I saw him yesterday, clutching his stomach near the parking lot at The Podium.  Moments ago, I saw him seated at a flight of stairs near Robinsons’ Galleria.  Tomorrow, I think I’ll still see him in that faded white Crispa shirt, blue shorts, worn slippers… and still clutching his stomach.

I see scenes like this all the time, but never in the seeming opulence of a place that’s supposed to be the headquarters of multinational corporations and agencies.  Here you have San Miguel Corporation, the Asian Development Bank, JG Summit, call centers.  At every corner, there’s a MiniStop, a 7-Eleven, or a Starbucks.  Nowhere else in the Philippines - not even in Makati - would you see the kind of wealth that speaks of class and sophistication.  Yet nowhere else would you be so maniacally depressed to see scenes like that hungry man sitting there, pale and sunburned, wondering if there is any salvation to be met in starvation and sheer exhaustion.

I kind of wonder if class structures are meant to be oppressive.  The truth is, they’re not.  Much about the harmony of society is defined and made possible by the fact that we are unequal.  Your economic standing is the Noble Lie of capitalist society; you’re meant to be in at least one of the many different striations of “rich,” “poor,” and that arbitrary substrate called “the middle class.”

It is when these structures start to become oppressive, when their blatant obviousness slaps you in the face, that you see what injustice is made of.  It is when you start to contrast what was once taken-for-granted - and see the stark difference between the haves and the have-nots, that injustice is supposed to move you.

Too bad, it doesn’t have to.  It doesn’t have to be moving, considering that this hungry man is not alone.  Millions of Filipinos are just like this man, only they’re not surrounded by skyscrapers and opulence and coffee-swilling underpaid employees of corporations.  It doesn’t have to be obvious when his image is drowned by business suits and crisp polo shirts.  It doesn’t have to be unjust, when there are so many other injustices in the world to piss you off besides his grumbling stomach and his pale, lined face.

But then again, what can I do?

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail about a certain Friendster blogger named “ihatecofi,” who has some rather caustic comments about “Orcs.” Thanks to a Google-search, I found that the blogger maintains a separate blog at “Make Poverty History,” where he has even more caustic comments about “Orcs.”

Instead of pissing me off, the blogger made me think a bit deeper than usual.

Some weeks back, I wrote about the political life of what I call the “call center generation (CCG).” The hallmark of our generation is business placement outsourcing, whether it’s in a windowless office or a home-based job that requires an Internet connection (I belong to the “windowless office” category). While I do appreciate The Warrior Lawyer’s thoughtful perspective that the CCG is the “first truly globally-oriented generation of Filipinos,” I still see things in terms of a less-than-optimistic light. The challenge to the CCG is the motto of Friends of the Earth: “Think globally, act locally.”

Anyway, the BPO is like being caught between a rock and a hard place:

• Factor 1: Outsourcing represents an aggressive, unsustainable economic policy that drains human resources and many forms of capital;
• Factor 2: Outsourcing represents a convenient and (hopefully) temporary means of employment to address basic human needs and other canons of taste.

I’m not an economist, but from what I do know (please correct me if I’m wrong), institutional economics - represented by thinkers like Thorstein Veblen and John Kenneth Galbraith - eschews the rigors of mathematics in favor of a socio-cultural approach to economic perspectives. Perfect, since I think that an economist will explain Factor 2 in terms of line graphs and funky equations.

Veblen, in particular, is known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption.” In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen observes:

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. As wealth accumulates on his hands, his own unaided effort will not avail to sufficiently put his opulence in evidence by this method. The aid of friends and competitors is therefore brought in by resorting to the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts and entertainments. Presents and feasts had probably another origin than that of naïve ostentation, but they acquired their utility for this purpose very early, and they have retained that character to the present; so that their utility in this respect has now long been the substantial ground on which these usages rest.

“Veblen goods,” or in a word: Starbucks.

I won’t be sanctimonious as to say that I do not enjoy the occasional frappé, the less-than-occasional pack of Dunhill Filters, or the definitely-not-occasional trips to malls. To keep up with the Joneses is something consistent with - or even corollary to - capitalist society, which is manifested in this case by outsourcing. Alcohol and coffee become necessary as social needs to survive in stressful work environments, even if in some cases, indulgence in luxury goods and activities come at the expense of basic necessities like food and transportation.

The horror of it is that after hours of inbound tech support and outbound telemarketing, it takes a cup of coffee and the atrocity called San Mig Light to make you feel human (before you send me hate-mail, I’m a Pale Pilsen guy). It is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, although with a more corporate twist, sans the horrors of slaughterhouses in the 1900s…

But that’s another story.

I don’t know about the next person, but I’m starting to find the phrase putang ina - and all its derivatives - completely and utterly meaningless.  “Putang ina,” often contracted to “tangina,” is of course the Filipino equivalent of “your mother’s a whore.”  While it’s used in the same way and frequency as the curse-word “motherfucker,” the direct translation is different and rather difficult to say: “Sumasampa ka sa nanay mo.”

Putang ina is supposed to be a very offensive phrase that violates the dignity of mothers and women everywhere, but if you use a curse too often, it loses its power.  People flick middle fingers too often nowadays that I stopped using it; these days, I use The Shocker.  Putang ina can be used to begin a sentence, as a conjuction, as an interjection, as a verb, as a noun, as a conjecture, as an adverb, as an adjective, and so on and so forth.

There is no single mode in Filipino or Taglish that putang ina does not fulfill.  Putang ina can be a subject, it can be a predicate, it could be an object, it could be a referent, it could be a signifier, it could be a signified…

What was once a genuinely offensive figure of speech is so common, that you might as well be offended by the word “The.”

I surmise that there was a time that putang ina was the stuff that would make a good plot device in a Ronnie Ricketts film: the hero’s mother is called a whore, the hero goes berserk, and an old schoolbus explodes.  These days, it’s too common; putang ama doesn’t have the same kick.  Putang aso mo is merely a reiteration of the word “bitch.”  Puta madre?  Nah, too common.  Puta ka?  You’re not exactly Vilma Santos.

So don’t be so surprised why I use the words “dickshit,” “monkeyfucker,” and “dogfister.”

That entry, of course, begs a rejoinder.

I personally think that it is at the height of a moral and ethical crisis in society when basic precepts like honesty (honeste vivere), doing no harm (alterum no laedare), and giving every one his or her due (suum cique triburere) are questioned.  When something like a just and fair society becomes relegated to the “unattainable,” it is a crisis in itself.  If rice crises and the rising prices of fuel are bad enough, the inability or reluctance of a society to work toward justice not only becomes its own undoing, but it spells its own death.

Let me explain - again - why “do no harm” is something I hold in such a high (if not neurotic) regard.  We do live in an unjust society, so let’s hold that as a given.  Society today is replete with so many liars and ingrates.  The reason why we still live today - the very reason why we exist, survive, and scrape the bottom of empty barrels to eke out a living - is because of a precept called “do no harm.”  I think Emperor Justinian I, who coined the phrase “alterum no laedare,” had enough foresight in his time to realize that for society to exist in harmony, even in its most rudimentary form, people must look out for each other.

“Foresight,” or I should say, a “duh” moment.  Consider people mobbing a thief or a pickpocket.  Or people throwing epithets at rapists on TV.  People who boil over with rage and anger when they hear of a crime.  A criminal represents the opposite of “do no harm.”  He or she is a malcontent whose existence revolves around harming another person, to live devoid of conscience, to disregard the welfare of other people.  If the malcontent harms one person, he or she can definitely harm another.

Let me get to the word “conscience.”  Laws, ethics, and personal principles are nothing more than embodiments of conscience.  Rather than to restrict us from living meaningful lives, laws permit us to do so.  There are just some lines you cannot cross.  For all the complicatedness of the law, it is merely a map that indicates your limits.  You can have your fun in a given limitation, but when your fun transgresses upon one’s person, there are repercussions.

While we’re on the subject of blogging responsibly:

A libel is public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead.

“Definition of Libel”
Art. 353, Sec. 1, Ch. 1, Title 13, Book 2
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines

I leave it to lawyers to interpret if libel does apply to blogs in Philippine jurisprudence.  Even if it doesn’t, this is not a license for libel or slander to find refuge in blogs, for blogs to be made as a venue for it.  Still, it brings to mind a very important point about how laws are merely reiterations of conscience: the definition of libel in Philippine law is worded in such a way that nobody in the right mind would dare dishonor someone, to discredit someone, to hold someone in contempt, or to besmirch dead people.

The motive is of course, irrelevant.  The law, being a reiteration of conscience, is very explicit:

Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if it be true, if no good intention and justifiable motive for making it is shown.

“Requirement for Publicity”
Art. 354, Sec. 1, Ch. 1, Title 13, Book 2
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines

Because the law draws lines on the basis of reiterating commonly-held beliefs about what ought to be, there is no reason for us to not live up to it.  The law - conscience - exists because we have to live up to it.  Never mind the perceived “sacrifices” we make because this is “imputed” on us and “imposed” on us.

To act with justice, to live honestly, to harm no one, and to give every one his or her due, is NOT an ideal.  These are the most basic of requirements expected of every single human being who lives in some form of society.

Which brings me to ask: what is so difficult about life without doing any harm?  What is so complicated about writing - irrevocably reduced to blogging, in this case - in a responsible, fair, just manner that seeks far more prudent and noble ends than to commit slander?

I won’t dare be sanctimonious to say that in four years of blogging, I never made lapses.  I wrote things that, had I lived in a less-permissive society, would land me in jail for sure.  Yet as time goes on, and you learn from your mistakes, you realize how responsible you really are for what you write.  It’s not “just a blog,” as much as every act of writing is itself a commitment to history.  To own up to it is not enough; it is expected that in the exercise of free speech and expression, that in the exercise of creativity, people should realize how important the ought-to-be is.

Besides, “do no harm” is not all that complicated.  It’s just three words.  Meaningless?  Relative?  Antiquated?  A deterrent to the creative process?

Hmmm… I am reminded of how Plato, in The Republic, offered a prescription to those who do not act justly and those who do not have the interest of others in mind.  Plato’s solution, metaphorical or literal, makes a lot of sense: the people in the polis throw the malcontent over the city walls.

It makes a lot of sense.

I was conversing with a friend who points out a rather interesting argument: the moment you “put yourself into ‘minority’ issues” (quotations mine) like alternative sexuality, people “automatically” (quotations mine again) assume that you have an alternative sexuality.  It becomes a piece-of-string thing, that maybe you (in this case, me) are, “in fact,” gay.

For someone whose college running joke has been “I’m in love with amoebas,” this assertion can go a lot of ways.  So could this rejoinder, but that’s just me.  After all, I’m a guy who takes Being-in-the-World to its practical extreme.

“Class,” when used in the economic sense, is monolithic.  While there is a very broad continuum for wealth and its connotations (sophistication, taste, fashion sense, and so on), there are only two things you should be concerned with.  It’s either you’re rich, or you’re poor.

“Culture,” as a word, is fundamentally ambiguous; it can mean so many different things.  The very notion of “difference,” to me, is rooted on the many different components of different culture where we, as different people, differ in so many different ways.

Bottom line: class is stratified, culture is flux.  Gender is not a class issue; rather, it is a cultural issue that has implications on class.  To treat a cultural issue, you need to see it from a cultural standpoint.  Not in terms of stratifications, but in terms of divergences.

This is going to sound offensive: “paglaladlad” is not an affirmation of liberation.  There is nothing liberating about gender roles, and the affirmation of gender roles.  Liberation and emancipation comes with transcending the limitations of gender as a perspective, and viewing society beyond gender roles.  Gender is a lot like Wikipedia: it is a portal to understanding the consequences of the class structure that defines the situation of everyone in a capitalist society.  This is why I take a very nonchalant, if not insensitive, view of “gender.”

I’m not saying that gender is a non-issue.  If it weren’t, there would not be an advocacy for it.  If it weren’t, there would not have been movements for it.  Yet we must remember that society is further fractured and divided along other different lines.  Discrimination is never a superficial phenomenon rooted only on something like race or gender or religious views.  I hope I do not sound “reductionist” here, but it is true that the economics of things will come into play.

Let me put things this way.  A woman, a lesbian, or someone gay is excluded from participating in production, i.e. work.  Do we protest the injustice on the basis of their sexual preference?  I don’t think so: we should protest the injustice on the basis of the injustice itself.  The moment I protest injustices on the basis of differences, then I am, in effect, being unjust to other people who are excluded from society where gender is not a concern.

Who speaks for the disabled?  Who fights for the rights of those committed to mental institutions?  Who will stand up, see a child sleeping on a cardboard box on the sidewalk on a dewy Saturday morning, and say, “This is injustice!”  Do we even engender those injustices?  Do we ask questions about sexual preference in the face of injustice?

At the end of it all, what we really need is freedom for all.  In a society that demands freedom, equity, fairness, and justice, it is an oppressive class structure that fractures our society the most.