Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES The business of selling conversations on the telephone started in highly urbanized societies where human beings must live together as fragments of a “lonely crowd”. The sociologist Johan Galtung quantifies the extent of this mass loneliness thus: 40% of all households in Sweden are one-person households, and 20% of all Americans say they do not … Read more
My friend Dodong Nemenzo, who lives near 2 churches in UP but never visits any of them, tells me that in Japan where he is currently a visiting professor, he goes to church when he wants to eat balut or dinuguan. I am sure however that it is more than the meal that follows the … Read more
I will not mention her name here. It was bad enough that I had to ask her what she was doing in Hong Kong. But then, how could I presume what job a B.Sc. in Agriculture graduate from UP is prepared to take on these days? UP students have this illusion that they belong to … Read more
This title, and such other morbidly graphic phrases as the “spectacle of the scaffold”, “gallows speeches”, or the functions of “punitive rituals”, are taken from Michel Foucault’s book Discipline & Punish. To Justice Secretary Teofisto Guingona and Senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., who have both recommended TV coverage of public executions, I enthusiastically endorse this fascinating … Read more
Long after they have delivered them into the world, mothers continue, for some mysterious reason, to feel deeply responsible for their children, for what they have become or will become. It is a burden that is not as often associated with or as intensely experienced by fathers. Children are more properly seen as their mothers’ … Read more
I’ve always been a reluctant speaker at graduations. I’ve always suspected that graduates everywhere would rather get on with the ceremonies than listen to stale sermons. Besides, what can one really say on such occasions that will not sound trite? But it was very difficult to refuse the invitation of UP Cebu Dean Socorro Villalobos, … Read more
Paulo po, he said – Paulo Parungao was his name. I was doing some last minute shopping at Baguio’s vegetable market in-between a late lunch at Rosebowl and the 3 p.m. Victory Liner bound for Cubao. A platoon of kids of varying sizes and ages blocked my path, selling plastic bags and offering to carry … Read more
In general, our motorists are law-abiding citizens. The few deviant elements who delight in deliberately flouting the law are exceptional. The many who seem to violate every conceivable norm of decent driving do so, I think, not maliciously but ignorantly. They are just unfamiliar with the culture of driving. If this thesis is correct, our … Read more
Rape must rank as a woman’s darkest nightmare for it represents the most total of all possible invasions of her body. The crudest assertions of power have always had the physical body as their object. That is why the first spoils claimed by victors in war are the local women. That is also why in … Read more
While lecturing at the National Autonomous University of Mexico early this year, I had the rare chance of witnessing the signing of the first peace accord between the Mexican government and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation or EZLN. That historic event reminded me of the Moros’ own negotiations with the government. I began to … Read more