Friday, April 11, 2008 Seares: ‘Primal scream’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
IF radio talk shows tell us anything, people are angry.
The ZTE national broadband network scandal, with all its slime and stench, was gut-wrenching. Current uproar over supply and price of rice is confusing and infuriating.
And people are angrily talking about those issues.
Psychiatrists tell us there's a type of treatment in which the patient is made to "focus on repressed pain from infancy or childhood." What they call primal scream is "when a patient makes contact with the primal trauma thought to lie at the core of neurosis."
Filipinos are not neurotic. They're just angry. Words used on radio by plain people are words that could kill.
Source of rage
Rage comes from a nation abused again and again, with abusers gloating over their ability to get away with plunder and relishing their capacity to survive despite serial crimes of corruption and cover-up.
"Alienation, powerlessness, and fear," emotions vividly portrayed in Franz Kafka books, overwhelm many Filipinos who feel they are helpless against repetitive acts of oppression.
What to do when institutions that Filipinos have been taught to use don't work? The justice system flounders. Even the Supreme Court, packed with Gloria appointees, is not beyond suspicion or reproach. Impeachment is wasteful and inept.
Filipinos are angry because they know they are being had and they can't do anything about it unless they destroy institutions they're bound to protect.
In its popular use, primal scream is a "deeply felt cry of rage or pain." Screaming our heads off won't solve our ills but they may give us the sense of power to overcome.
