0.4 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 4

Chapter 4

Dr. De Pedro’s Freethinker Find&Mine

Don’t give any copy [of Noli ] to

just anyone… he might just burn it…

─JPR to J. Ma. Basa, 1888

…in this land of the brain-damaged…

─ Phil. Star editorial, 2/14/2009

W.O.W. Philippines!

Wonder of wonders, indeed: its chief national hero’s veneration without understanding! By virtue of this ongoing work, especially the previous chapter’s disproof of the retraction, and this its including the next chapter that well-known finding of venerating with no understanding can be understood more profoundly. In fact: “It is as if he were truly the country’s accidental chief hero,” its venerators clueless as to their chief hero’s core-identity and nature. We shall further see this here. Hardly anyone among its educated classes and English-illiterate masses has understanding of their chief hero’s main mission; this as awesomely manifested in his first historical novel; and whom he rightly blamed for his death. This is just for starters in regard to his “core identity”: who he was, what inherent motives and beliefs drove him, what he valued most of all.

Tourists attracted to the country by all sorts of official come-ons who might take a chance on this five-chapter meatiest of Rizal books can rightly ponder its “wonder of wonders”. They can rightly wonder why their host country’s inhabitants don’t really have a clue on their chief hero’s true central core identity as fully revealed and defended here in this ongoing work to include five more chapters and their respective endnotes. I hope some local opinion-makers of “a nation that does not read” will be curious enough to take a critical look at this agenda-setting book full of findings not generally known. The phrase in quotation marks about a non-reading nation is by the popular historian-columnist, A. R. Ocampo, from his column of October 8, 2010. He’s written such stuff before, many times over as many years. I agree with him; so does everyone I know, especially if we’re talking about serious reading for critical thinking in English, effectively the Philippines’ language of higher education and higher-order thought. “Hell, we loathe books, raze trees and settle for making babies”, Inquirer’s C. Quiros just now (November 29) railed against self-inflicted ignorance.

A group of nationalistic anti-American historians, like Dr. Floro Quibuyen in his very ambitious book first published in 1999, claim that the revolutionary masses, the peasantry in particular together with their rebel leaders during the last decade of Spanish rule and early years of American occupation, had a true understanding of their “Tagalog Christ”, who joined them in armed rebellion. He was killed by Spain for it, whom he regarded as the chief enemy. That’s nationalistic myth-making, into which, alas, the otherwise respected Quibuyen falls. In this regard I side with the other pious nationalistic anti-Americans, like the historian Agoncillo, who deny that the masses read the Spanish-writing Rizal’s challenging ideas discussed in his books, essays, poems, and letters. And that they venerated with no understanding at all.