Community
Work - a device for social control or a tool for liberation
by Bert & Eva Ricacho
In Microbiology, when we want to reduce or totally get rid of the virulence of some organisms, the rabies virus, for example, we usually subculture or grow them in various media other than its natural host for prolonged periods of time in a process termed attenuation. After several pas- sages, when the virus becomes adapted to a new environment, it is expected to have lost its ability to produce disease in humans. During the pre-molecular biology era, they were used as harmless vaccines for those bitten by suspected rabid animals hoping to induce some form of immunity to the incubating virus.
Unfortunately, such analogous process of attenuation is not easy to see among our human counterparts. We still witness the lot who have developed undesirable traits while in their home country and continue to manifest them in their newly-adopted one. No matter how many places or abodes they have resided at, how many relationships lived in the past or how much re-education received from formal or informal institutions, they remain as virulent and as venomous as ever.
We sometimes wonder what makes it very difficult for some of us to change for the better, particularly in a new country where honesty, integrity and justice are given so much regard and that dirty politics is not the norm. Was it the long years of exposure to an environment where profit and greed were the rule rather than the exception? Was it because one is born to a poor constantly discriminated family that has brought up a competitive, combative and anti-social child? Or was it the other extreme where one is born with a silver-spoon that made him an uncaring and arrogant adult whose only interest is to expand the wealth, prosperity and political influence, or what have you?
The results of the recent US and Australian elections indicated that people are once again looking for a moral compass in their political leadership. Voters now want moral leaders. In the same token, the future of our community organisations rests upon a moral by: Bert & Eva Ricacho governance, and that moral governance rests upon moral leaders. Our organisation�s constitutions are made for moral people. Our leaders must be able to create and achieve a new vision but it must be a moral vision. The means of achieving it must be moral as well.
�Money still talks�, quipped one. �Can�t you see how some people�s hands are in everybody�s plates � across organisations, across bridges and across mountains? What interest would they have if not a desire to exercise influence or control. What instruments do they use if not a few dollars here and there.�
Genuine community work must be a tool for liberation not only from poverty or oppression, but more practically from the �claws of control�. Sad to say, these attempts to exert influence are creeping unwittingly and unnecessarily to many sectors of our society. Monetary promises, stage roles, radio interviews, news features, job offers - all these are being used to entice and to ensnare unsuspecting corruptibles. Organisations want officers who can make paluwal, volunteers look forward for a free T-shirt, helpers waiting for a free lunch.
Community work must aim for empowerment of its members. Efforts must be done to interrupt any more widening of the gaps between the Filipino haves and the have- nots, the powerful and the powerless. Every Filipino, every organisation, every firm must be given the opportunity to participate in social activities, enabling them to make their own decisions and be responsible for those decisions. All these are necessary if we want to see Filipinos who are self-reliant and self-accountable.
A good governance is only as good, decent and moral as its constituents. In short, in order to elect better leaders we must like- wise become better members, friends and neighbours. It will be difficult but is not impossible. Then and only then can we have a genuinely moral community.