Nigger Horses

by Jango Agustin

13 November 2012

Discussed Text: Emmanuel Levinas, "Bible and Philosophy," in Ethics and Infinity


“Why do we have to see what the others see?” was the question stuck in my head after yesterday’s lecture. At the top of my head, my answer to this would be because I don’t want to be a nigger. The nigger here defined by Arthur Rimbaud as an unproductive man of society bent on making money and money only.

It seems that nowadays, there are a lot of people who become ignorant that there are others living in the world outside their selves. Too busy grinding on with their lives thinking of ways on how to get the biggest income, highest chances of winning bets, or thinking of ways to earn money fast by any means necessary. This can be happening because of the way the world’s system is built and these people are forced to live this way. Although it is sad to say that this way of living is like living the life of a kalesa horse.

Do you know what those eye patch looking flaps on the horses eyes are for?

They are for keeping the horse concentrated on its path and not get distracted by the cars and people passing on both sides.

The kalesa horse is forced by its master to walk whichever direction its master wills it to. It is guided by the reigns connected to its face and then it just moves straight towards that direction. Trained to ignore everything else around it.

This can be the same thing the system does to its people. This also why it is important to break away from time to time, to take a walk. Travel. See the world outside. As mentioned in the lecture, when you travel, you provide yourself with a possibility to recollect and comeback to oneself. This video might prove the point that if ever at some point in your life, you become Rimbaud’s definition of a nigger; you may find that there is a way of redeeming yourself through travelling.

If ever you don’t want to watch the video because the video is 58:47 minutes long. It is about Josh West, a colored man who is a bus driver in London. He visits Mang Rogelio, a jeepney driver here in the Philippines. Josh willingly lives with Mang Rogelio and his family for some time just to experience how it is to be a jeepney driver here in the Philippines. Josh now raises money to send Mang Rogelio’s grandchildren to school.

**There was no racism intended at all. It may come off as satire but if you think about it, the irony is striking and awesome.

Completing The Circle

by Krista Agbayani

The first two discussions of the semester instantly reminded me of the film, Never Let Me Go, based from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel.

Never Let Me Go tells the story of three friends, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, who study in a boarding school called Hailsham. In Hailsham, they are prepared for their ultimate purpose in life, which is to donate organs. Early on, they are taught to keep healthy and to accept their fate. After their 3rd or 4th donation, they are told that they will “complete” or to bluntly put it, die.

Like the three friends in the film, we spend most of our lives preparing ourselves for our future, only to end up serving other people.  We often resign ourselves to that fate. We take care of ourselves, so we can be physically capable of finishing tasks. We study, so we can get jobs that pay well later on. We think we are doing it for ourselves. Or are we really?

We spend the first part of our lives searching for our identity, finding out what we really enjoy, only to doubt all that once we interact and live with others.  The shift from “Who am I” to “What does the other demand from me?” is akin to the chicken or the egg problem (as someone mention during the previous discussion). Which came first? Which one is of greater importance? They are both equally important, that’s for sure. You can’t have one without the other.

We need others to help us look at life differently, and our active participation is needed to keep society going. But maybe we want to look in deeper, because we want to understand further.  As human beings, we are always looking for solidity and validation.  We seek and explore, before we can truly accept what lies ahead.

The Human Experience and the JEEP Program

by JB Capinpin


*Disclaimer: If you’re also under Mr. Rochester and haven’t watched “The Human Experience,” do not read any further. This blog post will spoil the film.

Last Wednesday, I had to watch a movie, entitled, “The Human Experience”, for my Theology 131 class under Mr. Rochester. It was a movie about two brothers who decided to record a documentary about different human experiences. Instead of simply recording other people’s experiences and narrating it on film, they immersed themselves in other peoples’ experiences.

For this blog post, I will only focus on the challenge of living homeless in New York during winter season because this is very much similar to the JEEP program we will have this semester. The other two, interacting with children who were disabled and momentarily abandoned by their parents due to financial problems and interacting with lepers in a colony, are similar to the immersion programs I have experienced in high school and exposure trips in college. Hence, they didn’t really strike me as much as living the life of another person.

Below are some of the experiences they had:

• A number of scenes were taken at night to show how they survived the cold nights of New York (5° Celsius on night 1). They sought refuge outside the church and made use of a cardboard as a bed. This protected their backs from the freezing concrete floor, but they were still very much exposed to the harsh environment.
• During the day, they looked for a corner where they can sit down and ask for some loose coins or spare change to buy food. Sometimes, they didn’t collect enough so they had to approach the small food stalls along the streets and ask for any food that they have left.
• In an interview with a homeless lady, they mentioned that she felt excluded from society; she was simply ignored. She even mentioned an instance where a group of walkers-by helped this injured dog. She was also near the area, but she was simply looked over. She was puzzled that she had the similar features of a human being, yet the other citizens of New York don’t seem to see her that way. 
• Luckily, a church had a feeding program for the homeless people. It was there that the two brothers really got to interact with other homeless people and share their experiences. The group praised the brothers for having the courage to step out of their comfort zone and live as homeless people.

More often that not, we succumb to our biases and judge other people. It is so easy because this is what we have experienced, have observed or have heard. We tend to believe that these experiences will repeat and thus act as a safeguard. In some way, our biases set the boundaries of our comfort zone. Anything beyond can spell trouble and make us unhappy. However, since our biases can be very personal or subjective, we can be mistaken. Therefore, our comfort zone can limit us. In this regard, there appears to be a trade-off between one’s safety and experience. It focuses on the “I,” which was the focus of the 1st semester. Towards the end of last semester, the “I” was defined as a being-in-the-world-with-and-for-others, although the “with-and-for-others” description was only briefly tackled.

This 2nd semester asks us to shift from thinking about the “I” and instead think about the “Other.” From the question, “what is being?” we now discuss, “what does the Other demand from me?” From ontology, we now focus on ethics. From philosophy’s definition as the love for wisdom, we define philosophy as the wisdom of love. With that in mind, instead of focusing on our own comfort zones, our own lives, we begin to consider Other’s feelings and Other’s life. In other words, this semester is a call for us to be more compassionate.

That is precisely what the two brothers in the film showcased. They tried to see New York in the eyes of a homeless person, to understand the life of the Other. I believe that this is one of the reasons why we are going through the JEEP program this semester. What the two brothers did is a preview of what we will be going through, but it definitely won’t be as extreme as living in the streets of Katipunan for a week. When we start living as sales people in a supermarket, photocopies in U.P. or street vendors along Katipunan, we must become more sensitive and more open and more compassionate to the Other. Perhaps, we find telling ourselves that we already know this. We have dealt with this over and over again in grade school and high school. We have been always reminded to always think of our neighbor, to do the good. But at this point, it would be helpful to pause and reflect if we really understood and follow this concept of doing the good? I guess we probably know the good, but we often fail to exercise it. This is perhaps the challenge to us in our times. As Lexie Coloma, C&PR Manager of The GUIDON, said in her column entitled, “The Epiphany of the Face”, “As Ateneans, we have always been taught the value of being men for others. We pride ourselves in having theology and philosophy classes but despite this, we still fail to go down the hill, where we are needed the most.” We have an idea of what to do, but then how come we don’t anything for the Other?

Through the JEEP program, we may hopefully find this humility to see the world in the Other’s shoe. This experience will somehow open our eyes to the reality of what the Other is experiencing and how we can respond to the demands of the Other.

For this semester, let us all try to leave our own selfish ways and constantly remind ourselves to think of the Other and how to be good to him/ her. I believe that if we carry disposition with us wherever we go, we are already bringing about change in society in our own ways. We can still fix our “broken world.”

On Selflessness

by Alex Chua


The other day, I was hanging out with my block mates when one of them brought up a very interesting argument. She said that we are all selfish. At first, I was really offended because I think of myself as a pretty selfless guy (hehe). I immediately started thinking of ways to prove her wrong. After a while, when I calmed down, I decided to hear what she had to say. I have to admit that she had a valid point. According to her, we are all selfish in the sense that everything we do would somehow benefit us.

To give an example, let’s say you did something good; something society would call “selfless.” You donated all your money to a church. If there was an act that would be the complete opposite of selfish, that’s what it would be right? Not really. You still benefit from doing this. The benefit could be personal, emotional, or even spiritual. You feel good about yourself for doing it, or you felt happy when you did it, or your soul gets saved. You will always benefit from the act in some way. Even the most genuine, most selfless act would benefit the doer, and the doer can always, in a way, be considered as selfish.

A lot of people would probably disagree with this statement, just like I did. This is expected, given the negative connotation we place on this word. However, after thinking about it, I say that being selfish should not be a bad thing. In fact, it should be a good thing. We just have to change the way we define selfish, and, more specifically, the way we define the self.

 We should forget about the word “selfless.” Like, why is doing something for others even called “selfless” in the first place? Is it because you think less about yourself or lose a part of yourself? No. If we connect this to Heidegger’s essay, and follow his definition of the self, we acknowledge that the self does not refer solely to us as individuals, but rather, as a collective being, consisting of every human being in the world, helping others, becomes helping ourselves. Doing things for others connects us to the rest of the world, or to ourselves. It brings us closer to ourselves and makes us more human. In this sense, the more you do for others, the more selfish you are.

Being selfish can be a good thing if we simply change our definition of “self.” We should stop thinking about “me” and start thinking about the rest of the people around us. Let us stop viewing ourselves as individuals scattered around the Earth. Rather, as Heidegger put it, a “collective Self.” We should view our Self as human beings grouped together sharing a collective experience that is allowed by our existence and, as much as possible, everything we do should be geared toward the benefit of the group, not just the individual. We should strive to be “selfish.”

Time and Death

by Sophie Villasfer


"Time is movement," said Mr. Calasanz.  It signifies change, growth, and development.  It can be described objectively as chronos -- that is, through seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on.  It can also be described subjectively as kairos.  Kairos was described through an experience of waiting and spending time with the beloved.  Waiting for 10 minutes for the beloved feels that time is so slow (almost like forever), but spending the same amount of 10 minutes with the beloved seems so fast.  In terms of chronos, both were objectively 10 minutes, but not in the sense of kairos.  In a way, kairos is felt time.

 I would like to relate this to the question in the song "Seasons of Love": How do you measure, measure a year?  Perhaps we speak of chronos when we belt out " Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes".  And maybe we speak of kairos when we sing "In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee/ In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife."  Time is not just described by the clock,  it is also described by our experiences.

From describing time and the experience of it, Mr. Calasanz then describes the past, present, and future.  Why is it that even when the past is done, it still feels real to us?  Why is it that even when painful experiences happened many years ago, we still feel the hurt as if it happened just now?  The past becomes present as we continue putting meaning to it.  This meaning, whether the past has affected us positively or negatively, still contributes to who we are now.  For this reason, Mr. Calasanz suggested that the right attitude regarding the past is one of gratitude.  No matter what happened in the past, pleasant or painful, it helped in the creation of the person we are today.

Reflecting on this, I think this implies that we have the choice of how we give meaning to our past.  We have the power to give meaning to our experiences, to the things that happened to us.  We can use our experiences, whether they are positive or negative, to give meaning to our growth.  There is some truth in the saying "It is not what happens to us, but how we react to it".  In this context, maybe we can say that although what happens to us are important, overtime what is more important is how we interpret the experience in such a way that we learn from it.  The lesson can be as simple as life does not end with failure.  There is value in learning that one can still continue with life despite disaster.

Mr. Calasanz then describes the future.  The future is full of surprises. With the word "surprise", it can be divided to "sur" meaning out and "prise" meaning control.  Hence being surprised, is being out of control.  And many people do not like that.  Hence they plan out their future even for the next five to ten years.  Through planning, through imagining what would happen in the future, the future then becomes past.  This is because what has objectively not happened yet has already been laid out in one's head.  For the person, it has already happened.  Hence, the capability to foresee, or predict.  However, in reality, we cannot really see the future all the time.  In fact, there will be instances wherein a person is faced with a disaster and he or she exclaims "I have no future!".  However, it is when we do not have any grasp of what to expect, when our hands are completely empty, that we are free to receive everything.  For this reason, the future can be viewed with hope.  The future can be seen as a gift yet to be given, yet to be unwrapped.

Then I thought, maybe if we view the future with hope, we become less anxious, less worried.  If we view the future as a gift, we see it in a better light instead of seeing it with despair.  How about when dreadful things do happen despite our hope?  H.G. Wells gives a good answer:  "While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it.  If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful."

Mr. Calasanz then asked, "If we view the past with gratitude and the future with hope, how about the present?"  He then describes the present as a commitment.  It is constantly keeping one's word, and it is an ongoing decision.  This ongoing decision can be related to the future.  In the hope of our future, we take actions that lead us there.  For example, a college student decides to take pre-med subjects in the hope of entering medical school and being a doctor.  All three attitudes: to see the past with gratitude, to see the future with hope, and the present as a commitment -- all these make the person solid and whole.

I wondered, is it a coincidence that many things were related to the idea of a gift?  Both the past and the future are seen as gifts that has been given to us, or will be given to us.  Perhaps commitment enters the picture when we commit to view all aspects of life as a gift.  To have an attitude of gratitude is a commitment; it is not easy all the time.

Mr. Calasanz then proceeded to talking about death.  According to Heidegger, people have an inauthentic view regarding death.  People see it as far from them, as unreal.  However, he explained that it is not our own death that is most painful. Marcel said that it is the death of the beloved other that hurts us.  When people we love die, we will be left alone.  We are the ones left in pain. Later on Mr. Calasanz describes death as the radical other, the perfect stranger that we know nothing of, and we do not want to know of it.  Finally, he ends with an assignment: Imagine if you were to die tonight.  Who would we talk to before we die? Perhaps that beloved person is the perfect stranger.

I was confused by his last line.  How could the phrase "perfect stranger" from being ascribed to death, suddenly be used to describe the beloved?  Is it because that we usually live our lives ignoring the important people in our lives, that they become strangers to us?  Is it because when put in the context of death, we suddenly see these people and realize that we have not fully experienced them, and them to us?  If this is the case, then thinking of death is not purely morbid thinking, but maybe, putting some things in perspective.  The important things in life suddenly come into focus.

Given all of this, we go back to the question of Sir Earl in class: "How are we to live knowing that everything passes?  Is there still value in living when nothing really lasts?"  Perhaps the value in life lies in the bigger picture.  The value is in seeing the whole life as a gift.  The movement of  every experience embedded in time is a gift.  To exist in itself is a gift, because we experience the rich abundance of life.  Some say that the secret is to appreciate everything, but not to hold on to them. It is true that when we are committed to this attitude of appreciation, we are busy experiencing -- going out of ourselves.  Andrew Matthews phrases it well when he said that abundance lies not in the accumulation of what we have, but in what is circulating in our lives.  When we are busy going out of ourselves, in the sense of the giving of our ourselves through loving others, we forget about grieving over things lost because our focus is not anymore in taking in, but in giving out.    We are to live in view of the transcendent, of what goes beyond ourselves.  The value in living is being loved, and the experience of having loved.  What is the proof of this?  Usually, people are afraid of death because they realize they have not loved enough.  On the other hand, those who have loved are less afraid because they are secure that their lives have been worthwhile.  As mentioned before, having an attitude of gratitude is a commitment.   When this gratitude is directed towards others, when we are grateful of the people in our lives, it becomes easier to love, to live, and even to die.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

- 1 John 4:18

Creating In A Broken World

by Sari Molintas

"The nostalgia of writing: the ache for a home to which one cannot return."

Trafficking in Nostalgia, Exie Abola

As an outro of sorts – an exit from my first semester of formal philosophical education – I would like to revisit here the concept that has resounded in me the most since it was first introduced in class: Gabriel Marcel and his idea of our broken world.

The world being broken isn’t something that is new to any of us, as impossible to deny as it is. We all bear witness to its many forms every single day: injustice, discrimination, poverty, the examples are endless. It isn’t a question of the brokenness, but a question of what we choose to do about that brokenness – how we react to that reality. Ultimately, this is what makes us different from one another.

Many would decide to, in the well-worn sense of the phrase, “do something about it.” They would join organizations that address social concerns, or donate what they can to foundations whose efforts are directed to “making the world a better place.” Some would choose to see it as “ganyan talaga,” a situation out of their control or influence. They believe that they are born into a world where it simply is the way it is, and they will die in a world with little to no changes. And there were others still would find ways to escape the brokenness, to elude the inescapable.

Until very recently, I used to think of myself as an escapist. I never denied that the world was broken, but I wanted to distance and distract myself from that knowledge. And it was easy to divert my attention. Contemporary society has done much to keep our broken the world the way it is, by devising countless means for us to get lost in our own tiny little spaces.

I used to believe that I constructed and maintained my space through writing. After all, writing helped me create my personal refuge where I could make sense of all the things that were happening in my life, my secret haven where all the things I longed for could suddenly exist. When I wrote, I disappeared into my sanctuary of words, where the endings that could only be vividly imagined – and never truly experienced – could temporarily be real to me.

I began to consider writing as escape in its most total, all-consuming form.
But now I’m beginning to realize that I was wrong.

* * *

It was a Friday when I first heard the paragraph that would make this outro possible. I was sitting in the back of a crowded room, while the writer himself read the words out from the afterword of his newly published book: “The nostalgia of writing,” he read, “the ache for a home to which one cannot return.” The words resounded in me the whole night, and much later, when I read the words to myself in my dorm room, I was suddenly reminded strongly of Marcel and his exigency for transcendence.

Maybe that’s what it really meant, I thought to myself. Maybe the exigency for transcendence is like a longing to return home, and maybe what home really means is a world that is less broken.

It made perfect sense to me in that moment, although now the idea seems to be a bit difficult to put into words. Perhaps the best way for me to describe it is that I realized that no matter what the original intention, in the essence of creation – be it the creation of a painting, a song, an essay – what we are really doing is slowly bridging the gaps of our broken world. Not only because any creation has the potential to bring people together, but because we give ourselves to our creations. And when we put our creations out into the world, we are breaking out of our tiny spaces.

While our individual efforts may seem small, perhaps even insignificant in totality, they are meaningful, because every step we take out of our own space and towards others is a step that makes our world less disconnected. And while we may not end up achieving what it is we hoped to do – since, after all it is a home “to which one cannot return” – but we can at least be comforted by the knowledge that we tried to do something to leave the world less broken than it already was.

The Purpose of Life

by Cara Garcia


I have never thought that Philosophy would provide me the answer of the one question I’ve always asked myself since high school - what is the purpose of life? Because everyday, we do the same routine and as students, we go to school in hopes of landing a great job and creating a successful career for our future. But all of that, in truth, is short term. After the whole staying up all night to write papers, and studying, and more studying, we finally reach that point where we are where we wanted to be. But what’s next after that? Say, after making a name for ourselves, we decided to settle down, get married, etc., and then we make another whole set of goals for us to do the same thing all over again – work hard to achieve that goal. So I thought to myself, is this what life is all about? Set goals. Work hard. Achieve them. Then do the cycle again and again...  until we die?

I wondered if there’s some point to that. If there’s a purpose why we do it. If in the end, something great or miraculous will happen that we always work our butts off over momentary things that one day might slip away from our fingers. I’ve always been so curious if really, there’s a basis for this, an end goal into which we live the whole of our life to reach.

And I wanted to know the answer. I wanted to know if there’s some concrete, specific explanation or reason as to why we are here.

We have, in our bookshelf, a book entitled The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and I decided to read it during high school, but after a few passeges, I gave up. It didn’t give me the kind of answer I was looking for.

And yet, during a usual Thursday session in Philo class, I was enlightened. In a span of a five to ten-minute sharing by my classmates, my eyes opened and an epiphany dawned to me. I’ve finally found the answer.. and it was during a time that I wasn’t looking for it. It suddenly came to me, just like that. In Philo class. I realized what the purpose of life is.

When Sir threw the question, “Is there something to make life out of if things are passing and we are destined to die?”, I honestly couldn’t think of any response. But when my classmates shared their insights about this, it occurred to me that they’re right. And I was so overwhelmed with the fact that these people, my classmates, eighteen to twenty-year-old people would know what the purpose of life is. And here are the answers they’ve given (credits to those who shared these ideas. I do not own them. I may have revised the words though):

It’s about investing yourself with the things you love -- immersing yourself with the people, things and experiences that make you happy.

You should enjoy them for the moment and not be too attached so that when time comes to let them go, it won’t be difficult.

It’s about what you leave behind for the future generations – making an impact, leaving a mark in the world of what you’ve achieved. Because when you die, it’s what you’ve done that will let the people remember you.

What it means to you – the experiences, people, and things you’ve come across have their own significance. It’s about being able to appreciate the things you got yourself into. Some people may not see it as important, but what matters is how you value them.

There will always be new experiences and opportunities.

Relationships are important because it’s always about experiencing people. To be engaged with them. To share a moment with them. To feel what they feel. 

Life is about the joy of experiencing material things because through them, we learn. And through learning, we realize the superabundance of life - that there’s always more. There’s so many things that life can offer us and we will never have enough of them.

Because of these insights, I realized the purpose of life. It’s not some concrete, clear-cut goal we achieve in the future. It’s not something that awaits us in the end.

It’s the here. The now. And the everyday.

The purpose of life is living it everyday – to surprise ourselves, experience the wonder and appreciating every moment that encompasses us. So if we’re all destined to die, why not make the most of what we have? What we have now…

I read a quote once, and it says, “Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here, we should dance.”

And it’s fitting. Since things don’t always go our way – it might not be the best music, we might not enjoy the people we’re with -- it’s best that we make the most and enjoy what’s there in front of us instead of wasting time looking for things that aren’t present in the moment.

Maybe this entry doesn’t explicitly talk about Marcel or Descartes, but to engage and practice in a kind of philosophical thinking, I believe, is what matters.

I must say that Philosophy affects us no matter what. I entered the Ateneo, taking a degree in Management in hopes of becoming a businesswoman and achieving that goal, that purpose of being successful in life. But after experiencing Philosophy, I’d probably remember this realization in Philo class than actually doing company studies or making financial statements.