist you are.  All I know of Marx was built not on an (admittedly biased) educational discussion on but on two semesters of boring theory classes.  For each, I've earned a 1.25.

   If I were ever a bully (I wear glasses, I'm the target of bullies) I would have dared an activist to define imperialism in Lenin's terms or have him/her write a full-length essay on why Leandro Alejandro is the paragon used by many an activist.  I don't: it's this day and age that without an educational discussion on imperialism an activist would probably define it as "ibagsak" and Lean's memory is literally being pissed on by people who refuse to debate, but instead wreck the UPD Chancellor's car or disturb classes.  I'm sure that a man as learned and as articulate as the late Lean Alejandro would probably do that.  Of course, I'm not that old to have known him.

   Anyway, back to McLuhan.  The medium being the message.  That stunt where one threw eggs at General Esperon?  The medium is the message.  That stunt where a student barged into a class without the teacher's permission and started screaming leftist slogans to walk out of class?  The medium is the message.

   This blog entry?  The medium is the message.

< philippine media >

   In the news today, Malaysia's information minister called on readers to stop using blogs to get their information.  "Rumor-mongering" among Malaysia's bloggers consist of reportages on corruption by government figures.  Malaysia's media is kept in so tight a control that, according to the Agence France-Presse report (oh, so that's what AFP stands for), two bloggers are currently being sued by the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times Press.

   In the Philippines, the publisher and seven editors of the Philippine Daily Inquirer were detained at a police station in Manila after they posted bail for a libel suit filed against them by First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.  The Inquirer is known to be very critical of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's administration and have posted op-eds criticizing the regime.  (To add to that, just to be fair and balanced, I read six newspapers in a day.  I don't get my facts solely from PDI.)

   It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that there is a clear harassment of the media (and in Malaysia's case, multimedia) going on in Southeast Asia.

   As for myself, I've been a student journalist for the better part of my life as a student (counting my stint as a poem-writer [I'm not a poet] for my elementary school paper, that would be 11 years) and I have experienced censorship head-on when I was editor-in-chief of my high school paper.  In college, stirring the pot of controversy was part of my job not only as an alternative journalist, but a critic as well.  My former life as a journalist was marked by censorship and, to a certain extent, harassment.  So I quit journalism and found refuge in blogging.  At least, in the "new digital democracy" that is the World Wide Web, I'm free to write whatever I want with consequences I am very familiar with.

   Just like a hundred or so other bloggers who choose to take a stand and use their blogs to make a difference.  Of course, we're still the sad minority.  Most blogs out there are fan sites or disclosures about romantic love and things of that nature.  Compared to mainstream media outfits and megaphone-toting slogan-chanting activists, we bloggers are small fry: we aren't even worth arresting in a setting which already resembles a media Holocaust.  I myself doubt that FG Mike Arroyo has the testicular fortitude to file a libel suit against a blogger.

   (Believe me, there is a ton of anti-government content out there in the Philippine blogosphere.  TMX is just one of them, written by someone [i.e., me] who has already dared the government to arrest him for whatever suit there is to be filed against a common man who disagrees with government policies.  My friends and family have already told me to stop writing dissentful entries on account that I'm treading dangerous ground.  But I'm not the only one.  Every blog hosting site out there definitely has at least three government dissenters writing there.)

   The way I see it, in the case of the Philippine government (I don't know much about what's going on in Malaysia), instruments of justice - from arrest warrants to the use of a jail cell - are being used by those in power (and those who, plain and simply, have a proverbial bull's-eye painted in their foreheads) as instruments of vengeance.

   Vengeance against whom, you ask?  Not against legitimate terrorists like suicide bombers and murderers and gunslingers somewhere in the boondocks of the Philippine countryside, but against those who legitimately exercise their responsibilities to inform the public about the wrongdoings and shortcomings of the Arroyo administration.  In the case of Mike Arroyo, the man actually exceeded the limits of his restraint by suing 45 - count them, 45 - journalists for various imagined offenses.  Offenses that he himself would not probably disclose on account that only he could probably defend such offenses in an already corrupted justice system.

   Then again, what can one expect of a government which is, for all purposes of the term, run by the insane, the crazy and the paranoid?  When Manuel L. Quezon said that he'd rather prefer a country run like hell like Filipinos, he probably didn't expect a country where people are being shot left and right for exercising their right to free speech and the right to peacefully assemble and organize.  He probably didn't expect a country where the right to free speech is limited only to Presidential speechwriters paid to write only about economic growth and to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to media censorship and extrajudicial killings that the government has yet to answer for.  Quezon probably did not expect his rhetorical "hell" to be marked by a regime literally pissing on the very freedoms our forefathers sought and fought for with their very lives.

   We pride ourselves, as Filipinos, on having the freest press in Asia.  But that's not one without consequence.  This country has 45 journalists sued for libel in one day or so, more than a dozen already killed and forever silenced, and media outfits being closed down just because they criticized the government for all they're worth as watchdogs and critics of the nation.  Free?  I don't think so.  This, by far, is the worst definition of "freedom" I have ever heard, considering that people everywhere are being handcuffed for having dissenting views against the government.

   Then again, there are a few people out there who continue to dissent.  Bloggers all over the Philippines should unite and speak out their views and challenge the government to do better than to arrest media personnel left and right or issue baseless warrants of arrest to those critical of government.  Bloggers everywhere should challenge the government to do better for the nation than to be wary and paranoid of the kind of "terrorism" that is already ill-defined to begin with.  We have the power.  The Internet is yet something the government has to regulate.  The next course of action is not one of the streets, in my view.  It's a declaration of a war of attrition, a war waged from information.  Alternative new media vs. the government.

   If the government, maybe FG Mike himself, files a single suit of libel against a single blogger (consider this a worst-case scenario), we should all band together to fight for the one thing that is worth fighting for.

   Freedom.

< hmmm... >

   Here's an "endorsement."

   I don't log on to YouTube on account that I don't have the equipment and bandwidth to participate in the latest in what I like to call the "American Idol"-ization of the Internet, but it seems that I can't watch a free set of indy movie trailers by the Broadcast Communication 130 people at school on account that it's 79.1 megabytes long.

   Seventy nine point one megabytes is just too much download time.

   Anyway, just because I have a popular blog (hmmm, yeah, right) the compiled trailers of such independent short films like "Biyahe," "Dis-Illusion," "Halaw," "Edukasyon 101" and "Kapalit" can be accessed here.  If you have a fast Internet conncection, I strongly suggest you watch the video.

< hmmm... >

   Yup, it happened.  A guy, Dingdong Flores, due to the stresses and the strains of working at a call center, died of hypertension.  That was the news last night.

   Somewhere in my small library of books is Upton Sinclair's classic, "The Jungle," which talks about the almost inhuman conditions of the meatpacking houses in Chicago in the turn of the 1900's.  The book itself turned a vegetarian out of me for a week (just like Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" turned me anorexic for a day), but could we say that there is a certain abuse and exploitation in the call center industry that a perfectly healthy fellow can die of stress?

   Since I haven't graduated yet (I'm still enjoying the carefree life of a student) I have seen my friends who work at call centers look like death.  Due to the stress, some of them have taken up the Gospel of Marocharim and professed that smoking is their only coping mechanism (the Lord be with you), drinking countless lots of coffee and they start to sound more and more like answering machines.  Most of them look like they came from the very toilet of Satan after a graveyard shift.  I wonder if the same future awaits me by the time I graduate.

   Dead because of a call center job?  Whose fault is it?

   The easy way would be to say that if only call centers offer a medical plan (I don't know if they do) and take care of their employees properly (again, I don't know if they do), the obvious disaster (which it is) wouldn't have happened.  The easy way would be to blame the health habits of already stressed call center agents killing themselves with an unhealthy lifestyle the obvious disaster wouldn't have happened.  But then again, in this world, there is no such thing as an easy way.

   The obvious disaster would have been averted if the Philippines had a strong enough economy - stronger than what the President says it is - and enough jobs so that the call center industry stays where it should be.  Not here in the Philippines, but over in the shores of America.

   It's that simple.  Agree?

< hmmm... >

   Lately I've been criticizing the Internet.  Maybe it's because I'm too much into writing my thesis that I have consolidated a few critiques of the Information Revolution or maybe because I'm just bored.  Nothing's been going on in my life save for that thesis proposal.  Had I been enrolled as a Communication Arts student at my school I would be talking about our new independent movie, but as good as I am with conceptualizing film, I don't write scripts.

   I have come to that point in my life where, save for a future in the call center industry, I could be the next critic of modern life, although I have to say we're past modernity and we're now being controlled by information, not capital.  That will not sit too well with my Marxist friends who would probably be accusing me left and right of being a technological determinist, but I've already been accused left and right for being an idiot in Math.

   Anyway, back to the indie film festival at UP Baguio.  For one, I don't want to watch it on account that I would probably be introduced to the kind of emotional enema of gay relationships (based on the spoilers, everything's kind of Brokeback) or to the mental endoscopy of socially-relevant brouhaha (down with capitalism, down with authority, stuff like that).  The reason why I'm using ass analogies again is that I'm insanely jealous of the kind of ease there is in being a Comm student.  We SocSci people trouble ourselves with a bunch of readings, manipulating regression lines and having to have to wear the jester's hat of being intellectuals when all we want is an end to the kind of mental torture there is in our courses.  In Comm, what is apparent to me is that you only have to have this big argument with your groupmates in BC 130 and this constitutes the highlight of your four-year stay.  It's so easy to spend four years in Comm on account that you don't have to literally breathe Marx, eat Almond and Verba, and then excrete your thesis.

   Yes, I said excrete your thesis.  I've seen that constipated look before from graduating students in libraries.

   I guess that watching independent films made by people you know would probably give you much insight into what they've learned in their frequent soirees to coffee houses and the Saturday night gimmick.  Yup, softcore porn.  We SocSci students talk about sex in passing, imagining some form of Samoan butt-sex in Malinowski (or is that Mead?) and then turn our attentions to gay and lesbian themes, which most teachers I know are already sick of.  Our lives are defined by that cup of instant coffee made in haste and a pack of Marlboros spent over a single reading of Jacques Derrida.  Surprise quiz tomorrow.  The book has been checked out.

   Gessellschaft, anyone?

< i'm starting a series >

   In this age of new media, where everyone is subject to the ultra-democracy that is the digital democracy, more and more voices spring up to be heard. However, they scream in silence.  There are just too many people talking.

   Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of people in the world who can write well, but in the end we end up reading trash.  YouTube is popular on account of girls mauling each other for a chance to become a digital celebrity.  The Web has sort of become the new American Idol.  Just who exactly gets the golden ticket and why, nobody knows.

   In the effort to be heard out in the new public sphere, the effort to change the world is nothing compared to the new "important" discourses being formed: you have to be aware of the next boy band or the most tasteless in pornography.  The problem with the new digital democracy is that it is more of an anarchy of discourses: really, there are too many opinions being formed to the point that everybody's got one and nobody listens to voices from below.  In order for your blog to become popular, outside of writing well you have to be able to manipulate choices.  You have to be able to sway opinions.  If you can't, and you choose instead to rant about the next big thing in shoes and kikay kits, you contribute to the cacophony of voices that characterize the disorderly new democracy that is the World Wide Web.

   Now don't get me wrong: if you choose to write about your personal choices it's OK, since it's your task in the new digital democracy to unearth voices from below.  But what about those voices which should be heard?  My argument is this: the free individual entering cyberspace feels the pressure and succumbs to the extent that too much information brings him.  The effect?  Take a look at Friendster profiles and the way people portray themselves to be, presenting only the front stage that would look appealing to the mindless crowd of drones.  Take a look at the bricolage surrounding blogs and the way some people try to put as many images and media in their sites just so that people would not instantly be turned off.  Too much information results in a form of schizophrenia for society: too many voices are being heard at the same time.  The individual becomes drowned in the multiplicity of voices and is lost.  The result: the individual becomes decentered.

   Being confronted with too much information sets aside the dangers of the new digital democracy.  In order to sell your profile to an audience of billions, you have to post your sexiest picture on your website, describe yourself in the best possible manner, and be dishonest with yourself to the point that you present yourself so strongly just to be noticed in a crowd of zillions of profiles and websites.

   The effect?  A sort of schizophrenia.  Too many voices, too many paranoid delusions, too much information.

(to be continued...)

< this may sound boring >

   When I started blogging two years ago, it was seen as akin to psychological striptease.  We bloggers have often been accused of publicizing our private lives on the public sphere, thereby seeking publicity for all our actions.  Making blogs were almost nonsensical on account that too much information flooded the World Wide Web and resulted in an anarchy of various discourses.

   Today, it's different.  More and more blogs are sprouting out like mushrooms from the void, talking about everything from one's lovelife to one's taste in food to one's opinion on politics.  And the difference now is that it actually makes sense.  Not only blogs, mind you: YouTube is starting to be a popular venue for amateur filmmakers to show their work.

   Is this the beginning of a popular digital democratic revolution?

   TIME magazine voted us bloggers and them users of YouTube to be the Persons of the Year, on account that a massive change has resulted from the democratization of mass media.  The philosopher Jurgen Habermas stated before that commercial mass media has contributed to the downfall and decay of the bourgeois public sphere and resulted in consumption of media rather than media being a tool for public discourse.  What seems to be, however, is that more and more discourses are formed over the World Wide Web and the virtual environment and have resulted in a new public sphere, where there is an accelerated democratization of information.  Anyone can now be a journalist by blogging or a filmmaker by using YouTube or a talkshow host through Podcasting.

   If you asked me, information is the new capital.  The ability to create and disseminate information has become a crucial turning point in human history.  Although the fact remains that the Internet is still pretty much a Western construction and is part of the monopoly of societies that revolve around the exchange of information, one cannot deny that the ability to manipulate information is so central to our existence.  Without competence in information technology one is condemned to the sidelines of the information revolution.  To answer Habermas, yes, the public sphere has been revived in the form of the new digital democracy.

   From the anarchy that characterized the blogosphere just a few years ago we are seeing a new revival in the creation and exchange of information.  The blog, in my view, has become the single most important factor in the formation of the new digital democracy.  It is the new virtual newspaper.  Anyone can now opine about the news, and more and more opinions have resulted in a healthy exchange of discourses along the World Wide Web.  Anyone can now practically manufacture information - become a celebrity, a pundit, a commentator.  The new mass media is now the central focus for the exchange of information in commercial society.

   I mean, think about it: we are at a crossroads.  Not that it's a new paradigm shift, but when you come to think about it, there must be something to the rise of outsourcing the information industry.  This is new capitalism.  This is the revolution that Marx has seemed to have propounded in The Communist Manifesto: the equality and equity of all information and the production of information in the ultra-democracy that is the World Wide Web.

< politics >

   When you have the likes of Prospero Pichay, the man who wants to be planted in the Senate like Chinese cabbage (his namesake), waste all your television time, you start to wonder if it makes sense to vote for a man with a vegetative mind to run for the Senate even if he is one of the prime proponents for the abolition of the Senate.

   That's Philippine politics for you.  Go home and plant camote.  May you be picked up where kangkong grows.

   When I come to think about it, making a living out of camote and kangkong is paradise for the likes of us who wonder if it still makes sense to live in this country despite all its imperfections.  It doesn't: being a Filipino nowadays means to be a moron in the political arena.  We don't know what's going on because personality politics dominate this country.  Rather than having strong parties with strong platforms, we have political parties where incompetence predominates.  I mean, really, in the real world, with all the obviousness of it, would you vote for Richard Gomez or Cesar Montano and the lot of actors and actresses who profess nationalism and run for a seat in our already awry government?

   Would you vote for a guy like Kiko Pangilinan who runs a cheesy ad even if it is obvious that he is a modern version of a political butterfly?  Would you vote for the likes of Mike Defensor and Migz Zubiri who pretend to be everybody's friend on the account that they have Lito Camo jingles?  Come on, there has got to be more to this than what we already have now.

   Next thing you know the battle lines will be drawn on the pregnant belly of Kris Aquino and the vote becomes evident on what they think is up with her and James Yap.

   I say, let the battle lines be drawn on real reform.

< hmmm... >

   When they say that quitting smoking is a mere matter of mind, I guess they were right.  I was able to quit smoking for two days until I once again smoked like hell today to compensate for the lack of smoking I've been doing.

   I've always said to the neophyte smoker that the only way to quit smoking is to stop smoking, but I couldn't say that to myself considering that I am already smoking anyways.  I wouldn't do well in the "Pinoy Big Brother" house considering that a single smoke will cut the budget of my housemates by a good amount (I hear a smoke costs 50 smackers a stick) and that Big Brother would probably give me a special assignment consisting of quitting smoking.  Abroad, I would probably get arrested for smoking in all the wrong places.  But that's just me.

   Of course, I couldn't quit smoking just yet.  I'm at that point in my life where I am practically addicted to nicotine.  I don't know why I even smoke anymore.  It's just one of those silly little vices I have.  Of course, I managed to quit drinking and kick alcohol out of my system.