There’s this interesting paragraph from Jacques Barzun’s epic work, “From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life”:“But moral turpitude concealed a deeper trouble: the meaning of the roles had been lost. The priest, instead of being a teacher, was ignorant; the monk, instead of helping to save the world by his piety, was an idle profiteer; the bishop, instead of supervising the care of souls in his diocese, was a politician and businessman … Too often the bishop was a boy of twelve, his influential family having provided early for his future happiness. The system was rotten. This had been said over and over; yet the old hulk was immovable. When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label.” Barzun was referring to 15th-century Europe, which gave rise to Luther. But he might as well have been describing the conditions of 21st-century Philippines. That is so not just in reference to the Church but also in reference to the State. Though his description about the Church itself is uncannily familiar, the same description Jose Rizal made about the Church during his time. The only thing we do not have today is 12-year-old bishops, but one may always argue that that’s so only in the physical sense, not so in the spiritual sense. We do have bishops who have the moral, even mental, capabilities of 12-year-olds. My apologies to 12-year-olds. I remembered Barzun’s passage in light of two recent things. One was Penny Azarcon’s article last Sunday, “Whatever happened to Jun ‘bubukol’ Lozada? Plenty.” In Penny’s words: “Six months after his Senate testimony, Lozada and wife Violet continue to reap retribution. They are fending off at least six cases charging them with perjury, malversation, graft—even theft, filed by a woman they swear they’ve never met.” The other thing was our front-page story a couple of days earlier about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo going to China ahead of other leaders to witness the signing of a nickel exploration project in Zambales province between several Chinese exploration firms and Filipino ones headed by Michael Defensor. The event had text messages flying all over the place about a Filipino landing the first gold even before the Olympics began, or if not gold at least silver. Defensor, of course, was the guy who, as the hearings on the national broadband network (NBN) contract brought out, tried to convince his “pal,” Lozada, to deny he was ever kidnapped and proposed to bring him to friendly media to hold a press conference to that effect. Before that, he was the guy who insisted that the “Hello, Garci” tape had been doctored, trotting out an American expert to prove his point, only to have the fellow completely deny what he attributed to him. Before that, he was the guy who “rescued” Panfilo Lacson’s prime witness against Mike Arroyo, whom Lacson accused of being Jose Pidal. I don’t know what happened to the cops who had a hand in Lozada’s abduction (99 percent of Filipinos believe it was an abduction, the remaining one percent is in mental institutions), but I do know that Lito Atienza is thriving as well as Defensor. Atienza, as the NBN hearings also brought out, was the guy who shipped Lozada out to Hong Kong and recalled him later, only to lure him into the arms of the shadowy figures who welcomed him at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Like Defensor, he now heads the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Like Defensor, he has various projects in mining, today’s fastest growing industry. Which also reminds one of the old joke that Imelda’s favorite activity was mining—she was always saying, “mine, mine, mine.” Romulo Neri, who refused to answer three questions that would have implicated his boss in the NBN, is now head of Social Security System. And Gloria Macapagla-Arroyo, who would have been implicated in the NBN, is still head of the country, or whatever will be left of it after its sale to the highest bidder. It’s a situation that lives up perfectly to the description “decadent.” The system is rotten, the meaning of roles has been lost. Folly and absurdity rule the day, good is punished and evil rewarded. We have not lacked for decadent times in the past. We had roughly the same thing during Ferdinand Marcos’ time, injustice and abuse, arrogance and highhandedness, lawlessness and impunity being rife. That was particularly true during the twilight years of martial law when Marcos and his ilk could pretty much do anything they wanted with the country. But even those times pale in comparison to ours today for one reason. That is Barzun’s observation: “When people come to accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.” There is one more criterion for decadence, which is the people’s attitude to absurdity, which is a sense of futility. That is what makes the hulk immovable. Nowhere have we seen that sense of futility and acceptance than today. During Marcos’ time, Filipinos found the rottenness oppressive and raged against it, if clandestinely. Today, Filipinos still find the rottenness oppressive, but though perfectly capable of fighting it openly, greet it only with text-message jokes. That brings us the curious—and dangerous—side of the acceptance. It comes from the belief that the rottenness will die a natural death. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has only two more years to go, so let’s just wait out her “term.” What makes it dangerous is not just whether we will still have a country left after two years (we already have part of Mindanao being proffered to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the whole country being yielded to the Chinese) but whether we will have new leaders after two years. Both of the above show the lengths to which the current rulers are prepared to go to stay in power. When people accept delusion and insanity as normal, the culture isn’t just decadent, it sucks. That is not a technical label, it is a slur. |
