The Hate Within Us

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One day, the Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalander (The Red Royal Falcon) was wandering the desert with his friend Sheikh Baha ud-Din Zakariya. It was winter and as night was approaching, they began to build a fire to keep warm.

They found some wood but they did not have fire, so Baha ud-Din suggested that Lal Shahbaz turn himself into a falcon and get fire from Hell. Off he flew, but an hour later he came back empty-handed.

"There is no fire in Hell," Lal Shahbaz said. "Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, their own hate, their own pain, pain from this world."

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The Tyranny of the Good

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I was a very young boy when I started reading books. One of the first genres I fell in love with was fantasy and I devoured the Dragonlance novels with gusto.

Who could forget Caramon's big heart and undying loyalty to his brother? Or Raistlin's constant torment between good and evil? Or Tasslehoff's endearing charm, despite his thieving ways.

These books may talk about dragons and mages, of kenders and dwarves, but the characters in them face the same daunting tasks we are given, the struggle to be good. It may seem strange but the truth is, the world they portray is much like our world, filled with the same wars, the same sorrows, the same joys.

Filipina actress Valerie Concepcion tweeted last Sunday night that she performed at a party for the Presidential Security Group where President Benigno Aquino had laughed at her jokes and enjoyed her show.

It was a normal tweet perhaps for anyone who enjoyed meeting the president, but the party happened when a tropical storm hit the country and killed more than 600 people.

The message unleashed a flood of righteous indignation. People posted angry messages on their Twitter and Facebook accounts condemning her and the president for being insensitive, for having fun at a time when the nation was in mourning.

In the Dragonlance novels, there once was a Kingpriest who ruled at a time when the powers of good were flourishing in the world.

He fought evil and sought to end wars in the world. But as time passed, the Kingpriest begun to persecute not only evil, but even those who did not think exactly like him. He had begun to assume that he knew what was good for the world, and those who opposed him were evil. He had become arrogant, and in time, called upon the wrath of the gods.

I suppose there is always a danger when we start to expect that people should think and feel the same way we do. Especially when we believe that how we feel and the things we fight for are for the good. It can make us cross the line from righteous to self-righteous. When we begin to think that our way is the only way.

Under the guise of good intentions, personal liberties can be questioned; the right to not feel bad, the right to have fun, the right to feel happy.

C.S. Lewis, Christian apologist  and staunch defender of the Catholic faith, was one of those who constantly warned against dystopian futures that arises from utopian visions. In his book God in the Dock, he said

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." 

I told Rudeboy that I found it interesting how people reacted. I am always curious about people, why we do the things we do, why we are the way we are.

"It echoes the late Christopher Hitchen's contempt about the comfort these 'hysterical bunch of pearl-clutching virgins and their righteous indignation' find in conformity," Rudeboy said. "Not to sound callous, but the world does not stop spinning for any tragedies, no matter how small or great. Christmas this year will still be celebrated with cheer, shallow or genuine, dead drowned bodies or none."

I understand that people are angry. They feel helpless, and worried and upset and as is often the case, we often lash out against those who seem to not care.

But as we have seen in the past,  people will learn to move on from tragedies. Lives will continue. The holidays will come. People will still hold parties to celebrate, friends and families will give presents and cook a feast, even as thousands of others lie hungry, homeless and mourning their dead.

That hard fact may make some of us uncomfortable, squirm, or seethe at the seeming callousness and indifference but perhaps, that's just the way it is. Each of us can and will respond to tragedies in different ways. To help or not to help. To care or not to care. how much to care. To give or not to give. How much to give.

These questions pose delicate and complex issues about morality and examine our responsibility to help those who are in need. But I'm afraid there are no easy answers. Each of us must find his or her own way in the dark.

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Happiness Like a Tattoo

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"Thanks Kane. I really appreciate it. By the way, how are you?" Yas texted me.

"I'm good Yas. Happy =)," I replied.

"I always say I wish happiness is like a tattoo; permanent."

"Ohhh… It comes and goes, I've learned."

"Yung iba kasi, maraming stock. Ayaw mamigay. (But you know, it just seems others have a huge stock of it. They don't want to share.) Hahaha."

"Yung iba naman, nasa harap na nila, ayaw pang kunin. (While for some, it's right in front of them, they just don't want to take it.)"

"Aaayyyyyy!!! May pinanghuhugutang malalim ba iyan? (Now where did that come from?)" Yas asked.
 
"Hahaha. It's just an observation of human nature. :)"
 
 
 
I think, we all want to be happy. As the Greek philosopher Aristotle observed, no person deliberately chooses to be unhappy.
 
The question then is: What is happiness? What makes us happy?
 
 
 
In his lecture "The Four Levels of Happiness", Reverend Robert Spitzer, S.J., writer, teacher, and speaker, discussed the four kinds of happiness we experience.

1) Laetus: Happiness in a thing.

I want a vanilla almond ice cream. I bought and ate vanilla almond ice cream. I am happy.
I want the Iphone4. I bought the Iphone4. I am happy.

This kind of happiness comes from things outside ourselves and involves one or more of the five senses. The pleasure they give is immediate, direct but short lived.

After awhile, you'd want another ice cream, a newer phone.



2) Felix: The happiness of comparative advantage.

I have a nicer job than Andrew.
I have more money than Michelle.
My biceps are bigger than Miguel's

This kind of happiness involves the ego. It is a result of competition, by comparing yourself to others and seeing yourself as superior to others. The most important thing in the world (me) has been affirmed.

We all want to improve ourselves, to achieve goals and finish projects. The danger is when we believe that happiness can only be found in achievement or success; that means we will live in constant competition with other people.



3) Beatitudo: The happiness that comes from seeing the good in another person and doing good for another person.

My friend Paolo is sick. I will take care of him even if it means I will not have enough sleep.
My sister needs money for school. I will give her the money I have been saving for a new phone.

Human beings are not selfish; or at least, not all are. Some of us also desire love, truth, justice, beauty.

We find happiness in giving to another, in making the world a better place. We make personal sacrifices, forgive others, give our live, energy, money and time to another person.

But at some point, we can become frustrated. We realize we can never do enough to help, there is always more to do. We cannot be everything to everyone.



4) Sublime Beatitudo: The reach for fullness and perfection of happiness.

We all face our mortality, at some point in time. This recognition of our finiteness is what pushes our desire for the sublime, something beyond. People of faith recognize this as a desire for a God.

For others, it's a recognition of something infinite that lies beyond our mortal world. Perhaps the collective human creativity and spirit which has propelled our civilization to where it is now.

Sometimes I wonder why happiness is fleeting. Why do we suffer? Perhaps it is because most of our happiness is tied to mortal things; human gadgets, human love.

De Vita Beata

"Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness."
---Oscar Wilde

 
People are strange creatures, I've learned. Most of our existence is characterized by routine but still, we persist in measuring our lives by "significant" events; those huge, dramatic, episodes where people demonstrate their ability to navigate through pain and suffering.
 
But some would argue that it is the ordinary day-to-day living that actually defines who we are, all that makes a life feel meaningful or feel meaningless.

What defines a marriage, for example? Is it the anniversaries and the Christmases or is it about the affection, care, and love we give our partners everyday?

I read an article written by Joseph Epstein, formerly the editor of The American Scholar titled "The Symphony of a Lifetime". He cited Gary Saul Morson, a teacher of Russian literature at Northwestern University, who showed how Tolstoy believed in the prosaic life and Dostoyevsky in the dramatic.

In his article he said:

Things happen to Tolstoy’s characters — they go to war, have vastly disruptive love affairs, suffer unexpected deaths — but they are most interesting in their ordinariness: a strong case in point is Natasha’s family, the Rostovs, in War and Peace. Her brother and father and mother, with their rich but normal passions, appetites and family loves, are people who gain moral stature through an endless series of small acts.

In Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, nothing is ordinary: passions turn into obsessions; gambling addicts and epileptics are at the center of things; men are beating horses to death on the Nevsky Prospect; poverty has wrenched people’s lives into little hells on earth. The question isn’t really who — Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky — is the greater novelist, for both are great, but which shows life as it is more truly is.

As Professor Morson puts it: “Dostoyevsky believed that lives are decided at critical moments, and he therefore described the world as driven by sudden eruptions from the unconscious. By contrast, Tolstoy insisted that although we may imagine our lives are decided at important and intense moments of choice, in fact our choices are shaped by the whole climate of our minds, which themselves result from countless small decisions at ordinary moments.” At some point in life, I think, one has to decide if one is, in one’s belief in the shape of his or her life, a Dostoyevskian or a Tolstoyian.

So what then constitutes a happy life? Tolstoy would say what makes a life good or bad is how the ordinary moments are lived.

In my university, we were taught the concept of the fundamental option in theology; the idea that people do not become good or evil overnight. Fundamental option refers to the basic human choice we make as to how to live our life. It is not the freedom of choice to do a particular thing or not. Rather, it is the freedom to create oneself with regard to the totality of existence and its direction.

Let's say I lied today. That doesn't make me a liar. But if I lie every day, at some point in the future, I not only lied, but I have become a liar. We become what we do.

And in the end, all those little choices we make; to wake up early for work no matter tired and sleepy we are, to be kind to those who may not deserve it, they may be the ones that matter, after all.

Immoral or Not, That is the Question

"To be or not to be – that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them."
---William Shakespeare, (Hamlet)

When my friend Jethro invited me to be part of the "I Am Not Immoral" campaign, I said yes. Not because I was particularly upset about the decision of the Commission on Elections to disqualify the gay party-list group “Ang Ladlad” from participating in this year's election, but because he is my friend and I wanted to support him.

He wanted to create a short video showing gay men and women protesting the decision of the Comelec and the branding of all gay people as immoral. The participants gave their names, said something about themselves, and the line "I am not immoral."

It appears gone are the days of marching in the streets and shouting "Off With Her Head!" Instead, people don on costumes, pose in front of the camera, and scatter the videos all over the Internet. The person who was interviewed before me wore a black-and-white Lady GaGa-inspired outfit, posed, and said "Hi. I'm a gym instructor by day and Lady GaGa by night."

So I was a little disconcerted when Jetty suddenly started asking me questions about the issue. I was flustered and told him "Wait, Jet. Bakit may Q&A? Akala ko ba simple lang ito."

I realized I was flustered because 1) I had to sound smart and intelligent!, and 2) I haven't really thought about the issue, not deeply, at least.

Fundamentally, I had to ask myself what does it mean, to be moral? Who defined it? The protest implied two things: to be immoral is not something desirable, and that gay people are immoral.

But, what if some of us are? What if, I am not moral after all? Should being moral be a requirement for a person to run for public office?

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "There is no moral phenomenon at all, only a moral interpretation of a phenomenon." He argued it is people, individuals and societies who define morality and that these definitions change depending on who is on power.

But then I realized to explain all these things on camera requires too huge a task given I only had a few seconds of fame. Sometimes you have to know what to say and when to say it (so I'm saying it here).

And oh, the best part of it all? You get a free photo shoot. And ladies, here's my best shot.