Which brings me to ask – in the tradition of this newfangled fixation with appropriating German (philosophical) terminology for the most inappropriate situations – what is the (modern) Filipino Weltanschauung on meat products?

Our Sein-zum-Fleisch (read: being-toward-meat) should, like our neighbors in the Pacific, should be towards fish-eating.  We are, after all, surrounded by water, and therefore we should be eating a lot of fish.  Our marine ecosystem is filled with a lot of edible fishes.  Heck, Jose Rizal’s favorite fish, per one of his biographers – Zaide, I believe – was the ayungin, which is something we don’t see very often in the fish markets of the modern Filipino nas-Markt.  Instead, we see canned tuna – Dosen-Tunfisch - in all of its variations, forms, and flavors.

The relationship of tuna with sauce is Gerwofenheit: thrown into the attendant peas and tomatoes and potatoes not presented or available by choice, but by those things being just there by instrumentality and being present-at-hand.  Vorhanden, so to speak: the tuna flakes are the same, it’s only the sauce that differs.

But this is not the point of this… discourse, if you will.  Like any luxury good, there is a high income elasticity of demand for pork, but such an overarching definition does not fully encapsulate the nuances of pork – much less meat – into our Zeitgeist.  Some fishes – and a lot of fishes, at that – are considerably more expensive than pork.  Or that some indigenous fishes have evolved into luxury goods by virtue of how they are preferred by the Western palate: once the galunggong was called a “round scad,” the labahita a “surgeonfish” and the kanduli a “cream dory,” the traditional fishes of the poor have been mixed into the general category of Asian-style soul food.  The most the poor have access to in terms of fish now generally come from a can, with the only marked difference – differance – would be the sauce that the mackerels would be cooked in.

But for those without religious and cultural restrictions to food, or discounting the absolute limit of poverty, pork is a staple source of protein.  Not only is it readily available, but it can also be as expensive and as cheap as you want it to be.  If you can’t afford the loins, you get the bones.  Lutong ulam businesses have fatty pork dishes because the fat is cheap, but there’s also a bit of meat there for the dish to be a suitable viand.  Whether or not this is reflective of Western tastes and the influence of colonization on the modern Filipino Zunge is debatable – I myself would be leaning towards the affirmative – but there are nuances to pork beyond mere luxury.  It is, outside of cultural and religious restrictions, a necessity, as long as the view of pork is more nuanced than just being a chop or a loin or a jowl or a plate of sisig.

And no, not for the modern Begeisterung towards “organic” goods – biotic vegetables and produce imported from somewhere – and not the native vegetables and produce grown here as part of the staples of Asian soul.  Things like the saluyot, the alugbati, the sitaw, bataw, patani that take the lowly, undeserved back seat for the modern noveau riche predilections toward things like celeriac and broccoli rabe.  Or tofu, reserved for those who can afford the slimming diet, and prioritize fitness over the fullness of the stomach.  And it’s not like we’re “carnivorous” either: the viand flavors the carbohydrate source, after all.  The few shreds of meat should be enough, if not for matchbox-sized portions we’ve been taught to consume in Gesundheits-Klasse.

The (modern) Filipino Weltanschauung on meat can be summed up this way: pork, like any meat, can be a luxury.  It can be a necessity, depending on how we see it as an instrument in our nutrition as individuals, as families, or as a people.

Of course it could have just started and ended that way, but the very inappropriate use of German neologisms and misappropriations made it more Geistigen klingenden, in my estimation.  Perhaps even deliberately oberflächlich.  Oh well, komme was wolle.

That said, they just came up with the official jingle to “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.”

There’s probably one in the works, but this is just me taking a crack at it.  Here goes…

Are your feet starting to get itchy
Ready to leave, saunter, and come aboard?
You’re from here, you’re so lucky
As many happenings
As there are islands

It’s more fun in the Philippines
You don’t have to go far
You know you wear fortunate slippers
Your feet are on paradise

It’s more fun in the Philippines
You don’t have to go far
From Batanes all the way to Jolo
It’s a special fun for the Filipino
It’s more fun in the Philippines

Everything’s here, you don’t need a furlough
The seas are deep, and happiness is shallow
And it’s very obvious, you are a Filipino
Your smile reaches the heavens
We’re a race of happiness…

It’s more fun in the Philippines
You don’t have to go far
You know you wear fortunate slippers
Your feet are on paradise

It’s more fun in the Philippines
You don’t have to go far
From Batanes all the way to Jolo
It’s a special fun for the Filipino
It’s more fun in the Philippines

As many happenings
As there are islands

It’s more fun in the Philippines
You don’t have to go far
You know you wear fortunate slippers
Your feet are on paradise

It’s more fun in the Philippines
You don’t have to go far
From Batanes all the way to Jolo
It’s a special fun for the Filipino
It’s more fun in the Philippines

Okay, for the “fortunate slippers” part, I just translate, I’m not a songwriter.

Now before we call it “rabble-rousing” – as Billy Esposo puts it – let’s look at the whole thing in terms of its merits.  Since our politics is characterized by some level of “personal relationship” – i.e., we vote for the President directly – we need to see the President personally when necessary, and we need his personality to be out front and upfront.

Erap Estrada, for example, was a populist through and through: here was a guy who would not hesitate to get down and dirty with the masses to be in touch with them, which made him so loved and somehow reviled.  Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, at that, wasn’t exactly the good ol’ boy that Erap was, but she knew the necessity of kissing babies and photo-ops whenever she was giving away relief goods to old women in disaster areas.

Erap was accused of everything from being a philanderer to a gladhanding politico in the business of handing out favors to everyone, but not for being a man so detached from the people.  Gloria was accused of everything from being corrupt to being a manipulator, but not accused of being lazy.  The thing is that you cannot accuse Aquino of corruption or graft, but yet he stands accused of the things that his successors cannot be accused of.

So Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda answered back: “The President continues to do working [sic] in spite of whatever is happening in the social media.“  Sure he does: the President doesn’t have to pander to the Twitterati or to have an open house for bloggers in Malacanang Palace to see the President at work.  Noynoying is not about social media: it’s about people taking to social media to express their displeasure about a President who’s not there when disaster strikes, or when calamity is afoot, or when his reassuring presence is necessary for people to see that he is a working President.  Photographing the President signing papers at the wake of a “Noynoying” trend doesn’t cut it, either.

It may not be something we all agree with, but the physical presence of a high official in a time where he is needed has great value in boosting the public morale.  Not that we expect him, for example, to negotiate for the freedom of hostages or that he’s excellent at packing relief goods that him being in a Red Cross headquarters would double the packing output.

But this isn’t just about PR or photo ops, but about having that stern, authoritative stand that comes with knowing the public pulse, and making decisions from that pulse.  It’s not about propaganda or anything, but the effective communication the achievements and the progress of the President’s administration leaves a lot to be desired.  From a motherhood construct it’s for the President to be there, be the reassuring presence.  From the nitty-gritty it’s about the staff crunching numbers, setting the logistics, or communicating – in plain language and situations that everyone can relate to – what “having a stable currency” means, or why such an action for oil price hikes is warranted and necessary.  Put simply, if it means taking action the President must come to the most prudent, necessary action.  He doesn’t have to pander, he doesn’t have to coddle, but he has to act, and communicate that action.  Again, it should be an action that comes from the public pulse.

Maybe we can’t escape the fact that every now and then we have to be one with the people, that we need to be reassuring presences for them, that we need to talk their language.  As much as we decry its ill effects or consider it “posturing,” that physical, tangible reassurance forms a crucial part of that necessary social capital that Aquino needs to have in order to secure the trust and confidence of the people.  Surely the President doesn’t have to accede to the demands of every lobby group or political element in the spectrum, and surely he doesn’t have to coddle the people, but his presence – his reassuring presence that he is working – needs to be there.  Somehow, if we’re going to accuse him of anything wrong with the nation today, it should be of anything but indolence.

Politics is, in many ways, an exercise in perception.  And managing perceptions is part of that package.  For a President who won on the basis of perceptions… well, the dots are out there somewhere.

This is a story often repeated in the realm of good intentions. Whether it’s about mining or fishing or hunting or kaingin, the struggles of advocacy are never as simple as a battle between good and evil. Rather, it’s a battle of discourses and viewpoints that, apparently, can be rendered “fair and balanced” by presenting two extreme positions. Positions that, in a way, betray bias, privilege, upbringing, proximity, relevance, and among other things, intention.

The forum, I think, should have been an invitation to a more important question at hand:

Who should answer the question, “Why mining?”

Should it be MVP, who probably could not speak in behalf of an indigent villager panning gold? Should it be Gina Lopez, who probably cannot rage against families in the small-scale mining industry, mining and panning from deep water-filled holes for years with only the aid of a siphon and a compressor pump? Or should it be that guy who directly suffers the consequences of having a home near the vicinity of a mine and have his life changed forever, for better or for worse?

For me, this is not a debate of whether or not an anti-mining advocate should stop wearing gold jewelry or any other non sequitur posturing as a logical correlation of values and arguments. This is a debate of the participation in debate, where the concerns and lives of people directly affected by a mining project are deliberately excluded from the conversation. It reeks, I believe, of the penchant of the center to make judgments and decisions – judgments and decisions that affect lives – in behalf of the periphery.

And this happens all the time: the deliberate exclusion of the women, children, the poor, and the indigenous peoples – far away from the center of economics and politics – from a conversation that directly affects them more so than it will affect us. They are the ones directly affected by the decisions we make in behalf of them, whether it’s a matter of policy or advocacy.

And the list of it has a wider scope than mining issues: animal rights (say, the eating of dog meat and exotic game), consumer welfare (say, the use of traditional medicine), labor (say, wage boards), education (say, the language spoken in the classroom), women’s rights (say, the importance of women in the decision-making process and policy), technology (say, traditional irrigation systems that have purified wells for centuries), and so on and so forth. And while we have enough representation for the excluded in the form of advocates and cause-oriented groups, we have yet to come to a point where the efforts of those who “know better,” or those with the ability to do so – more specifically the government – would give the excluded a voice of their own. Not echoes or whispers made in the realm of good intentions.

We have yet to come to a point where we acknowledge that the marginalized and those in the periphery can provide us with the help and insight that we need the most, especially in matters of policy and a very public debate on very public issues. That in a battle of extreme positions, they are the middle ground.

But what we have at the moment are two extreme positions that do not represent the middle ground. It’s a ground that would have been covered by the presence of people – real people – whose real lives would be affected by a mining policy. I think it’s time to ask the people what they want and what they need, and for all of us to come to a compromise for us to reach our mineral needs while a policy exists for them to meet their material needs of a mining project, with all the science and engineering and indigenous knowledge left to the technological know-how of those who know it most and best. And for that matter, making sure that the benefits of an environmentally-compliant, sustainable mining policy benefits those in the periphery.

At the very least, however, it behooves us to understand that the balance and the middle ground that we’re all looking for in the way of a national mining policy is not one to be found in putting two extreme positions against each other, praying for a synthesis. It’s in inviting those on that middle ground to the conversation: to hear them out, and for once, be on their realm.

To speak pidgin to a Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker. But, I will be told, there is no wish, no intention to anger him. I grant this; but it is just this absence of wish, this lack of interest, this indifference, this automatic manner of classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivizing him, decivilizing him, that makes him angry.

I believe that race is an antiquated, simplistic, and naive concept. Race has no scientific significance; we all belong to the same genus, the same species, and the color of our skin is a consequence of genetic variation. Yet as a social construct, race is very powerful: it classifies us qualitatively and subjectively. It creates a context within a whole set of contexts, forcing us to act and behave and achieve according to the expectations of dominant, discriminating forces. In a way, we become nothing more than the color of our skin.

All this, of course, should pertain to a particular men’s magazine cover, but I’d like to deep into it a little further. Maybe overthink it a bit, and snap a few branches from the learning tree along the way.

I think that a critique to the cover should extend itself to every social construct and artifact that has to do with bleaching the “brown Filipino skin;” or for that matter, having that discourse around anyway. There’s this legend that says that we were baked in the heavenly oven by God to come up with a golden-brown tan, as opposed to an undercooked Caucasian and a burnt Negro. Some of us have been taught how to classify people as “Caucasoid,” “Negroid,” and “Mongoloid.” It reeks, to me, of indifference because the stereotypes used to classify people physically extend to the stereotypes used to classify people in the social realm. You have Hitler’s “Aryan Race,” you have the justification of slavery in America, and even medical diagnosis finding firm footing in race.

But this isn’t just a question of colonial mentality: this is a question rooted at the very foundations of class conflict and class struggle, where the concept of race breeds and thrives. To go back to Fanon, the very notion that we can simplify our humanity on the basis of complexion, and simplify the products of our humanity on the basis of skin color, should be an oxymoron into how “modern” we really are. Take the simplicity of associations between skin color and human value: white, clear, flawless, blemish-free skin is kutis-mayaman, and that the toiling masses, the atsay of Nora Aunor movies, are depicted in hues of sunburned brown skin. Or commercials: how affordable glutathione is, or how papaya soap can be used all over the body to get “perfect” skin, or “before” and “after” pictures.

But what is “race” here, anyway? Our experience of racism, while we share in the empathy and struggle for civil rights, is radically different from the experience of racism by blacks (if that is the point of comparison). We were colonized, in our own land, losing our sense of cultural uniqueness and adopting the colonizers’ cultural views as our own. That they are white, so we must be white. That they have white women in their magazines and advertisements, so should we. It is our experience that colonizes our thinking and feeling, because we are engendered to become subjects to – and subjects of – this idea of race.

The ideology of pale skin is not just about “white supremacy” or “colonial mentality,” but that white skin is one of wealth, of material things, of the control of the lives of people with skin colors other than white or skin tones other than fair, of ownership of discourse and the monopoly on the means of production. Again, it’s the simplicity of our binary oppositions at work: that to have white skin means to be wealthy, that the fair-skinned shouldn’t toil in the field or scrub floors, or of maid’s uniforms and sidekicks and extras. For us to reach the same wealth, the same status, the same achievements, the same spots in the social ladder, we must bleach and be seen bleaching.

This is not an attack on a magazine cover – heaven knows how many of those exist in so many other magazines and publications – but an attack on the talk that validates and reinforces race as something true, factual, and empirical. This is an attack on our subjection, our subordination, our colonization, and most of all, our classification. Race attacks our humanity, to the point that something so elementary as soap can promise to change our race by making us whiter.

It is this essentialism – this reduction of our being, and for that matter, the being of a woman (and a Filipina for that matter) – as a hue and a color and a complexion where our humanity is severely distorted by just one characteristic we are not in control of. Whitewashed, so to speak, and imprisons us for lack of understanding of just how diverse we really are. That in the conversation about complexion, we do betray our own prejudices in the process.

Again, our “modern” and “liberated” society is hinged on a contradiction of fuzzy logic. And I can speak for it on the basis of personal experience: surely, with my complexion, my non-use of whitening products, and the occasional purchase of a lad mag, I couldn’t have been one of those golden-brown pieces of dough that God plucked out from the oven, breathed life into, and called a “Filipino.”

The question – and the solution – is how to elevate the discussion beyond race.

Whenever I write about the 1986 EDSA Revolution, I tend to underscore one thing: I am part of the generation that grew up after it all happened. At the time, I was seven months old. Suffice to say, I wasn’t in EDSA. I have no EDSA story to tell.

Yet if anything it is my generation that was taught the most about EDSA. It was my generation that reaped what was sowed on the streets on those four days, and the years that led to it. We were the first generation of Filipinos that grew up with no living memory of what it’s like to not be under the iron hand of Asia’s most infamous – and venerated – dictator.

My teachers and professors all shared an impression of Marcos that somehow stuck: an articulate man commanding of so much respect whose intentions for a “mandate for greatness” was marked by human flaws, like the thirst for power and the desire for great personal gain. He was “the greatest president the Philippines could have ever had,” if not for a catalog of reasons that included, among other things, Martial Law.

Like many others my age, I lived my life as a citizen of the Philippines in the shadows of the public history of Marcos, and in the light of those who overthrew him from the seat power and tried – tried their best and darndest – to make a democratic society work. And years – and presidents – have passed and we somehow have this thought that maybe it was better during Marcos’ time, what with graft and corruption at a high, and public confidence in institutions and officials at a low.

Could we use a return to the time of Marcos? I’m not so sure of that: all I know of Marcos are the portrayals of curtailed freedom and the excesses of his family and cronies in the history books. I never got to live under Marcos while he loomed powerfully and mightily over the nation. I did live during a time where somehow, our collective conscience triumphed and we overthrew Asia’s strongman to live by ideals higher than ourselves. And when this collective conscience stumbled under the weight of lost memories and a recalcitrant attitude to the lessons of the past, it’s our generation that suffered the most. We woke up, I think, to the graft and corruption and incompetence that pervades our society today. So much so that without that great sense of remembering, we grow up to take it for granted and lose our ideals. Or rather, the ideals of those who fought for EDSA and fought – died, for that matter – for the Filipino.

This is why I choose to remember EDSA; not because I want to open up old wounds, but because I want to know how those wounds came to be, that when the time comes for my generation would lead the nation, we would not suffer in the same way or even in worse ways. I choose to remember EDSA because for better or for worse, what was fought for in the streets at the time are the things and ideals that were taught to us to be what we should strive for. I choose to remember EDSA not because I want to revise that history, but because I want to revisit it: that only from knowing and remembering from the experiences of those in the streets who chose to depose Marcos and stand for freedom and justice and the power of the people will I know of – and value – the freedoms that I enjoy today. And when you do not remember – when you forget – you will end up making the same mistakes.

Sure, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and blue skies in February 25, 1986, but it sure isn’t the same today, what with all the animus that makes us enemies and everyone else making every reason to show why we failed when once we did succeed. Or calling it all a failure when those who say the same do not remember, or perhaps did not learn from all those who risked life and limb in the bloodless revolt of EDSA 1986.

My EDSA story is one learned from books, from classrooms, from the stories told all over me as I grew up, 26 years after it all happened. I remember EDSA because I have no story to tell, but the stuff of legend that grew from the flowers and rosaries and the human chains at EDSA then means one thing: that my generation will, one day, have a defining moment.

We will have, one day, a story to tell. We can only hope that when we tell that story, it won’t be forgotten this fast.