changing views

Fr. Montero, S.J., our professor in metaphysics, used to tell us before the start of the class: “Quid quid recipitur, recipitur secundum mudum recipiende”. Translated, “Everything is received according to the capacity of the receiver.” By way of an analogy, the one-liter bottle can never hold more than its capacity.

Then, Fr. Montero would proceed: “This is an immutable law of nature.” If you are dumb, you are bound to me one. If your I.Q. is that of a moron, then don’t aspire for post graduate studies.

May his soul rest, I indeed kept his maxim to the heart. No one from the class challenged his view. How can indeed a one-liter bottle hold two liters of water? From the classroom discussion, this seeming truism influence the way we relate to people. This child, given his I.Q., cannot take up law; that employee can never do this task.

Whilst science owes its framework from philosophy, the latter too has to bow to the superiority of the empirically demonstrated fact. The flat earth theory was a Mesopotamian thought that prevailed for many centuries, percolating in science, politics, and religion. Until Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the earth, the earth was then held not round. The whole system of knowledge had to be overhauled.

Then lately, contemporary medical findings have it that the neural networks that wire man’s brain can actually be stimulated by engaging the mind in both creative and analytical activities so the neurons multiply and create more linkages. The more linkages of the neurons, the more wired the brain is, and hence, the better I.Q and even E.Q a person have.

Science too may later on develop a bottle that even if it is designed to hold one liter of water, it may contain more compared to the present design because in the future, perhaps, even in between the molecules of the glass bottle, there may be nano particles that can hold up water. Now, you don’t measure intelligence by I.Q. The generally accepted norm today is multi-intelligences. The brightest of your kid, or employee, or you friend, may not necessarily be the best for the organization. The entire person is the package.

Are there really immutable laws of nature? The answer cannot be had in the near future. Philosophical theories are constantly being redefined by science, and the latter’s direction is being moulded by the contemporary thought.

Rigidity. Fundamentalism. Absolutism. These are anathema of the unfolding of human knowledge. Given the context, the right attitude is not dogmatism nor relativism. Dogmatism stifles the search for knowledge, and adaptation to something new. Relativism however leads to chaos. For sure, concepts and ideas may not be necessarily existentially true because one believes it to be so. The taking of soma plant during the Kali yoga ritual is not necessarily sound because they experience the 7^th heaven in their hallucinatory flight. There are certain universal virtues, not necessarily immutable truths that still keep humanity intact for millenniums now.

The attitude should be openness, the capacity to learn, listen, experiment, and adapt to new concepts. One does not have to die for a view which overtime have been proven false by verifiable phenomena. When the Oil Deregulation Law in the Philippines was enacted, consumers’ blood pressure shot up because that would mean pillage by the oil cartel in the Philippines comprising of Shell, Caltex, and Petron. That was in 1998. Ten years after, and after two months drinking with the top executives of the new oil player in the market, the new opinion has to be formed: the Oil Deregulation Law is good for the Philippine economy. The cartel of the Big Three is being slowly torn asunder by the many new players which roll back the pump prices ahead of the former. The hour per hour monitoring of the pump prices by this new player, JETTI Oil, is evidenced enough of the cut-throat competition going on. This is good for the consumers.

In human relations, openness is the key. One or two events do not a person make. Prejudgement, discrimination, bias, these three have no place in contemporary history that keeps on changing, and evolving. While as a human race, we evolve in knowledge; as a person, we are still in the life long search for identity, and in the process, revealing shades of the evolving persona.

How one wish Fr. Montero, S.J. is still alive, to tell him that his dictum does not hold now. But then he was a product of his time and place. No one should judge a person without judging the historical context he was in. And who are we to judge the historical context of the past which eventually, we the present, trace the long thread of the past, live the present, and project the future?

Had Fr. Montero been still alive today, the bet is for him to open up to the knowledge of the present, and adapt it. May be, even as he was still schooled in metaphysics and immutable truths, by now, he would live blogging his ideas into the virtual world.

Openness. How can you argue against?

menacing the ricefields: the golden “kuhol” story

It was in 1982, right after graduation in high school that I visited the school where I spent my primary education.  Right within the school playground was a small fishpond. I was curious why earth must be opened to give way  to fish, so I thought. Alas, what was cultured was not fish but a snail – apple snail which is locally known as golden “kuhol”.

Golden “kuhol”, scientifically known as pomacea canaliculata, was introduced  in the Philippines by no less than then First Lady Imelda Marcos, she who was tasked by the other half of the conjugal dictatorship, Ferdinand Marcos, to promote livelihood programs throughout the countryside.  The meat of the snail was reputed to be high in protein content which the impoverished Filipinos badly needed.

That was in 1982.  Even with much media hype, the snail did not find its way in the plates of the Filipinos. Poverty normally does not discriminate food on the basis of the palate. But not this one.  Hunger had to be suppressed than ingesting the slimy creature.  Poverty dehumanized people;  but even among the poor, there is still dignity left, a kind of self-respect that can choose death over eating the snail.

The golden “kuhol” remained a media hype, the project of Imelda Marcos that never was.

December of last year,  a sack of rice was within the P1,000.00 tag or around US$20.  The price of rice today has more than doubled.  Many have been queueing in market stalls just to buy cheap rice supplied by the government. Not only a few collapsed waiting for the long queues  to purchase five kilos of rice.

The Philippine government, to augment local supply, has to import rice from countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.  There is nothing really wrong with importation. In the now shrinking global village, exchange of goods is rapidly increasing. The international market is readily available.  

The storyline does not end here.  

Way back in the early 70′s, the International Rice Research Center (IRRI) was established in the Philippines, specifically in the University of the Philippines- Los Banos. Then, Philippines was second largest economy, in Asia and a net rice exporter.  The students from around Asia trooped to IRRI to learn modern techniques in rice production.

If  Filipinos taught the Asian neighbors the ways of rice farming, then it may be asked: Why then are we importing rice from these countries?  Is it the case of a novice learning more than the master?  This frankly boggles the mind.

Then, one day, my father-in-law asked me to buy pesticide.  That is insignificant request considering that every month, he supplies us with one sack of rice.  Abide I did.  To my surprise though, the pesticide he asked me to buy was precisely to kill golden “kuhol”.  When I held the bottle of pesticide, I was gripped with recollection of that time I saw the fishpond of golden “kuhol”.  The golden “kuhol” which was introduced to nourish the poor turned-out  to be the menace that stifled rice farming.

A single  golden “kuhol” can eat 7 to 24 seedlings a day and can consume one lettuce in one night.  With its peculiar rapid reproduction capacity, you can have millions of snails in your ricefield in varying stages of growth,  and even with the pesticides, the snails keep on reproducing.  This means I have to buy pesticides every planting season. But the severity of the problem is reflected when my father-in-law told me that more often than not, his expenses for rice farming exceed the value of the harvest considering the menace the golden “kuhol” has wrought.

Now I wonder if Imelda Marcos did take a bite of the snail when she launched the project. But that is a trivial matter.  On a serious note, we are actually having a peek of how not to govern.