0.6 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 6

Chapter 6

Cool Bone-Deep Freethinker in Death

Idiotic country ours .

─C. de Quiros, 12/03/2009

The Supreme Court…distinguished

…for supreme stupidity.

─C. de Quiros, 12/13/2010

Of the Classic Indolence Essay Too

What put a lingering enigmatic smile on his face as he, a retraction-immune freethinker at core, walked in a lively way to his death? This chapter offers a facts-based theory about that. But first let me ask if the popular columnist Conrado de Quiros quoted above would consider himself a stupidity-hating freethinker. Years ago on November 17, 2008 he wrote: “Stupidity remains firmly rooted in our country.” The respected political economic analyst Alex Magno might agree citing the Philippine Constitution itself as institutionalized stupidity. Would the freethinker Rizal likewise agree? Before answering we’d better read through this culminating chapter first. It clinches the case for this retraction-immune heretic who could not have retracted but instead took precautions to forestall false rumors and similar other claims arising from his last days in prison and surrounding his death.

Let me answer the questions asked above by way of Rizal’s misrepresented, trivialized ‘Indolence’ essay. You’d be surprised to learn how applicable it still is in answering whether indeed “stupidity remains firmly rooted in our country.” History’s rationalist freethinkers (scientists as well) have for centuries, if not millennia, railed similarly against human stupidity, particularly the self-inflicted kind nurtured by laziness, organized inculcated faiths, and culture in general. Their freethinker’s philosophy blames much of it on pervasive superstitious faiths and its fostered laziness towards independent serious reading and thought about one’s self, community, nation and the world. This complex interrelated subject Rizal studied and analyzed in “Sobre la indolencia de los Filipinos”, a very hot issue then as now. So touchy that in his background introduction of this “touch-me-not” subject, its fully rationalist author urged all to stay cool, to free themselves from preconceptions, from emotional sensitivities, letting the most objective reasoning prevail. Only on this virtuous path of facing bitter truths can individuals and country transform radically from benightedness on the higher arduous road to modern progress and redemptive self-transformation.

Recall your past experiences of the country from childhood to maturity, as I’ve done, Rizal wrote, taking in all the scenes we’ve witnessed growing up and at work. Include your readings and experiences of advanced countries you may have lived in. If you do this honestly, he shocked a lot of his countrymen industrious enough to work through his challenging original essay, you would have to agree even with the harshest Caucasian critics that indolence does exist as big problem among Filipinos. “Positivamente y realmente existe”, he ever repeated but stressed right away the need to fully explain its causes and forms. For our own individual and country’s good, he wrote, let us no longer deny its existence, explain it away or trivialize it, often with the most brilliant sounding arguments. Naturally a predisposing agent is excessively hot humid tropical weather. Nature has also made humans prefer leisure to hard work, whether physical or mental. You can see that from the indolent well-placed whites themselves who live leisurely in the hot tropics. Much more important, however, as contributor to general indolence, is the nurturing damaging culture and its influences through in sociopolitical institutions and inculcated superstitious faiths in school, at home and other levels of government and society. Quibuyen’s masterly analysis of the pioneering Indolence essay as Rizal’s theory of Philippine underdevelopment brings this out clearly in today’s terms. He wrote notably that Rizal analyzed the useful concept of Philippine indolence in its broad general sense to include intellectual moral, spiritual lethargy and indifference. Indolence, as little liking for general activity (including mental, moral etc.) most definitely exists, the bold shocking essay dared to assert, describe, and explain. And Filipinos share in the blame for it in not taking enough responsibility for their own self-improvement and for their passive acceptance of the socio-cultural institutions, practices, policies that nurture and over-magnify indolence from natural causes into the big socio-psychological cancer it has grown into. Such was the original pioneering twist he astonishingly gave to that subject.