beer and the meaning of existence

published 04/21/07 in the blog plug section of sunstar cebu's weekend magazine

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my soul may just have died, i think, and it's all because of beer.

it happened like this. after months of unbroken sobriety, i finally had my first drink of beer last weekend. an officemate, marlon, was holding his despidida because he found another job in singapore, joining an already numerous group of former officemates working in the city state.

i actually had reservations on going. i knew alcohol would be involved (it always is on all of my officemates' despididas), and i just had a surgery 2 months ago. but my doctor did say that i could now go back to my old lifestyle, and my old lifestyle did include a measure of beer every now and then, especially on special occasions. so if he says it's ok, then nothing should go wrong with me (i hope). so off i went.

i didn't really drink that much in the party. the beer wasn't enough to make me puke on the street and turn my brain to mush, just enough to loosen us all up and make the party a jolly occasion. but i used to have a low regard for people who drink alcohol. the resulting euphoria was not real in the sense that it wasn't derived from thought and experience, but chemically induced. and following that, i saw no difference between beer drinkers and drug addicts. but discovering the joys of drinking later on, let's just say i've changed my position on that matter.

so the night wore on, and eventually the discussion reached the topic of the weird effects of alcohol.

alcohol has different, sometimes weird, sometimes funny effects on people. some become so jolly that when sufficiently soused they will laugh for no reason at all (that's me). some suddenly become all quiet. some start speaking gibberish like it was a foreign language. some get violent (w/c in bisaya is called 'mauy'). we have this office mate who is a quiet and mild mannered guy. but when he gets drunk, he's like bruce banner suddenly transforming to the incredible hulk, a green imposing mass of pure rage. some can even take a piss anywhere they feel the urge to do so (i remember another officemate...). it's like in that song by the eraserheads that goes: 'CR mo ang buong mundo'. thinking about all that, that's when it hit me.

it's a strange thing no, when your mood, and by extension, your outlook in life and your way of thinking, can so easily be altered by some substance or drug. it somehow runs against the proposition of man being a spiritual creature. how can there be a spirit, or a soul, or whatever you call it, that is supposed to be separate from the one's physical nature when it can be influenced by one chemical or other?

there are actually some religious groups, like the rastafarians, who commune with their deity by smoking marijuana. the oracles of ancient greece were known to be exposed to mind altering fumes, and the resulting gibberish from their mouths the priests interpreted to be messages from the gods, like in the movie 300.

we already have pills like uppers (to make us happy) and downers (to make us sad, or at least less happy), both easily prescribed by our friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. but imagine having a pill for, say, passion, or excitement, or romance, or contentment, or even peace of mind. do you feel depressed? take a pill! you've lost passion for your job? take a pill! you no longer love your wife of 40 years? take a pill! you feel that your life is a hassle and you want to end it all by jumping off a bridge? take a pill!

scientists are now beginning to understand the workings of the brain, albeit slowly. they've already mapped which parts of the brain function for emotion, and behavior, and sensation, and basic motion. and using an MRI to scan the brain, they can even read (sort of) what thoughts are going on in your head by measuring the blood flow in your brain. once science has fully understood the brain, the possibilities of what we can do scares me.

and when that time comes, the essence of humanity, of what it means to exist, is reduced to that of being a machine. we will be nothing more than living, breathing, thinking machines, no better than robots. it somehow robs us of a reason, of meaning, in our existence. we just happen to be here because we are here, period.

even sentience has a price, and it isn't cheap. my thoughts are beginning to scare me.

that must be why i get so envious of my cat miming every time i see her get her siesta. all she does is eat, sleep, and hunt for mice and roaches. and she doesn't have the facility to torture herself with thought. i'm starting to think we humans actually got the raw end of the deal.

but what do we do about it? do we despair over it and ruin our day?

i say, let's just swallow the possibility, believe whatever you want to believe, and get back to the business of living. we happen to be here, we might as well enjoy the ride.

some of you philosopher types may now be punching wholes in my line of thinking. but either way the debate ends up, soul or no soul, doesn't make our time here less precious. and the prospect of having no soul actually makes it even more so. if we have no soul, and it follows, no afterlife, then our time here is the only one we've got.

now, if they only had a pill for hangovers, then that would be really great...

is doing good always good?

an edited version of the ff. piece was published last saturday 11/25/06 in the crossline section of sunstar cebu's weekend magazine

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is doing good always good?

this question entered my mind when a curious thing happened to me on the way home from work one night. i was walking to the jeepney stop where i usually get my ride when i met one of the security guards from my office on the way. he flashed a wide grin when he saw me, almost like a sigh of relief.

"bossing!", we greeted each other. this was followed by some chitchat on what floor of the office building i was actually in and under what department i belonged to. after about a minute or so, my already grumbling stomach reminded me to get home, so i was about to end the conversation when he asked me if he could borrow twenty pesos so he could get a ride home.

this surprised me a bit. we weren't close. i didn't know his name, and he probably didn't know mine. we just called each other "bossing". i didn't even like the guy so much, as he was the guard who always seemed to be so strict on me, inspecting me everytime i enter the office to see if i was wearing the proper attire, while everybody else escapes his scrutiny. but i thought, "uhhh ok... sure, why not? this is my chance to do something nice to someone who's practically a stranger..." i quickly took out from my wallet a crisp twenty peso bill and gave it to him.

he apologetically took the money and thanked me, saying that his salary had been delayed by the security agency. i assured him that it was no problem. after a final word of thanks from him, we parted and i went back on my way. then something unexpectedly bothered me.

i felt guilty.

yes, you read that right. i felt guilty. of all things to feel guilty about, it was for doing a good thing. weird. why? this i pondered on the ride home.

was it really a "good" thing in the first place? it couldn't have been inherently bad. the guy needed help, and i gave it to him. i did it without any ulterior motive behind me, no plan of using it to gain something for myself, and expecting nothing in return. common sense dictates that it couldn't have been a bad thing in itself.

could it have been just my exasperation over the general unfairness of the world? maybe. here i was, with some extra money i didn't need that badly, and there he was, the opposite of me, needing just a little money to get home but not having it. he might even have a family waiting for him to bring something home for the dinner table.

but the world IS generally unfair to everyone, me included. it can't be my fault that the world is unfair. it just is. we are all the walking wounded, as they say. the world piles upon us all layer upon layer of crap and we are all just fellow sufferers in this shared predicament. so it can't be that. so why the guilt?

then it hit me. there is something so deliciously superior about doing a good thing to someone in need. i actually felt a bit smug about doing the "good" deed, as if i felt good that he was in situation where he needed my help. as if i was happy that i had an advantage over him so i could "help" him.

it's the same way you can consider acts of charity as basically acts of vanity too. giving those "bundles of joy" every christmas not just calms your own conscience. it also confirms your superiority over the benificiaries of your benevolence, not just in terms of material wealth, but also in goodness, as if goodness can be bought with wealth.

so is that what the good feeling you get after doing something good really is, a confirmation of your superiority? a mere ego boost?

they say good should not be a means to an end, it should be an end in itself. but human nature always seems to find a way to twist the good. does this stop us then from doing the good?

as humans, we can never be perfect. but it is also human to aspire to be perfect. we live our lives in an endless struggle to attain our ideals.

the myth of sisyphus comes to mind. for his crimes against the gods, sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up the side of a hill and topple it down the other side. but just when he is about to reach the top and succeed, his strength fails him and the boulder rolls back down the mountain. he goes back for the boulder, begins again, and the cycle continues.

like sisyphus, we labor on to reach our ideal of good. but just when we seem to be getting there, we commit mistakes, things that we know are wrong, things that bother our consience. we are doomed to fail in our attempt to reach perfection.

but that does not mean we stop. even if we may never reach perfection in our daily lives, our effort to reach it adds meaning to our life. it is in the struggle that we find meaning.

thus we must labor on and run the good race, even if at times we fall down, even if we fail, because our failures are bridges to Him in Whom we will find perfection.

the migration patterns of wildebeest

the "resignation season" has returned to our company. five of my fellow software engineers have resigned, four of them planning to go abroad. a high turn over rate seems to be a natural characteristic of the IT industry. it's so unlike the old days where employees tend to stick to only one or two companies their entire lives. when they retire, they would typically have already given ten to twenty years of their lives working for that company. for software developers these days, they say that the longest you should stay in a company should be only up to two years, after which you should move on. but doing so can also be a pretty enriching experience, as it would expose us to different areas where we can apply our expertise, expanding our very horizons in the process. i myself stayed only three months on my first job, before moving here to my current one.

the previous "resignation season" happened at about the same time a year ago. but none of them left the country. some went to work for IT firms in manila, while the others stayed here in cebu to work for other companies. it's sad to lose fellow officemates to other companies, but it's sadder if you lose them to other countries.

this is not to condemn them or judge them, my fellow employees planning to go abroad, for i myself might be following in their footsteps someday. but is there really no more hope for this country that the middle class and the professionals are all wanting to get the hell out of here? it's not like they're part of the really desperate segment of society who have no other option but to go abroad to work because they can't find a job here and if they do stay they'll starve. they're professional software developers who i think have pretty decent salaries. they most certainly won't starve with their salaries. yes, they may be a bit hard put to pay, say, the mortgage for that house or car while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle, but i think the country really needs them at this point.

imagine this. if all the doctors left, who would treat the sick? if all the nurses left, who would be there to care for the patients? if all the teachers left, who would teach our children? if all the software engineers and programmers left, who would build and maintain the computer systems that have now become critical for the operation of many of our businesses and goverment agencies, if not the country as a whole? if all the software engineers and programmers left, what would be the point of foreign firms investing and outsourcing their IT needs here if there are none of us left? if all the software engineers and programmers left, how are we supposed to move and reach the heights we all want to reach for our nation?

and not to mention the social costs of going abroad, leaving behind families that are going to miss a father or a mother growing up. one of those planning to go abroad is himself a father. i'm pretty sure he has thought long and hard about his decision to leave, as it entails sacrificing his seeing and being with his daughter at the point when she is entering adolescence. it must have been a painful decision for him, a decision which i certainly woudn't want to be forced to make if i do have a family of my own in the future.

but this is not to say that all who go abroad are going their purely for the money. they may be going there for personal reasons i may never know and understand. maybe they just want a new life abroad, away from the pains, problems, and heartaches that might accompany their staying here. maybe they just want to see new places and learn new things. and also, all of my fellow employees who resigned to go abroad are all older than me, so maybe they have more experiences in life to say why they should leave. and to think that some our very own national heroes like Rizal, del Pilar, and the Luna brothers went abroad while working toward their goal of making the motherland a better place.

and i know too, that it is very hard to work for a concept of a country that doesn't seem to work for you. here we all are doing our duties as citizens of this country by following the law and paying our taxes correctly, and what do we get for it? a corrupt system that doesn't even work for us but only for those who are in power, trapos (traditional politicians) who don't respect the most sacred right of a people in a democracy, their vote, and a president so desperate to hold on to power just because she believes she is the only viable alternative to the country and insulting all her fellow countrymen in the process by considering them as a messy mass of barbarians who are unable to govern themselves.

but if you think about it, shouldn't that be bigger reason for us to stay? so that we can help out to fix the system? so that we can fight the power that for so long has entrenched itself into our society? so that we can help make the Philippines more attractive to foreign investment by simply staying here and giving the best we have to offer in our jobs? or do we just leave the fixing and the work to others then come back once things are going on the right track?

it reminds me of the great migration of the wildebeest in the plains of the serengeti in africa. the wildebeest are constantly on the move, seeking places where the grass is greener and more abundant. but once they are done with this pasture, they leave it behind bare and on its own to regenerate.

are we destined to be like the wildebeeste? are we destined to be nomads, a people without a land we can call home? can the Philippines still even exist in a decade or two if we all keep this mindset?

there is one major difference between heroes and wildebeest. it is that even if our heroes did leave, they came back armed with the wisdom and experience gained from their journeys abroad and actually tried fixing things.

but who am i really to say all this. who am i to dictate the direction they would like to take in their lives. who am i to demand heroism from them. maybe i am just being young and foolish. that maybe, come a few more years, i will learn that idealism is overrated, that idealists don't survive in a dog-eat-dog world such as ours. that maybe, come a few more years i myself might become more practical in my thinking and decide to leave as well. but right now, i sure hope to God i don't eat my words. and i also hope that you guys come back.