Thursday, February 21, 2008

Reality Bites

Today, we hear nothing but ZTE scandal and Jun Lozada's emotional testimony on how corrupt the Philippine government is. It's preposterous to see how people get too engrossed in joining the bandwagon despite not knowing entirely what they are fighting for.

I'm part of the middle class ( I believe), safely said, I'm a taxpayer. Every month, the government takes away approximately Php 3K from my salary. Do I get good services from the government? NO! But what the heck...that's reality in the Philippines.

So, I started to question myself, what have I done as a citizen of this poor nation? I was in EDSA 2 way back 2001... I thought of being part of history then. I was even proud of it...but now, I realize, could it be that EDSA 2 was just a mockery of EDSA 1? In my history class, I remember my teacher told us that a revolution aims to create a progressive change... Philippines had two peaceful revolutions aiming for a progressive change which I see today as a sickening change. Perhaps, "people power" is not the solution. Perhaps, what we need is "self revolution"

We did not fail in getting ourselves involved in addressing social issues but I believe we failed in getting ourselves involved in addressing our "self" issues. CORRUPTION IS EVERYWHERE! It's a dreaded disease that spreads faster than we could notice it. How can we change our government if we even see corruption in the basic unit of society...the family. We corrupt the minds of our children when we bribe them to do simple tasks. We failed to do a simple adult responsibility of making our children realize their role within the family in doing such tasks. We failed to let them identify themselves as a salient part of an institution that needs their cooperation for the family to progress.

Maybe it's better to make a self-check before we walk to the streets, shouting statements which we do not entirely understand.


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