[REFLECTION] The way we live now

There was a time when even Manila had all these odd, vacant patches which were either grasslands of swampy kangkungan, or daraanan ng riles ng tren.  I and my playmates used to chase dragonflies and catch beetles on the grassy patches, wheel ourselves on makeshift carts along the riles, or hop skip along the banks of the kangkungan. Today, our children are either out in the streets hustling or whoring for a living, or cooped up in an electronic world of TV and computer games. Hapless families build precarious homes along da riles, and sleek malls rise on what used to be lush and muddy fields of kangkong green. Modernity has come upon us, and the social landscape is exhibiting its bizarre results.

One of the more obvious things you notice is that there is a growing sameness in the lifestyle of our middle classes with that of the rest of the world, what they now call, the ‘global middle class.’ 

There are the same toys and things – computers, beepers, laser discs, smart phones – and the same stresses – heart attacks at forty, marital failure, and that withered, gulay look that signals a bad case of burnout, especially among our millennials who are well-paid cyberslaves in the global business world. 

We all work so hard these days that we hardly see each other. And if we do, there is really only time for hello and goodbye. Tipong wala nang oras para sa pa-chika-chika, and not even for culture: going to the theater or a concert has ceased to be worth the time, what with the horrendous traffic.

Our families are now scattered about, in the US and Europe or out in the Arab desert. Access to mass travel now means that not only the ilustrados get to see the world, but maids with a one-way ticket to Hong Kong or Singapore, seamen on board cargo ships, construction workers to Saudi Arabia and entertainer types ending up as Japayukis in Japan. 

Christmases and other such times for getting together are now sometimes forlorn affairs, with one or both parents away and two or three brothers and sisters sobbing away their media noche alone in the cold winter dark of London or New York. PLDT cashed in on the pain of this separation by telling us to ‘bring him home on the telephone.’ Small comfort, this. The truth is that you cannot hug a loved one through Facebook or the telephone, or fax a handshake as an old advertisement has said.

Side by side with the speed with which we are able to connect through time and space is the increasing sense of isolation and loneliness. Where once we used to drop in on each other for small chitchat, ngayon gusto i-fax mo na lang. An increasing number of professionals now operate from what has been called the ‘electronic cottage. While this has the advantage of efficiency, especially since traffic now makes going anywhere quite prohibitive, we lose out on community, that rare miracle of being in the presence of each other, and where, we are told, ‘the Lord commands the blessing’ (Psalm 133:3). 

In the infrequent times I manage to entertain at home and get friends together, I notice that one or two would, without meaning to, monopolize the conversation with their woes, gushing forth like a bottle uncorked, for lack of an occasion where such things could be said with great freedom, fun and abandon. 

It used to be said of Kierkegaard that he was condemned to an interior monologue because there was no one else in all Denmark that he could talk to. While most of us are not quite there yet, we are in danger of losing our vaunted sense of community simply by following the patterns by which the West has developed.

How are we to look at all this from a biblical perspective ?

First of all, there is no need to pillory technology or modern social life just because it is changing our time-honored ways. The massing of people in cities, the lightning speed of technological advances, the new forms of social organization that arise out of these changes — all these are part of the incremental progress nascent in history. 

The fact that the Bible begins with a garden and ends in a city means that we expect things to develop, to change into ever-increasing complexity. Human culture is part of God’s design for the world; the expenditure of energy and creativity in making new things so that life becomes easier and better for people is a mandate from God. (Genesis 1:28)

As a woman I am certainly grateful for the invention of the refrigerator, which frees me from having to go to the market every day and spending too much time curing meats or preserving and pickling fruits and vegetables just so they last. It is not from wisdom, says Ecclesiastes, that we ask, “Why were the former days better than these?” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). 

The past or our traditional ways are not exactly sacrosanct. There are good and bad things about tradition, and sometimes, as in the controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees, it can become a stumbling block to new ways of knowing God. Israel got so stuck with the ritual ways of Judaism that they killed the prophets or anybody who sings a new song, for, as Jesus puts it, “no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good’. ” (Luke 5:38).

Also, it is from the Romantic movement, not the Bible, that we get the idea of civilization as a corrupting influence. The sense that life is more innocent or pristine out in the wilds originates from Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’, and the general longing for the remote and the rough in the romantic imagination. The bukid is not any nearer to grace than the city. While much can be said about simplicity and keeping our needs to the minimum in these days of environmental crisis, the state of nature is not any kinder than the concrete jungle. Try sleeping out on a beach on a moonlit night without a mosquito net.

However, there are places in the Scripture where technology or the culture we build around us becomes a way of dominating people or making life bearable without God.

Lamech, in his famous ‘Song of the Sword,’ boasts that “I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (Genesis 4:23-24). His son’s inventions out of iron has enabled Lamech to avenge himself out of all proportion to the offense. With sword in hand, it was possible, even with his lesser strength, to multiply his capacity for inflicting harm. So he boasts to his wives about this new wonder toy that enables him to prevail over a younger man.

In the days of Saul and Jonathan, it was said that neither sword nor spear could be found in the hand of any of their people, excepting them. The reason was that no smith could be found in all of Israel, for the Philistines, by way of disarming them, had seen to it that the technology is locked against them. (1 Samuel 13:19-23) This passage is an ancient example of what a technological edge can do to countries which happen to lag behind in critical areas of technical knowhow.

It is worth noting that it was the line of Cain which pioneered animal husbandry, technology and the arts. (Genesis 4:17-22) It was Cain who built the city, which, to the French sociologist Jacques Ellul, was his way of self-defense and of making life bearable now that he has wandered away from God’s presence. This line of reading suggests that the city is something inherently rebellious, an artificial environment contrived to enable us to live with some degree of security apart from God. From Babel to Babylon, the thread that connects is this proud, autonomous reliance on one’s own resources and ingenuity.

Nevertheless, as with all things that begin with our fallenness, the city can and must be redeemed. “Pray for this city,” says Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon, “seek its welfare…. for in its welfare you will find its welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7). The city, with all its stress and tension, ugly menace and terrible slums, is a place of mercy. At the end of time it will be transformed, we are told, into a new Jerusalem where the best of human culture as we know it will continue in some way and endure. (Revelation 21:24-26)

So what does all this have to do with the changing pattern of our lives today?

Well, for one, it means that we shouldn’t get psychologically conservative whenever all these flashy things brought to us by globalization come our way. Let us be grateful for all the new things that connect us to each other and make our lives easier.

At the same time, we need to watch that these new tools do not develop a logic of their own, bidding us to organize our life and work according to the patterns set by them. There is nothing inevitable about the process of modernization. Japan set out to acquire and develop technology according to the inner workings of its own culture, building on a long history of metallurgy and communal solidarity. 

In our case, we need to ask: what kind of development is best suited to our temperament as a people, with our fiesta culture, our rather flamboyant inventiveness and flair for improvisation and its corresponding aversion to standardization? Note that in the days when our jeepneys were iconic displays of folk art, no two jeepneys were exactly alike. We do not like assembly-line uniformity.

To be sure, the blinding speed with which things change around us means that more and more we shall experience distortions and cultural discontinuities. We need to be those who are able to negotiate a continuity between the heritage of our past and the newness of the future. As someone recently put it, “We are all embarked on the adventure of modernity; the question is whether we are galley slaves or passengers with luggage who travel in hope.” – Rappler.com

Melba Padilla Maggay is a social anthropologist and president of Culture Creatives and the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC).