Murder up High: The Janet Lim-Napoles Controversy

And so another saga of theft brews around with the story of Jane Lim-Napoles making the internet rounds in the past days. Reading the Inquirer account about this story of greed and unimaginable greed is just exasperating and insulting to say the least. While millions of Filipino's eke out a meager living and millions more toil to pay their due taxes, a select cabal of glorified psychopaths pour salt, grime and gasoline on the collective consciousness with a lifestyle funded by the sweat and blood of the Filipino masses.

The story of Janet Napoles is a story of how we as a society have failed to reign in the crass materialism and consumerism of our cultural transformation. The relentless pursuit of material wealth up to and including doing anything that will further such ends, has corrupted not only the upper crust of our society, but has in fact lulled the Filipino into a state of national stupor - aware but unwilling, suffering yet seemingly unable to find ways to cut that cycle of poverty, corruption and vested interests of the ruling elite. Nay, corruption is a national past time. The Filipino actually has quietly accepted corruption as a necessity - a tragedy indeed!

There is a creeping possibility that Janet Napoles will soon be forgotten, and remain unpunished - if that is what she deserves, and which she probably deserves. The relentless media coverage will soon wither away, the Filipino will soon move to the next controversy. It seems that we are enjoying our fate - too comfortable actually with the rut of suffocating poverty, the glut of aimless street urchins lurking about in all Philippine cities is a sight we have come to quietly accept.

The Filipino of the 21st century is dead. Dead to the realities of life, yet living in the delusions of organized religion, really organized delusions, while neglecting, forgetting, and simply treading the filth of institutionalized greed.

I am not hopeless about the Filipino condition. I am a Filipino in this condition. I am the Filipino condition. I tell myself that to give up on my country is to give up on my future and the future that can be great for all of us. Hope is overused, stale even, but a word I tell myself is the chance to see myself in a Philippines that is great in all that that word means.

I am hopeful, hopeful for a renewed sense of national consciousness that is patriotic as it is nationalistic, aggressive without being jingoistic, prudent without being reckless, indeed, secular and truly democratic in that it is inclusive without being egoistic.

There is hope in all this mess, shocking though they may be to the most decent of conscience, it is still a product of our cultural sclerosis. There is hope because lest we forget, we are the hope that hope can depend on, we are the hope because we are the Philippines. We can change, we can be better. We have to begin with our individual selves.