- Kim’s Dream
- Orlando R. Ravanera
Blindness is just the loss of eyesight; that’s the least of being blind as it is just in the realm of the physical. But when one is blind socially, economically, ecologically and worst, spiritually, darkness reigns despite having eyes that will put a person in mental captivity and even in deep unconsciousness. If the people themselves have eyes but are wallowing in deep social unconsciousness because of the outpourings of fake information and non-information, then humanity will be buried in collective insanity that will drive civilization into the precipice of destruction.
So as not to wake-up, the contemporaneous society is bombarded with gospels of materialism and consumerism, so enamored in external looks and trivialities. Never minding the chaotic economic set-up where only one percent of the world’s population is in control, the business-as-usual attitude goes on without let-up. The pyramidal societal set-up goes on in a world controlled by cartels and oligarchs. When economic dictatorship is grafted onto representative, electoral democracy, a toxic growth of religious fundamentalism and right-wing extremism is the result. Thus this corporate globalization leads not just to the death of democracy, but to the democracy of death, in which exclusion, hate and fear become the political means to votes and power. We may be socially blind to see that economic set-up but not His Excellency President Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte who in his latest State of the Nation Address (SONA) exposed that oligarchical control of water and electricity. Indeed, these are means to life and must not be the subject of so much rakings by the oligarchs.
Such brave remarks from no less than the pro-people leader of the country should begin the awakening process. Look at Mindanao, so rich yet so poor because the choicest of lands are controlled by global corporations, planting high value crops to satisfy the consumerist lifestyle of the obese people in advanced countries. Isn’t it a great paradox in a country that cannot produce basic staples like rice and milk for its people. That’s the reason why 85% of our children are malnourished, according to the data of the Food and Nutrition Institute. Can we not see that? Can we not see why our rural people are migrating to the urban areas in droves as farming is not anymore economically viable? Why? Because farming is tied-up to conventional agriculture that only benefits the fertilizer dealers, the seed dealers, the compradors and the usurers. Yet, everyone is profiting from farming but not those who are working hard under the excruciating heat of the sun or the cold rains – the poor farmers. Have we not seen how exploited our farmers are, tilling the land not their own and if they own the land, they do not control the mode of production and marketing? Where are our native rice seed varities i.e. Denorado, Azucena? These were replaced by so-called HYVs that call for heavy usage of chemicals while global corporations are in control of our indigenous rice varieties like Tunawon which commands high demand in the US for being healthy as it is organically grown, stolen from the Rice Terraces of the Indigenous People in the Mountain Province.
How blind are we ecologically? Well, that is res ipsa loquitor (the thing will speak for itself). Don’t you know that we are third hardest hit country in the world with regards to climate change. Tens of thousands of lives had been claimed by Super Typhoons, i.e, Pablo, Sendong, Ph Haiyan (Yolanda) and what have you. We have already lost our ecological security as we have committed the biggest massacre of all times, the loss of the 17 million hectares of dipterocarp forest with billions species of flora and fauna that had lived in the forest ecosystem for millions of years? Don’t you know that our country then was the richest on earth in terms of megadiversity? Beneath the ground oozed with tremendous wealth in minerals. The archipelago has been described as the “center of the center of marine life on earth.” But all of these ecological resources are now gone – gone to loggers, gone to the miners, gone to illegal fishers? Many of these who plundered our ecological wealth have been voted as Senators, Congressmen, Governors and Mayors, raking so much money to buy votes as one shipment of logs can earn a logger 360 million pesos in one shipment of logs alone. If they had not run as candidates, they funded the candidacy of those would protect their interest. That truism is embodied in a well-research book of Ms. Marites Vitug, “Power from the Forest.”
Why are our ecological people poor especially the Indigenous Peoples who have become the poorest of the poor? The forests are their pharmacies, their market-place where they have lived sustainably for thousands of years. Why have we allowed the utter decimation of our ecological resources. Because we are blind. Look at our bays! Of the 13 major bays, 10 are already biologically dead making our coastal communities hungry and wallowing in poverty. How about our rivers? Of the 25 major rivers, 15 are either dried up or polluted!
Better if we are just blind physically but our ecological blindness has allowed the massive extinction of God’s creation. The Homo Sapiens have not just caused the extinction of billions of species, they had also killed their own kind at the tune of more than 100 million human beings in the last 120 years through two world wars and so called cleansing of Pol Pot and Hitler and the continuing Mindanao War, the second longest war in the world. This only shows that the most flawed species of all of God’s creation is the one whom He has created in His likeness and image – man!
What have the so-called churches or religious groups done? All empty rhetoric! Out of spiritual blindness brought forth deep unconsciousness of the truest essence of life. From out of the horrible life situations, it has become imperative to wake-up to fully realize that deep within each of us is an Essence that we must connect. Yes, you must now wake-up and be conscious that “you are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are.” Only then can the awakening process begin and stop the reign of darkness by connecting to the Power of Now!
