Yonson: Satya

IN JULY 2017, I attended a six-week summer program in Athens, Ohio. One of the participants, a professor expressed his concern about the legendary President from Davao City. Another participant admired the President’s successful media campaign. Still, another professor indicated her disgust over the extrajudicial killings as solutions to the drug problem of the country. I was least disconcerted by these appraisals.

Later on in the program, I presented a paper on the Philippine mass media system in front of international journalism professors and experts in Ohio University. The overwhelming response to my report was, “how is the Philippine press reporting Duterte’s government?” My response went with a caveat.

Yesterday, while preparing for my class, I came across with the Sanskrit word, satya (truth). In Hinduism, satya is essential, and without it, the world and reality will fall apart. While the other religions have their say on the term, I find the Hindu meaning strong and powerful.

Should truth be a virtue of government? Or else perish. Should our officials be truthful, too? We cast the first boulder. Or is it right for citizens to demand truth from their government? Transparency and accountability. Is the Philippine press truthful in reporting the government? They try to be fair and balanced.

Is satya relative?

I go back to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon to answer these questions. The film presents four possible truths (the bandit’s, the wife’s, the samurai’s, and the woodcutter’s) leaving the audience perplexed. However, in the end, we realize that we need to experience truth before we can even trust someone else.

The millennial, having not experienced and understood the atrocities of the Marcos martial law, has no one else to turn to for the truth but social media. No one talked about the dictatorship then except for a few camps. We institutionalized the 1986 bloodless revolution as a holiday but never into our own national psyche. We commemorate August 21 and yet we forget the reason why. Must it take another 23,000 more deaths for us to see the truth?

The Marcoses never actually left in 1986, we just afforded them a paid grand vacation. Only a few were bothered when Imelda Marcos came back. We inspired them the audacity to run for the second highest office of the land – the vice presidency, no less. We even gave the tyrant a hero’s burial.

Satya is equated to dharma (morality, ethics, and law of righteousness). Dharma tells us what it is right and wrong, good and evil. All hell breaks loose at the sight of the Crying Widow of Palo. As for loyalists, look at Juan Ponce Enrile, he has completely gone full circle. Instead of mocking him, we admire his bravery and strength. We find pleasure at the expense of women being insulted and raped, of the Supreme Being as stupid and worthless, of the religious as evildoers, and so on.

We are divided as a nation. We never think as one country except when the ageing boxer-turned-senator fights his “last.” We always find fault in the successful one. Our collective moral fiber is decaying and before we know it, we will totally lose it.

Civilized society, like the Philippines, needs punarjanma (rebirth; renaissance). History shows us how nations deteriorated and became phoenixes with astounding results.

“Yes, the Philippine press covers and reports the Duterte government. But we need to rewire everyone to demand for satya, for Filipinos to look into their own dharma. Then and only then that our punarjama will find its most potent meaning,” I replied.

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