The Great Dictator and EDSA

The Great Dictator's Speech

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost....

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. .....

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

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Into the Pinhole

 

Every time I go to a place for vacation I always have my camera. I make sure that everything is fine before I go. I make sure that the battery is well. I make sure that the camera itself is well. Aside from the camera, I have the plane ticket and the money. As long as I have these three, I know I am well.

I am always into history when it comes to travel. Before I embark on my chosen destination, I always make sure that I know the historical facts and places of that place. Since I really don’t travel with much budget, I travel light and I walk grand. I choose walking to minimize my expenses. I also prefer restaurants and carinderias, this is because I do not like to move with fancy inside a first class ones and also the expenses.

Aside from historical places or should I say museums, my side-trip destinations are shrines. I also need to refresh myself with a visit to a spiritual place. But, this does not limit to a Christian place, since I am a Christian. This visit could also go to a Taoist, Buddhist or a Hindu temple. I have always been fascinated by these three religions by their fancy rites along with their architecture. Also, I find their philosophies intriguing. Theirs is very simple yet profound. 

I am an environmentalist by heart! I find it a need for us to conserve this mother of ours. So, I also visit places which advocate environmental awareness. I am interested in the endemic species of floras and faunas that thrive in our country. If not endemic, I prefer those native species. 

It seems a lot for a traveller, but it’s not that much if you really know how to talk human language. I find jeep and cabs easier than taxis. All I need to know is how to ask. Besides, when in a jeep you also have the chance to meet other people who can point you to other side-trips. For a man who is interested in history, you will also for sure be interested in culture and you would not find it entirely in books while reading inside a taxi. Why not expose yourself to it face to face?

So, to sum up I am interested in Culture – the collective totality of that which is in a certain place. But, lately I realized this lack in me. Those feelings of after all the years of travelling I still lack something. One feeling is that I need to go back to a certain place which I have already been to and relive certain moments.

At these moments, I scheme my archives. I look into the things which I collected from my travels – the maps that I marked, the postcards which I pasted on an album, the keychain which bears the name and even the tee shirts which bears “I’ve been there.” When I have the chance, I also open my Facebook account to look into the photos captured by my cam.

At one time, I was inside the “Dambana ni Rizal.” A museum inside Fort Santiago in Intramuros dedicated to the Philippine National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. The said place was the latter’s actual prison chamber where he was detained, trialled, and sentenced of death. I was peeking into the hole of my camera, just for the effects as if I am a professional photographer. I was taking a picture of the oil lamp Rizal gave to his sister where his last work, Mi Ultimo Adios, was hidden from the Spaniards. I felt a feeling of space. I felt as if was still very far from Rizal. Of course I am not talking about the years for it really is but I am talking about the ties between us. His presence being in the museum and the things he left and me inside it.

It seems hard to picture it that way. Put it this way, this feeling I also felt during the Papal Encounter with the Youth. We took a very long distance. We waited a very long time. We sacrificed a lot just to see the Pope. Yes, I saw the Pope for three seconds. The longest three seconds of my life. I saw the Pope, but not yet Cardinal Tagle.

The point is that, the Pope was riding in his pope-mobile and the cardinal was just in his back sitting and I did not take the chance to look at him. The reason behind you may ask. I was busier taking a video in my camera. Have I not peeked into Pope Francis, all my sacrifice been wasted. I will lose the experience.

As John Eldredge put it:

Something awful has happened; something terrible. Something worse, even the fall of man. For in that greatest of all tragedies, we merely lost paradise – and with it, everything that made life worth living. What has happened since is unthinkable: we’ve gotten used to it. We’re broken in to the idea that this is just the way things are. The people who walk in great darkness have adjusted their eyes...We dismiss the whispers of joy with a cynical “Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.” (The Journey of Desire) 

Sometimes, we try to make a definite and determinate capture of the experience that we fail to experience the vastness of experience in the indefinite face to face encounter. We merely woke up, study, work then die.

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The Family Threat

The Church today is facing a very serious problem. There wages from different corners of society serious injury to the most basic building block of community life – family.

The church has always held this post for a Christian, to have a family, to be very hard. The apostles would even suggest that it is better for a Christian to instead stay single rather than to find for himself or herself a husband or a wife. The apostles even released letters to different Christian communities founded around Jerusalem to guide those who have chosen the life of marriage so as for them to lead their life more orderly. The best example for this is the letter of Paul to Corinth where he made his statement about staying single and some remarks on how a widow, a married man and a married woman would behave.

I think that the difficulty arises from the different roles and obligations somebody has to perform when he is in that state. Apart from his self needs, a married man or woman has also the obligation to perform obligations which should make his partner happy. Which means, then that the obligations for these people are multiplied.

Aside from the wife or the husband to serve as part of the obligation and role in marriage, they also have the further obligation for their kids. In the family come values instilled in the still innocent minds of the young. In the family comes the character that the individual may possess in his whole life. It is where the very basic tenets of life come. Some would say it is our first school with our parents as our first teacher. That would precisely be it.

What I am tomorrow is because of what I am learning today in my family. My character, my values, my path is because of the kind of family I belong to. It is from my family that I took the discipline which will become my arm against the world. 

But, there is one thing which binds why we learn it all. One powerful thing we can only get authentically in our family. It is as if all the things we have because of the family branches because of this thing which binds a family – Love. 

Some would say that what we say of love is because of the love that we experience. It is not learnt, it is felt and it is best felt in the warmth of the family. We can never know what love is if we will never know it from our family.

Sadly today, this experience of love is making its end. Not because that there is no more love but because of the attacks that is being made to that which is the source of our experience of love. 

We come to know now attacks from many parts of the society. Lately, grudges in the family are not anymore settled. Instead, they end not the grudges but the end the family. It is becoming more and more easier to tell a husband or a wife to end a relationship. It is becoming more and more easier to decide for a husband or a wife to split without thinking of the children that they have and the government would even support it.

The government whose ideals are to uphold the family for being the nucleus of the society is becoming more and more ready to split a family.

I think that the problem with husbands and wives today as to why they are becoming more and more ready to split is because they have lost that sense of astonishment. They have succumb more and more to intellectualize everything and forgotten that original feeling of mystery. They have forgotten to live out that sense of wonder in the things that is happening because of the workings of a mystery – Love.

In this age of unlimited, we have thought that everything could only be an option. After failing at one thing, we will run and chose the other thing. We will prefer choosing again, hoping that we may mask the past with the future when in fact we are just wasting our time and fooling ourselves.

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