This is going to be a short one, Â because it’s Monday and I’ve got four or five meetings scheduled for today at BGC and in JAKA on Ayala Avenue.
Get Real Phlippines Post is probably the only blog on Philippine politics left slugging away at the “establishment” and various poseurs. Â The others have either put their domain names up for sale, put up a “under maintenance” Â placeholder, or simply have stopped updating their blogs. Â Worse, though, some have actually been hired by the “establishment” and while they still engage in social media, now have a big bald sacred bovine to protect. Â It’s a pretty bad handicap.
SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
While some may have labeled this mega-group blog as anti-Noynoy, I have a tendency to think that it ISN’T necessarily anti-anything but proposes to challenge ideas being milled out and force-fed to the masses.
It is only when your ideas are challenged that real thinking happens and this is where getting real begins.
Get Realism, as opposed to blind fanaticism, is not a rigorously designed philosophy but more of an attitude. Â To me, it’s basically taking a “scrutineer’s” eye piece and subjecting whatever bubbles up in Pinoy social media to it.
It’s just convenient, though, that Pnoy provides a lot of fodder just as Erap once provided fodder — a lot of it or too much of it at times.
But just to be clear, and I don’t speak for the other writers here, I think that if ever anything negative gets written about Pnoy or Erap, it’s really with the intent to expose the sheer numb-nuttiness that enabled them to rise to power.
Although Baron Buchokoy and his Macoy loving supporters would probably chirp that Noynoy and Erap were results of “ignorance”. Â An entry in Wikipedia has an interesting way of describing what ignorance is:
Writer Thomas Pynchon articulated about the scope and structure of one’s ignorance: “Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person’s mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to [the advice of] writing about what we know, maybe we should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the possibilities therein for writing a good story.”
I beg to differ, just a bit.
Worse than ignorance is the egoistic dumb-ass that refuses to acknowledge the limitations in the application of any human idea and being an unauthentic advocate of any idea.
We need not fear the plentiful masses who vote for all the Eraps and Pnoys of this world. Â They don’t have money or means most of the times except for that one day every three years.
Well, that’s it pancit. Have a great day!
Writer.
A closed society produces closed minds incapable of independent thought and innovative solutions, with a deeply ingrained need to belong to any group/cult either through peer pressure, to mask their ignorance, or simply because it is the easy thing to do.
The result inevitably is a divided society in terms of wealth, opportunity, and also global irrelevance as it isolates and contributes little economically, technologically, or culturally to the world at large.
The fundamental change, although i do not think it will happen, is to become an open society.
Open economically, open to new ideas etc rather than seeing the outside world simply as a threat to monopoly businesses and the status quo.
But just as turkey’s dont vote for thanksgiving, there is no political will to rock the gravy boat.
Instead a tighter grip is being exerted on information flow, propaganda, education, so that ‘thought leaders’ become an endangered species, and the young business turks/professionals join the brain drain.
The result – our neighbours outpetform and prosper whilst we go backwards, other than the 3 – 4%.
Inclusive growth is a myth.
Political opposition non existent
Media debate muted at best.
The country is heading for ICU, a bandaid is hardly the solution.
Blog on Get Real!
No one can know everything.To acknowledge ones limits is a bow to reality,so remain humble/teachable. Be the best at one thing to prove brilliance,good at many things to be a survivalist.
The best thing I ever read in terms of actually teaching a whole lot,in a few pages?…wait…..wait…..just a l’il….OK,Part 2 of the Epilogue of ‘War and Peace’ by Count Leo Tolstoy.75 pages of profound knowledge about the limits of intelligence the ‘will of the masses’ and ‘power’.Brilliance at its most brilliant.
Why I like it here is that GRP is a “corrective” blog site. We like to correct perceptions that we believe are wrong. For example, the perception that the current admin is corruption free. The perception that blaming the previous administration is the answer. The perception that Pinoy Pride is the answer to our problems.
We also admit that we do not know everything. But where we see something wrong, GRP bloggers will still seek to correct it.