How to give God a hard time

1. Ketsana

IN the immediate aftermath of the flash flood wrought by typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana), Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chairman Bayani Fernando had the media-perceived strategic gumption to pin the blame on everyone, including himself. His take was wisely leveled against himself primarily—for failing to convince developers and "informal settlers" (squatters) to get out of the waterways and relocate in what he deemed a necessary move for his department's flood control mission to work. Unwittingly, or so he made it appear, he had actually backhandedly leveled the primary blame on these very developers (who had acquired permits to build real estate subdivisions on wetlands from the government). Fernando also implied these projects' having in turn bred squatter zones at the subdivision's sides as parallel developments in their own right, with these squatter developments often starting as a few construction workers' shacks cropping up during the construction of the subdivisions. It was as if Fernando was saying, I know how to work this, but the government that I work for doesn't have the intelligence to address the problems and solutions that I see.

     The subdivisions and squatters Fernando was referring to were those placed right smack in the middle of erstwhile esteros or waterways (natural and man-made), incursions he says he had always known to prevent the unobstructed flow of such flashflood water as what poured from the mountains of Luzon's Sierra Madre on the night of September 26. To his credit, Fernando did mention in passing the logging in those mountains (which have also acquired permits, legal and not; the legal from the government and the illegal from the protection of corrupt government people that Fernando is either working for or with). In short, while Fernando is the kind of disciplinarian that believes there is no society that disciplines itself, this time he points his finger at our lack of self-discipline, as party to the blame, otherwise—by subtle implication—to the lack of intellectual discipline in the government that he works for or discipline among the corrupted government officials he works with.
     The populace, meanwhile, looked somewhere else. Many pointed to the dams of La Mesa, Angat and Ipo as the culprits in the flashfloods that visited Quezon City, Marikina City, Pateros, the Pasig River-side parts of Makati City and many towns of Bulacan province. And although Angat Dam was quick to deny having released water of such catastrophic volume, it released two meters of water a day after the flood to prevent "a similar occurrence" in case the anticipated new typhoon Pepeng (Parma)—expected landfall, October 3 or 4—brought in a similar mass of rain cloud cover.
     Then there were the government-controlled channels. National Broadcasting Network Channel 4, RPN 9 and IBC 13 kept on harping on typhoon Ondoy's rain cloud cover as a manifestation of nothing but climate change, the sole gist of their lip service being that everyone should be informed of these effects and—by implication—should henceforth participate in the fight to turn back the climate change momentum. Putting aside the absence of other factors that could have minimized the scale of the catastrophe, the message was noble. Except that this was being pushed even as the very same government the channels were paying lip service for have also been sparing no effort to advertise the nation's need to add more coal power plants to the national energy grid as well as to further the fossil fuel industry in Palawan, all this side by side nothing in the direction of a renewable energy program apart perhaps from a desire to resuscitate a nuclear power plant near a rising sea level.
     Now, all of the above dams do merit mention as real culprits. However, it eludes the imagination of Fernando—a presidential or vice-presidential aspirant for the 2010 elections—as it does the government channels' climate-change lip-service spinners to examine the root of the evils they so readily point their fingers at. Failing to do so brings us back to the habit of stoning criminals whose crimes may have been nurtured by the very systems we have for so long accepted as natural and defensible.

LET us start with climate change.
     It is now common wisdom that climate change was processed by two things: industry and consumption. But, putting aside the fact that the conservatives of the world are denying it ever exists or that industry and consumption have nothing to do with it, it's still a common belief that's been taken for granted. Here's looking at it again:
     The majority of economic planners agree that a good economy is propelled by consumption which in turn oils the machines of production. The vicious cycle is not declared vicious at all but is in fact regarded as the very stuff that makes the world go round, the absence of which could stop the planet or threaten the momentum of its orbit around the sun. Likened to nationalist-cum-protectionist economics that defies globalization, holistic economics of austerity teaching "buying only what's necessary," along with other like-minded Thoreau-esque libertarian economic utopias, are seen as either too Middle Ages-y or New Age-y, thus anti-industry, anti-trade, anti-production, and in the long run anti-consumer, too. As if anti-consumerism is equal to anti-consumer. Yet the economics of the vicious cycle is the very economics that churns out more private cars for space-poor roadways, more fossil fuel barrels, more styrofoam on the fastfood table, more plastic bags in kitchens and the garbage bins, and so on. It is this very economics that, while encouraging some governments to look for alternative energy, also cannot argue against overproduction's (surplus production's) imposing its philosophy on the advertising industry to promote further consumption, being itself a product of such a philosophy. And the machine wheels of consumption-driven economics have been turning faster and faster since the Industrial Revolution, a philosophy no different from the Catholic Church's mission to increase and multiply the population in its orphanages.
     But the economics that manufactured—is continuing to manufacture—climate change is not the sole social science at odds with its prayers for a better natural environment. There is also the long-standing (since the beginning of time) human proclivity to create population centers.

SINCE the beginning of time, the human propensity to centralize further and further all aspects of societal living has spiraled ever faster as well. Sucking everything center-wards like a whirlpool, as a matter of course, cities created the metropolis that created the cosmopolitan megalopolis, and around these the suburbs and "urban fringes" or "surrounding provinces" as their unofficial extensions that make up what is now known as the urban agglomeration. We know megalopolises as those composites having overly-populated towns and cities within its embrace and "on its outskirts."
     Apart from being the facilitator of cultural exchanges, our center-moving proclivity has proven itself to be healthy fodder for industries, the very reason why it has survived urban citizens' impatience with their daily urban struggles. As long as a citizen has for himself an industry, it makes no sense to remove himself from the more populated areas of the world where the bigger market is. And the industries that have blossomed out since the time of Eridu, Uruk and Ur have become so various and sophisticated.
     In our time, suburbs have proposed semi-private short-distance railway systems for the transportation industry. And, undoubtedly, the megalopolis has saved a lot of money for the manufacturing industry, an industry wont to gather around a port-of-call center, thereafter mapping a spider web of delivery routes for its trucks, ships, or air cargo expenses; the nearer a population is to the point of manufacture, the lower the shipping cost. And where's the biggest market? Almost always it's in the megalopolis, the point of manufacture.
     Industries also benefit from the population center's populace of strugglers in competition. Seeing these strugglers as denied of the comforts of provincial contentment, city industries can haggle with the cost of their labor.
     Other industries, such as government profit-making ones, have also invented projects that grew from metropolitan necessities. One of these products is … the dam. When there are millions and humongous industries to be fed water and provided electricity, there is the industry to be made in the supply of that water and the harnessing of electricity from the pressure in the dam structures. It is even possible for the control of dam sites to lead to another industry altogether—the control of the forests near a watershed or mountain lake can be managed to harness forest farming activities better known as "logging concessions."
     In short, the economics of agribusiness and manufacturing or creating domino effects of consumption has a lot in common with the sociology of spiraling inwards towards a population center. The two long-standing concepts have been feeding each other since the time of Alulim. The economist Paul Krugman has amply demonstrated this further in his theory on economies of scale which, combined with lower transport costs, create processes whereby "regions become divided into a high-technology urbanized core and a less developed 'periphery'." It was for these "discoveries" that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008.
     Now, of course this partnership between the sociology of upward and inward mobility was seen as an ideal for Thackeray's London, and continue to be for a progressive European Union or an ever-expanding Metro Manila. But not anymore if we're to stop blabbering about geographic inequities (e.g. Manilacentrism), or—now—about turning back climate change to previous ideal levels and conditions. This dual mobility should be okay if we're not constantly gabbing about minimizing casualties from either "acts of God," man-made catastrophes (such as dam breakage and explosions or oil-depot-within-a-city accidents), or urban epidemics.

IS it possible to create a new millennium that would reverse the above human proclivity, towards real decentralization? In the age of the Internet and a "global community," in the age of Skype conferences and Facebook bulletins, is it possible?
     Let us consider examples from the present.
     A California ad agency operates an office center rarely visited by its employees, most of whom meet each other and clients everyday via the Internet. Another ad agency, based in Portland, Oregon proves that it is possible to be one of the country's leading creative shops without locating its offices in Manhattan. More recently, not a few companies all over the world have realized that it is possible to base its customer service call center in Manila or Bombay, its main factory in Shenzhen, and its main office somewhere in London's outskirts. So, why not a Makati office with departments scattered all over the Philippines? Why this supposedly-obsolete habit of creating more business centers, terrorist-friendly shopping centers, factory rows beside a river ditch, or flood-prone university belts? Why transport thousands of employees each day to the Makati financial district and Ortigas Center, with a lot of these workers waking up as early as 4:00 a.m. to be able to reach office (through traffic and the Metro Rail Transit's skin-to-sweating-skin horde) by nine, when work and efficiency can be achieved otherwise, without the obsolete bundy clock's standard of measure? If the aborted NBN-ZTE broadband project of Gloria Arroyo had to have a believable philosophy behind it that might have convinced all senators, it could have been this: that a company (private or government) need not operate its departments from around the esteros/arroyos/waterways of Pandacan alone.
     But what would be gained from such a scheme? What would be lost? Decongesting megalopolises to create a scattering of mini-cities—at best a scattering of mere towns—may have to do away with the necessity of building new metropolis-bound elevated roads, for instance, or the necessity of humongous dams. Or if giant dams have to remain, it would be easier to manage the towns below the dam's spillways considering that these would be mere small towns and not an unmanageable, irreversible mini-metropolis growth like eastern Bulacan. At present, should a 7.5 earthquake hit Angat Dam and crack it, the casualty toll within the province from the flashflood will be in the hundreds of thousands.
     What would be gained? For every loss is a corresponding gain, goes some common belief, and so with the loss of manufacturing centers and a corresponding dispersal of operations there shall be created a redistribution of employment opportunities. There shall result a de-saturation of land, nay, properties' liberation from the former distinction cutting between industrial hectares and agricultural ones; a farm can now be seen beside an LCD TV factory, and—besides—factories getting dispersed thus would be easier for the populace to monitor for abuses including lack of water treatment facilities and other pollution law offenses. It would also be hard for factories to recruit and import cheap non-unionized labor from the provinces since the concept of a "province" would already have been passé. The concept of urban and rural would have gone away, since everywhere would be urban as well as rural.
     As for the benefits of de-saturating the country's city areas, it must be noted here that not a few flood victims inhabiting unlivable areas of Metro Manila or its outskirts who got interviewed on TV in the aftermath of the typhoon Ondoy calamity had provincial twangs or accents. It was not hard to imagine or directly hear Tagalog viewers commenting like Nazis that very day: "go back to your provinces, don't squat in the city's idle lands and you’ll be spared from another typhoon Ondoy." This city-bred view, of course, would be coming from a lack of an understanding of the whole complex system that encourages such migrations (or, in some cases, such subtle importations) of cheap labor and, oh yes, electorate votes [my churchworker friend M- was quick to remind me—see his comment below]. The assumption of those voicings is that life in the provinces is so okay, that there's much idle or development or converted land by, say, a senator or pretty famous billionaire where the provincials could still plant sweet potato on for their daily meals. These Nazi-like critics should try, along with their professional practice, living in the provinces today.

     Sure, it is high time we create revolutions and reverse man's city-prone movement hand in hand with his reversing his habit of creating environmental decline. But it would not be as easy and simple as the government's present Balik-Probinsiya placebo program thinks it is. Such a program must guarantee relative non-returns to points of congestion. Therefore, the dispersal must happen naturally; that is to say, not through a Maoist conscription of individuals transported to new points for acculturation but by the sowing of investments that will lead the way out of Egypt, coupled with a comprehensive environmental management plan as well as a sound population control policy. I am not talking about federalism, but simply about giving everyone an elbow room and about discouraging everyone from congregating in special points of concentration. I'm talking about scattering the prey to scatter the predation.

     Nor am I talking about the annihilation of city culture, as the cities will simply be pushed outwards while the rural areas are being pushed inwards to meet the cities halfway. Nor should I be talking, as per my friend economist P-'s advise, about urbanizing all the squares in the archipelagic map to create another Los Angeles-like sprawl. I am talking about spreading the population in the archipelago while controlling the population so it wouldn't turn the new territories into metropolises themselves. I may even be talking about everyone being required to plant subsistence food if they can help it.

     Are these impossible dreams? Is it true that Marcos, too, dreamed of this? Or are these simple products of a present need to find long-lasting solutions? Simple-minded? Perhaps, but wary of status quo. If Fidel Castro was successful in instituting urban farming in Havana, is it possible that we could be, too?

WHAT would be gained? What would be lost?
     I leave these questions for social scientists and government planners to better mull over. All I can leave my reader with is an imagined utopia wherein during moments of catastrophe, be that catastrophe due to climate change (with its unpredictable thick raincloud cover resulting in dams' brimming to scatter their water load), estero/creek/waterway asphyxiation and lack of metropolitan drainage efficiency, some officials' or (who knows?) a senator's unguarded logging concessions uptown, viral epidemics, or whatever else or a combination of some or all of the above, casualties would be relatively minimal and/or manageable. And with such a distribution of the population's numbers, God's "wrath" (through typhoon Ondoys) would have to cover the entire country to effectively depopulate it.



Photo from http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//090929/ids_photos_ts/r490447765.jpg/

2. Parma (added October 20)

TYPHOON Pepeng's (Parma's) rainclouds wreak havoc: in Benguet with landslides, in Pangasinan with broad strokes of flashfloods reaching a depth of 14 feet in certain towns, and in various other provinces with more of the same. It is a state of calamity and disaster all over, and I don't mean in bureaucratic state terms, which take hours or days to declare.

     Some would say it was a different issue here. Sure, it was by the thick rainclouds of new typhoons by climate change, but—wait, who else is to blame? It wasn't a matter concerning squatters and subdivisions impeding the flow of water from the cities' over-exploited mountains overlooking the metropolitan sprawl. Sure, it may be by the relentless enthusiasm of unchecked logging, but—wait, who else to blame? It wasn't a matter to be solved by either looking for invisible loggers. Or sending squatters back to their provinces—after all, these were the provinces. Sure, the rains were a result of climate change, but climate change is just too academic for even mayors (who have been refusing any form of change for far too long) to comprehend.

     In Baguio, many say it was more a matter of the age-old physics concerning water mixing with soil and rocks, nothing more. In Pangasinan, many say it was more a matter of a dam. Nothing more.

     In fact, everything was a matter of more. And because of this more matter, more is to come. The more I think about it, the more I feel its certainty.

MORE. In her essay "In Paradigm Shift 1: A Long Look Back," the columnist Sylvia Mayuga wrote about the history of local government corruption and the national government's leaning towards the time-proven (read: old) solutions to 20th-century problems. In "Diary of Revolution V: Another Strange Column," she wrote about government's dismissal of NGO pleas to keep Mt. Banahaw out of South Luzon Expressway's tentacles. Also, in "Paradigm Shift 2: New Vision in Government," about government's ignoring then-DENR secretary Fulgencio Factoran's Ancestral Domain Law bill in favor of the Congress-favored IES bill mandating popular consent to such projects as the coal-powered Hopewell power plant in Pagbilao, Quezon. And today in the Philippine Star, columnist Jarius Bondoc's essay "Corruption: Direct Cause of Storm Ruin" chalked up more corruption data that led to the catastrophe ("The purchase of seven brand-new radars took so long because an admin congressman had tried to block it when he was eased out as secret supplier").

     More. Alexander Martin Remollino of Bulatlat.com—an online magazine—in "Dam Nation: A Bloody History of Struggle Against Dams" waxed nostalgic and defiant towards the struggles of such martyrs as Macliing Dulag and the Dumagats in the futile fight against the construction of the World Bank-funded Chico River Dam, implying the enormity of such revolts, since one is running against such respected institutions including the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Asian Development Bank.

     And all this history comes back to us now, in the present hunger of the citizenry not just for somebody to hang (the dam engineer who made supposed misjudgments, for one) but for solutions to prevent a similar occurrence, or otherwise to prevent similar results in case the return of the same occurrence cannot be mitigated.

     And so we rejoice as when, on October 9, 2009, an American cinema actor and philanthropist named Brad Pitt is reported about on the Net to have unveiled in New Orleans his flood-surviving float house for the Make It Right Foundation. We happily rejoice at the criticisms and proposals of the Filipino architect and urban planner Felino Palafox, who is no sooner on our TV screens, interviewed left and right for free TV's explanation-hungry angry citizenry.

     I, too, posted Pitt's house's picture on Facebook.

     To which posting my friend copywriter A- made a not-so-satisfied comment, providing ample ideas in his wake, to wit: "The idea of working on designs for the real world I like, but those two designs for floating houses are downright ugly. Ugh. Our squatters have more design aesthetics than those architects who couldn't even show some modicum of respect for the people they envision living in those ugly houses. In my opinion, a houseboat on a barge has more charm and design aesthetics. And that's a floating property, not just a house. The barge the house is on is one's land area. And the house of course is the floor area. And if everyone in ... say, a small community had the same idea, they could moor their 'land areas', their barges, together; and when the floods come, they all rise (of course they have to be anchored to land with a slack of 15 feet), and when the flood waters recede, they're landlocked again. Nasa lupa lang at kalsada ang kalat, wala sa mga bahay-bahay.

     "Hey Jo," he added, "why don't we look for a student architect to partner with and build one? For energy we'll use solar. For food, they can go hydro for veggies and raise doves and bantam chix for meat. There's rain water, but that will have to go through some filtration because of what might be in the atmosphere."

     To which great ideas I replied, thusly: "This is adaptation. This is Darwinian adaptation. Hereon in, typhoons will be bringing in tremendous cloud cover the likes of which we have never seen before. It happened in Bombay in 2005 that got featured on Discovery Channel and still the oil industry-backed Right is saying climate change is a myth, even as Bombay reacted with dikes and better drainage. The same thing with the conservative Republican-American TV network Fox News: in early 2008, where one female anchor even expressed something like, if Arizona is to have ice and snow the whole year she'd welcome it, and if North Dakota is to have melting ice, fine, great. Then her co-anchors went on about the virtues of an extensive US offshore oil drilling, echoing John McCain's going against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's championing the need to tap sustainable and renewable energy.

     "In our country, with the typhoon's evolution, dams filled to the brim should begin to see their obsolescence, except in the possible drought of summers. Each barangay has to shift to mini-dams and barangay waterworks systems of this kind both for drinking and irrigation. But I was also talking to my Bulacan neighbors in the flood of August 2007 about Badjao houses and how we should adapt with houses on concrete or iron stilts, and everyone just smiled at me, a crazy Waray, saying, 'hindi iyan uso rito.' And yes, even floating houses, with moorings to fight the current; I was talking about these like a crazy drunk at a streetcorner birthday party. Or, people looked at me like I was a crazy drunk.

     "And Pitt's prototype for New Orleans—not exactly a houseboat like the ones we see on HGTV's show on strange houses and great vacation homes and hideaways—may be a tad better than the houseboats of Hong Kong, but henceforth the floating house must be a new genre in 21st-century architecture. We must launch design contests for floating houses.

     "If we fail to adapt and we die," I aimed for a closing, "good riddance! Let's make room for a better species."

     Great exchange, it was. But, like this essay's Part One's pleas with an unknown readership, is this to be read as just another literary banter with the ghosts of reform? After all, who—among businessmen with resources, or leaders with clout—would even initiate such adaptations that dare go against the old contractor's specifications?

THE main headline in today's (October 20's) Philippine Daily Inquirer front page reads: Mayors damn the dam. The headline news item references a PHIVOLCS report saying the dam in question rests near a fault line, which fact alone would truly bring back visions of Noah's flood into the Pangasinense landscape. The mayors are crying for a decommissioning of the dam. But.

     Knowing government, that will never happen.

     Oh, me, a cynic? No. More. A student of history. To appropriate Mayuga's essay, I dare attach the reading that almost all governments around the world today have leaderships sponsored—directly or indirectly—by corporate interests, by big business, by local and international banking systems. Governments will always side with big business, and if we are to follow the philosophy of the 2009 Nobel Economics laureate Oliver Williamson, big business can in fact resolve a conflict by dealing with another big business, and if I may add, even topple the other big business' interests. So, to bastardize or bawdlerize Williamson by a converse reading of his thesis, only big business can successfully sponsor opposition to the interests of the other big business, and thus instigate change. That seems to be the only possible fight in times present, then—windmill and solar energy corporations sponsoring a new government to topple the centuries-old oil and coal and hydroelectric power plant parties.

     Sure, there have been triumphs of civil society against big corporations, but those have always proven to be short-lived or temporary. The monster manages to come back everytime. Thus the Williamson thesis' significance.

     For even if such entities as mayors or even mayors' leagues are to clamor for change, such clamor will—corruptibility aside—often be devoid of alternatives. For instance, who among the mayors of Pangasinan would now promise to do away with the benefits of big hydroelectric power plants in favor of small barangay-level hydroelectric plants, micro-windmills, solar power cooperatives?

     Who would want to arm themselves with the argument that solar power is only expensive today because it has a lot in common with twenty political posters from a printing press that could decidedly be costed way, way lower if produced in bulk by the twenty-thousands? None, I suppose.

     My friend the UN consultant Lila Shahani talks about solar energy in Cuba. My friend the church worker M- talks about village impoundments. "I’m still an advocate of small-scale water impoundment projects," he writes on a Facebook thread. "If every community in the nation had its own small lake or pond (size depending on population), a certain amount of land would be lost, but the benefits, in the reduction of soil erosion, improved groundwater levels for deep wells and even small scale power generation, would more than make up for the loss. It’s no substitute for forests as a mitigator of runoff, but in cases where the forest is already gone, it can be a helpful alternative. But no one even talks about it." In his Oct. 6 comment to Part One of this essay (see below), M- mentions the hydro plant of Villa Escudero Plantations resort farm, and the little power plants of the Sierras in California.

     But who among the mayors of Pangasinan is ready to counter the giant San Roque Dam hydroelectric power plant's argument that closing the dam now might mean selling un-irrigated farms to land developers? None, I suppose.

     In short, we are all like my Bulacan neighbors. We will continue to lean on the tried-and-tested convenient slogan, "hindi iyan uso rito e."

AND so, I promise you: a year from now we will not see a President Noynoy Aquino or Gibo Teodoro or born-again Erap Estrada or Manny Villar (estate development stalwart) or a Vice President Loren Legarda (claiming to be a proponent of environmentalism) making any difference in the area of doing away with the dams in favor of micro-electrification and micro-water systems and micro-irrigation systems that have been proposed by many a genius from Africa to England to Texas to Luzon on the moving pages of CNN and ABS-CBN and GMA Network, geniuses we've refused to listen to because of big business' charm.

     More.

     Is it hard for us to imagine such refusal among our leaders, us being faithful followers of certain candidates' supposed competence? Well, such refusal is present in our very selves. How many of us would want to give up our cars in favor of public transport, for instance? None. Who among us would be willing to boycott McDonald's pancakes served in styrofoam? None. Who among us would be willing to give up beef and rice for chicken and sweet potato so as not to contribute to the atmosphere's warming with the methane coming from cows' farts and shit and from the rice paddies' evaporting water? None.

     Tilt the camera up. Now, imagine yourselves as those leaders up there. Who among those politicians would work hard and work fast at improving public transport systems so even CEOs would want to ride on trains? Who among them might work hard at pushing for (or at least encouraging) alternative sustainable energy sources that may render fossil fuel use obsolete in, say, ten years? Work hard and fast to spread the population, control population growth, even render giant dams for urban areas and farm zones obsolete? Equally none.

     Meanwhile, the planet's atmosphere is working twenty-four hours a day at melting the polar ice to produce warmer oceans that produce more efficient typhoons for a disposable humanity that refuses to evolve (many still even refusing to believe in the "theory" of evolving) after Darwin and the dams' increasing damnations.

SO, what am I proposing? Equally none. Because I know that nothing will be done, nothing much will be created or demolished to service the fight against climate change, dam threats, uncontrolled logging.

     More. We will continue to build foreign bank-funded corporate dams, which are actually fourth floors of all our houses serving as water storage tanks. If you think that's bad architecture, don't say a word. Even if you say "no, I don't think that's good at all," still we all latently approve of it. Nobody would want to give up the benefits that the dam brings, because no one would want to be bothered with the adjustments that micro-electrification and micro-water systems and micro-irrigation demand. We are all reliant on big business to do our water-fetching for us, along with our farming, our gardening, our cooking, and so on and so forth. Everybody latently thinks a fourth floor serving as water storage tank is good architecture, in the final analysis.

     What am I proposing? None. If I am to propose anything at all, it would be to say, let's teach our kids how to ride it out. Make them learn how to swim. Let's not bother making it hard for God to depopulate the planet of human dinosaurs. None of Williamson's firms are going to do anything about it for us.

     And besides, at the back of our minds we knew this was coming. More now—we know it's what we'll continue to get. [END]

Photo from http://www.lugaluda.com/2009/10/09/sm-rosales-pangasinan-have-come-under-water-no-thanks-to-typhoon-“pepeng”-continuous-rains/

Acknowledgment: Sylvia Mayuga featured this blog essay as a "guest column" in her Philippine Star Online column Only One World of October 25, 2009. It was a tremendous honor, Sylv.

Gloria Arroyo, Underappreciated Patron of the Arts

[The following is a satire, coursed through a fictionalization of a real interview, that is to say, an interview with Lila Shahani and other Facebook friends/acquaintances that really happened]


1. The Underappreciated

GLORIA ARROYO IS an underappreciated, . . . no, a mal-appreciated, individual. Her role in the evolution of good Philippine governance has yet to be recorded by future historians, who might be able to acknowledge her contributions to that evolution and its place in the Filipino's unconscious psyche.

     But this mal-appreciation is understandable. This is the reason why there is such a course in schools called History; that academic course presumes that History's lessons are not learned by its characters' contemporaries but by those contemporaries' great grand-offspring inhabiting future time. In short, the History course is vicarious experiencing, which, by virtue of its being vicarious, elicits learning; it may even be deemed the opposite of true experiencing, and, by virtue of this, elicits objectivity. Totally understandable, therefore, that no one learns from Current History. So, to repeat: vicarious experiencing through past history is the key to learning, and it is therefore our great-great-grandchildren who can be expected to evolve after having learned from all that we experience today. To repeat, we can hardly be expected to learn anything big from unfolding current history; thus, our mal-appreciation of Gloria Arroyo's actions. (But make no mistake about it. Even future generations won't have their learning on a silver platter. They would have to expose themselves, in Sesame Street-like fashion, over and over and over to the lessons of past history for these to sink in.)

     Now, having said this, just for the hell of it and for those who might want a glimpse of what the lessons of the future might look like, simply from a modest form of sci-fi, permit me the indulgence of guiding you through this Star Trek of sorts to the archipelago's future learning. My sci-fi reader, I offer that the future will look back (perhaps through online books and videos) and say this: look, look at those moves by Gloria Arroyo in 2009, A.D., made for the benefit of Philippine arts, moves that totally couldn't be understood or appreciated by Arroyo's countrymen during her time. She was, after all, a revolutionary mind. In what way? you ask. Let me count the ways. Here is that glimpse.

CHILDREN, listen. In 2009, Gloria Arroyo insisted on the proclamation of that instant-film maker Carlo Caparas and that theater organizer Cecile Guidote-Alvarez as the new National Artists of the Philippines Archipelago, a move that, we've no doubt in our minds, was made by her to teach artistic circles at that time a very good lesson—a lesson we certainly cannot expect the Sesame Street of Philippine arts history to have seen until it was repeated a thousand more times onto the present; the lesson being, for us now in 2099, that if Bienvenido Lumbera or F. Sionil Jose or any other stalwart blessed by the national coffers can have the right to dictate their opinion on who the national artist for the Philippine archipelago should be, then anybody with a right to the national coffers, the President no less, can have his/her say on who the people should gobble up and emulate as their national artist. We harp on that today. They could not harp on that in the past, and only allowed the Sesame Street of History to teach the great grandchildren of the future its lessons, and more subtly, more patiently. After all, even Congress hearings on the issue reacting to protestations to the proclamation, attended by all sorts of historicist fellows from all sorts of persuasions, dared not question what they were fighting over; they could only question who was fighting for whom. And as for the claim that Caparas was not worthy of the award, was not that the very point of the hard lesson? If any clique can claim to be right about who they think is worthy of the award, then, by a simple stretch of that logic, we'll get the logic of getting a Caparas through an Arroyo. Brilliant Arroyo.

     Almost simultaneous to the initiation of this lesson in 2009 A.D., Gloria Arroyo also had a luxuriant ₱1 million dinner, with frustrated culinary artists and national Congressional gourmands, in colonial New York and Washington DC; it was a dinner against which hungry and not-so-hungry and not-hungry-at-all Filipino artistic circles interminably protested on social networking websites and blog sites. Little did they recognize that this was exactly what they themselves wanted. Gourmand luxury! She was the president, after all, and so if a national grantee of an individual could even have the right to dispose of a P2 million annual budget on his research-grant-hungry person care of the cultural tax collection from the people and his competitors, then why not a president, rightly entitled to a million-peso dinner, being a president and not a mere artisan of state-guided or state-approved art?

     A bit later on, the government of Gloria Arroyo, through the Cultural Center of the Philippines, accorded the former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos—wife of the then-already-deceased, previously-exiled dictator Ferdinand Marcos—a tribute evening entitled "Genesis: Seven Arts, One Imelda," to teach the artistic culture this by implication: "Look," the tribute wanted to say, "if any of you can dictate who to honor among your friends, certainly I, the president of the republic, can dictate too who to honor among my friends." And who can argue with that? . . . Well, some did argue with that, saying their dictates were "collective" in nature, having passed through a Commission of artistic dictators, er, connoisseurs. Total crap, of course, but no one could harp on Arroyo's lesson on that crap then, and history simply allowed Darwin's Sesame Street of slow, historical evolution to have its way and say on the matter for our education in the future, our education today.

     So, today, let us not forget what happened a few days later after that brouhaha. You see, the activist National Artist Lumbera had been one of those quite vocal about the perceived scandal the President wrought with the filmmaker's and theater organizer's instant proclamation for National Artist of the Philippines title award. One morning, Lumbera's housemaids called the guards of their high-end village to accost suspicious persons hovering about the front of the Lumbera house, persons who turned out to be members of the Philippine Marines. The military personnel were caught, but they had their alibi, alibi that . . . but the artistic community would not have any of it. If their suspicions were right, that Lumbera was being made to fear for his life and was therefore expected to cease all activism, then there again was a precious lesson that the government was generously trying to teach the art community. Anyone of you who dares oppose an authority's choice, the lesson seemed to say, will be harassed, just as anyone among the citizenry who dares oppose an art authority's choice, whether that authority comes from the CCP or the National Commission for Culture and the Arts or the art establishment or a small arts society's majority, would be promptly harassed by the art authorities' cliques either by ugly rumors, media-coursed black propaganda, collective dressing-down, or simple threats of isolation. But, of course, that lesson wasn't going to sink in during that season of scrambling for arts grants on Pinoy Sesame Seeds Streets.

     A day later, what more happened? Well, Gloria Arroyo appointed an accountant to man the helm of the country's Cultural Center. The arts community, quite naturally, went berserk. But they couldn't appreciate the logic of it. Gloria Arroyo was teaching the Sesame Street of artists in the archipelago a very important lesson: a lesson about funds. The mere existence of an artist's haven dangling subsidies and stipends can only mean that there will continue to be parasites looking out for these grants falling down from the haven's tall walls. Sure, Ms. Arroyo could have appointed a ballerina to be the new president of the CCP, or a brilliant lighting designer, but what would they do? They would usually just end up calling their friends to get hold of this or that grant that the institution is releasing. By appointing an accountant, Gloria Arroyo wanted the archipelago to learn this: when you wait for droppings called grants, you're not just waiting on the blessings of your patron in office, like a respectable-looking waiter hungry not for personal tips from a rich patron but for a sincere thank-you from an appreciative connoisseur of the waiting service art, you'd actually be like some kind of fly waiting for tax money to land in front of you as your piece of the pie. Apart from ad execs and marketing men, accountants are the very people who constantly talk about pie charts and pieces of the pie. You see the significance of the metaphor Arroyo gave them? But who could have seen all this in the moment of their experiencing this in the year 2009?

     Look, in 2009, they couldn't even see the lessons during their lifetime of certain happy occurrences. That very year, the charm and grandeur of the CCP's Daloy event, an exhibition and party celebrating 40 years of artistic patronage by the institution, was praised by all, friends and foe of the current CCP clique alike. A masterful historical documentation-of-sorts of that event was written by newspaper columnist Sylvia Mayuga. "Its red carpets are frayed where they once sank luxuriously underfoot," she hauntingly wrote. But it was a party. Filipinos loved to party in 2009, and to them all parties were great. It was therefore no surprise, being a true experience of unfolding history (and within an enjoyable party at that), for Daloy not to be accepted as a demonstration of where the CCP was better at—at the recording of past and continuing culture. The lesson that could have been derived from this was this: if the CCP is to transform its function from being a haven for artists (hungry or well-to-do) hankering after grants to being a repository of past and continuing culture, in short a true cultural center and not a state arts center, it might go through centuries without any major opposition. . . .

2. The Underrepresented

WE COULD GO on and on. But since it’s history, and we already know that a lesson was not learned until ninety years later, let us just get down to the present, here in 2099 in the year of our learning, and listen to an interview on a CNN-like station in New York hosted by a Winnie Monsod-like program host named Lila Shahani III, Oxford University PhD, as she interviews an exile who has been identified as one of many rebel leaders in the ongoing war to take hold of the CCP in the Philippine archipelago.

     CNN-like NY Studio is catering to the Filipino expat community in New York City, and presently the program's interviewee is that above-mentioned rebel leader who, we found out, is also currently headquartered in the city. However, CNN-like NY has agreed, for security reasons, to hide the real identity of the rebel, knowing that a civil war has just erupted in real time in the archipelago between a hundred artistic cliques, each with a standard bearer for a National Artist of the Philippines title and a proposal for a year of CCP state sponsorship, each fighting the other therefore in one of the bloodiest battles in the Southeast Asian region. We'll just call our rebel guest "The Greenman," since that's what Philippine legends and gossip call him, and in fact that's the name he used as author of nine poetry books, and he loves rainforests along with the color green and green forest jokes (known in New York as blue humor).

     Oh, and what are those lessons again that we learned from Gloria Arroyo that we should be thankful to her for again? Ah, you forget! It's the lessons enumerated in Part 1, Big Bird brain, along with the fact that everyone recognizes now that this ongoing war is a result of our not heeding Arroyo's parables for a long time until today! Lessons learned the hard way they have been, then. Some mutual tough feeling there, too; for, after all, these were lessons Arroyo herself had a hard time teaching us, lessons she could only communicate by holding a big mirror up to reflect the corruption in the arts at the time. Unfortunately, the art cliques looked at this mirror but could only see Gloria Arroyo behind it. They totally could not see that she was also there to act as their reflection.

     We might also remember that the host of our CNN-like show is the great-great-granddaughter of a former Filipino lady senator who once fought for the retention of the CCP, even as her fellow senator—one Heherson Alvarez, husband of a later National Artist of the Philippines title awardee named Cecile Guidote-Alvarez—preferred to see the edifice disabled (perhaps in deference to the stalwart opposition senator murdered at the Benigno Aquino Jr. International Airport, then known as the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, who loved to tag the dictator's wife as a persona with an "edifice complex"). Senator Shahani won the argument, if only for the liberation of the CCP from Imelda's arts and thus the institutionalization of a new CCP ostensibly embracing the arts of the people. Whether that ideal was achieved (or is even achievable) is the crux of this interview with The Greenman in this year of Shiva 2099.

     Here is that interview, which—although it starts off with the National Artist of the Philippines title award issue—actually mainly circles around a debate on what the CCP should be about:

     Lila Shahani III: Good afternoon, Mr. Greenman.

     Greenman: Good afternoon.

     LSIII: I watched you on Barcelona TV, and one of the callers, the Philippine consul-general Eddie de Vega IV, was asking you a question, and you were interrupted by commercials followed by breaking news, so naturally I couldn't catch your answer. Let me just repeat that question. He was saying, and I'll just read it here: “I was wondering why it was questionable to name composer Ernani Cuenco or actor Fernando Poe Jr. as National Artists. Anyone who could compose such a song as 'Gaano Kita Kamahal', and anyone who makes successful epic films that encourage the Filipino to appreciate their historical past (and preserves copies of those films he made), is a fine artist to me." And, you know, before you answer, let me just say that I think the issue with Ernani Cuenco was that he didn't really have a significant body of work (although the same could be said of Alejandro Roces, etc.). FPJr, on the other hand, always played the same stoic hero of the masses' proto-stereotype but was never really (in my humble opinion, at least) more than a B-grade actor. So I don't think it was their nationalism being questioned as much as the artistic form they worked in (or maybe at least in terms of how other artists in those respective genres were generally assessed). I agree: they both played a big part in forging our sense of nationhood, and I say this as a half-Filipino, but I guess the point is that the National Artist title awards should also be about artistic craft.

     G: (to the audience) Hey guys, what’s up! Great to be here. (to the host) Uhm, okay. I say let's subsidize artists, but let's subsidize everyone else too! Let’s subsidize solar-powered-jeepney drivers, and actors, and magicians, and Facebook bloggers, so everyone pays their taxes and gets something in return too. And I think National Artists should be chosen by a national referendum, under an autonomous Commission on Referenda. I don't think a people's committee comprising solely of Eddie de Vega IV and Lila Shahani III should risk logging horns with the official committee members of the largish Arts Commission of the People's Republic of the Philippine Archipelago who have decided a long time ago to dictate to us who they think should be our National Artists, whatever the hell that means. But, you know what, I think I want to take back everything I wrote in my earlier manifestos already. I think now that all Filipino artists are National Artists since they are all Filipinos and therefore all of the Nation. Mabuhay ang mga National Artists! (the audience responds with ‘Mabuhay!'s) Oh, and I'm an Ernani Cuenco fan, by the way.

     LSIII: (laughs) Sira ka talaga, e! You don't even bother to answer Mr. de Vega IV's question. Ba't hindi mo type yung dalawa as National Artists? I'm a fan of Nora Aunor but don't think she should have been a National Artist, so whether you're a fan of Cuenco or not is neither here nor there. And what's wrong with subsidizing production (as opposed to achievement)? Wouldn't having cheaper books and materials make your life easier? It sure would help me out, since I'm a voracious reader.

     G: First of all, yeah, oo nga, oo nga, sorry, Mr. de Vega. Pero sorry di ko type si FPJ except sa Aguila and a few more. I'll answer your question later. First, Lil, dapat talaga walang National Artist. Kahit sarili nating favorites wala tayong gustong gawing Number One natin, di ba? Lahat ng favorites natin gusto natin number one sila lahat, di ba? I say, subsidize production in reverse, that is, by giving the production mode tax breaks; that way mas egalitarian, hindi special people lang ang meron. . . . O di kaya, para masaya at wala nang away, idadaan sa wrestling o sabong. Ang may nanalong manok, siya ang National Artist. At least pag ganun alam natin ang Diyos ang nag-decide by the divine mystery of sortition. . . . And now, Lil, and Eddie in Barcelona, to answer your question, I have no beef at all with Cuenco or Poe Jr. or Caparas and all their followers through the decades who have established churches in their name. I am just reminding everyone involved in this ongoing war in Luzon right now of those protests in 2009, because I think those protests are at the root of this Luzon war now in 2099. In all this, I am just looking at things as an outsider, one without a religious affiliation or clique. Wala akong pinapaburan na kandidato for the National Artist of the Philippines award in the near future, from whatever school of thought. I'm not saying the Caparasites or the Poeics or the Cuencoenes should win next year. In fact, hindi ako pabor sa National Artist of the Philippines title dahil ayokong i-impose ng state o ng isang commission ang mga gusto nito para sa akin, and vice versa if nasa akin ang power. The issue is, bakit ba tayo mahilig mag-power trip over the underrepresented, sa politics man o sa arts?

     LSIII: Tama! Finally, a serious answer. Agreed! (laughs) Ay, pero ayaw ko ng sabong, ha. Ikaw naman, dadagdagan mo pa ng animal abuse! Pero, actually, mas marami nama'ng pera ang economic elite natin kaysa sa gobyerno, so dapat sila nalang ang mag-fund ng mga private awards. Like Lila Acheson Wallace in the US or the Rockefellers. Ayan o, sina Henry Sy IV, Lucio Tan V, and Jaime Zobel XIII!

     G: Tama ka. O "grant" mula sa mga artists mismo. Actually nga, magaling na exercise ng imagination sa isang artist ang wala siyang resources, di ba? Bakit ako, poet with eight online books na rin kahit wala naman akong perang pang-publish ng ₱65,000 per 500 copies na book? Resourcefulness should be a part of the art, matagal nang itinuro ng Marxist criticism iyon, the politics in/of artistic production.

     LSIII: Ba't ikaw ang magbabayad ng ₱65,000? Dapat yung publisher mo, di ba? Pero ang point mo, in short, walang patrons. Ako naman: let the market do its work, but we can help to make it more equitable. Parang welfare economics ni Amartya Sen. Did you know that Sen's wife is an expert on Adam Smith at Cambridge? And he, Sen, definitely believes that the market should be allowed to operate, though we need to directly address its inequities. We need competition, so artists strive to have a competitive advantage: that can only breed excellence, Mr. Greenman. Awards would be a kind of incentive, given that writers these days have so few readers; it's really not that much to ask ... a few carrots, that's all. But I agree that they/we all need to strive to be more resourceful. Hey, guess what, the Filipino consul-general at Barcelona, Mr. Eddie de Vega IV, is on the line. He was watching our show, Mr. Greenman. Let’s have him, let’s have him join in. Hello, Mr. de Vega!

3. The Underfinanced

EDDIE DE VEGA IV (phone audio): Hello, Lila, yes. You know, I agree with Mr. Greenman that resourcefulness and surviving under the most difficult conditions could elevate the artist's inspiration. A lot of the greatest artists in the world at one time or another lived in relative poverty (Schubert, Balzac, etc.).

Franz Schubert

     Lila Shahani III: Yes, yes, Mr. de Vega.

     EdV IV: I think I shall listen now to my recording of Puccini's La Boheme. Or perhaps the modern version, Rent, the musical—a wonderful depiction of the artist's life. That was all, really. Just wanted you to know I'm a fan of your show.

     LSIII: Oh, thank you, Consul General, thank you. B'bye, have a good one. Hmm, La Boheme. . . . Okay, where were we? ₱65,000, Greenman. Why you, why not the publisher?

     The Greenman: Ah! Sa National Book Store of the Republic of the Philippine Archipelago, ilan ang poetry books na published ng publisher itself, ilan ang co-publishing ventures? Statistical question. We might not get an honest answer, unless we're talking to friends in the industry. Co-publishing ventures are: you pay for the printing, publishers distribute. It's universally referred to as self-publishing, via a vanity press. Same with indie recordings. Mas matindi nga ang sa recordings, kaya mga bands ngayong sikat sa Pilipinas ay mayayaman (middle to upper-middle class). EMI would demand meron ka ring pang-marketing, as communicated to my band then, The Greenman and His Groupies' Panciteria. Sila, distribution lang. Magkano mag-advertise sa isang billboard? ₱65,000/week sa main avenues. Per Marxist criticism on artistic production, . . . well, kahit Marxists sa University of the Philippine Archipelago ayaw i-discuss 'yan e. Now, I agree that artists and patrons and the market should all be part of the equation. Government, nil dapat, zilch dapat, dun na lang sila sa museums at education. Dun na lang ang controversy sa kung sino dapat ang nasa lobby ng film museum, halimbawa, si Caparas ba o si Lino Brocka. At least malalaman natin sa ticket sales ng museum kung sino ang trip ng citizenry. And Puccini's La Boheme? Panalo, Mang Eddie, sir!

     LS III: Look, guys, Mr. Greenman, our audience, all I'm saying is: what if you have a brilliant young girl in Palawan who's gifted in music? But her parents can't afford to buy her the violin she so desperately wants. Ikaw, Mr. Greenman, you can nurture your talents because writing is the cheapest art form, after all. E, paano na ang mga filmmakers at lalo na ang mga musicians who have to start young? Paano kung type niya si Jacqueline du Pré at ang cello? Sino ang magbabayad? All I'm saying is that, in such contexts, artists could use some help from the government. Maybe you and I will just have to agree to differ on this, Greenman—okay lang.

     Greenman: Kaya nga. The culture of government-subsidized art practically produces such mis-alignments. If art is left to the private individual struggling for her/himself, s/he will not have been trained in the art s/he couldn't afford or the art that has not been in her/his neighborhood in the first place. Ang culture natin hanggang ngayon, magdadala tayo ng ballet performances sa mga rural barrios, tapos pag nagustuhan ng mga anak ng magsasaka at wala silang pambili ng pang-pirouette na sapatos, patay na. Tsinelas nga di makabili e. Ayoko ng mga tatay na tinuturuan ang mga anak nilang mag-appreciate ng violin, tapos pag nagkagustong mag-violin, di maibili. Ang culture kasi natin pilit. Pinipilit maging cultured sa mga bagay na di natural sa atin, when we should be nurturing the art na nasa neighborhood natin. If it's a neighborhood of violins, great. Pero kung rondalla, huwag nating piliting magkaroon ng cello. Tapos manghihingi tayo ng funding sa mga kapitbahay natin? Kung magbibigay, okey. Kung hindi, pa'no? By law? . . . Now, literature. Literature for publication is one of the more expensive arts in the Philippines, since most writers get published through co-publishing ventures better known elsewhere in the planet as self-publishing ventures, as I said earlier, the funding for which do not even return to the writers in terms of royalties or sales profit, at least in our parts. In that sense, pangmayaman ang writing, unless mayaman ka sa connections among Readers o Editors sa publishing houses, readers and editors whose bosses may finance a couple of non-profitable books a year. Walang cheap na art. . . . So, anyone can say his art is underfinanced. Kanino ba ang hindi? On the other hand, all art can be cheap if you do art that is natural to you. Ang pangit kasi sa atin, meron tayong tinutukoy na high art, so jeepney sticker art ayaw natin i-sponsor o ayaw i-cover ng media ang isang magaling dito the way NYC covered magagaling na graffiti artists in the 1980s. Colonial pa rin kasi ang sukat natin sa all right na art as against sa hindi all right. . . . By the way, regarding Amartya Sen's wife nga pala, the economics of liberals naman (say, New Keynesian) are not necessarily anti-market, di ba? Kahit nga si Paul Krugman dinifend ang oil speculation, di ba? Necessary components yun. Ang point lang ng liberals like Krugman, i-regulate ang dapat i-regulate. Even Milton Friedman often agreed on this. At sa politics ganun din, a liberal is not necessarily left-leaning in all issues. So, okay sa mag-asawa na nasa magkaibang poles, parang Shriver-Schwarzenneger? Si Ninoy, halimbawa, socialist, probably progressivist; si Cory, anti-Freedom from Debt Coalition, likely conservative-liberal or liberal-conservative. . . . So, speaking of conservatives and liberals, many will look at my advocacy of a State-less arts as a conservative position, depriving socialist artists of support. But I see it as a liberal one. In fact, it is the State-infiltrated arts that are related to the nobleman- and scribe-supported arts of the monarchic period.

     LS III: Okay. . . . But now I want to put you to task on something you said earlier. Huh? I'm sorry? Oh. Yeah, our director is saying we should hear first from our audience. Okay, audience, what do you have to say? Your own views on this ongoing war in the archipelago. Oh, yes, what's your name, ma'am?

     Therese Yason: I'm Therese Yason.

     LS III: Therese Yason, go ahead.

     TY: I think dapat subsidizing the nurturing of creative, independent thought and action in our citizens, no matter what field we are in … we are so sold out on educating our kids to land them a job that we forget that one of our greatest strengths is the ability to think out of the box. Not talking about arts and crafts alone, which seems to be what a lot of us are doing for the export industry, but finding a different way to solve a problem. Too long have we been in a tenant/employee mindset, it's about time we nurture in all of us the confidence to make tangible our creativity (not only in the arts) and have government backing in terms of tech and education, not just funding.

     LS III: Very good, very good. Okay, we'll pause for a commercial, and when we come back, I think I want to pin you down on that indigenous thing you just suggested, Mr. Greenman. We'll be back.

LSIII: ALL RIGHT, we’re back. Therese. Therese, you were saying during our commercial break, something you wanted to emphasize?

     TY: I was just trying to emphasize that subsidies should go to nurturing creative and independent thought in all fields. For too long, education in our country has focused on educating workers and followers and not on nurturing the out-of-the-box thinking which is innate in most of us. One of our country's greatest strengths is the innate ability of our people to improvise and innovate. Creativity is in our bloodline, be it in the arts or sciences. Creativity is in finding a different way to solve a problem—where else can you find a spoon improvised to fix a broken taxi door handle because the driver cannot afford to buy a new handle? If there is any funding to be granted, why not put it in educating our people to uplift their aesthetic sensibilities? Put it in providing technology or increasing the tech skills of people who need to make tangible their unusual ideas. While it is a bit fulfilling to have someone say that your body of work is great and here is an award to tell everyone that you did a great job, at the end of the day only the artist or the scientist or the businessman or the teacher can say if he was able to do what he had to do and whether he finds fulfillment in it.

     (applause)

     LSIII (also clapping): All right, all right! Hmm. Thank you, Therese. . . . Now, I want to go back to what The Greenman was saying here a while ago, and this is what I want to say: Great points, Greenman. But during our long commercial break I had a chat with Therese and then I went outdoors to our terrace here in the studio to enjoy the end of this gorgeous New York summer. But I had this entire body of thought that came to me. Greenman, yes, point very well-taken about indigenous instruments, etc. That's true. But we don't want to be nativist or essentialist about identity either, do we? After all, this is a postmodernist (post- postmodernist na nga kung minsan) era, so that young girl in Palawan should ideally have several options. Of course, it would be preferable if we’re to choose an ethnic instrument, but what if she really has a natural talent for something that's not readily available in her neighborhood? You know, much as Indians are loath to admit it, there are some outstanding Koreans and other non-Indians who are real virtuosos in classical Indian dance, for example. Yung mga dancer, tinatawanan sa Korea for this "strange" career choice, but they're actually really good. 'Di ba ito na ang cultural logic of late capitalism, to follow Jameson—that it spreads outside national borders—that, by its very nature, art in the 21st century could have transnational qualities? But, okay, I absolutely take your point that all art can be cheap if you do what is most natural to you. But I don't agree that popular art is not recognized by the art establishment—respecting artists working on pop art forms is practically standard fare in the museum/academic world in New York, for instance. Graffiti, language in New York City menus, hip hop—all of this has become rich fodder for cultural studies. Sa CCP din. My grandmother did a lot of shows on things like Kenkoy comics, pahiyas, etc., etc. But, as I said above, we don't want artists to artificially glorify the "ethnic" either—we just want them to do what is most natural to them. So, to follow Sen, providing the functional context (i.e., in Marxist parlance, the material base) where they can have the freedom to choose would be my definition of the ideal. And when I said writing was the cheapest form, I meant in terms of creating, as in: all one needs is a room of one's own (and a second-hand PC, of course). . . . As for publishing at home in the Philippines, I couldn't agree with you more, and it really is unfortunate. But, I'm frankly still trying to get a sense of where you stand on the market. And I definitely agree with Krugman. And, hahaha—oo nga, 'no? I forgot that Cory was anti-Freedom from Debt Coalition. And Therese, I couldn't agree with you more—that's also how I look at it. But sana you took a picture of that spoon!

     (laughter)

4. The Over-coddled and the Under-attended

G: NO, NO, Lil, I wasn't talking in terms of the ethnic or the indigenous, but in terms of what's natural to the surround. The violin is natural to Austrians, that's why you hear it on Viennese radio in the same playlist with The Scorpions or Nina Hagen. The ballet is natural to Moscow, so some taxi drivers dance it at night. The violin is also becoming natural to that town where the Bolipata brothers came from, thanks to their efforts. Me mura namang violins, e. I was referring to the habit of condescension, as when we say, okay, tomorrow we're going to dedicate a day to the popular novel, we'll invite authors of some popular novels (whisper: although we know they don't really deserve the honor). The fact that academic institutions still put those divisions between the popular and the high reeks of the truth, that some arts are being subsidized to survive (thus, by interference). Some arts are over-coddled. This all seems a digression but really part and parcel of the culture of nationalizing or saving or feeling responsible towards some art. But all unnatural.

     LS III: Oh, I see now. But then we agree! (himala!) We both believe in the market doing its work, but I'm more Keynesian than you and I follow Sen. Tama ba?

     G: Yes, we do. And that we only disagree not like I'm a Democratic guest on Republican-leaning Fox News, but am here only talking like I'm Hillary Clinton on pro-Obama but friendlier CNN in early 2008—that in itself is a happy himala! (laughs) . . . Now, Lil, though we both derive from the economics of liberals instead of from economic liberalism, when it comes to the arts, however, you could say I'm more Jeffrey Sachs than anything. Give everyone shock therapy. Then again, Keynes and Sen too, actually, as when I say the state should put more effort in nurturing not just museums but freedoms and equality in education so that capabilities do not anymore recognize such arts as the high for the upper-middle-class Ingleseros or Englog speakers and the low for the lower-middle-class Tagalogeros or Taglish speakers. I say, let's put the money instead in the under-attended facilities: museums, libraries. My art utopia involves a Shakespeare friendly to both the Queen and the masses, a Neruda for both the farmers and the senators. It seems nobody's interested in attaining that in the Philippine archipelago, everybody's happy with having expensive Montessori-method schools that sing an English Philippine national anthem hovering above public schools geared towards, say, caregiving careers for its Taglish-speaking pupils getting second-rate, poor English instruction. Not that a caregiving career should be looked at as godawful, but that it is seen as a sacrifice and heroism instead of as a mission is already telling.

Philippine National Library

     LS III: But doesn't "nurturing not just museums but freedoms and equality in education" precisely involve state subsidies? If not, what do they involve? Yung high/low, English/Tagalog, ibang usapan iyan. No quarrel with you there about dismantling such hierarchies. What I'm saying (and concentrate and don't digress, please!) is: how does the state make art and education more equitable if not by subsidizing production, as I've been saying? How else would they do it? By the way, what naman is your beef with museums? As someone whose grandmother used to work in the Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino, I know that there are creative, cutting-edge museums (though not necessarily there in Manila, mind you) all over the world; not all of them are ossified and necrophilic, you know. So why shouldn't they be competitive as well?

     G: That's what I was saying, Lil. The state should concentrate on museums and education, not the arts. The galleries deal with the painting and sculpture arts directly, museums only bear witness. Those are where the state can come in strong, to design them as an extension of public education. Education, including state universities' "interfering" in the arts, could/should be the job of the state. But arts patronage shouldn’t and never should be. In short, let's allow the people to choose which art they'll celebrate, then the state can teach the fact of certain public recognitions to succeeding generations through the museums. Museums are a part of a people's education, and if the state can pour all its arts money into museums and education instead, then so, so much the better.

     LS III: Okay, so, actually our only disagreement is that you believe that only museums and libraries should receive state funding, while the arts should not. My approach is more focused on process: that is, help them while they're producing the novel, video, rap song, kulintang piece, etc., much like academic grants. But we both agree: no state awards for the arts. Private patrons and the market should assess that. Tama ba?

     G: That's right, we only disagree on the grants. The National Endowment for the Arts is a usual stage for infighting within the arts community in the United States but, since not so centralized when it comes to approvals . . .

     LSIII: I'm not sure about that . . .

     G: . . . we don't hear about these in our country except when a Mapplethorpe-like situation appears. Let's just refer to the local grumbling by Philippine artists about National Commission for Culture and the Arts grants, maybe, and CCP ones.

     LS III: Ok, fair enough.

     G: In that sense, pareho kami ng partido ni Ms. Yason pagdating sa education and arts education. Sa mga na-educate na sa arts, walang grants from the state, sila na ang bahala sa buhay nila para matuto rin naman ng resourcefulness at pagpapahalaga sa pera ng tao. Ibang tao naman, please. Baka me nangangailangan ng micro-financing dyan para mang-shine ng sapatos, and so on. Sayang ang pera sa grants e, at nawawala ang fair competition among artists.

     LS III: But aren't you limiting artistic production to the economic elite and the truly resourceful, like you, then, Greenman? Social Darwinism naman iyan! E, paano na kung may disability ang artist o depressed (therefore walang drive) pero talagang magaling naman? I mean, could Jean-Dominique Bauby (who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) have written his book if France didn't have socialized medicine and his medical expenses/needs hadn't been taken care of?

     G: Sa healthcare, Lil, I'm a socialist. Sa arts, I'm a Reaganite.

     LS III: Well, thank goodness for that! At least they won't die of disease or disability. They'll just be a little constipated when it comes to making art, hahaha.

     (laughter)

     G: My logic is really simple, Lil. If we're to socialize artistic production, then let's socialize all production, sabi nga ni Therese. Why should subsidies be limited to the arts profession? Why not subsidize the baking profession too, or the solar-powered-jeepney driving profession, and so on and so forth? Why are we letting other professionals struggle by their own selves while we pamper artists as if they were the favored angels of the compassionate state? No wonder we have Caparasites and Alvarezenes in the arts world, even late in this century. We're spoiling artists with the hope that we'll have Manny Pacquiao IVs in that industry. Good gracious, the private sector seems to have done a better job at it. The Puyat family in billiards and bowling vs. the Philippine Sports Commission on Philippine athletes in the 1990s and early 2000s? No comparison. Indie cinema became agog with brilliance during that period, thanks to private sector alternative producers who went against the grain of the major production house belief that digital film was crap. Private sector art creates revolutions. State-guided art, subsidized art, creates conventional minds. Actually, independent art produces lots of edible fruits, Lil, an artist could go on a diarrhea of ideas (giggles from the audience). State art won't inspire an artist to do that. The artist's craft might improve, but his ideation will be lazy. Take Solzhenitsyn's word for it.

     (continuing giggles in the audience)

     LSIII: Constipation, diarrhea, what's next?

     (laughter)

     G: Wait, are we going on a commercial break? I gotta go poo.

     (laughter)

     LSIII: Hahahahaha! But excellent points, excellent points. Maybe you're right—I dunno. Let me think about this some more before I respond. But you said something beautiful there a while back, and your "simple logic" ("If we're to socialize artistic production, then let's socialize all production") does make sense. That would read more like Keynes rather than Reagan or von Hayek or, of all people, Jeffrey Sachs. But what do you make of the Cannes Film Festival—state-endorsed iyan, di ba?

     G: Uhm, Reagan was steeped in von Hayek through Milton Friedman as much as Thatcher was. And Jeffrey Sachs, wasn't he also one of those guys Reagan sent to Chile to help solve the country's and Pinochet's economic problems? Surprising, though, that Friedman didn't turn out to be the conservative blind fanatic that other Reaganites turned out to be. Maybe it was the Nobel laureate thing in him, holding his composure, making him objective forever. Ideally, at least, because Camilo Jose Cela couldn't do it. (laughs) And Cannes, in relation to the French or in relation to the Filipinos who want to win there? Those are two long and very different discussions.

     LS III: Sachs to Chile, you mean Bolivia, don't you?

     G: Sorry, my mistake. Bolivia, yes, and Poland and Russia later for Gorbachev, but drawing inspiration from von Hayek's and Friedman's work in Chile for Pinochet. Sachs' shock therapy tried to do Friedman one better, I think.

     LS III: Well, once an erstwhile free-market prophet, Sachs had since transformed himself into an anti-poverty activist and occasional charity collector. I don't necessarily disagree with the latter, but there had obviously been some paradigm shifts he hadn't taken the time to announce to the rest of our people then. . . . But, look, ang ibig ko lang sabihin sa Cannes is that it has done a great job of supporting the indie film makers/producers and actors you appreciate ("indie," though arguably mainstream in themselves, at least since the early 21^st century, somewhat like organic food). But Cannes, unlike, say, Sundance, is very much subsidized by the French government. So paano iyan?

     G: Yes, yes, Sachs evolved from his old neo-liberalism and that’s what I meant when I said he never became blind to the growing evidence contesting his old theories. Friedman died in '06 or '07. I got confused. You ought to be familiar with Sachs' later work, Lil, your grandmother Lila Shahani, your namesake, was also a UN worker, and Sachs did a lot of work with the UN and got a lot of flak from his former free-market economics buddies.

     LSIII: W-w-w-w-w-wait. Ano ba, hindi mo na naman sinagot ang tanong ko tungkol sa Cannes!

5. The Overhauled

THE GREENMAN: OKAY. Let me answer your good question now. The reason why I continue to criticize the present crop of anti-Caparas and -Alvarez schools of thought is because I want them to see the anatomy of the setup that they have been criticizing—they're a part of it. Meaning that in the Philippines, art support is politicized, always. So, I say, if state art support is agreeable to the people and no one's complaining, by all means, let the state use/waste our money the way it wants since we're all agreed on the idea that the state is doing a good job with it and we're generally happy with the artists being promoted/supported. Such is the case with Cannes, among the French, as far as I'm aware. There are other factors: Cannes is not a grant-giving body, strictly speaking, so it doesn't breed jealousies; it's international; etc. In short, the tourism and cultural cum political cum semi-commercial project that is Cannes is seen by the French people as one with a worthy purpose that's working. When it ceases to work, it shall have to be examined by the people themselves or by the French media. It's the same with dictatorial governments; while the leadership is going great, the dictatorship remains okay. When Napoleon starts to go crazy or beyond some people's understanding, his dictatorship has to be blamed for itself as a system, in much the same way that democracies go through overhauls. So, while the French are happy with Cannes (and there are a lot of reasons why they are), it'll be a long time before we hear anyone holler "stop using French money for international cinema!"

     Lila Shahani III: Yes, but this disproves your point, doesn't it? The issue at hand is not whether or not the Filipino people approved or disapproved of CCP/NCCA-endorsed awards, nor is it about whether the French approved of Cannes. What we're discussing is state-funded art and art institutions. Oh yes, "indie cinema is agog with brilliance. Thanks to private sector producers who went against the grain of the belief that digital film was crap. Private sector art creates revolutions. State-guided art creates conventional minds." I agree with you absolutely. My point is, though: not always. Perhaps it's an academic tendency not to be comfortable with blanket generalizations. I'm willing to concede to your point a while back; are you capable of conceding to any of mine? . . . And, let me finish. Cannes is actually funded by both the French government and private sponsors. Public-private partnerships, kung baga, which was incidentally the favored hybrid of the day, particularly by the UN, as my grandma once explained. It's even incorporated into the policies of corporations practicing Corporate Social Responsibility. So, I would argue that not all institutions fall under the stark dichotomies you've just delineated and that there are a number of institutions that actually fall in between. So perhaps the argument could benefit from a little nuance, don't you think?

photo from http://www.imglobalfilm.com/festivals

     Greenman: No, Lil, the issue is a system that's evil. However, it's true that a system that's evil does not necessarily produce evil. The state's baby-ing of artists does not always produce conventional minds: you said so yourself. My point is, corollary to my earlier manifestoes, an evil system is likely to produce "evil" products. If not now, sooner or later it will. Napoleon or Franco doing okay today won't be the same song tomorrow. Once people start to question the system, the evil system will begin to show its teeth. So, do I think the French government's spending its people's money in Cannes to be evil? Maybe not. Because the tourism aspect, the commercial profit-making aspect, the international relations aspect, etc., of it benefit the French people. When those aspects start to fail, then the people will begin to question it: what's in it for us? That's the question inherent in grants, and thankfully Cannes is not a grants thing, it was in fact put up for an internationalist political reason. My thesis is: using the people's money for a few is evil. Grants are evil. Using people's money for everyone is good. Cannes is good while it is good. When it ceases to be good, it will already be evil. Simply because the people's money always has to be rationalized as beneficial to everyone. So what's the basic system that's evil? Holding on to the people's money for a selective liquidation already threatens an onset of evil—it’s like holding one of the rings in Lord of the Rings for the empowerment of a few. The leader's responsibility is to keep that treasury from turning into an evil thing. Grants are inherently evil because they're selective; Cannes is not yet that because it can qualify its present existence as not that and as beneficial to all French, or at least the French intellectual elite primarily, while the peasants are not complaining. That's what I'm saying. Okay? Grants are inherently evil, let me repeat, because they're selective. Now, is it possible for a year of grants to be regarded as good, by my standards? Yes, if the people see those grants as having also benefited them. If they feel happy that a grant was given to Sam Milby and Angel Locsin or some other pop cinema couple of the day (which Filipinos love to call "love teams") and they feel themselves to have benefited in turn, then the evil system hath produced good, if not perhaps in aesthetic critical terms, at least in terms of the pragmatic use of the peoples' money not for a few but for the majority. The top-to-bottom cultural system, by virtue of its bottom-aware application, has ceased to be evil.

Napoleon painting from http://rompedas.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html

     LS III: Your language is alarmingly Manichean, Greenman: what's with all the "good" and "evil" stuff? And your definition of what constitutes both good and evil depends on popular perception, which we both know can be a very problematic arbiter. Your argument for why grants are not good is fairly sound but your response to why certain exceptions happen to work is less theoretically rigorous. Ano'ng klase'ng sagot iyan? Well, Cannes is successful because the French like it and, once they don't, e di hindi na. But, okay: Cannes doesn't do grants. But there are all kinds of grants, as you know. I realize your objection has to do with how grants provide welfare to cultural elitists, even as they subject the market to distortions. But what about grants focused on art education, for example? Maybe you'll say that they are still selective, but are you against government subsidies for art education in general? Kasi di ba type mo'ng i-fund ang museums and libraries and education? So, what happens when the last converge with the arts, as they invariably do? Contemporary art museums, museum education, etc., etc.? As for subsidies, don't forget: back in the mid-'80s, the Internet itself (which is arguably responsible for the globalization of culture as a whole) was the sole province of universities and government institutions, which were in turn instrumental in bringing about its rapid development. So, are you more opposed to grants for individual artists than art subsidies in general? If you advocate throwing out the entire kit and caboodle, you might wanna re-think your position on museums and education, because that would be inconsistent, no?

     G: You got it right. Imagine all the budget for the CCP and NCCA, along with the private donations, going to the National Library of the Philippines instead, and the National Museum of the Philippines, and—yes—maybe I can consider artist-in-residency chairs in state universities, too. Museums and libraries and education, those are all part of the socialization setup. Arts grants (exhibit grants, etc., as against education grants) defeat the socialization process and create new parasitic "elites." Or . . . imagine the CCP becoming more of a culture center than an artist-care center. Imagine NCCA becoming more of a documentation and library and museum commission than a host for artistic parasites. Not do away with the money, but use it wisely for the benefit of the nation's collected Culture, not the benefit of select Artists. Not dismiss all the employees at the CCP and the NCCA, but redefine their work and mission. With the CCP not dismantled or left to rot, but overhauled, to do a proper function. . . . Now, it's a long philosophical argument, though, about the intrinsically good and the intrinsically evil. In everyday terms, it's really just about how you use something. Of course I'm not espousing Pragmatism (what the people say is good is good). I'm coming from a basic principle or belief which may not necessarily be popular: egalitarianism. In this case, egalitarianism in the management of appropriations, in budget management. Egalitarianism is the basic judge. If not egalitarian, bad. If egalitarian, good. Now, coming from that principle, even "evil" motivations (say, corporate profit motives over national interest) can be manipulated to become good when managed by the egalitarian principle through regulation. So what may be perceived as evil can suddenly turn out good because its use was transformed. Cannes, therefore, while managed well for an egalitarian principle, stays good. An arts grants system, on the other hand, can never be managed to be egalitarian. Impossible, because unlike in a museum where you can manage representations from, say, all ethnic groups, artists really only represent themselves, their art, their individual theses, and you can't subsidize all artists.

     LSIII: But if "NCCA (becomes) more of a documentation, library and museum commission than a host for artistic parasites," then it will merely be a repository for past artistic expression and a few contemporary productions. Well, okay, as you say, artists should be able to subsidize themselves. And if they can't, well then they can't—that's your argument. So you want the playing field to be egalitarian, which is fair enough. My only concern is that it's not a tabula rasa outside the grants process either; in other words, the world itself is not egalitarian. The point of grants originally was precisely to render it more so. With your argument, it will always be easier for members of the upper classes to produce art than for everybody else, for whom the costs of production will remain prohibitive, pitted against the costs of survival in a Third World country itself. So the meta-question is: how to make society itself more egalitarian? This brings me back full circle to Amartya Sen, whose position I favor. Unfortunately, that's all we have time for today, Greenman, but it's been a most interesting discussion indeed. We shall have to have another session to flesh this out further. Thank you again for such insightful contributions. At maraming salamat din sa inyong lahat. Mabuhay si Greenman at ang mga artistang Pinoy!

     G: W-w-w-wait, Lil, do we still have a minute? Can I just answer you there briefly?

     LSIII: One minute. One minute.

     G: Okay. To illustrate: what if you had seven children, and you keep on asking everyone of them to contribute to the dinner table but you always give your favorite son a couple more slices, always? Is that egalitarian? That's precisely how art grants look to me. If you want to help your artist son because he's an artist, why not help your astronomer daughter as well because she's an astronomer? And so on and so forth. Why not help your other son, he's an artist too, isn't he? If we really want to have subsidized professions, very well, let's convert this country into a quasi-communist state. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is subsidized. Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure.

     LSIII: Well, Greenman, . . . oh, what? Oh, oh yes, we have a viewer's question! I almost forgot that segment (shakes head, audience laughing). Okay, just one more minute. We have another minute? Great. Greenman, an email sender from Parañaque City is asking, "you said Gloria Arroyo was underappreciated. You've covered a lot of ground but I still don't see how Gloria Arroyo fits in all of this. I still don't see how she was ever underappreciated? What has she contributed?" You have 30 seconds, Greenman.

     G: Well, I was simply saying everything that Gloria Arroyo did was for us to pick up from, to do the necessary reforms. And no one seems to see those actions of hers as signals for necessary reformation. We complain but don't want to do anything about the root of her actions, which is the same as the root of our complaints. (shrugs)

     LSIII: The Greenman, ladies and gentlemen. Good night, everyone. Don't forget, tomorrow our guest will be the actress Kristina Aquino III. Good night!

     (music, credits and acknowledgment graphics) [END]

***

(ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The conversation above actually took place on Facebook between Lila Shahani [a UN consultant and doctoral candidate at Oxford University], Ms. Shahani's friends [Atty. Eddie de Vega, Consul General of the Philippine Consulate in Barcelona, and Therese Yason, artist and art teacher], and a real Greenman.)

• Photo of Gloria Arroyo borrowed from http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/11/biz-07women_Gloria-Arroyo_1YDI.html 
• Photo of Franz Schubert painting borrowed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schubert
• Violin photo borrowed from http://www.freewebs.com/violinduets/Violin1.jpg
• Philippine National Library photo from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_the_Philippines