Imagine poverty
In her book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” art educator Dr. Elizabeth Edwards explains the importance of imagination in the successful performance of odd tasks like shooting the ball into the basket or hitting the target with a long bow. Imagine the ball going into the hoop. But not just that. Imagine its trajectory going there. The advice is also a technique for shooting the arrow. Things never travel in a straight line. There is a necessary curve. And it is this curve that the brain must account for before the target may be successfully hit. And if one takes this as a metaphor for all human acts, then Edwards was really also saying, you’ll need a bit of imagination to achieve anything at all.
And so it is with the country’s poverty. People already know how bad it is. We do not need the Catholic bishops to explain that to us. And they are right to say the current government has done nothing fundamental by way of solving the problem. Certainly government should do more. But what?
Is the incarceration of GMA a contribution to solving the problem of poverty? Only if it becomes a deterrent to institutional corruption. It helps that the current president has no reputation for corruption. But one cannot help but wonder if corruption is really the reason we have so many who are poor. It is one of the reasons but not all there is to it, and one has cause to worry as one reviews what has transpired in recent events. If they share anything in common, it is that big names surface every time: Ongpin, Tan, Cojuangco, Arroyo, Corona, etc. At day’s end, the ordinary man cannot help but think, these are problems of the ruling class. They fight their battles between themselves, and it is all about money and power. But what have these to do with us? What have these to do with making the country better?
The most fundamental questions are seldom ever asked especially in the high strata of power in our country. What kind of country do we envision for ourselves? How do we get there? How do we imagine our future? What trajectory may we project that would get us there?
Where this is concerned the Marxists always have the advantage. They have their ideology to guide them. And this has reached such a level of imaginative elegance they have produced a whole vocabulary to describe themselves. Such words as Maoist, Stalinist, Internationalist, protracted struggle, etc. all describe their imagined world, and so if you ask a Marxist what country they imagine for us, they will always have a clear answer. And they will always add, it is a “scientific” vision.
Everyone who is not a Marxist will give the somewhat less clear answer. And this is to their disadvantage. Ask the typical Filipino politician. The answer will most likely have to do with infrastructure. More roads. More bridges. More buildings. Few will imagine beyond mere concrete and steel bars. For some, that might as well be spelled “steal” bars, and perhaps one may see here why despite its universal decay elsewhere in the planet, Marxism is still very much alive here. They at least have the clearer vision of where we ought to go, though the trajectory they prescribe would seem quite awful.
The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines seems no better than government. Where the poverty issue is concerned, they have become a church of paradox. At the same time that they rail against the current government’s shortcomings, they have also positioned themselves against the most fundamental efforts to contribute to easing suffering and misery. Their position against the Reproductive Health bill is an indicator. They could simply have said, “To Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…” But instead they launched their fight in the halls of Philippine traditional politics and soiled themselves there.
Yet, besides the Marxists, only the Catholic Church has the long tradition of dealing with the poverty problem. This tradition fell under the aegis of “social action.” We know it is a long tradition because they have developed their own vocabulary as well. Such words as: Basic Ecclesial Communities, liberation theology, praxis, etc. all speak of an imagined process that would take the poor out of where they are now. These are words that suggest the need for education as the key step to solving the problem of poverty. But it is not education the way they dish it out in schools now. It is education of the type where the poor educate themselves so that they understand their situation better and from there search for ways to liberate themselves. But the church must put itself back on track in this effort. Somewhere between Edsa and now, something fell from place that has yet to be restored.
Educating to liberate, called by educator Paolo Friere “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” is not a hopeless or forlorn effort. Most of the educated in this country know exactly why there are so many who are poor. They know that the main reason they are better off was that they managed to educate themselves or got education from schools. The main problem is really how to share this education to those who need it the most. All the better if there are ways so that the poor may educate themselves. All the better if they could imagine themselves out of misery and suffering. After that, we may all begin to imagine a better country for ourselves.
