Coffee and Transgender people

One of the more hot topics recently involves the question of whether transgender men and women should be allowed to participate in events specific to a certain gender. The question was sparked more recently by Ms. Spain of the Ms. Universe pageant, who was born male and now identifies as a woman (transgendered women). It was then fueled by posts of transgendered women who compete in women's sporting events and completely dominate in their sport, with one report of a female MMA fighter who suffered a broken skull from a transgendered female MMA fighter.

The recurring theme of these posts is, "Where do we draw the line?" I get the point made by some of my friends when they say that in the Ms. Universe pageant, being biologically female isn't as important as what is important for a pageant winner is her voice in representing certain humanitarian causes. However, the line still needs to be drawn somewhere. There have already been athletes, born male, but compete in women's sports and dominate. There's also been in the UK, a man who was convicted of rape but since he identifies as a woman, was placed in a women's facility where to absolutely no one's surprise, this person raped a bunch of the inmates.

This story is truly disgusting:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/11/transgender-prisoner-born-male-sexually-assaulted-female-inmates/

Now, I'm not saying that all transgendered men and women are like this. They are NOT. Many, I believe, are good people with good hearts. But it's practically unchallenged that a line must be drawn somewhere. Some draw the line at sports and crime sentencing, which I find very arbitrary. It's not based on anything really except feelings, which are arbitrary. I understand that the goal of inclusion and acceptance is a noble one - no doubt about that. But we must remember why is it that we think it's a good thing to include and accept these people as their chosen gender?

At the very bottom of the issue is one I think everyone agrees on. We care for the well being of these people and want the best for them. If they truly believe that they are the gender they say they are, wouldn't the most loving option for anyone be acceptance and acknowledgement? Some people would answer in the affirmative. I say "No."

In no other case of where a person believes something false about their body is the treatment to reinforce and acknowledge the false belief. There are women who believe that they are too fat and so vomit out anything they eat or choose to not eat at all. In this case, we do not reinforce their false belief. There are people who truly believe they are disabled when nothing is wrong with them (BIID). In this case, we do not reinforce their false belief. In fact, in all these cases, the most loving action one could take to make these people realize that their false beliefs are in fact false. Why do we make an exemption for transgendered men and women? If you ask me, I would simply draw the line at biology.

Now, people who think my beliefs are false, gladly point out what they think my false beliefs are. In this case, I know I'm not perfect and I may indeed hold false beliefs. But let's not confuse this with hate. Think I'm wrong? Talk to me about it. Truth be told, I can't write down all my ideas so I'm looking forward to listening to someone. I'm all ears. If you disagree with me, let's have coffee.

Miss Representing Women

Recently, Miss Philippines won the title of Miss Universe and as expected, the whole country is excited. I personally missed the announcements of Top 20, Top 10, Top 5 and the Q&A portion but I know enough to know that Miss Philippines won the title. What these ladies go through to prepare for the competition is something a man can't fully understand. Or that was the case until quite recently.

Miss Spain, I've come to know, was born male and then "transitioned" to being a woman. I put the quotes on "transitioned" as I think no one can truly transition. Now, Angela Ponce (Miss Spain), has received a lot of criticism and though I may agree with a lot of them, maybe it's time we reevaluate how we approach this issue.

Angela Ponce is an individual and must be treated as such. He believes he was born into the wrong body and is a woman. Fine. A lot of people in the LGBT community will say that he shouldn't get hate for being who he really is and we should all acknowledge that he's a woman and if we don't, that's offensive or hateful.

This is quite problematic. The idea here is that people hate this person for saying he's a woman. When I look at the concerns of some people I know though, they couldn't care less what he thinks. What people care about more is, "Are we really feeding this delusion?" Yes, it's a delusion. I am a 29-year old Filipino man who's 5'8" cm tall. Every part of that sentence tells you something about myself that I cannot change - or what we call immutable characteristics. If one day I announce to my family that I'm a 16-year old Korean girl who's 4'11", the most loving thing that my friends and family could ever do is to snap me out of my delusion. Far from being hurtful, reinforcing the truth back to me would be one of the most loving things those closest to me could ever do. The thing about every single part of the description I gave is that it's all backed by something scientific.

I know I'm 29 years old because I was born in 1989. I know I'm Filipino because I was born to Filipino parents. I know I'm a man because I have a penis and every single cell in my body have XY chromosomes. I know I'm 5'8" because I was born after the meter stick was invented. It really is just that simple.

At the end of the day, Angela Ponce is a man in a dress and sorry to say this but he is misrepresenting women.

Text out of Context

I realized lately that I'm one who is easily triggered. I see something online that I disagree with and automatically click on the comment box and start typing out a response. I've stopped actually responding to posts as I've seen it as a waste of time. So now, I usually just ask them out to coffee (see Coffee and Abortion) or write down my thoughts here and then link them to this blog.

A common theme I see in memes are taking the text out of context. Back when I would respond to online atheists who cite Biblical verses, I always tell them that they have to consider the context and I proceed to explain to them the context but this always falls on deaf ears. Some of them would just say, "Here comes the 'context' excuse."

I laugh about it now since I know better but context is never an excuse. Context is what makes the text more meaningful. I assure you, any Bible verse, opinion article, or line from any politician's speech, taken out of context can be spun to say anything you want it to say. Let me give you a demonstration.

St. Ignatius of Loyola made this prayer which says, "Teach me to give and no to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and ask not for reward..."

Right now, no one takes this out of context but with the right spin, we can change it to make it as if St. Ignatius was telling slaves to remain slaves. I mean, "to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and ask not for reward..." sounds a lot like slavery to me!

And this is super easy to do. If you're listening to a speak, one just needs to be triggered for a split second to catch whatever was said and throw away the rest of what was heard. This happens a lot to the pope, and to the Bible. I can do it again as an example!

Psalm 14:1 says "There is no God." So Christians, it's game over! It's right there in the text!

Here's one which triggered me quite a while back and I just had to respond:

These ones are easily answered. For Psalm 14:1, the context lies in the exact same verse. And the meme above is brought to us by not reading the Bible at all and considering memes like this as truth. As much as I'd like to point to you, dear reader, where the answer lies, I think it best to leave it to you to crack open that Bible and verify your facts.

Here's another one of my favorite "out of context" texts from the Bible. Think about it and understand the context. Try to read the verses surrounding the text and see if you can find the context in which this was written. (Disclaimer: the views expressed after this disclaimer are not views I hold)

Exodus 21:20-21 says,

"Whoever strikes his male or female servant with a staff, and if they have died by his hand, he shall be guilty of a crime. But if he survives for one day or two, he shall not be subject to punishment, because it is his money."

Here is a clear indication in the Bible that slavery should be allowed and that they are worth less than people since it says slaves can be beaten up just as long as they don't die.

Think about it. Take all the time you need.

10 Rules of Coffee and Abortion

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that coffee and abortion discussions should be a common occurrence for friends and family to discuss certain topics without the help of the internet. As such, I've decided to make a simple guide on how to make coffee and abortion discussions the most productive. Here are my 10 rules for Coffee and Abortion.

Rule No. 1    The goal is NOT to convince people.

The goal of Coffee and Abortion is to open our worldview and see certain issues from all possible perspectives. If you're born Christian and have been your whole life, talking to someone of a different faith may give you a more holistic worldview.

Rule No. 2    Listen with your eyes, ears and face

Coffee and Abortion discussions are a response to online discussions where lack the face to face interaction. Listen to the other person's words and see with your eyes their facial expressions. These facial ques are lost in the comment threads. A certain issue may affect someone in your group on a highly personal level so be sensitive to those things.

Rule No. 3    Don't raise your voice

If you've said something once, saying again in a higher volume won't make much of a difference. You may, however, repeat a point to stress it more.

Rule No. 4    Prepare palette cleansers

If you're talking about abortion for 2 hours, you might want to talk about other things during a break. Games can help with this as well.

Rule No. 5    Give other people their time to talk and respect it

If the goal of Coffee and Abortion is to have a different perspective, you actually get less out of the experience if you're monologue the whole time. If you wish to monologue, I suggest you become a priest or a pastor. Those guys can talk for days!

Rule No. 6    Criticize the idea, NOT the person

Ad hominem attacks are sometimes easy to dole out when you've run out of your own arguments. Coffee and Abortion doesn't conclude with a "And the winner of this debate is ..." Focus on the arguments presented and pick them apart. Dissect them for all their worth.

Rule No. 7    Coffee NOT Alcohol

Though coffee is not an essential part of the discussion, the discussion may go off on several off tangent points if alcohol is involved. Alcohol has the effect of having the drinker break all the other rules in this list so I'd advice against it. If alcohol is involved, however, set a maximum number of drinks per person.

Rule No. 8    Set a time to end the discussion and stick to it

This rule helps keep the first rule that people tend to forget. If you have a boundless discussion, you might end up with people trying to convince other people how wrong they are and again, that is not the goal of this discussion.

Rule No. 9    Avoid off tangent topics

If the issue being discussed is abortion, talking about women's rights may lead to talking about divorce. AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS. If you wish to talk about divorce, schedule it during your next Coffee and Abortion discussion

Rule No. 10   End with a smile since you've just learned something new

Congrats! You've just broadened your worldview and may have broadened someone else's. The goal has been achieved and while there are no winners, you gained something. Smile, laugh, thank everyone for their contribution and probably schedule the next one.

I hope more and more people will try out some Coffee and Abortion discussions. I believe this is sorely lacking in our society now and hopefully, it'll take off.

Mixing Sports and Politics

The UP Fighting Maroons aren't best known for their men's basketball team. This year, however, they not only managed to get to final four of the UAAP but they managed a spot in the finals. As expected, the UP community is just exploding with excitement especially prior to game 1 of the finals.

This is UP's first finals appearance in 32 years. ADMU, on the other hand, is used to this thing. Back in college, I remember we would simply route for ADMU in the finals as they were our closest neighbors and most of my friends were from ADMU. If UP students would see students from other schools, most likely, they'd be from ADMU as all the other UAAP schools were far away.


Maybe it's just that UP hasn't seen many UAAP finals but just a few days before game one, the UP student council made a call for students to wear black to protest violence, impunity and misogyny. Apparently, the ADMU Sanggu made the same call to their students.

I think this is a bad idea. Let's let basketball be basketball and let politics be politics. I feel very uncomfortable letting sports events become platforms for political statements and agendas. I'm not taking away from those causes but there is a time and a place. And as much as we'd want to fight against violence, a basketball game is not the place to do such a thing.

The fighting maroons have worked so hard this season to get to where they are now. And so have the blue eagles! This finals is their time to shine! UP, especially who had to fight an uphill battle to get where they are. Let them be the stars of the finals. Let's reserve our protests for another day.

UP students and alumni, wear maroon and wear it proud. ADMU students and alumni, wear blue and wear it as proud as you'd always been. To both schools, whatever the results of the finals, let's maintain our close friendship and fight together to build a better Philippines for tomorrow.

I will personally be cheering on the fighting maroons even when most of my friends are from the Ateneo. Win or lose, the maroons will leave this season achieving something great. I can't for Game 3.

Upsilon and their leaked thread

Last week, news broke out over leaked conversations between members of one of the fraternities of my alma mater which we just call Upsilon. Now, I haven't read much of the threads but I did see enough to make me vomit a bit and taste the vomit then swallow and vomit a bit again. Sorry for the imagery but it was really that bad.

The part where these Upsolinians were in the wrong is undisputed. People called them out for being misogynistic. On that point, I totally agree with the reactions online. But something about the whole affair went unsettled with me.

I opened my FB messenger and did some reflection. Have I ever insulted anyone or any group of people on any of my FB threads? Now, I don't think I have as I generally just use messenger to follow group conversations. But I do see some insensitive things being said here and there. Nothing close to the misogyny displayed by some Upsilonians, but enough to give myself pause.

Everyone is talking about how abhorent the Upsilonians behaved yet really all we have are words being said in private. This isn't a case of Upsilonians going out and actually mistreating women on campus. I'm not one to make generalizations but at the very least, the Upsilonians I do know are very good people who respect women and homosexuals. At most, what we have is a relatively small group of Upsilonians who are guilty of viewing women as objects and a large group of Upsilonians who are simply trying to either cover up the situation or deny it.

What I find more disturbing is that no one I've seen online seems concerned about the Upsilonian's rights. The fact that their private conversation was hacked and posted online is a clear cut violation of their right to privacy and their right of expression. They may not be expressing good ideas but I stand by the idea that we should protect their rights to express whatever wrong ideas they have. It's actually right in our very own constitution - right there in the bill of rights.

Why I find this so disturbing is that the silence is deafening and it seems to me no one is willing to speak out in defense of Upsilon because of the fear of being branded as a misogynist or a homophobe. Let's get one thing clear - we as a people should always fight for everyone's rights (the real ones, not the made up ones - this gives me an idea for another post) regardless if they're in the right or in the wrong. Remember, if the law cannot protect the worst of us, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I hate that it's come to this where it's okay to break the law so long as something good will come out of it. Two wrongs DO NOT make a right and if we start thinking that way, I fear for you and whoever disagrees with you.

A non-religious case AGAINST divorce

Divorce is a tricky topic. On one hand, people acknowledge that it's a sad thing when marriages don't work out yet. On the other, we acknowledge that we need to protect people who are in abusive relationships. I am against divorce in the Philippines and unlike 98% of people out there, I'm against it for reasons OTHER than religious reasons. As such, some friends of mine have rightfully pointed out that such arguments can't be found online. These arguments almost always revert to, "God says it's not right" and we have got to realize that this argument WILL NOT and SHOULD NOT convince our policy makers.

This post will be longer than usual as I feel that to get to being against divorce, I'll have to start from the very beginning.

For divorce, we need to start, as with all things, its definition. What is divorce? Divorce is the dissolution of marriage by a court or other competent body. In the case of the state, it would be the courts.

What then is marriage? Now, I know I might get flak for saying this but marriage is the union between a man and a woman. A MAN AND A WOMAN. Not two men, not two women, not three people, and notice that love is NOT a requirement. There is a reason for this but for now, I'll simply pose the question, "Why do you think that across all cultures worldwide, marriage has always between a man and a woman?". Even in cultures where polygamy is allowed, the marriage is always between the husband and the wife and not between the woman and her husband's wives. The next question I'd like to ask, which for some reason no one is asking, is this:

"Why does the state recognize marriages? Why does the state have a vested interest in who's married to whom? Why is marriage held in such high regard in our own constitution?"

Where else to find the answer but in our constitution?

Article 15, Section 2.
"Marriage, as an inviolable social institution, is the foundation of the family and shall be protected by the State."

The family is an immutable part of the human experience. Put simply, we cannot change it. We have to work together with the family as opposed to going against it. Consequently, the state should recognize that marriage is intrinsically tied to family (being the foundation of which) should always work with marriage and never against it. Evidence of this assertion is found in biology. Even with IVF (which isn't available everywhere and can be very expensive), more than 99.7% of the world population is a product of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. Put simply, it is only in the union of a man and a woman that a new human life is made and thus, a family is made. It is thus very natural for us humans to see that marriage (between a man and a woman) is indeed tied directly to the family and the two are inseparable.

And even without this fact being spelled out in the constitution, it doesn't take a PhD to recognize that families are founded on marriages. We can easily see this in our language. When couples get divorced, we usually call that family, a broken one. The same is never said about single parent households where one of the parents died. In other words, it is the family that the state should protect and as it needs to protect the family, it should therefore protect marriage and both are tied together.

It is therefore very illogical for the state to claim to protect the family while allowing a couple an easy way out of their marriages. In such a case, the state is simply making it very much easier for people to belong to broken families, should the state allow divorce in any case.

Why then should the state protect the family as opposed to not caring at all? What is it that the family has that the state should have a vested interest in protecting? We usually see the state as being concerned with things such as the economy, security and, peace and order. Everything else the state should be doing should tie into one or a few of these. In fact, that's why we expect the state to have policies on public health, education and the environment! A healthier population will produce better for the economy. An educated population will contribute greatly to the economy and to peace and order. Environmental laws ensure that the economy performs well in the future as well as the present. Where does the family factor to all of this?

The basic reason we have family laws at all is that it ensures our country has a future at all! The family is naturally tied to the production of new Filipinos - this is why across all cultures all throughout history, family has always been one father, one mother, and their children. It's been shown through criminal records that children from broken families - ones where the parents are separated or left behind by the father - are more likely commit crimes compared to children from families that are in tact. For this, several sources can be cited but for brevity, I'll simply link to the article which cites these studies:

http://marripedia.org/effects_of_fatherless_families_on_crime_rates#fn__7
http://marripedia.org/effects_of_family_structure_on_crime

Now, I'm not saying that children from intact marriages are all angels and those from broken ones are demons in the making. Such is absolutely NOT the case. It is just that from the date a have, children from broken families have a higher incidence of crime than those from intact ones. As such, the state has absolutely NO INCENTIVE in promoting divorce or the dissolution of marriage under any circumstance. Marriage.com lists the most common reasons for divorce and lists abuse at the tail end. Almost all of the top 9 reasons can be solved through means other than divorce. I mean, weight gain? Really? (Source: https://www.marriage.com/advice/divorce/10-most-common-reasons-for-divorce/). I fear that if divorce was to be legalized here, you'll have several couples breaking up over the wife's spending habits, the husband's hanging out with friends, and more trivial things like a pet dog or piece of furniture. Call me crazy but these things have in fact happened.

Now, the only case I found compelling in legalizing divorce is in cases where the marriage has become so toxic that it affects the children negatively and abuse. The state does have the duty to protect all of its citizens and maybe divorce may be the only way to protect the children and in many cases, the mother from an abusive father. However, here's what's wrong with this case. Divorce may cease the spousal relationship but it cannot stop the paternal and maternal relationships. The father will always be the father of his kids no matter how abusive he may be. Philippine law already has a provision for legal separation but stops short of dissolving marriages. As such, the couple remains married but do not maintain the same household and it protects the core family from otherwise destructive behavior. However, both husband and wife cannot remarry (at least legally).

Divorce packages itself as one of the essential women's rights alongside other things. But like some of the women's rights, it forgets something more important - children's rights. We often forget that one person's right ends where someone else's begins. Children have the right to grow up in as healthy as possible a household. Divorce threatens this and as such, we shouldn't allow it to become legal in our country. The Philippines is the last country in the world to not allow divorce aside from the Vatican (and really, that doesn't count). People often say we have it backwards here because of this. I say, we're the only ones who got it right.

My first ever shiny Pokemon

Right now, I'm 29. Back when Pokemon came out in 1996, it was the in thing. As I didn't have my own Gameboy or Pokemon game, or Pokemon cards, my enjoyment of Pokemon as a young boy was primarily through other people who had the game and I'd watch as they played through Pokemon Red, Blue or Yellow. I didn't even watch the anime so my enjoyment of the Pokemon games was purely from a third person perspective.

I didn't mind though and when the next fad came along, everyone else moved on as well. I was lucky enough in college to download an emulator and I was able to play through my first Pokemon game shortly after college in 2011 - Pokemon Fire Red. I refused to play the other games as I really only knew the original 150 and Fire Red was set in the same region as Red/Blue/Yellow so I knew the maps ahead of time by heart.

I was playing through the game normally and casually (I never even knew people played Pokemon hard core) and I knew what kind of team I wanted to assemble. One of my Pokemon would be a Kadabra so the first area you find an Abra is north of Cerulean City so I went there to go Abra hunting. Now, Abras are tricky to catch. If you don't incapacitate them fast enough, they'll just teleport away. I had a specific kind of Abra in mind as well. I wanted one with a specific ability and one that was male. So if I chanced upon a female, I'd escape the battle. After I'd catch a bunch, I'd go to the PC and check if the Abras I caught had the abilities I wanted. I picked one and it was that Abra I trained and evolved into a Kadabra.

It wasn't until I was going to fight Koga that I noticed something strange every time I sent out my Kadabra. Stars would fly around it and his shoulder pads were more purple than the brown I expected Kadabras to have. What's more, when I'd look through my party, there was this small star that the other Pokemon in my party didn't have. I thought it was some sort of bug that I needed to have fixed or something. Little did I know, the Kadabra I had just trained from an Abra was a shiny one.

I googled, "stars fly when Pokemon sent out" and I had my answer right away. I didn't even know that shiny Pokemon was a thing. The old Gameboy games didn't have color so this was all really new to me. I found out that you could get shiny Pokemon from breeding 1 in 8,192 times and catching one in the wild was an even rarer feat. I was thrilled! My Kadabra which was already a powerhouse in my party was more special than I had previously anticipated. I had party wished I knew this ahead of time but part of me just saw how lucky I was at having incidentally caught an Abra which was exactly the kind I wanted and it just so happened to be shiny as well. Damn! Game Freak really knows how to entice their player base.

Shiny Pokemon don't excite me as much now as they did before though but I can't forget how that first one excited me so much. Really, the shiny-ness of a Pokemon has nothing to do with the strength of the Pokemon but it's just a tiny incentive to keep playing in case you find another one lurking in the wild or in eggs.

Now, especially with Pokemon Go, my nephews keep coming up to me and showing me all their shiny Pokemon and I like that it still excites them. Looking back, I feel lucky to have gotten a shiny Abra instead of a shiny Caterpie or Pidgey.

This may be a huge departure from my regular topics I write on but I just wanted to write about something different and one which was light hearted and easy to read. Aside from my opinions, I do enjoy playing video games (as do probably 90% of guys my age). This is just to show the different aspects of my life as well as my different interests.

Can the Truth ever change?

I was pondering this question a few days ago as some people I personally know would claim that truth is subjective. What's true for one person may not be true for another. To be clear, I'm not talking about favorite dishes or a movie preference. I'm talking about The Truth.

One way to test the truth value of an assertion is to see if the negation draws up some absurd conclusions. As my assertion is "Truth cannot change," I'll begin with the negative of that. It would be strange to state the negative of my assertion as, "Truth can't not change," so I'll state it more simply.

Truth can change.

It's quite unsettling but then again the truth value of a statement cannot be determined by how good or bad it sounds. The thing about this statement however is that if it were true, it should be able to change as well. Meaning, sometimes, it may be the case that Truth can change and sometimes, it may be the case that Truth cannot change.

And here lies our first contradiction. If it were the case that sometimes, Truth cannot change then surely, it can no longer change back to being false now would it and so we're left with an unchanging Truth.

Let's say now that the statement cannot change and it is always true that Truth can change. There again lies our second contradiction. If the truth value of the statement cannot change then it can be asserted that the statement is always true and cannot change. Written in bullets, it would go:

• Truth can change.
• The truth value of the statement above cannot change.
• Truth cannot change.

I was quite pleased with myself having come up with this. Actually, it may be the case that someone else has beat me to this. It is, however, simple enough to memorize so that we as a culture can continue to remember that truth cannot in fact change. What was true before, is true today, and will be true in the future. What's more, what's true for me should be true for you and should be true for everyone else in the world.

A lot of ideologies stem from the idea that Truth is relative and it can change. Sometimes, it presents itself as, My truth instead of The Truth. We should all be careful not to go down that rabbit hole if we're to keep our sanity.

Discussing Abortion (sort of)

Before leaving for the States, Faith, my friend from the gaming community, and some other friends decided to gather together. Since we had been putting off the abortion discussion until last Wednesday, we thought it was a good a time as any to have our very first coffee and abortion session.

Originally, we were to just have four people but two more people joined us that night - one of them didn't know that an exchange of ideas on abortion was one of the topics to be tackled. Thankfully, no one shied away from the topic and the discussion was very fruitful. I doubt anyone's mind was changed that night but then again, such was never the goal of this discussion. The discussion was meant primarily to show both sides of an issue, probably touch on some grey areas and what not.

To my surprise, the case that gathered the most intrigue that night was not one of abortion though it did touch on it very slightly. Here's how the story goes:

Faith was telling us about this girl in the US who got pregnant and since she didn't want the baby, wanted to get an abortion. Her boyfriend, as was the case, wanted the baby and so they both decided that the girl would carry the baby the term but that the guy would have to take care of the baby. The went as far as getting papers signed in court saying the guy will not hold her responsible for the child.

Months later, the guy was demanding that the girl have a more direct active role in the child's life - it must be said the woman was paying child support. The girl declines and cites the papers they signed in court and the guy goes on social media bashing her and calling her a deadbeat mother.

Now, upon hearing the story, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'm always against social media bashing but in my gut, I could say that the mom was indeed a deadbeat. I, however, was the only one who took that position. Two of the guys said that they didn't think it was right but that it was legal as the the mother of the child does have the papers to show she doesn't want anything to do with the child. As it would be legal, they couldn't say it was wrong.

The issue ate at me for the rest of the night and during a trip to the bathroom, it hit me why we didn't think it was right. Everyone in the table was so focused on the mom and the dad and their agreement and we all just forgot about the third person involved in the story - the child. I pointed out that whatever the agreements on paper between the mom and the dad, the child will never cease to be the child of both.

Further discussion brought everyone to the conclusion that the signed agreement between the parents can be viewed as one signed under duress. The mother was practically holding the child under hostage. In a way, it was a classic case of, "sign on the dotted line or I pull the trigger". Once the issue was framed this way, it became much easier for everyone to see what was wrong with it.

We then moved onto abortion but it was the interaction I mentioned above that set the precedent for the rest of our conversation. Essentially, when we're talking about human rights, we need to consider all the humans in the conversation - including the child's, the mother's and the father's.

Coffee and Abortion

The title of this piece may be misleading and it actually is meant to be. Me and a couple of my friends coined this term "coffee and abortion" to refer to a time when we would have a coffee over a conversation about serious social issues. Being a guy, my age, I do have a group of friends who are into gaming. Most of our conversations will lean towards gaming.

However, many moons ago, one of my gaming friends posted on Facebook about the issue of abortion which I happened to disagree with. As with practically every single comment thread online, the discussion then involved other people and became nasty and there was no real resolution to it. Online anonymity is the enemy of intellectual honesty. My friend, the original poster, then politely asked me to drop it just to take the high road. I couldn't agree more with him at the time. Online discussions can be very fruitless and frustrating which is how I decided to ask my friends if they'd be open to have a gathering where instead of talking about gaming, we'd instead talk about these more serious issues.

Since that time, our list of topics had grown and we still haven't been able to gather enough people for our first gathering. The topic need not be about abortion. Among the topics we might take up are homosexual marriage, Duterte's war on drugs, transgender issues, and charter change. These friends of mine actually do have strong opinions on these matters and a face to face discussion most definitely encourages dialogue and a forced civility.

While we still hadn't had our first formal "Coffee and Abortion" gathering, we somewhat got an informal kind last night. My friend Faith, asked me when we'll have Coffee and Abortion and the people in our table looked at us weird and so I explained to them the origin of the term and just like that, people were giving their opinion on the matter. The discussion was very lively and though no minds were changed still, the end effect was that everyone took away someone else's point of view and took it respectfully.

I most definitely got something out of the conversation which is all I needed to know that they took something away from it as well. I guess my next post would be a set set of guidelines about how people can have their own Coffee and Abortion discussions. Here's what I think rule number 1 should be:

"You're not here to change minds. You're here to express your ideas and learn other people's ideas."

How I think we can end political dynasties

A former teacher and good friend of mine, Odick Abellanosa, wrote an opinion column tackling the issue of political dynasties and though his column wasn't what made me think about this issue, it was his column that made me want to write about it myself. I bounced my ideas off of his and while the solution I offer isn't perfect, it's one I think has some merit.

To solve a problem, we usually look at two things - the cause and the effect. Take a leaking roof. The cause if obviously the poor condition of the roof itself. The effect is that water enters the house and can cause damage to your property. We can opt to address the cause by plugging up the leak or replacing the roof which would make the most sense. Or we could opt to address the effect and put an umbrella inside the house to make sure the leak doesn't cause a slipping hazard.

Our problem with the issue on political dynasties is we see their existence as a cause we need to plug up to avoid their adverse effects. My take on this issue is that political dynasties is that it is an effect, the cause of which is what we need to address. Consider how many political dynasties start off. I'll illustrate below and you decide if the thing I painted is close to reality. I'll be using hypothetical couple Boy and Girlie and the hypothetical city of Lungsud (coz why not?):

• Boy is married and Girlie and he used to be the mayor of Lungsud City
• Girlie had not much interest in politics. She found it dirty and it wasn't something she wanted a part of.
• During Boy's last term as mayor, he realizes there isn't a more suitable replacement to his leadership. Either that or he simply doesn't want to give up the power he's grown accustomed to for his past three terms (that's 9 years).
• He may have engaged in some shady dealings which he needs to cover up. Enter the brilliant idea of asking Girlie to run in his stead while he runs as her vice-mayor.
• If Boy is popular enough, Girlie gets enough support to win and now you have the mayor and vice-mayor positions held by the same couple.
• Girlie now enjoys her power and decides to stick to politics.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced that political dynasties are born out of the Filipino palusut attitude. Whatever law we put forth addressing political dynasties, the Filipino will find a loophole in it. Plus, let's face it. Pushing for an anti-dynasty law to come from politicians who come from political dynasties is NEVER happening. A genius law comes from looking like it serves these monkeys when in fact it serves the people more.

My proposal? It might be time for the Philippines to consider lifting term limits for local positions including congressional seats. In my view, what harm does it do to cities if good mayors stay in power longer? Lifting term limits also removes the incentive for family members from going into politics as the main politician in the family is still able to run for the position legally.

Now, I admit I could be totally wrong on this front and this could erupt into total chaos but it makes sense to me the most. I remember a former senator defend his poor performance as a lawmaker by saying the Philippines already has a lot of laws. He was mocked then but there may be some wisdom in his words. Many laws are good. Some are bad. Some are outdated. And a lot need revision. I think the laws on terms limits need some revision.

As it so happens, a draft of the new constitution does remove term limits from congressmen only. From my personal observation of Philippine politics, this rule needs to extend to mayoral races as well as these are they are the ones that usually spawn these political dynasties.

That's my take on this matter. Whatever the case, it would be beneficial to the Filipino people to see the end of political dynasties but the mechanism by which we end them should make sense as well.

What rallying taught me in UP...

"So aktibista ka?"

"So you rally on the streets?"

These are but the few reactions (of many) that UP students and alumni get when mentioning that they go or went to UP. I can certainly relate as almost all of my Ateneo friends would ask me when I last attended a rally and when the next one would be. Now, spoiler alert, I never attended a single rally in my stay in UP and many UP alumni share this experience. I know a few who attended a few rallies and that was it.

So how did rallying teach me anything if I never attended a single one? Simple. I had the chance to see their arguments and evaluate for myself what position I should hold. Whenever I see a group rallying for anything, I always feel I need to look into the issue more. I mean, if people are that upset over something, maybe I should be too! Then I look into the pros and cons of each position and take it from there.

A hot button issue during my very first year in UP was about the Tuition and Other Fees Increase (TOFI). The argument put forth by the activists was that UP is a state university and should therefore be free. The idea that we were paying for college tuition at all was abhorrent to them. On paper, this sounds great. Anything free always sounds good... on paper. TOFI passed that year and the new bacth of students were paying 3x more than what I was paying for tuition. We could see instant results in the first semester alone! In our chemistry lab (1st year subject), we had to make do with rusted iron rings. Our instructor had to use masking tape because the iron ring was too large. We had to cut litmus paper so we could use one strip for several experiments.

In the semester directly proceeding that one, we were using computers with motion sensors on our physics experiments. Now, I will admit that the university had raised the money in other ways to pay for the initial equipment. But for the school to continue using these things, they had to have other funds for their maintenance. Where else but lab fees and tuition fees? Our classrooms in Engineering suddenly underwent a makeover and for the better! Better tables, better white boards and altogether, better rooms.

I was, on certain occasions invited to join an educational discussion which in hindsight was good practice. It gave students the avenue to explore ideas not normally addressed in the classroom. My memory was vague but I remember them saying that college education should be free. As a freshman who had no idea about all these things, I considered their ideas until they invited us to stage a rally for greater state subsidy. I didn't agree in rallying for a cause. I believed that if we truly want the government to fund our education, we'd have to prove to them that our education is worth funding. As opposed to their view which was to demand free education regardless of merit.

This is what I learned from rallying in UP. There's a more nuanced ideology here and it's a hot button topic now on social media so I think I'll address it in a separate post.

Mahal kong Pilipinas (a post about inflation)

Everything is so dang expensive now! And while inflation is a natural occurrence in the economy, a 6.2% inflation is hardly natural. It had to be caused by something. In this post, I'd like to look at one thing whose price increase has the most effect on all Filipinos - rice.

I saw this one particular post which did make me think. It said that we're an agricultural country that imports rice. That in itself should give us pause. But it's not a new phenomenon. We've been importing rice since the time of GMA - or at least that's when I first remember it being an issue. No president since then has actually solved this problem and we're simply seeing the results now. So what is the problem?

Not enough people are going into farming. Since 2013, it's been news that the average age of farmers is 57 (source here: http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/02/26/filipino-farmers-dying-breed). Since this was news 5 years ago, I can only assume that the average farmer is a senior citizen! Why is this? We have so much land for agriculture and yet less young people are going into farming. Inquirer even reported as much way back in 2012! (see: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/223047/enrollment-in-agriculture-at-uplb-sharply-declines). What's happening?

I'll admit that the current administration has contributed to this by not addressing the core problem of the situation but let's not delude ourselves by saying this current administration is solely to blame. This problem was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and it simply chose to explode now. Now, if this was a ticking time bomb, who planted it? The answer can be short and simple. This ticking time bomb's name is CARP. And it actually fits with all the things we see today. CARP passed in 1988 so that means CARP has been around for 30 solid years. (Yes, 90s kids, 30 years ago means 1988, NOT 1970). That means that back then the average age for the farmer would be a healthier 30-40 years old. The problem is simply that because of CARP, the profession of farming has never looked pleasing to the younger generation. Why? Sure, the farmers could get land, but without capital to make the land produce anything, you basically have a farmer who gets poorer and poorer. So you have children of agricultural families not going into agriculture because they see that farmers don't get rich and stray in poverty longer than any other profession. Can you blame them for not going into farming?

So why is rice so expensive these days? Some people point to TRAIN. I, on the other hand point to CARP and of the two, CARP is definitely more responsible for the inflation we see right now.

Mahal kong Pilipinas, we need to stop these useless laws which border on socialist policies. In my humble opinion, government should simply try to get out of businesses as much as possible and should only step in when it puts actual harm into its citizens.

The Circle of Discontentment

Nature has several cycles which make sure limited resources are reused. We have the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the circle of life and all of that. However, there's one unnatural cycle we need to kill and stop as soon as possible!

The circle of discontentment as I like to call it works this way. We are discontent with a certain area that our government is in charge off. We complain that we need or deserve better than whatever the government gives us and demand more. This next step isn't always present but usually while complaining, we'll abuse whatever government has already given us while demanding better. So, government responds and the cycle repeats itself.

I shall illustrate one particular case where I have personally seen this happen and though I need not point it out, it's been a common recurring theme in protests that make it to the headlines.

Coming from a national university, the battle cry had always been for bigger state subsidy. I was paying around 7,000 pesos per semester for (arguably) the best education in the Philippines and people just wanted more. This 7,000 pesos/semester was blamed for certain students opting to drop out of school altogether because they couldn't afford it. My friends would always express shock at the figure since it was at least three times less up to ten times less than their own tuition fees per semester.

Granted not everyone is as blessed as I am but this 7,000/sem tuition fee did not amount to a preventing a bunch of my friends from enrolling at all. I've had friends apply for scholarships very easily and they even give monthly allowance and housing allowance. So no, any tuition fee is NOT a barrier of entry for any one although it was always mentioned as the barrier of entry for the poor Filipinos. What I think the actual barrier of entry is, is the inability of some families to sustain the cost of living of a student - from food to housing and transportation. This figure amounts to more than 7,000/sem.

UP Students rally for greater state subsidy

So the activists of UP would always stage rallies and protests pushing for bigger state subsidy and lower tuition fees. And their means of doing so? Walking out of classes. This is where I never got the logic for walking out of classes. Every single class held in UP has a corresponding cost. Whether it's the salary of the professor, the janitor that cleans the hallways, the electricity that powers the lights and the air conditioning, there is cost involved. That cost is subsidized heavily (or today, fully) by the government. If you're fighting for greater state subsidy, it simply does not make sense at all on any level to throw away classes which the government has offered to pay for. And this isn't something that's rare. A lot of student activists (not all mind you) actually consistently fail their classes because they're off in the streets "fighting the good fight." Wanna know a better fight to fight? It's in the classroom.

The analogy is simple. Would any sane person willingly continue to give you things if you simply throw them away and have the gall to ask for more? Of course not.

This is the circle of discontentment as seen in numerous government projects. How do we fix it? I have a suggestion although it may be an unpopular one. But needless to say, we need to end it.

I'll close this piece with something I've noticed time and time again on these issues. If we should learn anything from our recent history, it's that the government is a lousy spender and a lousy quality controller and we need to change that soon.

(P.S. After writing this piece, I noticed that the term, circle of discontent had already been used. Although in a different context. I'd like to keep this piece the way it is though so don't mix the two when reading this.)

Teaching the new kids today

Last November, I took a part time job teaching Calculus to Senior High School students in Ateneo de Cebu. Anyone who knows me from high school or college knows how much I enjoy explaining things. Up until last November, my audience had been limited to classmates, tutees, friends and family. As this time around, I'd be teaching Grade 11 students, I knew that these kids wouldn't be like my classmates or my family or my friends. This was mentioned to me over and over and over again by practically everyone who knew these kids.

This new generation of students grew up with technology readily available to them as younger kids. I grew up in a time when we needed to get those floppy disks (the big 5" ones, not the smaller 3.5" ones) for computer class,. I grew up in a time when internet was really slow and practically unusable, when e-books weren't yet a thing, when having a cellphone (even the clunky ones) was absolutely banned in school.

 

We needed this for computer class. #thiswasathing

Naturally, I would have to expect having to talk to kids who aren't "speaking my language". I could not assume that what worked for me when I was in 1st year college would necessarily work for them. This is one lesson I learned the hard way after I gave them their first long test.

You see, being in UP, the test questions were never the same as the questions given during the tests. In the rare cases they were, we didn't learn as much. The teacher would teach us how to find x, for example but ask us to find y in the exam. All the competencies were in place, it was simply a matter of how to use the competencies. Being brought up this way, I decided it would a great learning experience if I did the same thing. Looking back, however, I think my students did learn a lot from the first long test I gave them.

One of their first assumptions about me were that my exams would be easier than their previous teacher's exams and boy were they wrong. I wanted to let them experience the kinds of exams I did - where I'd learn more while taking the exams and I knew I wasn't being spoon fed the solutions. I remember seeing their faces after the exam looking so defeated. But I take pride in knowing they quickly learned their lessons.

Succeeding test results were still low but they gradually went higher and higher and I'm proud to say that my first batch of students did end up learning from their time in class. I hope I taught them more than calculus though. I hope I taught them hard work as most of my students aren't going to be using calculus as much as the others. But all of them will be using hard work throughout their entire lives.

The Death of DemoCRAZY

Democrazy, n. a crazy form of democracy. aka absolute democracy

Lately in the news, we hear about charter change or federalism or some new draft of the constitution. Two years ago, during the 2016 elections, "Change is coming" was the buzzword especially for now President Duterte. Proponents of the charter change in favor of a federal or parliamentary form of government push for such and their reason goes as follows:

• Our current form of government is broken
• We need to either fix or replace it
• Our current form of government makes it very difficult or impossible to fix
• We need to replace it.

Truth be told, I am for replacing our broken system of government, and to this day, I still do feel this way. I feel the current system has devolved into a democrazy of sorts. We, Filipinos, are currently under a system where the will of the minority is almost always overshadowed by the will of the majority ... EVEN IF the will of the majority is wrong.

Our democracy has turned into a mob rule type of democracy where our leaders simply submit their will to the that of the majority. One instance I can recall from recent history was during the trial of then Chief Justice Corona. One senator (now the Senate President) gave as his justification for his guilty vote was that that was what he thought the will of the majority was. While it might sound good to the common person, the idea that his own personal opinion didn't matter was a signal to me that this person was acting as a puppet to the majority.

Another piece of evidence of a broken democracy is when certain personalities choose to run on the national level because they know they won't be able to win on the local level. This logic seems to me very contrary to what a good election should be. Some people would rather run on a stage where most people have no idea who they are as opposed to running in local elections where they're known more.

Absolute democracies do not work. It's this kind of democracy that eventually devolves into a democrazy. What our democracy lacks is the mechanism that limits the rule of the majority. What we need is the power to limit the rule of the mob. A parliamentary, a federal form of government, or a combination of both does have that power. And i support that move.

My fear, however, is that the way things are going, we might be replacing one type of democrazy with another type of democrazy. One thing we should get right at this early stage of the drafting of the new constitution is that the majority SHOULD NOT be able to choose the head of state or the president or the prime minister. We should elect people in local elections who will then vote for the head of state (as in the case of a parliament or the electoral college in the US).

This process gives us at least a slightly bigger assurance that political parties will choose competent leaders from amongst themselves as opposed to fielding candidates who win by popularity or name recall. We see this time and time again with Pacquiao, Duterte, Noynoy, Erap, GMA, Binay. We can argue about competencies of these people (some of them are) but they all won their elections due to name recall or popularity.

Ask the normal passerby on the street what competencies the candidate they voted for last 2016 had and most of the time, you'll get a slogan or something about their personality. Almost never will you hear about their platform. This process actually incentivizes political party to field more competent candidates as opposed to more popular candidates since all elections would technically be local elections. It also incentivizes the political parties to naturally merge into two distinct parties, a dream I've had for so long now.

An argument can be made that a federal form of government would actually promote political dynasties more and I would disagree but that would be for another post.

It's time we limit the rule of the majority. No to democrazy. And if the absolute democracy we have now has to go as well, then good riddance!

Utility of Beauty

I'm guilty of looking at something and thinking what it's utilitarian purpose might be. In my head, if it's useful, it has value or it should have value. I doubt, however, think that if something is more useful, it should be more expensive. That's a question I'd rather leave to the economists.

What I'm saying here is that value should be put to useful things (i.e., they're willing to spend for those things). Which is why I never understood why some people put so much value on things which can't really be used more than once. Nikki and I talked about a wedding dress and how it will only ever be worn once and only once. And yet, so much value is put into the wedding dress and people are willing to shell out more for a wedding dress than a regular run of the mill dress. For me, you get more value from the dress a lady can buy in the mall than the tailored dress which is to be worn just once.

Other things that fall into this category are flowers (which will rot after a few days), your very intagram-able food (which will turn into waste in a few hours), ice sculptures, etc. You get the picture.

This obsession with momentarily beautiful things simply did not make sense to me. More permanent beautiful things like a grand church, or a painting by one of the great artists, or a craft made by a child, or even a poem, I might understand their value more than the temporary ones.

One could argue that the value of these temporary beauties in not in the objects themselves but in the emotions they evoke from people. Real flowers will most definitely evoke more positive emotions than fake ones (thought the latter will most definitely last longer). I had actually thought of playing around with this idea a while back. While giving fake flowers was never an option for me, what I did think of was something of real value - art. I thought of getting a painting of flowers. They would still serve the same utilitarian purpose only that  they would last longer.

Then I realized a few days ago that it is this "temporary-ness" of these beautiful objects that make them even more beautiful. I've only experienced spring once in Japan and was lucky enough to see some cherry blossoms. It was the "temporary-ness" of the cherry blossoms that made them even more beautiful than they already are. You only had a slim window to catch them but if you did, you'd be very lucky.

It's this temporarily beautiful objects that give spice to our lives. It aims to nourish a need within ourselves which cannot be fulfilled by the more constant beauties in life. Perhaps these temporary beauties elicit a more lasting satisfaction than their constant counterparts. And maybe that's okay. As part and parcel of our human experience, we need to embrace the temporary beauties just as much as the longer lasting ones. I dare say they satisfy a basic human need which isn't physical in nature but rather more spiritual.

To Prevent Rape, Don't Rape

A while back, Angono Police released a flyer which stated ways to prevent being a rape victim. A number of my friends and some activists have come out saying this promotes victim blaming as it passes the guilt of the crime to the victim. Someone even fixed the flyer by replacing all of the "tips" to avoid rape with one simple tip, "Don't Rape."

I've been sitting quietly watching all of this go down and one thing I can't understand is that all of the "tips" of the Angono Police were simply common sense expressed in words for basic safety for anyone really. Though I won't claim to know how women feel about being in the position to be possibly raped, I don't see anything wrong in telling women (or anyone for that matter) to be ready in case some people do have malicious intent. In an ideal world, it should be so simple. To prevent rape, don't rape.


As is such the case, we don't live in an ideal world. Self defense is a vital life skill for any person to learn for their own safety. Will it be someone's fault if they didn't learn self defense and they were raped? Is the victim to blame if she got drunk and got raped? I simply do not see that in this flyer. All I can see are general reminders for safety which is really what we're all responsible for.

Take a second and read through everything and this time, replace the word RAPE with THEFT. Address it to everyone and not just women. All you have are general safety guidelines.

What's happening now with the rage about this flyer is our feminist mentality is reading things into the text which simply put, is NOT there. Again, ideally, we should be able to pinpoint possible rapists and address them with the directive, "Don't Rape." or better yet, "Respect women." But we simply cannot tell who is capable of rape. This is a less-than-ideal precaution to a less-than-ideal problem in a less-than-ideal world. And trying to make this flyer say things it simply does not, helps absolutely nobody.

Can non-talents be useful?

(This post is close to a year late. It's something I started and never finished)

Over the weekend, I was able to serve the BLD community in the Singles Encounter Weekend No. 30 and I was able to convince another friend of mine, Ham to join. This is a big turn around as Ham has constantly rejected my invitations to go to mass when we go on trips together and here he was joining a Singles Encounter Weekend.

I took a step back and realized one of things that made him say yes to joining was that I told him I'd be performing. All my closest friends know that I don't dance or perform so he saw this as a rare opportunity to see me in action. Of course, I didn't disappoint but I looked at the things he had to go through just to see me dance. He had to give up his weekend for a weekend with the Lord. He had to pay a registration fee. He had to go to confession and hear mass before he could see me dance, all this I informed him before the weekend so I wouldn't be accused of false advertisement. And yet he went with it.

Now, I'm not saying my dancing is beautiful in any way, but it was still able to attract someone to a spend a meaningful weekend with God. It's just so funny to me that of all the talents I've been given by God, dancing was definitely NOT one of them and yet, I was able to use that non-talent to serve Him. How much more my actual talents can be used for the greater good.