Green Light

Manila Standard Today

Dr. Emiliano T. Hudtohan

September 30, 2013

In today’s column is speak English, I speak about the Greeks, and I intentionally speak also in Pilipino because linguistic taste seeps down the heart and the stomach for gut feel of what the baboy issue have come to pass.

Grecian Pork

The City of Pigs was an ideal in Plato’s (428-348 BC) Republic. The residents of a Greek polis were civilized men [sorry, women were excluded] who were ruled by reason and lived in moderation.  Yes, moderation for this is what Aristotle meant by virtue, by balance, by beauty.

According to blogger Jeff Mason, Socrates envisioned “a healthy a society in which everyone shares the work according to ability and the modest sustenance it provides. The people are not greedy or envious, taking joy or sadness in the successes or failures of their collective enterprises. They have no fancy spices, but honey for sweetness, and wine and conversation for their entertainment. In this way, they live at peace with themselves, protected from covetous invaders by their collective ‘poverty.’ They have nothing that anyone would wish to steal.”

But Glaucon proposed a Fevered City. He envisioned a world “of great ambitions, great architecture, literature and even philosophy…[where there is] a distinction of noble and base, rich and poor, the superior and the inferior.” More than two thousand years later, it seems to me, The City of Pigs of Socrates is more civilized than the Fevered City of Glaucon.   Socratic Pigs living in Grecian polis were honourable men.

Pinoy Baboy

I cannot not say the same for the Philippines.  Our congressmen and senators legally pursued the path of Glaucon.  Their Glauconian separation of “noble and base, rich and poor, superior and inferior” was done with ardour and rigor. The selectively fed pork to the ‘noble, rich, and superior’ men [this time, women, especially to the  woman of substance] who ran away estimated Pesos 10 billion pork and left the barrels empty to the ‘base, poor and inferior.’  Yes, they live in a Fevered City, temperature running high for greed at feverish pitch.  They put Glaucon to shame and debased the City of Pigs of Socrates.  Binaboy and PDAF.  In the City of Pigs,  one becomes what s/he eats.  May I suggest for our congressmen and senators to go vegan.  It is good environmentally.  Less pork and other meet products will help reduce green gas emission. Indirectly, it will benefit the general public and the tax payers.

City of God

Before St. Augustine (354-430 AD) became a man of God, history has it that he was porking around too.  His lascivious life produced a love child. But his caring mom, Monica, spent thirty years in fervent [feverish] prayer for his conversion.  And it happened one day when he wallowed his way out of the worldly mire and raised himself from an ‘animalistic’ life to a spiritual life. Lesson learned from his mistake produced a classic, The City of God, where order reigned in the hearts of men and women who follow the path set forth by Jesus.  He became bishop of Hippo [very symbolic Hippopotamus, hayop and closer to lusty touch in Pilipino].

His life story, if read and taken to task [he himself got converted because of Tolle et lege].  The door is wide open for those who will make a choice.  But choice is falsely undermined by overwhelming externalities that blind the heart and poison the mind and petrifies the hands and feet if one has eaten the pork, or the pork is served, or the pork is promised in feasta fashion.  Training the body for character then is necessary.  Fasting is good for the soul; but fast food is always within reach. Where are the St. Monicas of Philippine politics?

When Jesus exorcised a possessed person, he sent the evil spirit to the pigs.  In eastern culture pigs are indeed lowly creatures and the wisdom of Muslims not to eat pork is physically and spiritually noble.  As soon as the pigs were possessed, they proceeded to the sea and drowned.  I wondered if those who fell in love with the pork were likewise possessed by the spirit of madness to wallow in the mud and muddle the delivery of services. But where is it driving porkies?  Are they headed for the sea?

Dante Allegheri’s Divina Comedia would send them to a lower level of Hades.  There is no water there. It is perfect for the porkies because hell fire will cook them to their bones.

Dan Brown prophesied that Manila is the gate of hell. The nine circles of Hell

First Circle (Limbo)

Second Circle (Lust)

Third Circle (Gluttony)

Fourth Circle (Greed)

Fifth Circle (Anger)

Sixth Circle (Heresy)

Seventh Circle (Violence)

Eighth Circle (Fraud)

Ninth Circle (Treachery)

Let us erase limbo for children because Vatican has abolished the first circle.  But note Agustine’s lust is now the first circle; greed as third, and fraud is second to the lowest in Dante’s hell.

For some who do not believe in hell, they subscribe to the idea that hell is other people.  A propos,  hell is other people who are hayop, being less human.

We thought of it as happening in our streets with horrendous traffic and polluted air, with motorcycle tandem robbery and killings, with subdivision home rented for the use of the ‘noble, ricsh, and superior and holy.’  Let us make this into a film series of The Gods Must be Crazy.

City of Man

Once upon a time when strongman Ferdinand Marcos rules the Kingdom of the Maharlikans from Malacanang Palace, a lady name Imelda became the governor of Metro Manila and she dreamed of making it a City of Man.  The structures she constructed were indeed meant to raise the consciousness of the Filipino beyond material preoccupation.  She exposed them to culture to be able to understand and appreciate the good, the true and the beautiful. The disconnect between material wealth and cultural richness was there and the wholeness of Filipino soul continues to be fragmented.  We are an interrupted culture.  Malay, Chinese, Spanish, and American  is a culture mix like chopsuey.  And now our moral fiber has been chopped, chopped by the pork barrel.

Muddle issue

In the Grecian story of Plato, Jeff Mason concluded that “Socrates acquiesces to Glaucon’s wishes. He builds the Republic to keep the fevered city from succumbing to its own excesses and attachments to unworthy values.”

In the Philippines, the Socratic City of Pigs remains an ideal and Glauconian Fevered City is going to the pigs

Can we  regain the City of God?  City of Man? Paradise Gained

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Dr. Emiliano T. Hudtohan earned his doctorate in education at De La Salle University; he is faculty of Management and Organization Department. Ramon V. del Rosario Sr. College of Business of De La Salle University, Manila.  He lectures at the Graduate School of De La Salle Araneta University,   Graduate School of Social Work of Philippine Women’s University, Manila; Graduate School of De La Salle College of St. Benilde and  Graduate School of Business of San Beda College. His email: dr.eth2008@gmail.com and website:  www//emilianohudtohan.com.