Closed Ears and Stifled Voices
The Phenomena of Shutting People Out and Shutting People Up
By Dennis Aguinaldo

I'VE CHANCED upon articles, posts in some forums and sites, e-mails, and just offhand comments of fellow Filipinos who wants everybody else to "shut-up" against the leadership. Or else do it themselves.

Shutting out is understandable. It might be an affront to more vocal counterparts but I sense a general "fatigue of the Filipino ear." I don't figure anyone would relish reading the same old headlines, yet another Senate upset, another Presidential political "error," and more controversial resignations or scam exposes. Whatever I hear gives me the feeling that what I'm getting is much less of what my work is entitled to and the country will not get any better even if I multiply my taxes by ten.

And worse, that if I'm going to have children, they're going to hate me for giving them the "shame" of being Filipino. I see then why shutting the world (or the country) out could sometimes be therapeutic, like taking a breather from daily pollution. We all have to keep our sanities intact, guard ourselves from the blackness of despair.

Yet, I wholeheartedly fear the desensitization of this collective ear. Weber-Fechner law recognizes the human nature of sensation, how the constant application of any pressure or irritant will be felt less along its duration. How, for example, an itch could be forgotten although the red reality of the penetration of a pest's proboscis remains on our skins. Or the blasts of bus and carhorns in a traffic jam becomes a drone.

The great intermingling of the sounds are reduced to a ringing in our ears, then every expressed anger fades into the background. We are left to our personal cusses. And sometimes it is too automatic that we even forget we ourselves have cursed.

I fear that we could first lose outrage. For example, some of us may begin considering corruption as endemic, prevalent, and an indispensible part of life as grease in the machinery. Therefore we should all just get used to it. A black and white picture of protagonists and antagonists in political leadership, business sex scandals, and showbiz triangles is hard to sustain. Dirt is dredged up from every angle and thrown against every side and it's hard to just believe in anybody in the limelight. Some of us just quit altogether. Some of us hate the whole spotlight personality thing. Some just throw their money on the best-smelling "hero" and just sticks with her no whatever she has done before or will do thereafter.

And maybe later, with the onslaught of more distractions from escapist media flooding whatever time is left from our routine-ridden days, we might just lose interest altogether. Or pack up and leave and later find ourselves just watching the show from a different, foreign angle. There just seems to be no room to act in this country. And when there is, the average Juana and Juan can't live decently in it.

Or pays too big a rent for it.

Closing one's ears temporarily or permanently running away from the horns and jams may be seen as defense mechanisms. The ethic of escape is entirely in the realm of moral debate. Economic realities are pressing and the offer of personal development seem greener from afar. Also, we cannot discount our Rizals who leave so that they can return.

Telling people to shut up is another thing. The aversion to the national din, I can understand, but the intolerance, I think, begs careful analysis. It is the equivalent of pushing people out of their struggles and dragging them into self-centered, disinterested lifestyles and narrow, G-spot focused worldviews. Sometimes it is a tune played yet again by conservatives. It could also be the song of favored lives ensconced in worlds that do not include the possibility of poverty amid their plenty. How dangerous it would be when even the average irritated man would just wish everyone would stop expressing themselves.

Silence is not a feature of any society with the pretention and conceit of free speech. Someone is always bound to speak about something. When we praise the freedom, we cannot but in the same breath accept the fact that the freedom will be exercised.

I think it's counterproductive to shoot the messengers just yet. I still believe commentators in general do not enjoy speaking or writing about the pain, misery, and suffering. I still believe that they don't sugarcoat the bitterness of truth because they don't see candies having anything to do with what's actually going on. And if not all of them can infuse hope in their messages, maybe that could be forgiven too.

Maybe we should learn to derive hope from these blooming (or booming) flowers. I've learned to grow happier with every number in those public polls from texted, e-mailed, or phoned-in votes. Even with these numbers are stacked on the other side of my chosen stand. It shows that we are not merely spectators and listeners. I most especially enjoy the man-on-the-street interviews and opinions solicited via phone or internet forums.

I see that although we do not yet have the structure to support a truly participative government, we may have it in ourselves to go beyond images and personalities and embrace principle and character. Discourse is alive beyond the cloisters of the academe and the favor of the government. These jousts are filled with ad hominems, ad misericordiams, and other fallacies (but then so is the academe and especially the government). I find here hope that we may shape our own struggles with reality and find renewed voices from throats and diaphragms other than our own. I find hope in the mere fact that we speak, that we involve our ideals even in causes perceived as lost. I find hope in the fact that some of us write to remind ourselves of what we think as right and present it for public scrutiny, trial, and (if we are so lucky) practice. I find hope in the very fact that we still communicate.

Despite the with-us-against-us rhetoric borrowed and perverted by the pretentious from the divine, we are challenged to think in our unique manner. And express accordingly. I have my own threshold and draw the line of public and the private when and where I see fit. I long for a cloistered or hermetic existence in a very special manner. But I have a severe case of horror vacui. I have learned to fear silence where there is space only to echo the proclamations of the men on top.

And words are put into my mouth.

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