Are The Youth Still The Hope Of The Philippines?

June 22, 2016

By: Grimwald
I remember that the great Jose Rizal, the Philippines greatest hero according to our history
books, said something about the youth being the hope of our country. Indeed, we are not the only
culture to view the next generation as such. Unfortunately, in this day and age, I can no longer
agree with this sentiment unless something is done with the kind of mindset that is prevalent with
the youth of today.
Im not saying that theyre hopeless of course. My apprentice and his sisters are among the
youths of this country and they themselves are self-admitted squatters but they shine with an
intellect I have all but rarely seen. However, my apprentice and his gifted siblings are just a
handful of individuals compared to the ocean of stupidity the youth of the Philippines has
become in recent years.
Being part of a growing gaming community, I often come into contact with the younger
generation of other countries. Many of them also come from struggling middle-class families
who are still studying to earn their degrees but one can note a sense of purpose and determination
in the way they talk about their plans for the future. One of them has plans to become a
veterinarian in her community since she lives in one of the more rural parts of the United States
where agriculture and livestock are an all-important commodity. Somewhere in South Korea is a
young woman who studies hard to become a guidance counselor as she is all too aware of the
high suicide rate in her own country and knows that even a small amount of counseling can have
a great impact. Then, in Canada, there is a young man who works at an outlet of Starbucks while
he studies to become a programmer so that he can one day become a vital part of a company and
earn a good living for his troubles. Again, these are just a few individuals but this is extremely
far from what youre likely to see in the vast majority of Filipino youths today.
I lose heart for the youths of the Philippines because the following is all too often what I see in
them:
Materialism
Granted, theres nothing wrong with wanting things for yourself. Theres nothing wrong with
having good or beautiful things like a good camera phone, a nice car or some awesome shoes.
However, what I find deplorable is that they seem to be the only things in the minds of our youth
today.
Nice things, at the end of the day, are just that: Nice Things. They arent major necessities
because a basic Nokia phone can still allow you to call for help when caught in a bad situation,
an old but reliable Toyota can still take you places and even a pair of cheap slippers can last you
for quite a while. Nice things are things you can have when you have the money for them and
dont need to worry about things like food, shelter and medicine.
The way many youths today seem to value materialistic belongings is often disturbing. There are
some who will choose not to eat for days at a time just to get the latest model of smart phone and
there are those would rather be stuck with old and torn clothes just so they can buy a new pair of
branded shoes. Of course, as long as they use their own money, I suppose I shouldnt be
complaining. But then there are those who steal from either their parents or other people their
age just to get what they want.

Lust
One of the saddest things about our youths is that, thanks to our romance-centered media from
the love-songs constantly blaring on our radios to just about every movie that is made these days
that doesnt contain hilarious ghosts, they seem to be hell-bent on breeding and very little else.
Indeed, I find it utterly ridiculous when there are so many youths discussing their relationship
goals even though they have so little in the way of career goals which is actually more
essential in the long run. Whats worse is that majority of the youth cant even tell the difference
between lust and love.
Look, Ill admit, Im not really an expert when it comes to love. However, I do know that love is
less about looks or platitudes and essentially more about trust than anything else. Its about
having confidence that your significant other will be there for you when you need them and less
about them looking like Daniel Padilla, Katherine Bernardo or Alden Richards. Remember ladies
and gentlemen, we will all age and that pretty face youre looking at now may very well change
in the next few decades of your relationship. Its better to have someone you can laugh with and
trust completely in your sunset years than someone who has no sense of humor with a sagging
face and an overall bad attitude.
Stupidity
Well surprise, surprise, eh? And no, Im not just pulling this one out of my butt. Ive met my
share of smarter youths of course, my apprentice and his sisters included. But, as Ive already
mentioned, they are easily outnumbered by those who couldnt tell the difference between an
elbow and an oboe.
Most of the youth of today are so preoccupied with senseless things like neuron-destroying TV
shows, showing off their latest gadgets and simply bonking with one another that they are unable
to see the consequences of many of their actions. They fail to see that not finishing school will
make finding a job in the future very difficult. They fail to surmise that being unemployed will
leave them and their family in perpetual poverty. They fail to deduct that poverty will make them
vulnerable to all sorts of problems from disease, starvation to being victimized by others.
Then I run into a bunch of youths who seem not just content but happy in their stupidity,
believing that being smart means theyll have more problems. They never realize that being
smart means youll be able to find a solution to said problems and that, just because you cant see
the said problems, doesnt mean they arent there.

Iglesia ni Cristo minister: Claims of bullying De Lima pabebe

By: Yuji Vincent Gonzales / @YGonzalesINQ
INQUIRER.net / 07:06 PM August 28, 2015
Reacting to allegations that the influential Iglesia Ni Cristo was bullying Justice Secretary Leila de
Lima by protesting in Padre Faura, Manila, INC minister and spokesman Edwin Zabala said the
gathering was within their rights
Pabebe yan, Zabala told thousands of INC members gathered near the Department of Justice
compound on Friday.
Zabala said they cannot be deprived of the right to assemble because they were able to secure
necessary permits.
The Manila City Hall allowed Iglesia ni Cristo members to stage their protest until Sept. 4.
Hawak-hawak ko po yung permit natin para sa ngayon ay payapang magtipon sa lugar na ito.
Hanggang Lunes pa at kung kinakailangang lumagpas ay pahihintulutan din tayo (I have with me
the permit for this peaceful rally. We can stay here till Monday and longer if necessary and we will
be allowed), Zabala said.
Garantisado naman ng batas, hindi naman pambubully ito (This is guaranteed under the law, this
is not bullying), he added.
Zabala said the INC protest cannot be called bullying as they were only expressing their beliefs and
concerns.

Porke bat ginagamit natin ang karapatan natin, humingi naman tayo ng permiso, pambubully na
ba agad ito (We are only exercising our right and we asked for and granted a permit, they claim this
is bullying)? Zabala said.
Porket nagtitipon para payapang ihatid ang hinaing, bully na agad (Just because we gathered here
to air our grievances, were called a bully)? he added, noting that INC protesters have been
behaving properly since Thursday.
As to unverified reports that INC was planning to move the silent protest to Edsa Shrine in
Ortigas, Zabala said official announcements will be made in Padre Faura and not on social media.
Kung kinakailangan na tayong umalis dito, maririnig nyo pong i-announce dito sa stage (If we
have to leave, well announce it here), he said.
Thousands of INC members flocked to the DOJ on Thursday, protesting De Limas supposed
meddling with internal affairs of the church.
Calling for a separation of church and state, INC members said De Lima should focus on more
important issues such as the botched Mamasapano operation instead of prioritizing the illegal
detention case filed by dismissed INC minister Isaias Samson against the church leadership.
Wag nilang sikilin yung kalayaan natin, wag nilang pakialaman yung relihiyon natin
(Dont curtail our freedom, dont meddle in our religion), Zabala added. Yuji Vincent
Gonzales

The real American Sniper was a hate-filled killer. Why are simplistic patriots
treating him as a hero?
Lindy West
Tuesday 6 January 2015 18.00 GMTLast modified on Thursday 11 August 201611.47 BST
I have to confess: I was suckered by the trailer for American Sniper. Its a masterpiece of shortform tension a confluence of sound and image so viscerally evocative it feels almost
domineering. You cannot resist. You will be stressed out. You will feel. Or, as I believe I put it in
a blog about the trailer, Clint Eastwoods American Sniper trailer will ruin your pants.
But however effective it is as a piece of cinema, even a cursory look into the films backstory
and particularly the public reaction to its release raises disturbing questions about which stories
we choose to codify into truth, and whose, and why, and the messy social costs of
transmogrifying real life into entertainment.
Chris Kyle, a US navy Seal from Texas, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and claimed to have killed
more than 255 people during his six-year military career. In his memoir, Kyle reportedly
described killing as fun, something he loved; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone
he shot was a bad guy. I hate the damn savages, he wrote. I couldnt give a flying fuck
about the Iraqis. He bragged about murdering looters during Hurricane Katrina, though that was
never substantiated.
He was murdered in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a 25-year-old veteran reportedly suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder.

However we diverge politically, I have enough faith in Eastwoods artistry and intellect to trust
that he is not a black-and-white ideologue or, at least, that he knows that the limitations of such
a worldview would make for an extremely dull movie. But the same cant be said for Eastwoods
subject, or, as response to the film has demonstrated, many of his fans.
As Laura Miller wrote in Salon: In Kyles version of the Iraq war, the parties consisted of
Americans, who are good by virtue of being American, and fanatic Muslims whose savage,
despicable evil led them to want to kill Americans simply because they are Christians.
Adds Scott Foundas at Variety: Chris Kyle saw the world in clearly demarcated terms of good
and evil, and American Sniper suggests that such dichromatism may have been key to both his
success and survival; on the battlefield, doubt is akin to death.
Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, sees only shades of gray, andAmerican Sniper is a
morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film. But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world,
and the chasm between Eastwoods intent and his audiences reception touches on the
old Chappelles Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelles rapier
racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about
black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers. Is that Chappelles fault? Should he
care?
Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniperwith similarly
shallow comprehension treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they
would the national anthem or the flag itself. Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been
flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the
ethos of the film itself. How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who
misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle who,
bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people is he
responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people
use his work as propaganda?
That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew
attention to Kyles less Oscar-worthy statements. Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments
of Iraqi families in Fallujah, wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal. Kill
every male you see, Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an American psycho.
Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an
exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet. Move your America hating ass to Iraq, let ISIS
rape you then cut your cunt head off, fuckingmedia whore muslim, wrote a rather unassuminglooking mom named Donna. Rania, maybe we to take you ass overthere and give it to ISIS
Dumb bitch, offered a bearded man named Ronald, who enjoys either bass fishing or playing
the bass (we may never know). Waterboarding is far from torture, explained an army pilot
named Benjamin, all helpfulness. I wouldnt mind giving you two a demonstration.

The patriots go on, and on and on. They cannot believe what they are reading. They are rushing
to the defence of not just Kyle, but their country, what their country means. They call for the rape
or death of anyone ungrateful enough to criticise American hero Chris Kyle. Because Chris Kyle
is good, and brown people are bad, and America is in danger, and Chris Kyle saved us. The
attitude echoes what Miller articulated about Kyle in her Salon piece: his steadfast
imperviousness to any nuance, subtlety or ambiguity, and his lack of imagination and curiosity,
seem particularly notable.
There is no room for the idea that Kyle might have been a good soldier but a bad guy; or a
mediocre guy doing a difficult job badly; or a complex guy in a bad war who convinced himself
he loved killing to cope with an impossible situation; or a straight-up serial killer exploiting an
oppressive system that, yes, also employs lots of well-meaning, often impoverished, non-serialkiller people to do oppressive things over which they have no control. Or that Iraqis might be
fully realised human beings with complex inner lives who find joy in food and sunshine and
family, and anguish in the murders of their children. Or that you can support your country while
thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry. Or that many truths can be true at once.
Always meet your heroes.

If you dont understand how people fall into poverty, youre probably a sociopath
Lucy Mangan
Why dont abused women just leave their partners? Why dont poor people just spend less? Why
do people in positions of power ask so many stupid questions?
Inequality has become a challenge to us as moral beings
Saturday 24 January 2015 08.00 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 20 September 201615.06 BST
Last week, I took part in a comedy night to raise money for the charity Refuge, which supports
women and children who have experienced domestic violence. It was a great night: partly
because it raised several thousands of pounds for the cause; partly because it was sponsored by
Benefit cosmetics, and the idea of a benefit being sponsored by Benefit pleased me greatly; and
partly because standup comedian Bridget Christie finished her act with a plea for all laydeez to
stop waxing, spraying, deodorising, strimming and surgically trimming their well, lets call it
that part of ourselves historically judged to be the seat of all our femininity and womanly
powers and instead celebrate our individuality by thinking of those parts as unique, special
like snowflakes. Made of gammon, which was both a new thought and a new image, neither of
which has left my mind since.

Less uplifting, however, was the number of times I heard, when I mentioned Refuge to people,
some variant of: But what I dont understand is why dont these women just leave?
We dont need, I think I hope to detail too extensively here the exact answer to that question.
Bullet points: an immediate fear of being punched, kicked, bitten, gouged or killed, and of the
same happening to your children, preceded by months or years of exploitation of the weakest
points in your psyche by a master of the art; an erosion of your self-confidence, liberty, agency
and financial independence (if you had any to begin with), coupled with a sense of shame and
stigma and a lack of practical options; no money, no supportive family or friends, nowhere to
run.
So, lets concentrate instead on the lack of imagination, the lack of empathy inherent in that
question. Because it shapes a lot of questions, and particularly those that animate government
policy and the political discourse that will start filling the airwaves more and more as we move
towards the election.
Politicians, for example, are apparently completely baffled by Poor Peoples propensity to do
harmful things, often expensively, to themselves. (Thats politicians of all stripes its just that
the left wing wrings its hands and feels helplessly sorry for Them, while Tories are pretty sure
They are just animals in need of better training.) The underclass eats fast food, drinks and
smokes, and some of its more unruly members even take drugs. Why? Why?
Listen, I always want to say, if youre genuinely mystified, answer me this: have you never had a
really bad day and really wanted nay, needed an extra glass of Montrachet on the roof terrace
in the evening? Or such a chaotic, miserable week that youve ended up with a takeaway five
nights out of seven instead of delving into Nigellas latest?
You have? Why, splendid. Now imagine if your whole life were not just like that one bad day,
but even worse. All the time. No let-up. No end in sight. No, you cant go on holiday. No, you
cant cash anything in and retire. No. How would you react? No, youve not got a marketable
skills set. You dont know anyone who can give you a job. No. No.
And on wed go. Why do the poor not always take the very cheapest option in food, travel,
rent, utilities or a hundred other things you can find if you or an obliging Spad or unpaid intern
trawl and filter case studies for long enough and stop being so, yknow, poor that way?
someone will ask. And some kind soul not me, Id be off for a lie down and some pills by this
time would ask if the questioner had ever been under so much pressure that hed had to throw
money at a problem to secure an immediate answer, to get something rather than nothing, even if
it meant paying over the odds, perhaps because someone was exploiting your desperation?
Oh, you have? Well, that bond issue you missed because you had a cashflow crisis after buying
the villa in Amalfi, and that box at Glyndebourne for your parents wedding anniversary you
forgot about till almost too late, have their parallels with furniture for a council flat or with a

childs present bought on punitively interest-rated credit and so on, until somewhere along the
line our boy would have to admit that he shared the same irrational impulses as people all along
the socioeconomic scale, differing only in degree of consequences, not in kind.
I dont understand how the people in charge of us all dont understand. If you are genuinely
unable to apply your imagination and extend your empathy far enough and you dont have to
do it all at once; little by little will suffice, but you must get there then you are a sociopath, and
we should all be protected from your actions. If you are in fact able and choose not to, then
youre something quite a lot worse.
So, these are the questions Id like to see pursued once the televised prime ministerial debates
begin (if enough speakers agree to turn up, natch): have you ever had a bad day? Have you ever
been really, really tired? Have you ever been alone, or frightened, or not had a choice about
something? If yes, was your response unique among man? If no, are you a madman or a liar?
Do tell. Do tell.
If its wrong to feel this happy about Wolf Hall, then I dont want to be right. The story of Hilary
Mantels will-be trilogy like the story within it has everything. An unhappy child from an
unremarkable family in an unremarkable village grows up to be an author of genius. She quietly
produces book after brilliant book, virtually unrecognized, then finally comes into her kingdom
with the story of the Reformation told from Thomas Cromwells point of view. Difficult but
compelling, uncompromising but once youve cracked the first 50 pages, at least accessible,
it is a profound commentary on our times, but also a serpentine thriller, a new twist on an
old story, familiar yet revelatory; it wins prizes, is adapted for an acclaimed stage production and
has now become what looks from the opening episode a few nights ago to be an equally
magisterial television series.
And behind it stands Mantel, overseeing everything, accepting the prizes and plaudits with grace
and without self-deprecation or false modesty, turning out essay after beautiful essay, never
boasting of or hiding the depths of her sinuous, subtle, extraordinary intelligence, effortlessly
sidestepping every possible curse, temptation and bad habit of the modern age. Its like a
glorious love affair that has yet to go, as I believe the Tudors said, tits up. And still five more
weeks of Mark Rylance, and one whole new book to come. Bliss.