Like many of the ordinary folk who attended its birth twelve years ago, I have trouble summoning enough spirit to celebrate another Edsa anniversary. Edsa was about a people mustering collective will and courage to bring down a dictatorship by a direct manifestation of its power. That power drew its force from nothing more than … Read more
The title is from a lovely book on the sociology of intimacy by Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (Frankfurt am Main, 1990). The thesis of the book is that as modernity frees us from the shackles of traditional obligations, it also means that henceforth, we have to work harder in making relationships work. Freedom is … Read more
It was funny, and it was amusing. But it was also, according to one thoughtful viewer who watched the Public Life episode with the “other” presidentiables, painfully sad. My guests that evening were four gentlemen who had filed certificates of candidacy for the presidency, but who will likely be declared “nuisance candidates” by the Comelec. … Read more
Her husband, a taxi driver, was missing for more than a week. They had been arguing the night before he disappeared, and she recalls having said something that might have hurt him, something about the family earnings no longer being enough for their needs. Previous to this, he had also been feeling bad about having … Read more