“The truths I learned at the Ateneo”

Commencement Address before the John Gokongwei School of Management and the School of Science and Engineering of the Ateneo de Manila University, on June 1, 2019.

Good afternoon.

Yesterday, I received a gift—and like all true gifts, it was entirely undeserved. I had the honor of serving as commencement speaker in my beloved alma mater. If you knew me back in college, and remembered that I spent far too much time outside the classroom and in the streets, you too would have been struck by God’s mysterious ways. As the eloquent young man Elihu reminded the old and self-righteous Job: “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding.”

Today I receive the gift again, and on behalf of all those who just barely made it, or made it only after second chances, or made it mostly because long-suffering teachers took one more leap of faith, I welcome the inexplicability, the irony, the sheer grace of it all. God truly does great things beyond our understanding.

Now I am faced with a choice: To repeat yesterday’s speech, or read another one. The ancient Greeks respected the power of repetition. But on reflection, I realized that while I drew the necessary connection between the continuing assault on the institutions of truth and the erosion of Philippine democracy, I fell short in explaining what truths are worth defending in the first place.

So, a new speech then, but with many elements of the old.

I taxed the patience of the graduates and their parents yesterday when I promised a 30-minute speech and spoke for 36. Mea culpa. Today, I intend to speak for no more than 25 minutes, and the orchestra from the Oscars is here to play the music when I miss the mark.

So, to begin again:

Yesterday, I asked myself this guide question: What is the good that needs doing today?

As a journalist, I have my own answer, and I find it reflected in the words of the theme of this year’s commencement exercises: It is to strengthen the institutions of truth.

Let me speak plainly.

Our democracy is suffering what political scientists call democratic decay. You know this. You do not need to “come down from the hill” to know that our democratic institutions are eroding under unceasing attack. This is the world you will be re-joining as graduates.

The integrity of the courts is under grave threat, because judicial capture, the effective subservience of the Supreme Court to the Executive, is almost complete. The independence of the constitutional commissions is under serious stress, because of repeated encroachments on their areas of responsibility or constant criticism of their work. The institutional dignity of the Senate is facing a real test, because of the election of even more senators who will follow the agenda, not of Congress, but of the Executive. And the fate of certain local governments is under a cloud, because the Executive has decided to make a heavy-handed example of Cebu City and Mayor Tommy Osmeña in the last elections.

The hard-earned professionalism of the military is at risk, because the commander in chief himself continues to invite the generals to take over civilian functions or, worse, to form a military junta. The reputation of the Catholic church has been repeatedly besmirched, because of the President’s blasphemies and his baseless accusations. International organizations with delegations in the country are feeling under siege, because of the chief executive’s deep antipathy against them. And the Constitution is dishonored again and again, because the President who admitted he planted evidence and intrigue to trap suspects when he was a city prosecutor has only a selective respect for the basic law.

Yesterday,  I described the method behind President Duterte’s madness as an ideology of negation, defined by its 7 No’s. Here they are, in summary form.

1. No cure. The defining policy of this ideology, the so-called war on drugs, is based on the mistaken assumption that no remedy exists for drug addicts, and no rehabilitation is effective.

2. No innocents. This so-called war makes no real effort to distinguish the guilty from the innocent; as a tragic result, many dozens of minors, including toddlers, have been killed extrajudicially as “collateral damage.”

3. No rights. The massacre of the innocents is made possible by the preliminary slaughter of human rights and civil liberties.

4. No West. In the name of an irritable nationalism, this ideology of negation rejects the Western alliance—in order to complete the repudiation of the Americans, against whom the President has a personal animus.

5. No criticism. Both domestically and internationally, this ideology brooks no criticism, especially of its many human rights violations.

6. No truth. The ideology plays loose with facts, deploys lies, drives disinformation, to make accountability more difficult if not impossible.

7. No limits. This ideology of negation seeks to accumulate power to escape accountability. As early as 2015, the plans for “constitutional dictatorship” were already being floated. Now the talk has shifted to military juntas.

Yesterday, I also tried my hand at a literary critique that was at the same time a political analysis. I noted that Jose Rizal, our national hero and foremost alumnus, prophetically drew the same character as two opposite persons: in the Noli, Crisostomo Ibarra, the first Atenean to be depicted in all literature, is a young man of promise committed to reform and the ideals of modernization. In the Fili, set 13 years later, he has become completely transformed as Simoun, the wealthy anarchist, dedicated to breaking a vicious system that had destroyed him as a victim. The point was to suggest that the people running these various disinformation campaigns, consciously eroding our democracy from within and mortgaging our future as an independent country, are present-day Simouns: educated, committed, amoral men and women of means.

And yesterday, I also spoke of six next steps that we—the academe, the sciences, the free press, and other institutions entrusted with the discovery and safekeeping and transmission of truth—can take to counter disinformation. Again, in summary form:

1. Engage the platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, the various chat apps) through a policy of critical collaboration. Hold them accountable for the false information or abuse of information that happens, work with them in educating audiences and fighting falsehoods.

2. Support the free press. Subscribe, follow, share, subsidize, encourage, defend, and hold accountable those who are doing the real work of journalism.

3. Continue the hosting of fact-checking workshops, but increase their number. While such workshops can train only 50 or so volunteers at a time, they are immediately empowering, and these small victories can lead to larger opportunities.

4. Consider the use of massive open online courses, MOOCs, to dramatically widen the potential base of critically aware fact-checkers.

5. Propagate a culture of critical thinking, starting with short courses on the growing field known as the psychology of disinformation, and offer them in schools, companies, parishes.

6. Fight back against known peddlers or vendors of disinformation through the legal process—and the same time strengthen the capacity of the legal system to defend the rule of law.

BETWEEN TWO ASSASSINS

That was yesterday. Today I would like to speak about the larger truths worth defending.

As a journalist, as an editor, I work mostly behind a desk, but on occasion I go out on field. I remember, for instance, when I interviewed two confessed assassins.

When dangerous men are in fear of their lives, they make themselves difficult to find. To interview Edgar Matobato, who confessed to being a hired killer of the Davao Death Squad, and then, months later, his handler, the former Davao policeman Arturo Lascañas, we needed to do the cloak-and-dagger stuff we see in the movies, only without cloaks and definitely without daggers. Unmarked vehicles, hand-off points in crowded areas, circuitous routes to lose possible tails, remote or unlikely locations.

But when dangerous men are in fear of their lives, they also speak plainly. The prospect of a hanging truly clears the mind. Expecting to hear them speak obliquely, circuitously, with a lot of strategic hesitation, we heard them speak calmly, candidly.

For instance, when I asked Matobato how many times he personally saw Mayor Duterte kill a man, he gave a straight answer.

“Sa Ma-a, siguro pitong beses”—“In Ma-a,” the site of the quarry where the Davao Death Squad killed many of their victims, “maybe seven times.” Does the use of “maybe” put his admission in doubt? Let’s think this through. I can understand why there will be those who will think that it’s a sign he was not telling the truth. But I think it’s the opposite. The “siguro” is a sign of doubt, yes, but it is exactly the kind of doubt that reinforces the truth. It is easy enough to remember how many times your boss has killed a man, if he has killed only once or twice. But if he has killed more times than that, how can we remember, and how can we be certain?

Here was an assassin searching his memory in real time. Could he have been putting on an act in an attempt to mislead me? Yes. Did he? I don’t think so. Do I believe him? Yes. Is it a fact then that the President of the Philippines killed at least eight men, seven of them in Ma-a? I don’t know; that needs to be independently verified. Do I believe that the assassin Matobato was telling the truth? Yes.

I did not enter the gates of the Ateneo, of the college, back in 1981, in order to learn the skills to determine whether a hired killer is telling the truth or not. How could I have known? But it is precisely the truths I learned at the Ateneo that brought me, circuitously, to that interview, and to my conclusion.

The truths I learned, and which I once committed to writing, in the form of an editorial in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, were the larger truths, the myths that make a nation possible.

• That we have the power of self-definition, a power based on the human capacity for remorse and redemption and reinvention.

• That our freedom must not be taken for granted, but rather earned again and again, and won each time through difficult struggle.

• That the face of the invader or oppressor described in our national anthem can assume the countenance of a fellow Filipino.

• And that we have the power to liberate ourselves, according to our fundamental dignity.

BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY

We are, literally, standing on a hill.

But Loyola Heights is a hill in a figurative sense too. Our beautiful, beloved campus is an aerie of academic, artistic, athletic achievement. Our university is a sanctuary, for spiritual activity and social activists. Our home is a laboratory for the liberal arts, a retreat for research, a safe zone for the sciences. And 142 years after Rizal was graduated from the Ateneo with the highest honors, his formative role in our history, and his fate and fame as First Filipino, continue to add not only borrowed luster to our name, but borrowed height to our hill.

To this history, you have left your mark; you have carved your own milestones and added your own memories. The highlight reels will naturally vary from graduate to graduate. For some of you, OrSem and its exhortation to take a leap of faith—“lundagin mo, baby!,” as I cannot believe we used to say in the 1970s—will figure in the reel; for others, it will be trying out for the JSEC challenge, that most Atenean of contests; for still others, it will be competing in your chosen sport in the UAAP; for some, it will be the high, or the low, of your first Philosophy orals; for many, it will be the national championships in the country’s most popular sports; for others, it will be the rush to the People Power Monument, after the travesty, the tragedy, that was the Supreme Court decision on the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

But in all likelihood, your highlights will be mostly people: Your fellow stragglers in that 730 am class; the family you stayed with when you went on immersion; your org mates who pulled all-nighters with you; the friends who vetted your thesis against their will; or Ate Alma, over at the SEC B photocopier, worrying over your work, and never failing to call you pangga; or Kuya Mack; or Ate Rose, who kept your floor in the University Dorm clean; or Ate Mel, who took special care of your department’s majors.

Then there are the teachers, who made a lasting difference. I had the pleasure of meeting and conversing with more than a dozen graduating seniors in the last two months; the teachers they mentioned, among others, included John Paul Bolano, Max Pulan, Ambeth Ocampo, the excellent Kim Kierans, and Jo-Ed Tirol, who is in a struggle for his soul, caught between the demands of teaching and administration. (At least that’s how the students described it to me.) There was also Aaron Vicencio, the wonderful Tonette Angeles, and Mark Pasco, who reminds his students again and again: “Huwag ka maging kopal.” Now that is truly woke: Both somewhat obscene and politically necessary at the same time. In the interest of our General Patronage rating, I will not translate his organic turn of phrase.

All of the students spoke, with genuine pride, of three icons: BobbyGuev, Father AD, Eddie Boy. It is my good fortune to have known Dr. Bobby Guevara since our high school years and Dulaang Sibol days; his Exodus insight, that to be truly free we need to be aware of our own conditions of exile, is liberating. Father Dacanay, who discovered the new theological virtue summed up in the phrase “ball is life,” teaches us how to confront our conscience—even outside the basketball court! And Dr. Eddie Boy Calasanz reminds us how it is even possible for us to speak of “forever.” Because we can do more than what we can know.

Finally, some of your highlight reels may feature the life form that is indubitably superior to humans: the cats of Ateneo.

To be sure, the Class of 2019 has already made history; you are the first freshman class to follow the new academic calendar—which starts, like revolutions in the Philippines, in August.

And perhaps your revolution has already started with a stirring call to arms. In an extraordinary essay, reflected in her valedictory speech, your valedictorian (and student government president) has moved all of us to reconsider that most Ignatian of virtues, the spirit of generosity, in the context of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the “structures of sin,” or “social sin.” Using our own sense of place, borrowing our own rich source of metaphor, Hya Bendaña has powerfully reminded us that “Inequality in the Philippines means that there is a hill, and the rest is down from the hill.”

The hill we stand on, then, is also one of great privilege. Note the words we use, sometimes instinctively, to describe it: aerie, sanctuary, laboratory, retreat, safe zone. The words already embody a sense of exclusion, or to extend Hya’s own thinking, they suggest the power of isolation.

But it isn’t just the elitism of the educated or the entitlement of the economically advantaged that we must guard against.

As I have written elsewhere, an Ateneo education does not guarantee immunization against villainy. Of many possible examples, let me offer only one. In late 1896, nine clergy of Nueva Segovia were suspected of being part of the Revolution and tortured. Three of the priests—Fathers Adriano Garces, Mariano Gaerlan, and Mariano Dacanay—were brutalized by someone who volunteered to do it: Enrique Lete, who was not only a graduate of the Ateneo but a classmate of Rizal’s!

It is necessary for us to reflect on this fundamental truth: that the same school, our beloved school, can graduate, in the same class, a Rizal and a Lete. That is the true context in which we can understand the nobility of our Ateneo heroes and the everyday heroism of the Atenean who does good. I do not mean doing well; I mean doing good.

ENVOI

I read something by Saint Ignatius that I believe sums up everything the Ateneo taught me. In his letter to the Jesuits taking part in the Council of Trent, written in 1546, he gave highly specific instructions. And then he said this:

“… when it is a question of bringing souls to a sense of their spiritual good, it is profitable to speak at length with method, love, and feeling.”

Method, love, and feeling. I found this elegant formula practical but also puzzling. What did Saint Ignatius mean when he distinguished love from feeling?

I looked up the original, and in Spanish we read this: “ayuda el hablar largo, concertado, amoroso y con afecto.” Roughly: “It helps to speak long, systematically, lovingly, and with feeling.”

Saint Ignatius’ concern with “concertado” is built into the DNA of schools like the Ateneo. He means being prepared, he means arranging things beforehand, he means thinking and doing things systematically. He means method, which in our schools means rigor, precision, discipline.

But what is the difference between “amoroso” and “afecto”? By “afecto,” I believe Saint Ignatius meant fervor, distinction. Today’s Jesuits would perhaps call it style.

And “amoroso”? It turns out this is the heart of the Ignatian legacy. He writes sometimes of sympathy, of caring for the well-being of the other, the subject, the soul. He means: Speak, act, fight out of a sense of love.

This sense must be the difference, between a Jose Rizal and an Enrique Lete, between an Ibarra and a Simoun. You can bring rigor and a certain flair to torture, but you cannot bring love. You need method to plan an act of terrorism, and you can do it with a kind of style, but love takes no part.

Choose the work that requires love.

So, Class of 2019! Congratulations. You have just survived the last lecture of your college years. It is time, not only to change the world, but to change the nation, with the larger truths that make nationhood itself possible. And as sons and daughters of the great Ignatius of Loyola, fight the battles that need to be fought—with method, love, and feeling, but above all with love.