THE ULTIMATE question is can the country bring the peso back to 27 to the dollar. if so i would love to come and do business again. Gary Price. [email protected]. December 06, 2002 MY REPLY. You might as well ask: Can Thailand bring the Thai baht back to 20 to the dollar? Can Indonesia bring the rupee back to 1,800 to the dollar? Can Japan bring the yen back to 320 to the dollar? Can Singapore bring the S$ back to 3.50 to the dollar? ������������������������������ Absolutly hilarious; typical mysticism of the uninformed ignoramus. Here are quotations from Interptetations of Poetry and Religion by George Santatana that fit those no doubt charming women: "The ideal of mysticism is...exactly contrary to the ideal of reason; instead of perfecting human nature it abolishes it; instead of building a better world, it would undermine the foundations even of the world we have built already; instead of developing our mind to greater scope and precision, it would return to the condition of protoplasm--to the blessed consciousness of an Unutterable Reality." "Mysticism is usually an incurable disease. Facts cannot arouse it, since it never denied them. Reason cannot convince it, for reason is a human faculty, assuming a validity which it cannot prove. The only thing that can kill mysticism is its own uninterrupted progress, by which it gradually devours every function of the soul and at last, by destroying its own natural basis, immolates itself to its inexorable ideal." Robert Hanan. [email protected]. December 06, 2002 MY REPLY. This is not even mysticism. It is just a couple of silly women babbling about nothing. ������������������������������ TONY, I almost died laughing. This piece is the best piss ever on all those who think the Filipino is a delusionally great human being. They should read Carlos Bulosan's "America is in the Heart" and see how early on Filipinos behaved in the U.S. and why they went there in the first place. What he said is still happening. Gras Reyes. [email protected]. December 06, 2002 ������������������������������� I LOVE this article�..well written and entertaining. Thank you. Orimar. New York City. [email protected]. December 06, 2002 ����������������������������� THANK YOU for your very revealing, down-to-earth and humorous article on the Filipinization of the world. I find the article a typical Filipino reaction to the world around him. We Filipinos, after all, find something humorous in every situation that's why we're used to just smiling and bearing our troubles. That's why we're not ---not yet, anyway--- a banana republic. I just hope that because we're matiisin as a nation, the whole world doesn't look at us a nation of defeatists. BTW, are you, by any chance, related to Don Gavino Abaya of Batangas who was an Assemblyman during the Philippine Commonwealth years? . Rome Farol. [email protected]. December 06, 2002 MY REPLY. Sorry, no relation to Don Gavino Abaya. ����������������������������� BRAVO, TONY! I suspect it was intended to annoy Teddy Benigno...ha ha. Bobby Hilado. [email protected] December 07, 2002 MY REPLY. Sorry, Bobby. I do not get the Philippine Star so I do not know what Teddy Benigno has written, if any, about Filipinos as superbeings. ������������������������������� DEAR MR. ABAYA - i have gotten on your mailing list for the pieces of wisdom and laced with generous sarcasm that you manage to write. from one piece where i agreed with you, that our situation can be characterized as "more of the same", I am happy to be chuckling with this crazy retort on the Filipino reincarnate. so much so that i thought it correct to tell you that i was pleased to read your mad and rather lucid, thoughts this december sunday. chuki feria Miranda. [email protected]. December 08, 2002 ������������������������������ I JUST CAN�T believe that someone who can read and write, could actually believe something as stupid as this. Peter Capotosto. [email protected]. December 15, 2002 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Filipinos as Superbeings By Antonio C. Abaya November 19, 2002 A curious piece, titled �Filipino as a superbeing: filipinizing the world� and written by my friend Gilda Cordero-Fernando, much-awarded fictionist and book publisher, graced the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Nov. 9, 2002) and must have raised a few eyebrows. It certainly did mine. Gilda, who has always been upbeat on the badly beaten up Filipino (bless her!), sees in the �multi-faceted Filipino the creativity and talent to make it big in the world.� And Gilda quotes an astrologer-friend, one Georgina Solina, that �the Filipino defies definition, he is the thesis and the anti-thesis, he is in this world but not of this world. You can�t put him in a straitjacket and measure him��. �The Filipino is a highly evolved soul yet lives a dual reality. Locked in his DNA is that capacity to be a superbeing. When you begin to feel, Wala nang pag-asa itong taong ito, kalat na kalat, that�s when he feels he has to get himself together, kasi sukdulan na, crisis na��.. �The Pinoy is a crisis person. It is in his nature. Pag sagad na, sagad na siya, he is able to muster all the courage in his being and rise beyond the physical. What is significant about People Power I and II, as we never tire of recounting, is that they were such strange revolutions.� (They were indeed strange revolutions, since nothing revolutionary transpired, during or after. ACA.) �There was no mob rule in those huge gatherings, people were eating ice cream, dancing, singing.� (If that is G/G�s criterion for a revolution, then Erap�s People Power III was the real thing, since there was mob rule then, although some squatter-types were seen eating ice cream, and singing and dancing, on their way to attack Malacanang. ACA.) �At the same time, the Filipino was praying and praying. He was evoking (sic) higher forces. In involving supreme values � or redressing injustice, the need for a new order etc � which are the ethics of an evolved and heroic man, he had gone up to the higher levels of his being. His frequencies rose, he went beyond the third dimension, into a protected state, a level beyond destruction. That is why no shot could be fired, no grenade could be thrown. Only the Pinoy is able to do that and it has become a model for revolution in Asia. (By this criterion, Ferdinand Marcos was the Great Hero of People Power I since it was he - excuse me, He - who firmly, categorically and publicly rejected on television the frantic requests of Gen. Fabian Ver for permission to fire on the mob who were eating ice cream and singing and dancing in front of Camp Aguinaldo, and was therefore, following this odd logic, the first one to transmorgify beyond the third dimension. ACA.) But it gets worse. Say G/G: �Every country, every race, every person, has a purpose for being here on earth whether one is aware of it or not. That is why the Filipino was placed in a Third World country, where nothing works. He is so poor but there is no one to turn to for help. If to find a living abroad were not part of the mission, maybe he would have been born in a First World (country) where there would be no logic for leaving home�.� (This is like saying that if Osama bin Laden, who believes it is his mission to lead Islam against the Crusaders and the Jews, had been born a Lapp instead of an Arab, there would have been no logic in organizing the al-Qaeda; ergo leading a terrorist organization must be part of his purpose or mission for being here on earth. ACA). It gets even worse. Continues Gilda: �Did you ever wonder why there are so many children in the Philippines? If you are into esoteric studies, says Georgina, you would have heard of the many souls that are trying to incarnate in this century, which by 2010 will be the beginning of the Golden Age for the world��� (And by which time the Philippine population will exceed 95.8 million, at current growth rates. ACA) �But the uteruses of the First World are blocked with contraceptives and abortifacients so these children incarnate in Third World countries like the Philippines. The souls, though, who had really wished to be born in the West but had to incarnate in the Philippines, through the diaspora end up where they wished to see light in the first place��.� (This opens up a whole new perspective in immigration jurisprudence and human rights advocacies, not only for Filipinos but also for the rest of the teeming Third World multitude struggling to breathe free in the First World: Mexican wetbacks, Haitian boat people, Cuban paddlers of inner tubes, Afghan and Pakistani migrants stewing in the island of Nauru, Kurds and Arabs trying to stowaway into Britain at Sangatte, Albanians jumping off derelict ships near Italy, the ghosts of thousands of Vietnamese boat people eaten by sharks in the South China Sea and Chinese stowaways asphyxiated in airlesss container vans, etc��..all these poor devils can now claim that their souls really wanted to incarnate in the First World but were prevented from doing so by the blocked uteri [the correct plural form of uterus, a Latin noun] of American, Canadian, Australian, British and West European women��and therefore their primordial human fetal rights have been violated, for which they should now be compensated with several billion dollars plus valid immigrant visas to the First World countries of their choice. A worthy cause for Gabriela militants with blocked uteri. ACA.) ***** What alarms me is the suggestion that �the Filipino has a role to play in the coming world scenario�..We didn�t just export bodies. We exported our own brand of people and our own culture�..in the Age of Aquarius, the Filipino will be empowered, his sun will rise, he will govern and his real wisdom will shine�..� which presumably presages the fulfillment of our mission, spelled out in the headline, that of �filipinizing the world.� But is the world prepared and willing to be filipinized? Perhaps this should be debated in the UN Security Council soon, even before the Americans start bombing Iraq. How do we filipinize thee, o world? Let me count the ways. We can filipinize the Japanese by convincing them that their fetish for punctuality is what makes them uptight and unhappy. (G/G cited a survey which showed the Filipino as the happiest and the Japanese as the unhappiest man in Asia). The Japanese get upset when their trains are 20 seconds late. They should learn to run their trains as we do: only when the engineers feel like it. We can filipinize the Singaporeans by teaching them how to conduct endless acrimonious debates on how best to dispose of urban solid waste, in the meantime letting the garbage pile up on the sidewalks, traffic islands, streets, empty lots, esteros and riverbanks. We can filipinize the Australians by persuading them to junk Melbourne�s 360-route electric tram network and replacing it with swarms of noisy, smoke-belching, stop-anywhere, turn-anywhere, park-anywhere jeepneys and tricycles. We can filipinize the Israelis by teaching their army how to pursue a band of 80 Muslim kidnappers with an invasion force of 6,000 troops, preceded by naval gunfire, artillery barrages and aerial bombardment from safe distances.. We can filipinize the Malaysians by persuading them to jazz up their staid TV newscasts with endless accounts of saksakan, barilan, patayan, bugbugan and gahasaan; and to liven up their boring newspapers with 500 columnists criticizing everyone and everything in their government.. We can filipinize the Taiwanese by urging them to allow, as we do, communist labor unions in their industries, communist and pro-communist columnists in their newspapers, and communist front organizations dominating Taipei�s streets, so that in time Taiwan becomes a communist country while the Chinese mainland becomes totally capitalist. We can filipinize the Americans by telling them to abandon the 4-Way Stop (a charming, uniquely American motoring ballet in which motorists coming from all four directions come to a full stop and take turns in crossing the intersection according to a formal etiquette, even without the presence of a policeman) and replace it with our 4-Way Go, Go, Go! in which all vehicles coming from all directions barrel down at full speed in a 24-hour game of Chicken, and those who blink are towed away in disgrace. We can filipinize the French by convincing them to build an LRT, a la Edsa MRT, on the magnificent Champs Elysees and the ritzy Rue de Rivoli up to the Ile de la Cite, with incredibly ugly stations at key stops such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde, the Louvre Museum and the Notre Dame Cathedral. That should spark a real revolution. ***** It is heroic of Gilda and Georgina to put a positive spin to our character flaws and our collective failures. I myself also believe that the Filipino has �the creativity and talent to make it big in the world.� But it can be attained only through the application of intelligence and hard work under inspired leadership, not by drinking a voodoo cocktail of parochial Pollyanna pop and astro-babble fizz laced with stale Marxism (�thesis and anti-thesis�), pseudo-science (�DNA of superbeing�) and the mathematics of hocus-pocus (�rising beyond the third dimension�). Having embraced Marxism-Leninism in the late 1980s, just when it was expiring, Gilda now seems to be clutching at another allegedly scientific hokum, a New Age pap-sicle for creeping old age. You were much better at fiction, Gilda. Or was this meant to be fiction? ***** The bulk of this article appears in the December 9, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to "Filipinos As Superbeings" (Forwarded) I logged on Tony Abaya's commentaries on Gilda Cordero-Fernando's monologue on Filipinos as Superbeings. It's one of the best writings yet I have read in recent times. I thoroughly enjoyed his scathing but delicious sarcastic remarks on the supposedly unique virtues and God-given gifts of Filipinos as expounded by Gilda. I have very high regards for Gilda's writing style and subjects but unfortunately this time she foundered into the unchartered waters of social commentaries in which she was unable to navigate in a credible fashion. And talking about the peaceful "revolutions" of Edsa I & II, I personally dismissed the events simply as mass "picnics" - "eating ice cream, dancing and singing" - loved by the Faustian masses, organised by pompous nuns and priests, and cleverly staged by Ateneans' empty braggadocio. Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada could have sailed into their sunsets without the headwinds of People Power I & II. All it needed was a couple of barn-storming passes on the Malacanang airspace by two young and extremely bored U.S. F16 pilots looking for a little horse-play and excitement. I now hanker for more exciting commentaries like Tony A's. Perhaps it will, from time to time, wake us up from our mystic midsummer night wetdreams. Incidentally, is this Antonio C. Abaya the same person as Tony Abaya who owned Erwohn Bookstore which used to be my advertising account? . Frank Jimenez. [email protected] New Jersey January 27, 2003 ��������������������������� |