‘This missive from America was received on 19 August 1983 just when the Philippines was about to descend into the twilight of the Marcos regime ensorcelled by the June 1983 economic crisis followed by the Aquino assassination.’
I HAVE a colleague in the Philippines who thinks me a madman. He is too much a friend to say so directly but he hints with remarks about head in the clouds when it comes to my search for the idealistic in the practice of medicine. Yet this friend has directly aggravated my madness and acutely so, by sending me a biography of Jose Rizal, a physician who was the father of the Philippine Republic. If you do not know of Dr. Rizal you should, for then you may better judge a madness I shamelessly would spread to all my colleagues.”
The gentleman from 2525 N.W. Lovejoy St, Suite 404, Portland, OR 97210, USA found it: “Rizal was a scholar and a scientist. There are a number of species of animal life discovered by him and which bear his name. He applied his scholarship with implacable honesty to arousing his people from their stupor…Nor was he a monomaniac, for he held with the Greek belief, mens sana in corpore sano. He exercised regularly, at a time when it was considered beneath the dignity of a gentleman; he taught school, practiced outstanding medicine, remained deeply religious, loved women, never faltered in his respect of his family, fought off despair and cynicism in hopeless circumstances.”
This missive from America was received on 19 August 1983 just when the Philippines was about to descend into the twilight of the Marcos regime ensorcelled by the June 1983 economic crisis followed by the Aquino assassination. Be that as it may, the gentleman from Oregon may have been relieved but cured?
“So now you can see my madness. It is not that I aspire to Dr. Rizal’s greatness. I am not that mad, but I search for men like him who are alive and unselfishly struggling with the needs of people all over our world. Though my friend does not say so, many persons insist that nothing can be done. Nations are too set in their ways, institutions in their mindless momentum crush the future with the past. These realists insist on seeing things as they are, sordid, deteriorating, and inhumane, yet madman that I am, I stand on the example of Dr. Rizal to look over their heads to what may be: a commonwealth of understanding where power is servant to need and expressed love, the implicit goal of men’s and women’s behavior; a world in which thought has become understanding and passion become compassion. It is the madness that lies at the soul of medicine.” [Ralph Crawshaw, “Second Thoughts: Jose Rizal (1861-l 898),” J Chron Dis, Vol. 37, No. 4, 1984, pp. 311-312]
Sadly for the Filipinos of the 21st century, there is a different sort of madness that lies at the soul of medicine and public health: bureaucratism and narcissism. Recall: “Hindi, just respond to the offer professionally on the right not junior level; say no and explain why.
The offeror answered back devastatingly. Don’t ever, Duque, ever, question my motives.” [https://twitter.com/teddyboylocsin/status/1470320786942533633] And this: “On Hospitals’ Planned PhilHealth Holiday. What is wrong with PhilHealth? Everything. First, it should be headed by somebody who knows accounting and fund management… Second, the Senate inquiry on PhilHealth anomalies as a consequence of my ‘PhilWealth and the Department of Wealth’ privilege speech in 2019 resulted in the filing of criminal and administrative charges against top PhilHealth officials after we transmitted to Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra voluminous documents and other pieces of evidence that we gathered during the Senate Committee of the Whole hearings. Yet, more than two years had passed, and those cases are still pending either in the Ombudsman or Sandiganbayan.
As long as the wheels of justice grind at an irritatingly slow pace and the conviction and graft and corruption cases remains very low, we cannot expect corruption to abate, no matter how many Senate inquiries we conduct.” [http://legacy.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2021/1228_lacson1.asp]
In a different universe, the Filipinos would have heeded Rizal’s axiom: “Peoples and governments are correlated and complementary: a fatuous government would be an anomaly among righteous people, just as a corrupt people cannot exist under just rulers and wise laws.” [The Indolence of the Filipino by Jose Rizal]
In our universe, Rizal remains a subversive: “Life in the Philippines in Rizal’s day…remains vivid and relevant for the student of contemporary Philippine society.” And what did Fred W. Riggs cite in his review (“José Rizal, The Subversive (El Filibusterismo) by Leon Ma. Guerrero,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3, May, 1964, pp. 488-489)? Parts concerning Quiroga the Chinaman! The pimp of the–: “The Chinese nodded affirmation, but remarked that he had to do a good deal of bribing.” [XVI: The Tribulations of a Chinese. The Reign of Greed: Complete English Version of El Filibusterismo]
Rizal remains a subversive in a universe of panda-huggers. Should we not prefer a Rizal in a universe of dragon-slayers? Level 1 Multiverse or Level 1 Multiverse? [George F. R. Ellis, “Does the Multiverse Really Exist?” Scientific American, August 2011] How about a Level III multiverse (where “you can make reality branch and create whole universes by conducting quantum experiments”)? [Philipp Berghofer, Doctor Strange, the Multiverse, and the Measurement Problem]
In one of the multiverses exists the town of San Diego and this is the domain of Ibarra, Simoun, Basilio and Padre Damaso whose yuletide is as such: “Christmas day in the Philippines is, according to the elders, a fiesta for the children, who are perhaps not of the same opinion and who, it may be supposed, have for it an instinctive dread. They are roused early, washed, dressed, and decked out with everything new, dear, and precious that they possess–high silk shoes, big hats, woolen or velvet suits, without overlooking four or five scapularies, which contain texts from St. John…Afterwards, they are dragged from house to house to kiss their relatives’ hands. There they have to dance, sing, and recite all the amusing things they know, whether in the humor or not, whether comfortable or not in their fine clothes, with the eternal pinchings and scoldings if they play any of their tricks…But such is the custom, and Filipino children enter the world through these ordeals, which afterwards prove the least sad, the least hard, of their lives.” [VIII: Merry Christmas.
The Reign of Greed: Complete English Version of El Filibusterismo]
This is the world of Sisa: “But the madwoman did not yield. Bracing herself with her feet on the ground, she offered an energetic resistance. Basilio beat the gate with his fists, with his Mood-stained head, he wept, but in vain. Painfully he arose and examined the wall, thinking to scale it, but found no way to do so. He then walked around it and noticed that a branch of the fateful balete was crossed with one from another tree. This he climbed and, his filial love working miracles, made his way from branch to branch to the balete, from which he saw his mother still holding the gate shut with her head.” [LXIII: Christmas Eve. The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere]
More a job for the Genre-nauts than the Avengers. Anyway, Happy New Year.
