A letter to my parents
This was a letter we were required to write for a Community Development 11 (CD 11) class under Sir Elmer Ferrer. Part of it discusses the supposed historical role of intellectuals in social transformation.
To mom and dad,
Shifting has been strenuous for me. I've felt what you've reminded me of wasting my time. I have been in a limbo of sorts, because I couldn't get over the idea of leaving the only course in the world. I'm in CD now, and though I've missed my equations, I feel that I wouldn't be able to solve the simplest formula one can think of. I have the suspicion that my mind has become numb and immune to learning anything new. I guess I'm really paying for not attending much to academics and giving a little more time than necessary for extracurricular activities.
But depression subsides when you've got something to do. Friends have been helpful and shifting to CD has helped me to momentarily recover. I've learned of transformative knowledge, where I can use all I've learned in science for changing society. This was brought home to me in my introductory Community Development class – CD 11.
In my CD class, one can voice out opinions that would have been insignificant to a normal class, opinions that bring out impulses for change. We've learned that structures extremely limit human progress and most of these structures are unfair and inegalitarian. Community Development studies also tries to grasp the roots of poverty and helplessness, how a few maintain this order, and the course offers hope of changing this system. I'm thankful for my teacher Mr. Elmer Ferrer, of things I would never have been taught in my previous course.
Of course, some of the things being taught are nothing new, at least to me, because I do get around the campus a lot, and get in touch with some of the social issues. There are also some elements that I feel to be arbitrary sprinkled here and there. Some of the ideas of my teacher I don't necessarily agree with, but hey, some of my favorite teachers express opinions I disagree with.
We had a class on environmentalism the other week, and people had a party bashing all the ills of the world and its environmental degradation and blaming it on technology. The class was encouraged to pursue the argument until I blurted in. I pointed out that plastics replaced the cutting of several trees. Mr. Ferrer said that if we only managed our resources well, we didn't have to have such replacements that clog sewers. Exactly my unexpounded point.
The system that propagates the wasting of our resources is not science, a little perhaps on lack of environmental education, but rather points more to the capitalist imperatives of self-expansion, "productivity," profit-maximization, and competition without regards to the environmental effects. Modern environmentalism usually points to technology or the products of science as the final culprit. Or worst, it points to the logic, the rational impulse of science, which is said to be the cause of the environmental disasters of the twentieth century. But we have to ask whether the fruits of science and technology must by definition correspond with the needs of capitalist exploitation, accumulation, and the destruction of nature that inevitably accompany them. We don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Now I don't want to be ignorant of how technology and the products of science are being used in contradiction with Nature and pristine communities, but a critical inquiry would reveal that science is not the simplistic giant used to undermine the natural balance, but it would show that science can be an ally of environmentalists. Recent debates on the rise in global temperature show how important it is that environmentalists use science to strengthen their positions. It's easy to blame the tools and renege human responsibility for our own problems. The very crimes being charged against science and technology would more justly have capitalism as the prime suspect.
I have trouble also with the current theoretical trends about "civil society," if it means settling for an eternal "other" power other than the elitist state. Ironically, civil society is a product of the revolutionary movement, and the most active and strongest groups that can be termed "civil society" do not constrict their playing field to "civil society," but also struggle with tactics and strategies of grappling the state for the people. They also greatly consider the role of militant class struggle. I thought that the "democratic space" that civil society exponents celebrated had been refuted long ago. The recent EDSA Dos must have shown that there are a lot of things to change. Politics only changes faces in this country, and does not fundamentally mutate into something else. As long as a political agent does not present itself as a totality to other sectors, no genuine transformation will occur. Even the elite celebrated the January change of government because it did not have significant class content. Prior to Edsa Dos, the working class suffered serious setbacks from yellow unionism.
But revolution is more than taking to the mountains. It is more than killing, families torn apart, violence. It certainly involves that, but it is more a change in our way of thinking, to overthrow one class for the majority of the people. In this sense it is more educational. The hardest people to teach are the ruling class. Far stronger than our ideas are our interests. Even if the capitalist would read all the volumes of Das Kapital, he would still remain a capitalist. Even if a government official was sincere and honest, he is embedded in an apparatus used as instrument of oppression and exploitation. As long as people do not wish to break free, the vicious circle remains.
Now some CD teachers usually hint at being involved in something more than teaching and becoming more involved once in a movement. But some of them express tiredness and anger at what they feel to have been inadequate paradigms that they had practically left behind. Imagine a radical movement that had suffered a great setback. Many, no doubt, would drift either cynically or sincerely to the right, regretting their earlier views as infantile idealism and simple-mindedness. Others, sensing that the struggle had been hard to fight would comfortably settle for more moderate forms of struggle. But militancy is all that the masses have. If the system seemed hard to crack from outside, then one would find it a virtue in subverting it from inside, as in inside the state apparatus. A great many theoretical justifications would flow from this glum conjecture. There would be a celebration of the marginal and a suspicion of the current vigor of the movement. The intellectual would take center stage and be promoted as historic agent. There would be an increasing obsession with language and culture—topics where the intellectual is more likely to feel at home than in the realm of material production and struggle in factories and farms, or the mountain guerilla trek.
The historical basis for this way of thinking would be that the political movement that was once active, seemingly near getting to power, and creative, had suffered great defeats, both internally and externally. Now what if there were also splits and factions that seemed to an outsider was causing the rupture of the movement itself. I think that once-participants in social change that had left this movement have cause to feel suspicious of the survival of radicalism, and at a greater force than before, and they would simply demonize it as not having the creativity to appraise present realities. The current vigorous revival of the movement would simply be lost on them.
I feel appreciative of how my class encourages me to think of thoughts that diverge from the usual discussion. I felt a bit of irony the other day when class discussion had Marxists, the most radical practitioners of this century, painted of simplistic viewpoints. My experience shows otherwise. I feel that old revolutionaries project their era into ours and throw the foibles or simply the adolescence of their generation's experiences to the present. Marxists have been accused of "reductionism," foundationalism," or "essentialism," on the grounds that Marxism allegedly reduces the varied complexity of human experience to a monolithic view of the world, "privileging" the mode of production as a historical determinant, class as against other "identities," and "economic" or "material" determinants as against the "discursive construction" of reality. A healthy respect for difference and diversity of opinions does not oblige us to throw out all the universalistic assumptions to which Marxism at its best has always been attached, or to abandon the idea of a universal human emancipation. Marxists were the ones who pointed out that social reality is not as simple as the economism that they often are accused of. In light of capitalism's triumph and rampaging move to make itself seem invincible, a materialist viewpoint is a necessary step in liberating ourselves from its stranglehold.
CD 11 asks us: for whom are you? I think that was answered a long time ago. I'm for the poor, the oppressed, the exploited and marginalized of the world. My training in science had given me some of the tools to think of how to improve society. It has also occurred to me that there is a deep epistemological relation between science and dissent against all arbitrary powers and opinions that I think I'll be magnifying more in community development. I think I'll be learning more in weeks to come.
This is all for now.
Yours Sincerely,
Caesar
To mom and dad,
Shifting has been strenuous for me. I've felt what you've reminded me of wasting my time. I have been in a limbo of sorts, because I couldn't get over the idea of leaving the only course in the world. I'm in CD now, and though I've missed my equations, I feel that I wouldn't be able to solve the simplest formula one can think of. I have the suspicion that my mind has become numb and immune to learning anything new. I guess I'm really paying for not attending much to academics and giving a little more time than necessary for extracurricular activities.
But depression subsides when you've got something to do. Friends have been helpful and shifting to CD has helped me to momentarily recover. I've learned of transformative knowledge, where I can use all I've learned in science for changing society. This was brought home to me in my introductory Community Development class – CD 11.
In my CD class, one can voice out opinions that would have been insignificant to a normal class, opinions that bring out impulses for change. We've learned that structures extremely limit human progress and most of these structures are unfair and inegalitarian. Community Development studies also tries to grasp the roots of poverty and helplessness, how a few maintain this order, and the course offers hope of changing this system. I'm thankful for my teacher Mr. Elmer Ferrer, of things I would never have been taught in my previous course.
Of course, some of the things being taught are nothing new, at least to me, because I do get around the campus a lot, and get in touch with some of the social issues. There are also some elements that I feel to be arbitrary sprinkled here and there. Some of the ideas of my teacher I don't necessarily agree with, but hey, some of my favorite teachers express opinions I disagree with.
We had a class on environmentalism the other week, and people had a party bashing all the ills of the world and its environmental degradation and blaming it on technology. The class was encouraged to pursue the argument until I blurted in. I pointed out that plastics replaced the cutting of several trees. Mr. Ferrer said that if we only managed our resources well, we didn't have to have such replacements that clog sewers. Exactly my unexpounded point.
The system that propagates the wasting of our resources is not science, a little perhaps on lack of environmental education, but rather points more to the capitalist imperatives of self-expansion, "productivity," profit-maximization, and competition without regards to the environmental effects. Modern environmentalism usually points to technology or the products of science as the final culprit. Or worst, it points to the logic, the rational impulse of science, which is said to be the cause of the environmental disasters of the twentieth century. But we have to ask whether the fruits of science and technology must by definition correspond with the needs of capitalist exploitation, accumulation, and the destruction of nature that inevitably accompany them. We don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Now I don't want to be ignorant of how technology and the products of science are being used in contradiction with Nature and pristine communities, but a critical inquiry would reveal that science is not the simplistic giant used to undermine the natural balance, but it would show that science can be an ally of environmentalists. Recent debates on the rise in global temperature show how important it is that environmentalists use science to strengthen their positions. It's easy to blame the tools and renege human responsibility for our own problems. The very crimes being charged against science and technology would more justly have capitalism as the prime suspect.
I have trouble also with the current theoretical trends about "civil society," if it means settling for an eternal "other" power other than the elitist state. Ironically, civil society is a product of the revolutionary movement, and the most active and strongest groups that can be termed "civil society" do not constrict their playing field to "civil society," but also struggle with tactics and strategies of grappling the state for the people. They also greatly consider the role of militant class struggle. I thought that the "democratic space" that civil society exponents celebrated had been refuted long ago. The recent EDSA Dos must have shown that there are a lot of things to change. Politics only changes faces in this country, and does not fundamentally mutate into something else. As long as a political agent does not present itself as a totality to other sectors, no genuine transformation will occur. Even the elite celebrated the January change of government because it did not have significant class content. Prior to Edsa Dos, the working class suffered serious setbacks from yellow unionism.
But revolution is more than taking to the mountains. It is more than killing, families torn apart, violence. It certainly involves that, but it is more a change in our way of thinking, to overthrow one class for the majority of the people. In this sense it is more educational. The hardest people to teach are the ruling class. Far stronger than our ideas are our interests. Even if the capitalist would read all the volumes of Das Kapital, he would still remain a capitalist. Even if a government official was sincere and honest, he is embedded in an apparatus used as instrument of oppression and exploitation. As long as people do not wish to break free, the vicious circle remains.
Now some CD teachers usually hint at being involved in something more than teaching and becoming more involved once in a movement. But some of them express tiredness and anger at what they feel to have been inadequate paradigms that they had practically left behind. Imagine a radical movement that had suffered a great setback. Many, no doubt, would drift either cynically or sincerely to the right, regretting their earlier views as infantile idealism and simple-mindedness. Others, sensing that the struggle had been hard to fight would comfortably settle for more moderate forms of struggle. But militancy is all that the masses have. If the system seemed hard to crack from outside, then one would find it a virtue in subverting it from inside, as in inside the state apparatus. A great many theoretical justifications would flow from this glum conjecture. There would be a celebration of the marginal and a suspicion of the current vigor of the movement. The intellectual would take center stage and be promoted as historic agent. There would be an increasing obsession with language and culture—topics where the intellectual is more likely to feel at home than in the realm of material production and struggle in factories and farms, or the mountain guerilla trek.
The historical basis for this way of thinking would be that the political movement that was once active, seemingly near getting to power, and creative, had suffered great defeats, both internally and externally. Now what if there were also splits and factions that seemed to an outsider was causing the rupture of the movement itself. I think that once-participants in social change that had left this movement have cause to feel suspicious of the survival of radicalism, and at a greater force than before, and they would simply demonize it as not having the creativity to appraise present realities. The current vigorous revival of the movement would simply be lost on them.
I feel appreciative of how my class encourages me to think of thoughts that diverge from the usual discussion. I felt a bit of irony the other day when class discussion had Marxists, the most radical practitioners of this century, painted of simplistic viewpoints. My experience shows otherwise. I feel that old revolutionaries project their era into ours and throw the foibles or simply the adolescence of their generation's experiences to the present. Marxists have been accused of "reductionism," foundationalism," or "essentialism," on the grounds that Marxism allegedly reduces the varied complexity of human experience to a monolithic view of the world, "privileging" the mode of production as a historical determinant, class as against other "identities," and "economic" or "material" determinants as against the "discursive construction" of reality. A healthy respect for difference and diversity of opinions does not oblige us to throw out all the universalistic assumptions to which Marxism at its best has always been attached, or to abandon the idea of a universal human emancipation. Marxists were the ones who pointed out that social reality is not as simple as the economism that they often are accused of. In light of capitalism's triumph and rampaging move to make itself seem invincible, a materialist viewpoint is a necessary step in liberating ourselves from its stranglehold.
CD 11 asks us: for whom are you? I think that was answered a long time ago. I'm for the poor, the oppressed, the exploited and marginalized of the world. My training in science had given me some of the tools to think of how to improve society. It has also occurred to me that there is a deep epistemological relation between science and dissent against all arbitrary powers and opinions that I think I'll be magnifying more in community development. I think I'll be learning more in weeks to come.
This is all for now.
Yours Sincerely,
Caesar
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