Published in Cebu Gold Star Daily
The nature of power is to bend or break the will of the weak. Through the promise of reward or the threat of harm, power is exercised in our daily lives. Today we see two convicted rapists set free because of the power they wield over the weak. One is backed up by the wealthiest nation on earth, and the other by his own personal, less grand but equally effective, wealth, status and influence.
How did it ever come to this?
Since when did we become a people who set criminals free just because they have more money than others who are equally or less guilty?
I remember working with an NGO that serves persons who languish in jail. Our clients were people who have not yet been found guilty but are serving time just because they could not afford to fork out bail money. They are treated as second-class citizens who are herded into our congested, filthy and putrid city jails while they wait for a trial date that may never come. This is my most salient experience of the Philippine justice system. It makes me loathe my choice of profession and want to fly away to a country that values its people.
The nature of power is to bend or break the will of the weak. This is why I do not dare blame Nicole. I do not blame the weak for their weariness and their exhausted patience. I do not blame the fearful woman for running away when faced by the might of the most powerful government in the globe.
Many people spit venomous words at this girl while they watch the news on their plasma TV screens well within their comfort zones. This girl has no comfort zone. As a victim of a violent crime, that’s one of the things taken from you forever. Your reality is altered, and to escape from it by any means possible is a very welcome option.
This is not about her. It’s about us and the system that we allow to sink its roots deep into our consciousness and culture because of our resignation – because of our refusal to speak out and act in unison against the few bad people who have all the power. It is everything wrong about human nature and our unwillingness to rebel against it.
Election after election we grant power to those who don’t deserve it. Year after year we shortchange ourselves by believing that this is our lot in life and this is all that we will ever be.
See the drama of it all. Two freed rapists, two broken women and thousands of confused people behind bars. Welcome to the third world.
Is this the Philippines that was fertilized by the blood of our martyrs? Is this the nation envisioned by the free thinkers of our past?
Many of us feel that we do not belong here. Many of us feel that our one life is too short to waste in a place that does not offer us any real chance for growth. If you have these sentiments, then you are one of the many who have no power – then you are one who truly knows Nicole.
The nature of power is to bend or break the will of the weak. Today, the Philippine dream is to leave the Philippines.
How did it ever come to this?
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Friday, March 20, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Death of a Taxman
Published in Cebu Gold Star Daily
Taxation is perhaps the most boring subject matter I can think of to write about (and the most detested subject for those who ever took the bar exams). But taxation remains, or at least it ought to be, the most effective tool for social justice.
Long before agrarian reform, welfare and socialized housing, there was taxation. Taxes are nothing more than enforced contributions to society, where people give a certain percentage of their earnings to fund State services. It is clearly designed as form of socialism or equalizing device to shrink the gap between the rich and the poor.
Here are the basic premises for taxation:
From this, we formed a system where the fortunate support the unfortunate to a certain extent so that the latter are given enough breathing space to improve their lot in life. Progressive taxation means that those who have more must give more, while those who have less are given assistance.
In its proper sense, taxation ought to be taken from income – money that is gained. This ensures that taxes do not cut deep into the resources needed by people to survive. This ideal has been mangled because the rich find ways to avoid paying their rightful contributions to society. Those who ought to be supporting society are the hiding behind tax shelters and offshore dummy corporations. They avoid their social responsibility and make all these fancy legal excuses to justify greed.
So how does the government respond? By creating non-progressive fixed taxes, like the misleadingly named value-added taxes, that burden everyone equally, rich or poor. This painfully upsets the balance. After all, equal treatment of unequal people is inequality. The purpose of taxation is mangled, and people don’t know why they are suddenly paying 12% more for something that they’ve been consuming for a very long time.
On the other hand, people are quite justified in refusing to hand out their hard-earned money without seeing concrete results. Massive corruption and incompetence of government have left us a cynical people. Angry. Restless. Our taxes do not seem to be making more schools. They do not seem to stop the violence in our streets. They do not give us clean air or water. They do not seal the cracks on our roads or provide enough supplies to our hospitals. They do not seem to provide health, safety, justice, education, convenience or even access to state services.
The nasty people from both the business sector and government have turned us into this nation of whining idiots, always complaining about things we think we cannot control. They have transformed us into people who would rather ignore the difficult reality than actively steer it towards a better place. The greed of the few has virtually doomed us all… all because of money… all because our best defense against greed and inequality also involves money.
In spite of all this, I believe that a tight, disciplined and brutal taxation system managed by people with the same qualities is one of the keys to moving forward. Obliterate all the fixed taxes and optimize progressive income tax collection. This is the surest way to swell our middle class and give a fighting chance to our poor.
The wealthy support the poor.
That is the design.
That is the way it should be.
Taxation is perhaps the most boring subject matter I can think of to write about (and the most detested subject for those who ever took the bar exams). But taxation remains, or at least it ought to be, the most effective tool for social justice.
Long before agrarian reform, welfare and socialized housing, there was taxation. Taxes are nothing more than enforced contributions to society, where people give a certain percentage of their earnings to fund State services. It is clearly designed as form of socialism or equalizing device to shrink the gap between the rich and the poor.
Here are the basic premises for taxation:
- People gain wealth by using State services and systems (e.g. land, business grants, government contracts, etc…).
- The more wealth you gain from this system, the more you have to contribute to keep that system running.
- If you are poor, you need help, so you are exempted from giving your contribution to the State until you can rise to a level where you can support yourself and those who depend on you.
From this, we formed a system where the fortunate support the unfortunate to a certain extent so that the latter are given enough breathing space to improve their lot in life. Progressive taxation means that those who have more must give more, while those who have less are given assistance.
In its proper sense, taxation ought to be taken from income – money that is gained. This ensures that taxes do not cut deep into the resources needed by people to survive. This ideal has been mangled because the rich find ways to avoid paying their rightful contributions to society. Those who ought to be supporting society are the hiding behind tax shelters and offshore dummy corporations. They avoid their social responsibility and make all these fancy legal excuses to justify greed.
So how does the government respond? By creating non-progressive fixed taxes, like the misleadingly named value-added taxes, that burden everyone equally, rich or poor. This painfully upsets the balance. After all, equal treatment of unequal people is inequality. The purpose of taxation is mangled, and people don’t know why they are suddenly paying 12% more for something that they’ve been consuming for a very long time.
On the other hand, people are quite justified in refusing to hand out their hard-earned money without seeing concrete results. Massive corruption and incompetence of government have left us a cynical people. Angry. Restless. Our taxes do not seem to be making more schools. They do not seem to stop the violence in our streets. They do not give us clean air or water. They do not seal the cracks on our roads or provide enough supplies to our hospitals. They do not seem to provide health, safety, justice, education, convenience or even access to state services.
The nasty people from both the business sector and government have turned us into this nation of whining idiots, always complaining about things we think we cannot control. They have transformed us into people who would rather ignore the difficult reality than actively steer it towards a better place. The greed of the few has virtually doomed us all… all because of money… all because our best defense against greed and inequality also involves money.
In spite of all this, I believe that a tight, disciplined and brutal taxation system managed by people with the same qualities is one of the keys to moving forward. Obliterate all the fixed taxes and optimize progressive income tax collection. This is the surest way to swell our middle class and give a fighting chance to our poor.
The wealthy support the poor.
That is the design.
That is the way it should be.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Great Undeserved
Just got home from my usual urban immersion... and as usual it felt great and terrible at the same time.
Anyway, I finally got to check my phone and there I saw a message from a friend who has been long absent: "Why do I have the feeling that I don't deserve the person I'm with right now?"
Talk about "out of the blue"... but I indulged:
"We deserve nothing. The best you can do is try and be content with what you have."
Indeed, we deserve nothing. Not our jobs, our significant others, our friends, our families, our material graces or our skills.
I went through five years of law school to learn these ideas of justice, equity, fairness and proportionality... but in the end, you realize that all these are just ideas and ideals of such artificial value and character that an extra ounce of critical thinking only leaves us befuddled and trapped in the place where were before: helplessness.
Fairness is not a naturally occuring thing. We never get what we deserve. It's either too good for us or not good enough. Absolute equilibrium is mathematically and realistically impossible. And so, we as free agents try to bridge the gap. We try harder... we work for it so that somehow, we might approximate the propriety of the web of rewards and punishments that orbit our lives.
When we were young children, we were taught to "make things fit". I remember this old toy of mine which had differently-shaped blocks and a plastic tub that had the corresponding hole-shapes on it. The task was to make the triangular block fit into the triangular hole and so on... easy enough right? And so we have been conditioned to understand exactness... to conform to these shapes and sizes and characteristics so that all may be well... problem is, we later learn to apply these assumptions to people as well.
Whenever we see this less-than-presentable dude rest his arm around this lovely lady, an alarm immediately goes off in our head saying "NO!!!"... and we often rationalize it by thinking "He must have some killer wheels" or "He must be dynamite in bed"... and it never occurs to us that this mismatch is the most natural thing of all. We always think that pretty people should be with pretty people and the ugly should stick with the ugly... and so the shapes-and-holes exercise works wonders...
Is it fair? No it is not. But so is the rest of the world. Fairness is an abstract idea that keeps us in line. The Universe has been playing this joke on us all our lives and we don't even bother to question it. We are sucked into romanticism and other forms of mind-control and we use them to cope with the harshest form of reality: life is unfair.
Sure, we love hearing writers and musicians say that "there's always someone out there for every single one of us"... wrong! That's just bullshit, my friends. And you know it. Some of us have had 4, 7, 9, or even 14 relationships in our lives and we don't even give it a second thought... millions of people have lived up to the age of 40 or even 60 without ever knowing the touch of another's hand. The truth is that some people have all the fun... Some people die alone.
We love to dream... we love to hope... but one thing's for certain... it's all unfair... and our ever-changing perception of what's fair isn't helping at all... and as we grow older, our minds start to compromise and we lower our standards more and more that we end up with nothing worth keeping.
So what's there to do about it?
If you want something, just take it. Don't wait for the world to give it to you because it's not gonna happen. It's going to be unfair in any given case, so just take it. If you take it, it's yours... if you don't do anything about it, then maybe you just don't want it enough. If it slips away, then tough luck. You just have to deal with it.
That's all there is to it. Justice will not find you. You just have to make things happen.
Anyway, I finally got to check my phone and there I saw a message from a friend who has been long absent: "Why do I have the feeling that I don't deserve the person I'm with right now?"
Talk about "out of the blue"... but I indulged:
"We deserve nothing. The best you can do is try and be content with what you have."
Indeed, we deserve nothing. Not our jobs, our significant others, our friends, our families, our material graces or our skills.
I went through five years of law school to learn these ideas of justice, equity, fairness and proportionality... but in the end, you realize that all these are just ideas and ideals of such artificial value and character that an extra ounce of critical thinking only leaves us befuddled and trapped in the place where were before: helplessness.
Fairness is not a naturally occuring thing. We never get what we deserve. It's either too good for us or not good enough. Absolute equilibrium is mathematically and realistically impossible. And so, we as free agents try to bridge the gap. We try harder... we work for it so that somehow, we might approximate the propriety of the web of rewards and punishments that orbit our lives.
When we were young children, we were taught to "make things fit". I remember this old toy of mine which had differently-shaped blocks and a plastic tub that had the corresponding hole-shapes on it. The task was to make the triangular block fit into the triangular hole and so on... easy enough right? And so we have been conditioned to understand exactness... to conform to these shapes and sizes and characteristics so that all may be well... problem is, we later learn to apply these assumptions to people as well.
Whenever we see this less-than-presentable dude rest his arm around this lovely lady, an alarm immediately goes off in our head saying "NO!!!"... and we often rationalize it by thinking "He must have some killer wheels" or "He must be dynamite in bed"... and it never occurs to us that this mismatch is the most natural thing of all. We always think that pretty people should be with pretty people and the ugly should stick with the ugly... and so the shapes-and-holes exercise works wonders...
Is it fair? No it is not. But so is the rest of the world. Fairness is an abstract idea that keeps us in line. The Universe has been playing this joke on us all our lives and we don't even bother to question it. We are sucked into romanticism and other forms of mind-control and we use them to cope with the harshest form of reality: life is unfair.
Sure, we love hearing writers and musicians say that "there's always someone out there for every single one of us"... wrong! That's just bullshit, my friends. And you know it. Some of us have had 4, 7, 9, or even 14 relationships in our lives and we don't even give it a second thought... millions of people have lived up to the age of 40 or even 60 without ever knowing the touch of another's hand. The truth is that some people have all the fun... Some people die alone.
We love to dream... we love to hope... but one thing's for certain... it's all unfair... and our ever-changing perception of what's fair isn't helping at all... and as we grow older, our minds start to compromise and we lower our standards more and more that we end up with nothing worth keeping.
So what's there to do about it?
If you want something, just take it. Don't wait for the world to give it to you because it's not gonna happen. It's going to be unfair in any given case, so just take it. If you take it, it's yours... if you don't do anything about it, then maybe you just don't want it enough. If it slips away, then tough luck. You just have to deal with it.
That's all there is to it. Justice will not find you. You just have to make things happen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)