Visitors from theworldly.org, welcome to my blog! I must apologize, but my past few articles have not been published here yet, but they will appear simultaneously by the end of this week due to a recovery issue. Check back soon and look around at the archive for now, but stay tuned. - Johnny

Plato, Hobbes, and Confucius: Dialogues and Analects Against Democracy

The Greek philosopher Plato was one of the many Greeks who frowned upon the concept of democracy, which in its original translation, meant the rule of the people-- but in its original context, the people who rule were actually closer to the mob mentality and the chaos that comes out of it. Historically, the old Peloponnesian War of the 5th century BCE had the democratic power of Athens throwing its weight around trying to impose its will on other Greek city-states, whereas the militaristic oligarchy of Sparta was fighting against their empire-building ambitions and for their own sovereignty. This example is often used by critics of democracy when they show how it has traditionally never been the pure and infallible ideal that has been championed by the west (especially the French and Americans) for so long.

Plato believed that people should be ruled by what he refers to as the "philosopher king" who is a just, fair ruler that becomes the leader not because he wants to rule (he actually does not want to wield power at all; he actually avoids it), but because he fears what could happen if an inferior ruler was in charge, and takes the job only to make sure it is done right.

By contrast, the Confucian belief system was that everyone had a role in society based on specific social relations that are often misunderstood in the west, especially when confusing it with the later Neo Confucianism of the Song Dynasty that outlined women's roles as being strictly tied to their duties in the home. In terms of how the relationship between the ruler and his subject in the traditional Confucian philosophy, it was not just people putting their faith in the absolute authority of the ruler, but the accountability and responsibility of the ruler to his people, lest their faith be misplaced.

Looking at these two perspectives of governmental responsibility, how do we assess democracy in an age where the definitions still elude many? To begin with, it is important to know that democracy is not simply entitling everyone the right to vote, as it can happen as an act for show, much like the elections in Iraq that voted Saddam Hussein into power for another term before he was ousted in 2003 along with his totalitarian dictatorship. Democracy-- especially in terms of development-- refers to the institutions and bureaucracies, as well as the accountability of them and officials in charge for their actions and responsibilities.

How much of this has been lost since democracy has been mis-represented as the freedom to express offensive ideas or promoting the process of voting rather than creating actual accountability and representation? When looking at current failures and corruption in governments masquerading as democracies in name only (the fallen Republic Iraq and the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea being prime examples), or the Americans who allow hate groups to exist in the name of their democracy, it is somewhat disillusioning to see what has happened to the idea of democracy.

Under the current (mis)understanding of democracy, the Philippines, after a visit from Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew, earned his comment that it "needed more discipline and less democracy" due to the communication divide. Part of the problem in developing countries is that the criticism of leaders by allowing an excess amount of expression in democracies is that it creates such a level of distrust that governmental support and political aspirants rarely have a chance to work in good faith due to the unfair association of being susceptible to corruption even before committing those acts, which in turn inspires them to achieve their political goals through corruption in order to survive.

Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan a pillar of western political thought, would be disappointed at the way that the allowance of excessive free expression undermines the authority of the government and the respect due, which in turn weakens the relationship between the citizens and the government. After all, the social contract did not just detail the responsibility of the government to protect its citizens, but for the citizens to be responsible for their government as well, meaning that if they expect to have a responsible government, they cannot erode its image by mixing its effectiveness with the personal lives of its leaders, especially if it is no concern of the people to judge whom their leaders are sleeping around with behind their wives' backs, especially if those same leaders are doing a good job.

Perhaps the real issue is not to just let the idea that democracy is about voting and freedom of expression, but to correct that misconception and clarify its meaning of accountability and responsibility, as well as limiting the expression that allows libelous articles from tabloid-level journalists to mistakenly draw connections between state leaders and their extramarital affairs while promoting an image of the government that is consistent with its level of responsibility.

Cultural Imperialism 101: Colonizing the Panties

One of the greater divisions in the cultural gap between east and west is evident in the popular western sexual fetish for Asian pornography. Asian pornography does not necessarily refer to pornography produced in Japan or Korea, but based on the ethnic stereotypes for people who would otherwise all be categorized as Orientals. Oriental here is referring to not actually being from the Orient (as the term is now far too archaic and politically incorrect), but to the idea and concept that those who are perceived as having Asian heritage are forever foreign, exotic, and mysterious, left to the minds of the misinformed and uneducated to fantasize and speculate, thereby objectifying the culture and people they have misrepresented and misperceived, especially in their pornography.

The basic stereotype for women is that she is exotic, forever a foreigner, knows ancient pleasure techniques, submissive, and willingly offers herself to the westerner, whom she finds far more pleasing and greets as a liberator rather than lecher. The stereotype for the male is that he is sexually impotent due to his supposedly smaller body size (and consequentially his penis size as well), selfish, and oppressive to women. Both stereotypes speak more about the racial bias from early or initial impressions that westerners have of the Asian peoples rather than being drawn from factual evidence, as well as a complete disregard for culture.

One of the common fantasies in Asian pornography are usually about how some sexually-charged women are visiting the west in search of sexual partners or encounters with western men, whom they perceive as physically more attractive and capable with larger penises and muscular frames. Parallels to the Nazi Germany ideology of the Aryan as a symbol of human perfection comes to mind when observing this mindset.

Another fantasy involves a young girl lost and seemingly unaware of the environment she has found herself in, to which the lecherous pornographers seek to take advantage of her by telling her things such as how she will be a model and that they simply wanted to get to know her better, which involves much sexual touching and objectifying much like they were inspecting goods, before they proceed to make sexual advances on her.

Dialog also proves to be tasteless: when two performers are discussing the physical differences of each other's anatomy and resulting incompatibility as one example seen on a popular American site specializing in the Asian fetish, the male performer says, "the egg roll does not fit in the take-out box!" Hearing lines like this, one feels more inclined to laugh before shaking his or her head in disbelief.

It is such garbage like this that generates income for the pornography industry at the expense of ethnic groups being misunderstood and the viewers absorbing the misinformation, fostering ignorance in the long run. Surprisingly, some of the people who benefit are the performers, as a number of the female performers are college students earning tuition money. Some could argue that it is no different from prostitution, but one performer in the U.S. said "wouldn't you blame the education system for forcing me to subject myself to this, with student loans and financial aid harder and harder to come by?"

Other people have different opinions. One college student from China at UCLA who was asked about how the stereotype affects people's perceptions of her said that "I feel people are approaching me because they want to try something new instead of actually getting to know me or about my culture, like I'm some sort of new food they want to try for the sake of trying as they attempt to hit on me and tell me how much they like my culture. It's very degrading and disrespectful, and I don't tolerate it." Since arriving in the U.S., she feels that people are constantly trying to take advantage of her the way they do in pornography. "I'm not interested in their approach, their methods, or pornography. I'm just another person not from the U.S., I don't want to fulfill someone's fantasies from what pornography they have watched," she said after the stereotype and the popular fantasies.

If the west wants to start taking other cultures far more seriously, then perhaps some methods of control should be utilized in spite of constantly fighting for creative expression and corporate profits. Perhaps we need to be reminded that such ignorance can be dangerous, recalling specifically the American soldiers in Okinawa, Japan or Angeles City, Philippines where they were charged for raping local girls, under the impression that they can get away with their actions for being men of privilege, coupled with the misconception that these women were helpless and completely submissive-- common misrepresentations of both the western men and Asian women in pornography.

Text messaging: the new tool for democracy?

People power ousted Estrada in the Philippines, and popular protests in China that the government has a hard time controlling how they are organized both share one thing in common: they were organized by text messaging on mobile phones.

As of 2005, 27% of China were the owners of mobile phones, which allows for far more expression than e-mails that are censored or blocked by a regime that closely monitors its critics, who are usually viewed as synonymous with dissenters. As of 2006, the Philippines, a country with only 2 million Internet users and 3 million land phone users, had over 30 million mobile phone users, many of whom can multi-task anything they do while text messaging in one hand without even looking at the screen.

It is this extreme familiarity with the technology that helps people overcome the censorship of the news media, even in places like North Korea where some 20,000 mobile phones are smuggled in and used as a primary source of news about the outside world that the DPRK wants none of its citizens to be familiar with in order to protect its regime. Even the most outspoken blogger cannot compete with international text messaging when his or her blog is subject to being blocked or even shut down with heavy Internet censorship.

But development is not what causes people to resort to text messaging to spread information or organize protests: South Korea, which has over half of its population connected to high-speed Internet connections, still has an obvious divide between the people and the information. According to Cathy Hong of the online edition of Christian Science Monitor:

In South Korea, for example, many experts agree that current President Roh Moo Hyun would not have been elected without the help of the Internet and SMS. Back in December 2002, conservative mainstream media favored his rival Lee Hoi Chang to win the election, especially when a former rival who had endorsed Mr. Roh unexpectedly withdrew his support on the eve of Election Day. But Roh's core supporters, who were of the younger "information technology" generation, launched a massive last-minute campaign. They fired off e-mails and text messages to 800,000 voters on the morning of election day, urging them to go to the polls. Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-30-politics-text-tool_x.htm?csp=34

So even with greater access to technology, text messaging is now in of itself a necessary tool for the spread of information, especially with technology like the Apple iPhone which grants Internet access for direct access to news articles online that are complementary to people who have configured their mobile phones to receive news via long or multiple text messages. The mobile phone is an important tool in Africa as it is the one piece of technology that links everyone together, especially when farmers in the rural countryside get actual prices from friends or relatives in the city via text messages so that they do not get cheated out of their earnings from the agents who come to pick up their goods to sell to the city and give their own daily prices.

The downside to people text messaging is the limitations on characters each text message. People do not necessarily utilize the dictionary tool, but their abbreviations sometimes habitually end up in written form, including people occasionally writing words such as "2gthr" under the strains of in-class writing assignments, such as in the Philippines.

Beyond text messaging, mobile phone technology has had its own fair share of scandals, from the Tammy Nyp scandal in Singapore of February 2006 when a student's phone was stolen and erotic movies of her and her boyfriend saved on the phone were sent to multiple people and even uploaded to the Internet, despite Singapore's strict controls and censorship. Furthermore, some debates are going on about having mobile phones with cameras being allowed in places such as locker rooms, and security measures need to be taken into consideration amidst the advent of mobile technology, as it is much easier to snap a photo or record a movie of classified information and send it long before being caught.

Not to totally dismiss the use of the video and camera function of mobile phones however is the video below uploaded to youtube of one of many instances in which students have taken video recordings of abuses by teachers. One case in Taiwan caused an uproar and debates on the subject of corporal punishment in Taiwan, available in BBC's archive at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4378412.stm.



Mobile phones have already penetrated popular culture as much as the Internet has, possibly even deeper considering their ease of use and wider user base. Movies such as Japanese horror film One Missed Call show creative interpretations of mobile phone use, such as its plot about a ring tone that plays and leaves a prophetic message of the listener's own voice and approaching death by supernatural means.

Perhaps in the near-future, there may be stricter controls over the content of mobile technology and capability as governments are wary of their people's creative use of the technology, especially when terrorists potentially use text messaging to organize or plan attacks. There is also the potential for governments to take a page from the Israeli government, who in 1996 planted a bomb in the mobile phone of Palestinian suicide bombing mastermind Yahya Ayyash which resulted in his assassination.

So in the age of information and misinformation, we see a new field that is still in its developmental stages in the form of mobile technology, especially having seen what its potential can already do. Just don't go expecting your phone to explode in your face

More articles about the text messaging phenomenon

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-30-politics-text-tool_x.htm?csp=34

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/25/news/internet.php

http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/11/010591.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401379.html

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1176738,00.html

http://www.bulatlat.com/news/4-25/4-25-texters.html

http://www.time.com/time/asia/asiabuzz/2001/01/23/

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Mobile-rings-changes-for-worlds-poor/2005/04/21/1114028473872.html

When you're a jet, you're a jet all the way-- or are you?

“When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day” go the lyrics of the famous song from the classic American musical, Westside Story. That seems to be akin to the popular attitude with westerners towards religion. If you are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, you subscribe exclusively to that faith, any taint of belief in similar concepts such as Karma is to Buddhism as Providence is to Christianity results in conservative religious fundamentalists denouncing those who believe in false scripture, in spite of existing similarities.

But come over to the Asia Pacific region, especially in Southeast Asia and Japan, it is a different story altogether. Historically, many traditions reveal that the understanding of the world in both Southeast Asia and Japan did not distinguish between the sacred and the profane, as spirituality was part of their everyday life. Such spiritual traditions are varied and diverse.

One example shows how shamans and ancestral worship are important, such as going to shamans to communicate with ancestral spirits in order to find out what makes grandma so angry that she takes it out on the family by preventing a young couple from bearing any children. Another important example are rites and rituals such as mamemaki in Japan that is celebrated on the day of setsubun, setsubun referring to the day just before the beginning of each new season, and mamemaki performed by throwing soybeans out the door to cast away evil spirits from the previous season and prevent new ones from coming into the next. Most noticeably even today is the penchant for spiritual protection in the form of amulets and other lucky charms which people carry around for good luck or protection. But what happened to these when the advent of exclusive religions such as Christianity came when Europeans did, as well as the attitudes of little or no tolerance for traditional beliefs and superstitions?

Some current arguments show that in these cultures, there is no separation of culture and religion, because religion is part of their culture; it was what defined their outlook on life and was the basis of all their activities, from music in sacred rituals to government structure, such as the way Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temple was built to replicate the cosmic home of the Gods. So even when you have a high concentration of Islam in Indonesia or Christianity in the Philippines (yet some superstitions still remain especially in the form of amulets for good luck), how does this work out?

Here’s the thing: those beliefs never left with the arrival of the religions of the west. There is a western misconception that these traditional belief systems worship a wide pantheon of gods and do not respect the authority of a supreme deity above all, which is actually far from it.

The issue is not really a matter of inconsistent spiritual practices and religious beliefs, but a matter of definition and level of involvement. In the West, people tend to view religion as synonymous with the institutions that represent it and thus can eliminate it from their daily lives since they can separate themselves from it due to separation of the sacred and profane, especially with people feeling a greater attachment and more relief from the Almighty Dollar or science as a way of explaining how things work or even manipulating nature. Coupled with the fact people don’t feel too happy about church on Sundays asking for donations and thus taking away money, their source of comfort and society’s life blood, we can see why the spiritual realm of the gods has a limited role in society, even though the dollar says, “In God We Trust.”

Back East, however it is another story. An interesting discovery pointed out by UCLA history professor Herman Ooms shows that in a consensus of religions in Japan, 140% of the population are listed as Buddhist. Where does the other 40% come from if 100% is supposed to be the entire population? The answer is quite interesting: people checked off more than one box identifying which religion they felt they were, and the majority felt sympathetic towards Buddhism, practiced Shinto rituals, and got married in western-style Christian weddings. So interestingly enough, a person who checked off these three choice can theoretically be practicing three religions, which is difficult for a westerner to fathom if he believes that religion is a set path to meeting the Supreme Being, and we can only walk one path, not multiple.

In the value system back East however, this is not what religion is, since there is a very thin line between religion and culture as noted earlier. Though difficult to convey, essentially there are categories of importance in terms of spirituality that all fall under the overall belief system of these societies. Fellow history professor at UCLA Geoffrey Robinson on a visit to Indonesia wondered how a Muslim family in Indonesia was able to practice a ritual that could essentially be classified as ancestor worship in spite of the popular understanding that Islam was a strict religion with no tolerance like its brother Christianity. To the family who explained this to him, they felt that it had no conflict with Islam at all, that it was simply a part of their tradition to honor their ancestors. The key word here is “tradition.” Much like the Chinese in Hong Kong who use Feng Shui to make use of the sacred geometry of the universe for luck and prosperity who find nothing wrong with their conscience on the way to church Sundays, these practices would best be understood as traditions or superstitions in western eyes. Professor Herman Ooms, on a trip to Japan before, once asked a lady if they actually believed in the rituals they practiced, in going to graveyards for people to pay respect to ancestors, or in the good luck charms that people buy. Her response said it all about religion and culture: “Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

In a sense, people become too attached to tradition that it loses meaning, much like going to church becomes routine and it is no longer a spiritual day that reminded people of the powers that be. Why is Sunday in the United States a day when banks are closed and people somehow feel lazier than any other day of the week? Why does it seem weird to open up a drawer in a motel or hotel and not find a Bible placed by the Gideons? It is when the religion becomes so enmeshed in the culture that the culture takes it in without needing the religion to justify or explain it, since it becomes the norm.

Pay attention the next time you go to Borders bookstore and look by the cashier to see such novelties such as Buddha-in-a-box or a miniature Zen garden and more to decorate your desktops as well as offer a little more enlightenment. Why be a Jet when you can be whomever you want to be and reap the benefits of it all, just like the Japanese and most people in Southeast Asia do?

The Tesseract of Globalization

Put several squares together and fold them up, and you will have a cube. If you were one of the imagined Flatlanders from Edwin A. Abbot's 19th century literary classic Flatland, you would be bound to the Second Dimension and only be able to imagine those several squares to idealize what a cube would look like, but never truly know it until you have experienced it. Our own situation here is trying to understand the concept of the hypercube through the tesseract, an unraveled hypercube, which exists in the fourth dimension, one dimension over us. Like a Flatlander bound to the second dimension, he can only imagine several squares combining to form a cube, but can never truly fathom the cube without experiencing beyond his dimensional prison.

Keeping with this metaphor and knowing that globalization is an inescapable truth that only becomes harder to deny, we still find ourselves trapped in understanding the world through our default categorizations as we visualize a superficial world through our limited understanding, whether it comes from a lack of information due to the filtering of what is available by hiding it from us, or by what is highlighted for us.

But in spite of all the images on TV, the Internet, magazines, and the accounts of others, we have to remember that this is only a fraction of the other world we have not experienced; like a Flatlander cannot imagine a cube because he only understands the square, we cannot understand this hypercube of reality solely based on the information out there, no matter how much detail we have.

Whether it is an Indonesian nationalist's account of his country's history, or a socialist reporter's understanding of outsourcing in the People's Republic of China and its effect on workers' wages and conditions, there are many truths that are out there they are eager to reveal, but it is their perspectives that create the biases that are evident in their choice of replicating their experiences; from these accounts come a false picture of reality that has some truth in it and is thus only a fraction of what's really out there.

Whether it is Noam Chomsky's conspiracy theories or Tom Plate's chaos theories on popular news media, both cases illustrate the potential for misrepresentation of the world through the media, as well as inherent cultural biases that influence the cultural insensitivity that prevents adequate research and choice of words.

In the case of Noam Chomsky's conspiracy theories, it is believed that the news media deliberately attempts to maintain the status quo as it is influenced by the dollars of the consumers who buy the products from the corporatioons who bombard them with advertisements and control what the media focuses on through corporate sponsorship. In making the real world issues of ongoing genocides or human trafficking less significant by allocating less time to them and more time to sporting events, people are bred to become apathetic machines who consume and consume like animals in a farm. So in this case, it is lack of time given for actual thought as well as limited information which leads to hardly a fragment of the overall picture of reality. The metaphor here is a used-car salesman trying to sell a car for more than it's worth: he cheats the customer by withholding information of better deals or vehicles found elsewhere, and lies about his credibility, achieving the effect of limiting the consumer's choice and making him believe that it is also the best choice.

In the case of Tom Plate's strong case for chaos theory, the news media is definitely influenced by consumer dollars and corporate sponsors, but not to the extent that people are mindless slaves: more specifically, it can simply be explained that it is a matter of stupidity, not sin. From the space restrictions, the rushed editing jobs, lack of sleep from the reporters and editors, as well as differing educational backgrounds and different needs of the audiences, sponsors, and bureaucracy, the real issue is the chaos that arises from an entire organization trying to both earn money and please everyone at the same time, which is a very obvious case that explains why the world is difficult to grasp from the news stories and images that we are fed. The metaphor here is of an office secretary being told to multi-task and accomplish several objectives within a five-minute time frame, from making 200 copies of one document, faxing another one, making a new pot of coffee, answering and connecting an expected phone call to her boss, as well as dealing with any other assignments that come in: this high level of expectation and small time frame is what causes many people to get annoyed when mistakes happen during any of the tasks or if any of them are not completed.

With two proposed reasons for the misinformation fed our way, whichever you choose to believe is one thing, but the important thing to know is that we can not wholly rely on the news media for our world understanding. Thinking critically from the information we receive is one thing, but knowing that there is plenty of information out there to dig through is another thing; the lack of time (or interest for many) prevents us from getting a better perspective that comes from looking through that myriad of information. Suffice to say, we all live on the same planet earth, which is the same shape and size it has been for millions of years, but we all live in our own different worlds, based on different experiences and subjective understandings of what the world is, or whatever it happens to be, if there is any objectivity at all.

Brain drain: Manila’s finest don’t live there anymore, nor do they want to

The first time I dropped out of university was probably one of the better decisions I’ve made in my life.

The travel advisory currently issued on the Philippines by the U.S. government meant that UCLA had cut off its Education Abroad Program in the Philippines for fear of sending students to their untimely demise. However, the university UCLA is affiliated with there is reputable, so I will withhold its name out of respect for the institution.

Ignoring post-9/11 norms of paranoia, I went there independently to study for their first semester to see what life in a local university—the most prestigious public university with many Filipino intellectuals as its alma matter, including former president Fidel Ramos—would be like through the eyes of a self-proclaimed citizen of the world who could survive in any environment, thus influencing my (perhaps misguided) attempt to live and study like the typical Filipino student.

An entire semester of tuition for a local (lucky for me, I am a dual citizen and have an apartment there) was approximately $70 U.S.; some of my textbooks at UCLA cost more than this. And in a country with English as the other official language, I wouldn’t have to worry about learning another language, making it fare more attractive to earn credits and save on tuition, and comparatively cheaper than studying in England, which even former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once jokingly remarked about America and Britain, “it is the English language that divides us.”

Churchill could not have been more prophetic about my experiences in the language divide in Manila: I survived for three weeks before wisely abandoning my futile attempts at university life, since we all knew English, but spoke another language entirely, preventing us from seeing eye-to-eye.

On the first day, in spite of looking the same and dressing down to fit in with the other students in a country where the average family’s income converts to just a little over $3,100 U.S., I stood out like a marshmallow floating in a cup of hot chocolate, and I’m not white.

There was something about me that caused everyone to pay attention to me, even while hiding my California accent, wearing sunglasses to avoid direct eye contact, and shuffling my feet like everyone else did instead of hurrying off to class. Perhaps it was my obvious surprised reaction to a snake coming out of the toilet when I went to relieve myself, which everyone else laughed at and shrugged it off as the janitor was called who himself took a nonchalant approach as he went to remove it, everyone seeing it as just another thing that happens, much like overgrown grass in the floors and trees all coming into parts of the building.

My cover being blown already, I was thankful that my professors let me know that I would not receive any special privilege for being an American. Instead I get stigmatized.

Looking for the non-existent textbook store, I was instead pointed in the direction of the long hallway of Xerox copying stalls, having to go to several in order to obtain copies of entire books as my assigned readings. A handful of texts fresh off the copier, I can only describe the long march between buildings as equivalent to crossing deserts, even when riding overcrowded jeeps and squishing between hot, sweaty people.

My second day of classes, a syllabus was then distributed, followed by the assignment of groups and topics. Group work already? Okay, I can deal. I was part of a group they jokingly nicknamed “United Nations” due to my partner being half-Armenian, but already a third-generation Filipino. We did our research and picked a presentation date, and I did the same for my other two classes, which followed a suspiciously similar pattern of topics and assigning of groups.

It turned out to be a very popular university professor’s technique in the Philippines: getting paid to be a teacher who does not teach. They introduce the subject material, then assign topics after the one or two week introduction for student groups to research and present to the class for the rest of the semester, criticizing students for not presenting what the professors would emphasize had they been giving the lecture.

In a history class, students were told to read chapters, with each group presenting a few chapters and themes, getting awarded higher grades for giving snacks and theatrical presentations. In a chemistry class, when a professor spent half an hour wondering why her equation was wrong got embarrassed when my friend, a visiting white guy from Massachusetts, said that she had it wrong because it was upside down, and left the class saying that since we understood the subject material so well, she wouldn’t have to explain it anymore. This is when he got screwed over for homework and became the enemy of the students.

By the end of my third week, I jumped ship and had an extensive talk with my long-time mentor from Boston living in Manila in a self-imposed exile, who had spent time as both a professor and student in that university, saying that his time there in the 1970s was exactly the same, and praised me for being wiser than him in my choice of dropping out instead of dragging out a semester, like he did for two years.

The basic formula ended up like this: teachers don’t earn enough money, so why waste effort on teaching? Let the students pay them to be just as unhappy. The students, however, are to be praised for being ruthless and enduring four or more long years of this in attempts to improve their family’s place in society. A sad fact of life there is that moving up in society is either marrying an American or moving the U.S. And if staying in the Philippines means ending up being overworked, underpaid, and not appreciated turns once-hopeful students into bitter professors, then we can see why the conditions of Manila are pushing out these promising and hardworking individuals who slave through systems similar to this university in attempts to rise above their conditions and class. Until they find reasons to stay and contribute instead of looking for greener pastures such as the U.S., Manila only loses its potential every year.