On Why This Catholic is Campaigning for State Support for Reproductive Health

by Agustin Martin Rodriguez

I am one of those professors from Ateneo that the media branded as defying the Church on the issue of the passage of House Bill 5043 on “Reproductive Health and Population Development.” I’m not really sure if by making the stand we made we were defying the Church, for whom were we defying when we were acting out of Christian love and our informed consciences. And if we were defying the Church, we were doing so in order to respond to the call of love’s conscience. Now that the controversy over the Reproductive Health Bill is raging, I would like to explain my position in lobbying for state support for reproductive health. I don’t want to speak on behalf of my colleagues who so carefully crafted our statement or the signatories who supported our statement with passion and conviction. But I would like to explain why I myself stand so firmly behind our call to pass a law like this.

*editorial cartoon courtesy of The Manila Standard Today

Let me begin by saying that I do, as a student of philosophy and as a person who has grappled with the mysteries of parenthood and human sexuality for most of my life, understand the position of those members of the Church who look at this bill with fear and disapproval. I agree that the emergence of artificial contraceptives has made it easier for us to engage in careless sexual activity. The fact that there are contraceptives that minimize unwanted pregnancies and the spread of disease has probably made it easier for many of us to be promiscuous and this has certainly had an effect on how we give meaning to and value the sexual act.

It’s also possible that some of the contraceptives that are being sold have an abortive effect. It is possible that the pill or the IUD allow implantation to occur and might actually cause a fertilized egg to die. I don’t deny that this is possible and tragic.

I also can sympathize with their hesitation to allow a law to pass that will potentially interfere with how their schools will handle sex education. I also understand their distrust of the government officials’ capacity to design an effective and appropriate syllabus for sex-education. We in the education business know how government bureaucrats can impose short sighted and ill-designed programs that tend to be ineffective if not outright harmful in the formation of young people. And in such a delicate matter such as human sexuality and love, it takes a great act of faith and hope to imagine that the bureaucracy will not mis-educate our children.

However, those truths and possibilities aside, we are faced with the hard and terrible tragedy of millions of women and children whose lives are put at risk everyday only because they do not know many of the basic facts of human reproduction and are unable to access existing technologies that can prevent unwanted pregnancies. It is painful to witness how the undoing or further undoing of countless lives continues when proper information or the availability of effective methods of contraception are denied them. I need only to think of the countless children who grow up facing the violence of poverty that is compounded by the lack of care and nutrition imposed by the sheer size of their families; of the violence inflicted on the bodies of women by the unabated proliferation of their children due to the lack of knowledge and the lack of access to methods that could help them decide the number of children best for their family’s welfare; of the countless people whose creativity and joy is sapped by the constant pressure to find the resources to nourish themselves and their children in a world that can no longer sustain their numbers—and thinking all this, I asked myself how we could deny people a chance to rise from tragedy. Because this bill gives them that chance. It will ensure that young people understand the nature of human sexuality and reproduction so that they can make intelligent decisions about the risky behavior to which they are prone. It will give poor women access to contraception that will give them a fighting chance to have families the size of which can sustain love and care. It will give oppressed women a chance to say no to the abuse on their body and psyches of having large families. And it will give children a chance to develop with a chance at health care, education, and focused parental love. So you see, I and my colleagues are calling for the passage of this bill, not as an act of defiance but as a call of love. We know these parents, we know their children, we weep in our hearts to see how their chance at a decent human life is eroded by what society has denied them. We aren’t saying that responsible parenthood will solve poverty. It won’t, justice will. But this law will give them a chance to live more human lives as they wait for the reign of the Kingdom of God.

In my heart, I understand what the Church fears when it thinks of contraceptives and birth control—it is thinking that the contraceptive mentality is a symptom of a mindset that is not open to grace. For the Church it signals a kind of heart that has no hope and cannot trust in the good will of a loving God. I can see how that can be true and how the propagation of the culture of contraceptives might lead to the degradation of our capacity to be people of faith. It can also lead to the degradation of human sexuality as it will permit sex to be used as a drug to ease the ennui of modern life. I see how the reduction of unwanted pregnancies can do that. However, we do live already in a sinful world where the truth of sexuality especially between loving couples is an unfathomable mystery. Why does sex have such a power on our will such that it draws people to act beyond reason and good sense? Why is it that people think that sex could resolve their malaise, give them a higher esteem of themselves, make them happy, and give them a sense of completion? I don’t think there are easy answers to these questions and much of human existence is involved in trying to understand this mystery. In the meantime children are being born to impossible circumstances and women are being made to suffer preventable hardships.

In our broken and sinful world people are looking for answers and may be acting beyond their better wisdom in their search. Until we come to our wholeness and holiness perhaps we can provide ourselves the tools of prudence so that our search for intimacy and fullness does not have to end in sorrow and greater tragedy. State support for reproductive health will provide us these tools. And so with love for those like us who are broken, but unlike us are deprived of the means to regulate the effects of their tragic fate, we propose that some such bill be passed. Perhaps the Church will want it passed with revisions—but we should not touch its capacity to help people control reproduction through the access to knowledge and safe means. We should especially not water down its mandate to provide support for mothers who care for their children.

And as the secular state passes its laws for the secular good of all its citizens, perhaps it is only right for the Church to redouble its efforts in the education of its people’s hearts. For only a profound and effective education of the heart will bring her people to their good. No amount of intervention in state law will teach the people love. Only a Church that acts as a beacon of love can ultimately teach us what our intimacy is about. In the meantime, let us leave the state to its means to save its poor.

Musings on the RH Bill

by Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios

First of all, let's get two things straight:

(1) Even if this bill gets signed into law, induced abortion will still be illegal.
(2) Even if this bill doesn't get signed into law, artificial contraception will still be legal.

So let's get rid of the straw men crowding the issue. The supporters of the bill are not, in this instance, calling for the legalization of abortion. The critics of the bill are not, in this instance, calling for the banning of artificial contraception.

==========

Yes, this is an issue of choice. I argue, however, that BOTH sides of the debate are arguing for choice.

Those who support the bill argue that the bill is about giving all Filipinos the choice to personally and privately decide for themselves which form of contraception they wish to use, if any. It is a freedom that is currently afforded to the segment of the population that has more access to information--the most educated and most literate--who have wider access to information.

I think many (most?) of those who support the bill are, in effect, saying that the same choice should be made available to everyone in the populace. They are saying that since there are many in the population who do not have access to information in the way that the most educated do, the government ought to fill in that space by mandating that the information be included in the curriculum, through Family Planning offices (to be created by the bill), and through the Commission on Population (also to be created by the bill).

To extend the issue further. While the bill reemphasizes the illegality of induced abortions, some proponents of the bill argue that the bill will actually LOWER the numbers of illegal abortions by lowering the numbers of unwanted pregnancies.

==========

Those who criticize the bill are also arguing for choice. The bill does make very clear value statements: it considers population control and birth spacing to be desirable, and it associates contraception (both natural and artificial) with the goal of lowering the country's population. It prohibits both private and public doctors from refusing to perform voluntary ligations and vasectomies. It also adds artificial contraception--including pills and intrauterine devices--to the list of "essential medicines."

I think many (most?) of those who criticize the bill are arguing that they do not want these values and viewpoints--which they do not hold--to become "official state policy." Those who criticize the bill might disagree with the views expressed therein regarding birth spacing or population control. The critics might also object to many of the kinds of contraception being promoted by the bill, and they may not want their tax money to be used to purchase these forms of contraception for others (which becomes a strong possibility, if these will now be considered "essential medicines").

On the issue of abortion, then. There are those who argue, then, that the passage of the bill will push the State to promote and possibly subsidize potentially abortifacient forms of contraception (such as pills and IUDs), using taxpayers' money.

==========

Note: This is based on HB No. 5403, AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND POPULATION DEVELOPMENT, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

Oversimplifications

by Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios

In the aftermath of Monday's hostage-taking tragedy, a TV station asked its viewers the question: should there be a media blackout during hostage crises?

The question grossly oversimplifies the issue. The public outcry is not for a total news blackout, but for media outfits to exercise greater restraint in choosing which details to air and when to air them.

The best way, in fact, for media organizations to avoid further legislated media regulation, is for them to prove to the public that their self-regulatory mechanisms are sufficient.

ABS-CBN's statement, released on Thursday, enumerated ways in which their news team exercised self-restraint. However, of the nine examples they gave, five of them are not examples of self-regulation, but rather, of either complying with the law (e.g., not tampering with police evidence), or following commands from the police. Whether or not news organizations should follow the law and heed police's instructions is not at issue; that should be the minimum expected of all media groups in such situations.

In contrast to ABS-CBN's statement, the Poyner Institute, an American journalism school, published on its website in 1999 a list of self-regulating guidelines for journalists covering a developing law enforcement action, such as a hostage-taking situation. Among the guidelines are for journalists to "always assume that the hostage taker ... has access to the reporting," to avoid releasing information "that could divulge the tactics or positions of SWAT team members," to "strongly resist the temptation to telephone a gunman or hostage taker," and to "have a plan ready for how to respond" should a hostage taker call a newsroom. Links to these guidelines quickly spread online last week.

In response, Maria Ressa, ABS-CBN's head of news and current affairs, argued that the Poynter guidelines are culture-bound, and that our country's context is different from that of the Western audience for which the guidelines were written. Be that is it may, the ethical principle behind the guidelines is universal. In a hostage situation in any culture, the safety of the hostages should be paramount. When lives are at stake, media institutions ought to err on the side of too much rather than too little caution. News organizations can keep the public informed without jeopardizing the safety of the hostages nor aggravating the situation.

Moreover, the culture-boundedness of the Poynter guidelines does not exempt local organizations from the responsibility of making their own guidelines and assuring that these are followed. The argument has been made that in the heat of the moment, it is difficult for journalists and media executives to decide how best to regulate their own coverage. However, this argument simply affirms the need for pre-established protocols. With such guidelines, the journalist and the media executive need not spend too much time in an internal struggle over what to report or what to air. They just have to comply with rules they have already drafted.

It is unclear whether news organizations had definite protocols prior to this incident, but it is clear now, more than ever, that such guidelines are necessary. GMA News has promised to revise their rules for situations where the public or their personnel are at risk. ABS-CBN is inviting its colleagues in the broadcast industry tp undertake an industry review. These steps are welcome, but they are also long overdue. Journalistic behavior during crisis situations was debated in the aftermath of the 1990 earthquake, the 2002 hostage-taking incident at a Pasay bus station, and the Ducat hostage-taking incident in 2007.


Finally, some media practitioners, including opinion columnists, have criticized the public for blaming the media. It is not the media's fault, they argue, but the police's, as it was they who failed to control the media. Again, this is an oversimplification of the issue. No reasonable person is laying the blame entirely on the media. Of course, the PNP and the civil government also made costly missteps. And of course, most of the responsibility rests with Mendoza himself.

The question, however, which all people involved ought to ask themselves is this: what, in my capacity, could I have done at the time to make the situation better? And did I do it?

Only if all of us learn to be accountable for our actions, even when we are only partially responsible for the outcome of a situation, can we prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

Exercising Freedom for a Free Press

by Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez

In the face of the tragedy of the hostage taking last Monday, many Filipinos are quite clearly disappointed with the media’s handling of the matter. It seems clear that the lack of restraint that the television and radio stations exercised contributed to the terrible outcome of this crisis. Many viewers felt that the broadcasting in real time of the dramatic arrest of the hostage taker’s brother and the broadcasting of the movements of the SWAT teams would further disturb an already disturbed hostage taker. Why didn’t the networks go with this instinct? What were the network executives thinking?

The issue is complicated for certain. Television and radio news serve the public as much as they serve big business interests. Their business is not only to report the news and inform the public but to generate enough income to make their vocation viable enterprises. Thus, sometimes their instincts are muddled.

The more thoughtful among us asked why couldn’t they shut off the live feed? Was their desire to fill every second of air time with chatter and video of the crisis really fueled by their awareness of their responsibility to keep the public informed? If they had delayed the reporting on the arrest of the hostage’s brother and the disclosure of the movement of the SWAT teams, would they have deprived the public of vital information? What, aside from the drama and the circus, did the live feed give us? No doubt we were all glued to our television sets because we wanted to know what would happen next. But we really didn’t need to know. Our need for drama did not override the hostages’ right to a safe resolution to this crisis. However, it was vital for the networks to keep airing their live coverage.

From the ABS-CBN statement on their soul searching, they asked their fellow industry members to “…unite and work together to put in place measures to collectively decide when we stop live coverage in the absence of government presence of mind.” This collective decision to stop live coverage is essential because if only one station decided to play it safe and stop the live coverage, then they would have lost in the ratings game. Maria Ressa justified their airing of the hostage drama by saying that if they had stopped the live feed “we would have been criticized by the viewers or what viewers would have done is switch stations.”[1] This is what is so dismaying about their response: after the whole tragedy and the criticism, their justification lie in the ratings.

After all the criticism, there has still been no acceptable expression of culpability from the television and radio networks. Of course we shouldn’t expect a full expression of culpability that is not couched in language that will protect them from lawsuit or criminal liability. However, from their own attempt to explain what they did, it is clear that they didn’t feel that they could on their own decide to control their actions. It was as if their executives were driven by a transcendent machinery with motives beyond their own capacity to discern the good and which kept them from deciding what the best, most compassionate, and responsible thing to do was. Maria Ressa said “When there are no rules, we push for what we can get.”[2] That is true and perhaps it is the most responsible journalistic thing to do, i.e. go for the story. But is it not also their responsibility—they being the head of the news desks who are away from the action and not being driven by the reporter’s instinct to get as much of the story as they can—to decide on their own what was responsible and irresponsible to broadcast in the heat of the unfolding drama?

It is worth looking at ABS CBN’s statement of self examination. In that statement they implied that they were acting responsibly by being this way:
1. After the police tried to arrest the hostage taker’s brother, our team physically stepped back to comply with police request.
2. After the assault began, we tried to limit our shots to avoid showing police movements. We stayed with extreme close-ups or wide shots.
3. We immediately complied when police asked us to turn off our lights explaining the grainy shots viewers complained about.[3]

They did say that these measures taken were not enough but they are implying that nonetheless they were acting quite responsibly given that they were acting according the some instinct within themselves that they could not regulate. And it seems the instinct here is the need to please the viewers, not in order to respond to their right to know but to respond to their need for entertainment. Because they did step back but they still showed the arrest close-up, they limited their shots and took these shots wide but they still showed clearly where the police were, and they did turn out the lights but we all could see what was going on quite clearly. And someone from outside will wonder how essential all these shots were for the public's right to legitimately know the truth and be informed of vital issues—remembering all this while that lives were at stake.

Surely, the government should have acted better in all of this and exercised their police powers to regulate the networks whose concerns are always colored by the need to entertain and provide information to their viewers. But the networks should also remember that they are a public service and should be able to act more responsibly. After all a free press should be able to act with a free will for the good. This means being able to make better decisions for the good of society. And to do this, they must examine what forces drive their instincts to keep the screens filled with images that may have led to tragedy.

*picture courtesy of BBC News

Notes from the End of Life as We Know It 7:

These Are The Fundamental Beliefs That Define Our Lifestyle

by Agustin Martin Rodriguez

Once I was asked by the university to share with the faculty some points about simplicity of lifestyle, I took the occasion to sit down with my wife and articulate the fundamental beliefs we live by. Here I share with you the fundamental beliefs that shape our lifestyle:

1) We believe that there is a being of great Love in the world who governs our existence. This is a fundamental certainty that is grounded on existential experience for us. This just means that we have felt this Love’s presence and cannot but respond to it.
2) This great Love calls us all to share in their act of love for all being.
3) The great suffering in the world caused by human beings is painful for this great Love to see. And if we do participate in their Love, we cannot live without orienting our lives toward the alleviation of this suffering.
4) The task of serving the suffering and the poor is not an incidental task but the very central task of our lives.
5) There are many ways to serve the suffering in every arena of our lives. But our work only becomes an act of service when it is centered on serving the other and not our egos or our need to be needed or our reputations.
6) A life centered on service is the only path to finding yourself and to finding your potential as a person. It is the only way because a life lived only for the self keeps you from recognizing the call of love that calls you to your potential as a person.
7) Our lifestyles—that is the way we consume, entertain ourselves, engage in leisure, and work, or the way we maintain ourselves in existence—must not be exploitative. Although we have a right to maintain ourselves in existence, as workers building the kingdom, we have no right in causing the greater suffering of others in these acts.
8) We must in fact try and build up the lives of others in our acts of self-maintenance. This is perhaps what they refer to today as solidarity economics. Examples of this are acts that affirm the right of the marginalized and deserving to make a living: buying from neighborhood informal sellers rather than big stores, actively supporting alternative or non-mainstream artists, or choosing to pay a just wage for the services of those who help us.
9) We must not focus our lives too much on acquisition, consumption, and luxury for the sustaining of such desires often requires us to engage in the accumulation of wealth which in our world cannot be done without others paying for it. I believe the realities of global warming and worldwide poverty are clear proofs of this. Sadly, those who pay the sins of our excesses are always those who did not even choose to live or desire to live according to these excesses.
10) We are required by Love to make sacrifices in big and small ways for the marginalized—on the level of structural change and on the level of small acts of deliberate affirmation and support. Thus, we are called to live simpler lives or even sacrifice some or much of our own income to empower the disempowered.
11) Ultimately, we are all called to take part in realizing the revolutionary structural changes that will ensure that the suffering of others is ended. I use revolutionary here in the Christian and Marxian but not Marxist sense. The Christian sense still demands the changing of social structures but demands a transformation of self in love and justice.

Of course we don’t live this way of life perfectly, but we try to live it as much as possible. It’s not always easy. It means resisting a consumeristic lifestyle. That for us is the hardest aspect to accomplish because we are in a sense programmed to find consolation for our hard work or for our difficulties in buying things. We also try to find affirmation for our value or self-worth by what we own. So it’s sometimes hard to resist being consumers or even losing sight of our values in trying to engage in activities that will make us earn better in order to live more luxuriously. But we try to live according to our convictions even in simple ways like engaging our neighborhood service sector and paying them more than exploitative wages. We don’t ask for discounts from poor vendors. We buy our supplies from local, informal sector merchants even if it costs more. We consciously buy Filipino as much as possible. We take vacations only in the Philippines. And we have committed to professions that will pay us less than we could potentially earn in order to focus on service.

We have also chosen to raise our children ourselves as much as our professions will allow. In this way I believe we can raise persons of love and service who will themselves grow up to serve. Concretely, this means we have no stay-in yaya. In this way we have raised a 17-year old who I am proud to say is at least aware of the suffering of others and hopes to serve them through her writing. Now we are still raising a 4 year old and I must say it still requires great sacrifice on our part. I find it particularly important to raise my son so that he will grow up to understand how fathers themselves need to be persons of service in very concrete ways. He must understand that men must know how to cook, clean the house, and serve the people around them in order to break the sad tradition of spoiled, useless boys in our country.

On a personal note, it is difficult to continue this lifestyle without any structural support. It is hard to be a just consumer when most businesses are structured unjustly. It is hard to raise one’s own child when there are no day care centers in your work place and when you can be left out of so many things because you did not choose to prioritize your career over your fundamental responsibilities.

Sometimes it’s painful to see the outcome of your own choices. Sometimes it hurts to see others advance in the world who have chosen to live otherwise. It is a little more poignant now as sometimes I watch the world proceed without me as I chase a little boy around our little world. Clearly the successes that the world recognizes are not always for those of us who have chosen to live in service, except perhaps for a few happy exceptions. But the rewards of a life justly lived are found in the living of it. For living such a life keeps us closer to our truth, to our potential as creative human beings, and to the Love that bears us in their heart so that we remain focused on what is most important and find ourselves in the end made whole.

van Gogh and the Real Thing

by Michael G. Aurelio

As with many passionate souls,
the moment had come when his faith in life was faltering.
—Albert Camus, Notebooks

The turning point in the Ridley Scott film A Good Year finds the protagonist Max Skinner (Russell Crowe), a successful trader who just inherited from his deceased uncle the vineyard he grew up in, given two choices by his boss: “money or your life.” He had just come back from his unplanned and poignant visit to his uncle’s vineyard in Provence, France to arrange its sale. In his short stay there, however, he was also able to revisit his youthful years and remember the happiness he once had and now could no longer afford.

To be on a “holiday,” unfortunately, is unthinkable in the unforgiving world of trading. Wanting to know what he was committed to and where his heart lies, the owner of the firm, the no-nonsense German Sir Nigel, asks Max to decide on his own fate. Either he leaves with a discharge settlement “with a lot of zeros,” or stay and accept an offer for a full partnership.

Before their short, straightforward dialogue, Max had noticed, among other pieces of art, a beautiful painting showcased on the wall. It was Van Gogh’s Road with Cypress and Star. He inquires about the work of art, and his boss says that the one on the wall was a 200 grand copy—but the original, he nonchalantly adds, securely sits in a vault in the basement of his house. This strikes Max profoundly and images of his youth and his vineyard rush back to him again. Now certain with a decision, Max goes back to Sir Nigel and asks his gray, efficacious boss: “When do you ever see it, Nigel? The real one? When do you look at it? Do you make late-night pilgrimages down to the vault just to see it or . . . ?”

Asked about what he meant, the scene is cut and the next one shows the retired successful trader back in Provence taking back the woman he loved and the life he all along wanted to live. 


*

When Vincent van Gogh submitted himself to an insane asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France on May 1889, the artist was in the middle of his late period which saw the beautiful Starry Night Over the Rhone and his famous The Starry Night created. The thick swirls and dark strokes of night skies splashed with hopeful stars—and these would increasingly grow thicker, darker, and brighter—would distinguish not only some of his later works but, as held by most, also symbolize his deteriorating mental state toward the end of his life.

Starry Night over the Rhone, September 1888

The Starry Night, June 1889

Bouts of debilitating depression, psychoses, epileptic attacks and delusions had been plaguing the genius, requiring several hospitalizations. In one unfortunate instance in December of 1888, he threatened the life of Paul Gauguin, a fellow artist he had befriended earlier, with a knife. That night, seeing that he was yet to effectively use his knife, he cuts off his own ear, wraps it up and gives it to a prostitute who we can presume was anything but delighted.

Unbalanced, condemned to be a lone artist, though still one of the most gifted painters of his time, van Gogh would continue to yield the only weapon he possessed to ward off his demons in the sanatorium. He would do there what he did best: he would paint, and paint, and paint at a furious pace. Cut off from the world he had retreated from and which wearied him so, van Gogh would there take inspiration from what he would see in his supervised evening walks around the asylum.

What particularly caught the eye of the artist during those times, along with olive trees, were cypress trees. I imagine his awe and fear of those natural towers, ones which are usually found in cemeteries, lording it over the moonlit paths he took at night. Shaped like a candle, straight as an arrow that shoots to the heavens, cypresses have since ancient times been referred to as both the tree of life and the tree of mourning. The paradox, while clear, is amusing.

Vincent would later confess his fascination with cypress trees to his brother, Theo. Referring to cypresses, he wonders in a letter penned in the asylum:

It astonishes me that they have not yet been done as I see them . . . It is a splash of black in a sunny landscape, but it is one of the most interesting black notes and the most difficult to hit off exactly. (25 June 1889)

Road with Cypress and Star, May 1890

Road with Cypress and Star, completed a year later in May 1890—around the time he finally left the asylum in Saint-Rémy—would be what he later on called his “last attempt” in depicting his beloved cypresses on canvas. In another letter accompanied by a sketch of the painting, van Gogh describes the work to Gauguin, who had since forgiven his one time knife-carrying friend:

I also have a cypress with a star from down there. . . . A last attempt—a night sky with a moon without brightness, the slender crescent barely emerging from the opaque projected shadow of the earth—a star with exaggerated brightness, if you like, a soft brightness of pink and green in the ultramarine sky where clouds run. Below, a road bordered by tall yellow canes behind which are the blue low Alpilles, an old inn with orange lighted windows and a very tall cypress, very straight, very dark.

On the road a yellow carriage harnessed to a white horse, and two late walkers. Very romantic if you like, but also ‘Provençal’ I think. (17 June 1890)

On July 27, at age 37 and two months after giving up on breathing life into the dark cypresses of his nights in Saint-Rémy, Vincent van Gogh would walk into a field of wheat with a revolver and shoot himself in the chest. While he would survive from the blow, he would die two nights later. To a mourning Theo by his side, Vincent’s last words were “The sadness will last forever.”

*

Road with Cypress and Star may initially confuse the viewer who may not be familiar with its name. Two different heavenly bodies hang on the ultramarine sky. While the moon betrays itself with its crescent shape, the other, much brighter body on the left, with its yellow and green radiance, may be mistaken for the sun. That said, van Gogh’s stars and moons are more difficult to distinguish from each other in earlier works such as The Starry Night and Starry Night over the Rhone where more stars light up the night sky.

But in Road with Cypress and Star van Gogh only gives us a lonely star, which is then accompanied by a redundant moon “without brightness.” The world at the same time looks brighter and darker for the melancholy. The scene below is nevertheless lighted sufficiently, and even more so than the earlier works. The light from this single star, deceptive at first, should then be more brilliant than van Gogh’s earlier, more numerous stars.

Dominating the painting is van Gogh’s beloved cypress tree. Its tip exceeds the top of the frame, its blacks and dark greens contrast the blues of the sky and the browns of the canes, and it stands right in the middle—something which is counter-intuitive because the eyes find it harder to focus on the middle of a painting or a photograph, and because it delays the viewer from attending to the other elements in the work. The cypress’ odd placement cuts the canvas in two and separates the effulgent star and the shadowed moon. The cypress reveals its two faces here, one that celebrates the brilliance of life, the other that mourns nightfall and death.

The contrast in the sky marked by the cypress is replicated in a more evident manner below by a divided road. The bypath on the left is constricted and narrow as it begins, while the path on the right is easily accessible. On the wider path on the right we see two “late walkers” enjoying the cool and “romantic” night. Behind them a horse with a carriage, presumably following their direction, has just appeared.

Van Gogh is telling us something here, that these late-night pilgrims have chosen the easier yet less illumined way; and that while they may have in the day persisted on seeing things as they are, or things as they should be, they have by the dead of night resigned themselves to what may be counterfeit and mere copies of the real thing.

The moon waxes and wanes, fights and gives up, as stars may light up the skies or altogether hide—as does our love for this earth. Love gratuitously bestows black evenings with glow and hope, and sustains the breath of the artist who despite many failures still believes that the world’s beauty could be attained and real happiness could be reached. Love of life is the counterweight of the enigmatic darkness and eternal sorrow of the world, and the artist is the balance on which truth and happiness are weighed.

But no amount of love can ever match the weight of an indifferent world. The colors on his canvas inevitably fade because the artist can only use paint diluted with tears.

Melancholy, December 1883

June 30, 2010
For Arnel Reniedo

Notes from the End of Life as We Know It 6: Some Acts of Hope in the Face of the Darkness

The climate crisis that faces humanity is so immense that if one takes it seriously it would be easy to embrace despair and wait for the heat to smother us. I feel exactly this way some of these days. With the sun raging through most of our waking hours and our nights blanketing me in the proverbial blanket of oppressive heat, I cannot imagine better days although I know they are coming. They are, aren't they? They always have before. But then, it has never been this hot before. So, as I toss and turn in the long, long summer days, I cannot think past this oppressiveness—especially because I know the phenomenon is rooted in the undoing of our planet's mechanisms. As I languish in the birthing of the new world that is the fruit of our spiraling consumption, I wonder if there is anything that can be done.


As most of the accepted studies point out, there is no longer any way to stop global warming. Even if we are able to reduce greenhouse gases to those of the year 2000, global temperature will still increase by 0.6 degree Celsius. But at the rate, we are going the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a rise of up to 2.5% by 2050. The best we can do is prepare for it and, with great collective effort, we can still mitigate its effects. There is no fix. What can we do? Re-trap the carbon in the sea or earth? Revitalize denuded forests? Find some technological fix that will allow us to consume as much while expending less carbon? All these fixes are only going to mitigate the effects of the warming that we have already initiated. According to Mark Maslin, “Scientists believe a cut of between 60 and 80% [of greenhouse emission gases] is required to avoid the worst effects of global warming. And what are these worst effects? The expected 2.5 degrees already spell unpredictable flooding, droughts, deaths of coral reefs, increasing rates of extinction, reduced water supply, drying up of rain forests, melting of glaciers, increased spread of disease, the deaths of hundreds of thousand of people and the displacement of millions more. How do we stop this? What can we do when the very mechanism of our planet has somehow been misaligned? How does one fix a mechanism which is so complex that one purported fix could effect countless devastating side-effects?

And so here I am in my helplessness while I watch the world I love turn inhospitable to the deadly, ungrateful parasite that calls it home. Maybe global warming is the fever that is meant to purge mother earth of parasites like us—if there are any others like us, which is unlikely. I want to think that there is hope and most writers on the environmental crisis seem to think so. But from where I swelter in earth's rising fever, pest that I am, I can only feel that my host is determined to rid herself of my kind. I cannot think of a fix in this heat, and the more I learn about what is going on, the more I feel that I should give up in utter atonement for my sins and the sins of my fathers and my colonizers.

Still, because I intuit a good in the universe, because I am bound to this good in love, and because I intuit the promise of indestructible good in my fellow human beings—undesirable parasites though we have become—I am called to hope and do the good if only as an act of fidelity to the love that calls us to be. And so we must hope by being steadfast in our goodness and in our desire to do good by the world that is still so good to us despite our ingratitude. Remaining steadfast in the face of the darkness, despite the fact that the world as we know it is ending while others dance mindlessly into the night, is important for it keeps the presence of good and love in a world dying from mindlessness and greed. Love being realized is love presencing. Ahimsa being lived by its adherents is ahimsa presencing in the world. In its presencing, love is able to touch the broken heart that knows only to take and consume and destroy. The presence of love could build hearts capable to opening to the love that presences and the value of the world that is seen as commodity and resource could shine forth as a truth and beauty other than just that for the eyes of the awakened.

How then do we save the world? With little acts of love. Think of conservation through the prism of love and you will figure it out. Because little people committing little acts of love can channel the transforming powers of love, the very power that runs through countless stars, to the transformation of parasites into creative persons. What is needed is fidelity among those who love the world, that is fidelity to the source of love and faith in its power to restore by staying true to one’s goodness and creativity. This could mean doing the simplest things that almost seem like nothing:

• Cut down on consumption of everything from electricity to meat. Consumption is the number one problem of the earth. Because there are so many of us consuming so much, we have strained the earth's carrying capacity. Reducing one's consumption no matter by how much is an act of cleansing one's self of one's excessive and unnecessary violence. Everyone has to commit some act of violence to survive. Eating of anything is a reduction of an other being to your self. By reducing consumption, we reduce our acts of violence to the necessary ones and thereby reduce our acts of violence to the minimum necessary amount. But also, by doing that, one learns the joy of living lightly without too much baggage. The less one needs, the more one has opportunities for happiness unsupported by artificial supports, and the more one is free to be generous to others.

• Eat less meat mainly because it takes so much petroleum, land, water, and basic cereals to raise them. Cows also contribute much to global warming because their farts are methane and because we kill so much rain forest to raise them. On top of that, raising more meat deprives more poor people of food. Meat is only accessible to the well off. The more land is used for meat, the less land is there to use for the food accessible to the poor. The more meat is grown, the more grain is used by meat growers and the more expensive grain becomes for those who rely on grain for their energy. In effect, the more meat we produce, the more the poor are deprived of affordable foods. Consider your reduction of meat consumption an act of generosity and solidarity.

• Buy more from the market and less from the grocery. By doing that, you lessen polluting packaging. If there is a small market of informal sellers near your neighborhood, try to buy from there. This way you will save on carbon emissions and you will support small entrepreneurs who need your support. Of course, this may cost you more but if you can afford it you should because you're paying to support entrepreneurs from the marginalized groups.

• Look for products that are organic (because they are less polluting). Better yet, buy local organic products because they are more simply packaged without too many frills (thus without too much cost on the environment), they don't release all that much carbon to transport, and they support local labor. Even more importantly, buy organic products that are local and are committed to supporting marginalized communities.

• Buy simple products that require less packaging or processing. It may be prettier but the more packaging something comes in, the more materials it uses up, the more natural resources it consumes, the more it pollutes, and the more energy it takes to make. The prettier it is, there is also a greater possibility that it came from some first world country which means that it was made in a fellow developing country where workers are exploited before it was shipped to us.

• Try to be less fancy about your tastes. When you have highly developed palates that demand the best from the world like coffee from Africa, cheese from Switzerland, and beef from Japan or Australia, it costs more carbon points to get it the way it is and to get it here from there. I know that it makes a world of difference to acquire and consume these highly developed meats, that its worth dying for and killing for those spices, but your highly developed tastes could be forcing African farmers to enter into a trade economy that forces them deeper into debt or for cows to live in ways that are violative of their good or for vast tracks of badly needed rain forests to be destroyed.

• Try to ask for simpler things: less packaged, less processed, less fancy, less expensive. Try to not live expensively because the higher your lifestyle the more people, animals, plants, and minerals you have to exploit to generate a sufficient income.

• Avoid eating in big fastfoods chains. They grow their animals cruelly. Chickens are packed in cages without light and without enough space to move. All livestock are fed antibiotics to stay alive because they can't move. They also use a lot of Styrofoam to pack food which is very bad by way of solid waste because it takes forever to degrade and it releases toxins into our food and water when used.

• Avoid wasting food. Too much food ends up in the trash. If you don't eat and waste too much, you don't demand too much food and more of it will be available to the poor. Less demand, lower prices. Lower prices, more affordable food available to the starving millions.

• Try not to travel too much. I know we all need a break from our surroundings-especially when we live in the city which is really not built for creative human habitation. However, our getaways have an environmental cost—especially air travel. On top of that, we create an artificial strain on the local population and natural environment as tourists. Notice how in tourist spots life changes for the people and animals around these places.

• Don’t waste. Only use as much as can be justified. Everything, even water, is scarce thus every time we use something we end up depriving others of a resource that could have been put to better or more essential use. So before you spend on something expensive, or rare, or fancy, or high tech ask yourself will this excessive expenditure allow me to function better? Will it allow me to serve others more effectively? Will it make me more able to bring about a better life or a better world for humanity even if I accomplish this in a small way? Will consuming or owning things make me a better person such that despite everyone else’s sacrifice (the farmers in Agusan, the laborers all over the world who are not paid just wages and are victims of contractualization, the animals who had to die for this, the children who may not have clean drinking water for this) is worth it?

• Quit the upgrading habit for electronics. Try to use your old applicances as much as it is efficient and still working. E-waste is very destructive. Try to buy things that last.

• Better yet, stop accumulating stuff and stop needing to have new things.

• Find your peace as much as you can. The deeper you are at peace with yourself, the less you will have to shop, to eat, to travel, to golf, to entertain yourself at such a high cost to everyone and everything. It’s hard but let’s try for all our sakes.

These are the simple and not so simple acts of love we can do to generate hope or to invigorate the forces of love that can transform this fevered world and this sick species that is spoiling its own nest. But let’s all start small with the love we can do. The capacity for love and generosity is one that needs to be exercised. One should not aim too high too quickly but build on what is possible and fruitful. But we must also never be content with staying where we are.

Soon, more will be asked of us. Greater acts of love will be called for as the greater effects of our self-involved lifestyles will threaten our species and every other form of life on earth. If we exercise our capacity to open to all that is now, perhaps then we can respond according to the measure we are called to. And maybe we can rise to the occasion of the catastrophe we have created.