political-animal-blog1 - Tumblr blog

[political-animal-blog1]

[political-animal-blog1]

Professorial Talk

This is the talk of Dr. Antonio Contreras of the De La Salle University.

Resistance and conflict. We are all and always at conflict with everything and everyone. We are either fighting about class, race, gender, and several more. There are specific theories on each area; Marxism for class, Cultural studies on ethnicity, Feminism and Queer theory on gender. Everyday is a battle we have to naturally resist because it goes against our conviction. To allow oppression on to yourself is hegemony. If we are truly are political animals then we understand we cannot sit idle on our daily politics. For those who are not familiar with the concept of politics it is basically studying power. By understanding power we desire to use it more because we have the knowledge and understanding of power in our everyday lives. Now power is not restricted on selected few individuals, but everyone has power it just not as strong as the other. If we use it correctly it can be very effective. People have the ordinary forms of resistance using the venues of domination against itself, the weapons of the weak,  Parody and laughter, “Bricolage” (use of creativity to cope, survive and/or challenge the dominant). What this professorial talk gave me is that everybody faces conflicts very day and it may be very well caused by your identity. To win your battles you must know who you are are and what you stand for. If you do not know those then how do you know what you are fighting for is your fight? 

[political-animal-blog1]

Critical Essay 3: Commodity

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is my favorite show. It blends fantasy and politics; fiction and reality. The politics makes the fictitious show feel real because it shows the power relations between characters. It does not sugar coat the situation of medieval times, its not all knights saving princes. We have to remember that medieval times are feudal so wars are not supposed to be a surprise. The feudal system also fosters patriarchy, having men as the forefront of everything. To say in other words men were the most important figures in that time. In the show, it started off with the politics of the feudal system. As the story progressed the women started to become more empowered. They started to be exhibit strength and leadership; things a king should be.  Lady Brienne of Tarth. A woman who exhibits strength that could best even the best swordsmen of Westoros. She can go toe-to-toe with Jaime Lannister and Sandor ‘The Hound’ Clegane and defeat them. We first saw her defeating the Knight of the Flowers, Ser Loras Tyrell, in single combat and taking a role of Kingsguard, a job which majority are male. Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen. Mother of Dragons, Queen for the first men and the Andals, Breaker of chains, and yada yada yada, too many titles. She shows both qualities of a king and a queen. She shows strength by amassing her army and exercising its power. If her power could manifest physically it would be represented by her dragons. She shows wisdom by listening to her council to weigh all the options that are available to her. Showing mercy to her subjects and ruthless to her enemies, correctly using her power.  All in all I am happy that the show is pursuing this direction of female empowerment. The shows the power shift from man power to girl power. Most male leads die off and women are there taking over now. As Daenerys said to Missandei, “All men must die, but we are not men”. 

[political-animal-blog1]

Critical Essay 2: Space

Gym

I try to go to the gym at least two times a week and things are not always what we seem. We base our judgement on Western media. Western media portrays the gym as a temple for masculinity, where men can feel empowered by building their bodies to the image of Greek gods. If you enter the gym, you are at the mercy of the wolf pack inside; this is their territory and they will protect it. They can marginalize or oppress people if they want. This is their space of power. They can oppress fat people if they feel like it or objectify beautiful women just trying to workout in peace. Now I do not exactly like it how Western media portrays the gym, or it could be possibly only the space of the gym from the West that are like this. But here in the Orient, here in the Philippines, it is different.  In my local gym the context of space I have observed is different than what is portrayed in Western media. I have seen the men as taking a quiet role in the gym. They do not travel like packs of wolves, but the men I observe is that they are alone in their own world concentrating on their own business. The women act like the new wolves. They sort of become the image of strength in the gym. In the gym we even have female combat instructors. I have visited different gyms and that my gym has a larger female population. Its easy to see that women are empowered in our gym. They are opposite of how the West portray Oriental women. I am for gender equality and it feels great that women are getting stronger not only physically, but also socially. Women are becoming bigger voices now in society and some are proving to be valuable to society by being productive.  

[political-animal-blog1]

Hidden Meanings

Sometimes it just sticks. its really the people who has the power. If they automatically associate you with something, that is pretty much you now. You cannot just change how they see you. The information and association is already there, you cannot erase it. If you try then things are just gonna get worse. Take for example ‘careless whisper’, it has been used to ‘set the mood’, but if you listen to the lyrics its actually a sad song. It is used the opposite way than its intentional meaning. What I am trying to say is that people have the power. 

[political-animal-blog1]

Stereotype and Identity

Do we shape society or does society shape us? We sometimes think of ourselves as unique, but how are we unique in our scene of identity? How do we make our self unique if the narrative of the past shape us? If stereotypes exists and misrepresent us? My answer comes from a character in Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister, and he tells us to make own it, if people see it as a way to oppress us then ‘wear it like armor’ so that it could not be used to hurt us. We cannot just simply change the world to our will. Sometimes things, stereotypes, just stick on to people. We should see our selves as special because our story contributes to the grand narrative that we all participate in. Hawaiian music are often misrepresented with the Hawaii five-o theme song and the meaning of Hula. These are caused by the interpretation of Western media. This misinterpretations can be offensive, and people can feed from their frustration and this would make stereotype stronger. If popular media misinterprets us, the whole world will misinterpret us.  

[political-animal-blog1]

Empowerment

I support the He-for-She movement. it advocates for gender equality, not the domination of a single sex. Our society and history is already built on a Patriarchal narrative. There are a few women who would be remembered in history books and majority would be consisted of men. What I do not still fully understand is that the inequality still continues today. I mean I understand in like times of hunting and gathering when men actually have a physical advantage, but we do not exactly do the hard work now. We have transitioned to an age of information where the highest paying jobs require the least amount of physical activity. I still wonder why there such inequality exists? Is it just because it has been the norm for so long that we can just say we got used to it? We need to break the norms to change., we must not be afraid to go against the norm. I believe that women can be powerful, they do not have to be damsels in distress every time. They are capable with whatever men can do. Men are not a whole different species or being, men and women are human beings. Having a dick does not mean superiority, but just your function in procreation. Not only women are abused by men, but young boys are being abused too. These “masculine” men tell boys not to be sensitive, to always act tough, be an alpha. I find that unacceptable. Real mean know how to show emotion. We ask equal treatment for different races, heck even animals have rights now. Why is it so hard for women to be treated fairly in today’s society? We will not lose anything, we might even gain by receiving a boost in our economy for a larger labor force. If we really want to change, I think change should start from an early stage, we must show our daughters how to be already empowered. For the young boys, we should teach them to be also sensitive, this  would be empowering for men too because we do not have to be afraid of being marginalized by their fellow men. If a child grows to be empowered then they tend to become fearless and powerful people in the future.  

[political-animal-blog1]

Critical Essay 1: Cambodia’s commodification of culture

Cambodia fell into dark times when the Khmer Rouge rose to power through the leadership of Pol Pot. Pol Pot’s vision for Cambodia it to purify Cambodia back to the days before the Western powers polluted Cambodian culture. He feel in love with the idea of a Maoist Communist State, an agrarian state. He was trying to bring back the simple, happy and peaceful life of a farmer. Pol Pot’s plan is quite clever in achieving his goal. I think he succeed in getting his initial goals, taking over and changing the state, but failed in maintaining his utopia. He was successful by driving the people away from the urban areas to live an agrarian life and his goal was to eliminate all traces of the West in his country so he murdered those with an education, these people were potentially dangerous to his regime because they could start a peasant rebellion against him. He also did not use machines, it was back to manual labor since he saw machines as the product of the West. His regime fell because he became increasingly paranoid, he started executing his allies through the suspicion that his people are working with the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America to end his regime.

This horrific experience left a mark on Cambodian society, the Philippines experienced a similar event under the Martial Law of Ferdinand Marcos, but not as cruel as Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia. In the Philippine Martial Law under the Marcos administration, I can best describe it as a secretive abuse. I have heard stories that the Marcos administration had spies everywhere and if you were heard speaking against the administration you would be seized/captured by the authorities and never be heard from again. To this day we still have not found the people that have disappeared. People speculate that the Marcos administration committed these violent acts is for power and wealth, but in Cambodia’s case it is clear that the atrocities committed was because of an ideology. Both countries had to rebuild from their own respective traumatic experiences, but one of the two countries was able to commodify their culture to the world. The thing with the Philippines is that we had long lost our culture and was never able to recover it completely. The Philippines went through 300 years of Spanish occupation where our culture was suppressed and was forced into Spanish culture and about 46 years under American occupation and adopting the culture of the Americans. From what I can observe there is little traces of culture left in our society. We have our own alphabet, but we do not even use it. What I am trying to say is that we have lost our identity a long time ago that we can not even reach back to it because it is so far to come back. In the case of Cambodia, they still uses their alphabet even if they had been colonized by the French. The Cambodians have their own unique structures, such as the Angkor Wat, to remind them and other people of their ancient Cambodian culture. The Philippines just have old churches from the Spanish era, most countries have their own old temples and that does not make us special. We have nothing to look at to remind of our previous culture. We can consider the Banawe Rice Terraces, but it is poorly maintained now, and the tribes that still exists today, but even they are starting to consume the products of the West and started to modernize. Cambodians were able to commodify their culture because they can at a much greater extent than the Philippines. They have something to physically remind them of their culture, but for the Philippines it seems it is so far away.

But what of the traumatic events that both countries experienced in the 20th century, it can be considered to be fairly recent. There was already media to cover the stories before, during, and after. That means the events are well documented and can already be considered to be part of our culture, a part of our grand narrative. So in the case of Cambodia and the genocide museum they sell their accounts of the horrific events that has occurred in that museum, formerly some sort of makeshift prison. They maintain everything the way it is, preserving the horrific history right before our sights. It is horrific yes, but it is part of their identity as people of Cambodia. Inside the museum you can talk to the survivors for a small fee for them to recount their experience being imprisoned in the same compound we were in. They also sold books and videos about the other stories that happened in the compound and the story if the whole regime of Pol Pot. I believe that the Cambodians feel empowered that tourists come to their museums to learn more about the Cambodian narrative. They feel a sense of pride that they get to tell their story to a foreigner who has traveled hundreds of miles to personally learn and immerse themselves in their culture. Whereas the Philippines prefer not to talk about the experience. Survivors of the Martial Law era keep it to themselves the pain the experienced, but the Cambodians were inviting me to listen to their story. It seems like to me that the Cambodians became numb from the pain they went through by repeatedly telling their story over and over again. I guess what they say it's true the more you talk about it, the less painful it gets.

[political-animal-blog1]

Critical Commentary 3

The world is full of opposites: black and white, hot and cold, fast and slow, up and down, East and West etc. For others, they see and treat the world from different perspectives and approaches; and some of us have a really difficult time fully grasping or fully understanding the other’s perspective. But everything in our world adapts, if it did not its would most likely to be forgotten. Sometimes things would even adapt to its environment to survive. Take for example the international fast food chain McDonald’s, its menu is different, one way or another, for each country. Take for example, if they want to profit in India, they cannot sell the same menu items of the US. According to their religion, they cannot eat meat, so they have to change the menu items in order to create profit. I would think that adapting/indigenization a developed study to its environment would make it more effective. We have to remember, that we are all not the same. We have our own narratives, and these narratives can be very different from others. Here in the Philippines, we have been under colonial rule for many years, so long that we even forgot our pure/original identity as a nation. We have learned disciplines from the West that may have alien concepts that does not really apply to our culture. How I could best distinguish Western disciplines and Eastern (or rather Philippine) teaching is that the West are rigid and calculating. Whereas Easter (or Philippine) teachings are subjective. Another way I can put is that the West cares about the destination (or results) the quality of our product, but the Philippines care about the journey (or the values) we exhibit towards our neighbors. I will admit that I have lost touch with the Filipino values, I grew up being detached. So detach that I have problems now trying to feel or empathize with others, or pakikirandam. If you look at the Psychology of the West, it is tailor made from the environment of the Western countries, our conditions and values are different from Western cultures. Western countries would treat the other as a subordinates as their colonial conquest have shown, but our culture approaches the other in a completely different way. I welcome them, we mingle with them, we make them feel welcome, quite possibly try to integrate them to our society. Look at the Chinese and Native Filipino foreign relations before the Spaniards came. The Chinese didn’t think that they were above us, if they did they would have looted us, but no. They traded goods with us and some of them even settled in our lands and not creating social and class cleavages. they were just here to trade, not to conquer us or change our society or even our narrative. I do not think that we were the selfish kind of people, but I think we just wanted our group/society to be happy. Our happiness before did not come from money, but from enjoying life. Other than psychology, there we can also look at History, but our word of history goes beyond chronological events and records, but also the narratives and discourses, its the word “saysay”. I think using Western ideas and adapting it to our narrative could help us build a new identity or possibly recover our original identity.

[political-animal-blog1]

Critical Commentary 2

Post-Colonialism

There must come a time when everything ends. People knew that that the age of colonialism would have to end. You can observe that when you oppress a person, or rather groups of people, they will eventually resist and fight back. To put it simply, why would natives of a land serve a foreign king who does nothing but take the resources of their native land? You see colonialism is like a ship. The ship represent the colonial power and the gunpowder kegs are the colonized people. All they need is just a spark of flame to sink the empire down to the depths of the ocean. As a monarch, you cannot keep abusing your power for vanity and glory. As a monarch you must put your people first, when you colonize a land, its inhabitants become an extension of your empire meaning they become your people. If you apply the theory of social contract in John Locke's perspective. People would have inalienable or natural rights and if these rights are violated they had the right to rebel against the crown. What usually happens is that once a land has been colonized, the natives of the land gets oppressed because they are being thought to be lesser than their European counterparts. The Europeans would establish their society in a foreign land and forces their culture into the native land and since they are the powerful, their culture becomes the expected norm, the natives then are treated like savages. In the case of the Philippines we were under the colonial rule of the Spanish Crown for 300. For 300 years, we have serve under the crown and lived in a Spanish lifestyle. We have forgotten most of our culture, but the surviving practices have adapted itself it to Spanish culture. We have documents and accounts of the abuses of the Spanish Christian Church and the government, but we have lost our identity before the Spaniards arrived. Our identity became an identity of common struggle from colonial masters. The struggles still continues even after the colonial masters have left. What do we do then when we are finally free? Will the slaves of yesterday become the tyrants of tomorrow? What will we return to if our very identity was burnt by our oppressors 300 years ago? Will we take after our oppressors and continue their oppressive legacy upon our kin? If there is no other path, we must make our own. Me must make a new path in which we make our new identity for our new world order. 

[political-animal-blog1]

Critical Commentary 1

Western Thoughts

Domination. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of anything Western is domination. For example here in the Philippines when you say something is from any of the western countries, all of a sudden its value soars above local products, even if its the same exact thing. A long time ago, when I would go shopping in the mall I would read the labels on the clothing. On some of them I found out that some big and foreign labels are made from the Philippines but when I compare them with the local brands, somehow the expensive foreign brand has more sales than the same cheaper local products. People are just brain washed that Western culture is better than the rest. Although I cannot really blame the people because we lost our identity. Our identity was lost when invading Spaniards burnt our documents containing our form of alphabet and possibly stories of our people believing that it was the products of the Devil himself. It’s not that I adore them, but I admire how colonizers have brainwashed us. I am not saying that I am happy that they brainwashed us, but I am impressed that they were able to pull a feat on a scale like this that affected the future generation’s perception on Western power. The West’s path for progress is progress in science, we will see how this will pay off for the western world. There were two moves that dominated us. Before the Spanish arrived we were nomadic people: hunting, gathering, moving around, that was our life then. When the Spanish arrived, our society had a radical change. From a simple life in harmony in nature turned hard labor for our colonial masters and getting less than what we deserve. They made us forget our way of life and forced their culture upon us changing the narrative of the Philippines. The second move made by the American is through mass media. Since we forgot our heritage because of the Spaniards, we turned to our friends the Americans. When they gave us the T.V. and radios they were spreading their culture, and we just keep assimilating it to ours because we had no culture. We were just people without an identity. So we were like a sponge just taking in all the new ideas that come through American media. I think it was this time when American culture became popular culture. Again another culture penetrates our society, not through the sword this time, but through entertainment. To this day this still prevails cable T.V. is American media. We would see superficial teenagers complain first world problems even if there is other problems that needs to be addressed. To this day we are still dominated by Western culture.

Post-Modern Theory

The post modern theory blurs the lines. It made everything subjective and relative. It’s like there is a grain of truth to everything, even fake news. Language is the currency of post modernism. In post modern theory, power has relocated itself to language. We look at House of Cards character Frank Underwood. He said that appearances are important and with appearances comes with speech to enthrall other subjects. Language becomes power when used properly. In the TV show House of Cards, Frank Underwood says that “the road to power is paved with hypocrisy”. Politics has become more of a play or a theater because of all the lying and manipulation. People have become suspicious of other people and they always look for their motive. But I find it really hard to distinguish appearances and reality. For Hannah Arendt, she says that what we show (or say) to others constitutes reality. In Frank Underwood’s words that “We are nothing more or less than what we choose to reveal.” This shows us that identity is not stable and it’s always changing. How we put ourselves forward to others is reality.

Cultural Studies

Cultural studies just show us that the personal can be political such as feminist, queer and deep ecology theories. In cultural studies the concept of the object being oppressed outside the realm of politics. It went to gender in equality and thus gave rise to feminism and queer theory. It shows that we have lavished too long in a patriarchal society that we oppressed anyone or anything that is not a white male human. People have marginalized the women, the fair skinned, the LGBTQ communities, animals and environment movements. Now they fight back. We have feminist movements, civil rights movements, ethnic movements, animal rights movements, environmental movements, and etc. These are ideas that is in response to Western hegemonic ideas of patriarchy. Why did I say western? In many cultures such as the Scandinavian cultures, women had abundant freedom. There are Scandinavian women, called the Shield Maidens, who participate in war and raids. Note that they voluntarily made these decisions, not imposed by them. They also have the Valkyries in their mythology, they are based on the Shield maidens who had the power to choose who lives and dies in battle. In China, the Tao believe in harmony between man and nature. The native Americans during the colonial era believed that nature provides what is needed and that man should only take what is only necessary. During those time, white men hunt for sport, but the native Americans hunt for necessity. If you have noticed that hegemonic cultures did everything for progress and glory and for them to achieve them they had to marginalize everything else. We cannot ignore these issues anymore, we already have advanced humanity, now we have to take a look at ourselves and deal with what is in front of us.

[political-animal-blog1]

The Post-Modern Generation

I find it interesting that post-modern ideas have traces of ideas from the Frankfurt school. Today especially my generation have been clamoring for socialist state and I have even seen so many memes about having a Communist state. My generation is struggling with the inequality that we face everyday and they would point out that there is something wrong with the government and that the capitalist state that we have is to be blamed. Given this I do not think that we are Marxists, but I think that most of us are Post Moderns because we value language and communication a lot, that is why we created social media, we could connect with people anytime with our mobile devices. This new form of communication contributes to our narrative. If you check someone else’s social media accounts you will see who they are, their interests, etc. These things make communication easier, sort of makes ice breakers a little bit more easier if you will. With the rise of media, the truth can be easily distorted. People found out different ways to tell the truth, for example the spread of fake news, there would be facts there but it would be presented to mislead people to forward their agenda. So now I see that the center of power shifts to language and communication because people do not use swords and guns to sway political opinion, but now people talk and debate about certain issues important to them. 

[political-animal-blog1]

Are we free?

Most people in the world see that money and power controls our actions, but some would argue its a deity, consciousness, and/or culture. Both are true, but it is up to the person to decide on how they see the world. They could either believe that money makes the Earth spin or conscience makes a better tomorrow. The thing in these times are that we are bound to money, it is essential to survive. We need to work in order to eat, feed our family, pay the house bills, pay tax, etc. Our society has built the everyday life around money to survive. Marx suggested that man is no longer free with a capitalist society. I believe that it is nearly impossible to be completely free in this world. Even for children they are not free, they are bound to the hegemony of their teachers and professors. Teachers are sculptors of the young mind, they can indoctrinate children to certain ideologies. Indoctrination has also entered the powerful realm of mass media, thus making it more plausible to indoctrinate masses of people. The world we live in is difficult and it is a dangerous place. I believe that no one is free, not in today’s society. We are all bound to do certain duties that we have to do for many years or for the rest of our lives. 

[political-animal-blog1]

Others and me

I have made a lot of enemies. Without a doubt I can say I have made enemies. Its fair to say that I am not a nice person. In high school I was called something like an intellectual bully wherein everything is a competition including grades. When I would get a higher grade than others I would boast to them how my intellect was superior to them. Reflecting about it right now I have "othered" so many people because of my sense of intellectual superiority. I do not think I have been the object of domination. I always prefer that I am in control and that I dominate the situation. I possibly have dominated and marginalized someone, but I am not entirely sure if I did.

[political-animal-blog1]

These are my access and control profile. This basically shows how much power and control I have compared to my immediate family members. when I was making this table that I mostly only have access to certain resources and benefits. I believe it is understandable since that I am a student focusing on my studies and not earning an income yet. So most of it is out of my control, but what I can control is my own identity. We all have the power to control our identity, but not everything about is a product of the person, sometimes it is given to them such as gender and religion, in some cases even the degree program. We choose what lifestyle we live, what religion to believe in, what political ideology we support, and etc. I believe we are masters of our own fate. Nobody makes our identity but us, and only us. We make our identity through the choices we make and the experiences we go through, those are the things that defines us.    

[political-animal-blog1]

Sunday is World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

On this day, we celebrate the richness of the world’s cultures as well as the essential role of intercultural dialogue for achieving peace and sustainable development.

Learn more about what you can do to participate here: http://bit.ly/255yVfw

📷: UN Photo / Cia Pak 📷:UNESCO / León Dario Peláez 📷:UNESCO / Acervo PCR

[political-animal-blog1]