A reply because I disagree with you

Monday, September 26, 2011

A reply because I disagree with you

Dear F. Sionil Jose,

I do not agree with you. In fact, I am offended at what you just said.

I’m not a very good writer - not by the standards of the guard you represent, at least - but I was once taught that the business of writers is to write the Truth. Not because it hurts, not because it’s obvious, but because it’s true. What you wrote is a lie, a distortion of Truth. At best, it is a shallow truth.

You are a National Artist for Literature. Ikaw na ang deep, kami na ang shallow. You should be the first to guide the flock, and be the beacon and inspiration for those who struggle. Yet you are the first to put the poor and toiling masses down by calling them “dimwitted,” accusing them of a “lack of intelligence and the will to rise above it.”

The question is not “what have you done,” or “what do you do.” It is a recalcitrant denial of the ability of the poor to help you. The idea that they can’t help you on account that they’re poor. Denying that they can’t provide for you a vision, a perception, an experience of depth that no amount of bagoong will ever teach you.

Look at the smiling face of a starved child, and accuse him of shallowness. Hear the huffed resignation of a mother of twelve trying to stretch a can of sardines, and accuse her of shallowness. Have you plumbed the depths of their poverty enough to understand the depth of their hope, the depth of their character, the depth of their beliefs? Have you ever asked yourself how they live, how they survive, how they cling on to life, how they smile, in spite of the privations accorded to them by the oppressive system? Is it a depth that you understand?

You dare - in a seemingly bold and brave move - speak of obvious truths, but Truth is beyond the obvious. You tell of the Filipinos who bloom and prosper overseas yet forget the meals they skip to bring home food and clothing and shelter to their family. You speak of their prosperity and forget the trials and tribulations they face, not only physically but emotionally. Of being far away from home, apart from their families and loved ones, saving and scrimping and denying themselves of sumptuous meals that highlight the decadent foreign palate because a child back home asked for chocolate. Or denying one’s self the finest of clothing because another child back home asked for shoes.

You dare - in a seemingly maverick-like manner - reduce the poverty of our toiling and troubled masses to psychoanalysis. Who are you to define shallow? Who are you to say that we have no memory? We live and create memories, and while our generation has yet to corrupt the ideals of history by adding twisted interpretations to it to be published in required school readings, we do our best to make a history we can rightfully call our own doing. It is never the classics and the proportion of caviar to the cracker that defines character, but the will to live, the tenacity to survive, the depths of hope.

We do not remember because we are not taught properly. We wallow in the shallows because there are those who find it profitable to keep us there. In the powerful words of Raul Manglapus, free me from bondage, and I shall prove you false.

You dare call it depth? You see a poor family sharing a pack of instant noodles and call it shallowness. I see a poor family sharing a pack of instant noodles and I see a system that needs to be remedied and reformed. I see a system that fortifies instant noodles instead of ensuring that fresh and affordable food reaches all. I see a system perpetuated by corruption, by injustice, by a very public crime. That’s where the outrage lies, but it comes with just a little bit of a lashing left to spare on self-confessed old hacks that point out the shallow and never bother to plunge the depths. Or those who monopolize the idea of depth. Or the self-defeating, self-mutilating, self-flaggelating attitude that supposes that scourging is the way to reach the depths of the human soul.

If you are not open to experience and learn from the depths experienced by others, then you cannot speak - much less write - of the Truth. Not because it’s glaringly obvious, not because it hurts, but because it’s True.