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?

historical movements

Time and again, the debate rages: what determines  movements, historical moments or men?

Two years ago, when Barack  Obama is not known here in the Philippines, a friend of mine told me, after his brief visit in the United States, that the next US president would be Barack Obama.  I asked what party does he belong?  He quipped: Democrat.  In a staccato fashion, I unleashed arguments that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee and would trounce the republican in a general election.  Although as for Hillary ,  there is a perception that she will say anything just to win, her intelligence and experience is a plus for America, and the rest of the world.

Little did I realize now that the prediction of my friend is becoming a reality.  Barack  Obama, save perhaps for the super delegates, will lord it over Hillary.

The US, for the last seven years and more, has been led by a Texan Cowboy who thinks more by his holster than his brain.  George Bush presidency has been marked by incompetence and misplaced priorities, waging wars, then doling-out billions  to war-torn countries while being unable to halt the rising unemployment, and the home mortgages crisis.  All these add-up to the historical moments the Americans are revolting against, and are wanting to rectify, pronto, through the polls.

The confluence of events, that is, the present historical moment, is giving rise to a movement made flesh by Barack Obama, he who represents  vision, and hope.  From 9/11, and onwards,  Bush has created his own historical counterpoint: hope instead of the present dispair, and vision instead of blinded pursuit for nuclear arsenal that does not exist.

The Bush debacle is opening the call for clear vision, for a battlecry that can lead the citizens from the mess the leaders have created.  Between Hillary  and Obama, the latter is the natural counterpoint for Bush.  Hillary may have the experience and the wit, but she is not a fresh alternative.  She is not a break from the present, and the US under her helm will still carry the guilt of the past.  Obama is a fresh face, a visionary who inspires  and the light  upon which the rest pin their hope.

The fund raising is a good indicator.  Obama raises campaign funds from small donors who come in droves; Hillary has big but few donors who are very much part of the status quo.

The historical moments have produced the movement and Obama is riding on its crest.Bush has led the nation to discontent, dissent, if not dispair.  People want a new vision which is a total departure from the status quo.  Obama represents that vision. And when the multitude show support to the  campaign coffers, no obstacle can stop its parade to victory.  Anyone who  stands on the way will just drown and sweep ashore.

Obama is not  the creator but a mere creature of the movement: He happens to best exemplify the dream the multitude have for the country.  JFK  may have endeared to a lot of Americans.  But I wonder what would have become of him if not for the historical moment of his time: the emergence of television.  If not for that medium, his sound bites could not have been heard, and his royale presence could have gone unnoticed by the world without the tv sets.

In 1986, in the Philippines, Cory Aquino, a non-politician, once a mere housewife, was catapulted to highesh office , not necessarily of her own merit, but the historical givens that ignite in the multitude the fire to replace a dictatorship.  Cory, a non-politician, a mere housewife (pardon the modifier mere, but it indeed captured the sentiment of the times), represents something fresh, a break of the past, and the harbinger of a new vision.

JFK.  Cory Aquino. Martin Luther King.  These men lived in a historical moment that  created the movement which catapulted them to prominence.  They were icons of the movements of their times.

Barack Obama maybe a mere creature of the movement that resents the historical moment George Bush has led the Americans into.  But do not obstruct the creature in his march to victory.  He represents the movement that is incessant, unstoppable.  You cannot stop the flow of the surging waves: the oppositors will just be swept ashore.