Walang basagan ng trip: our ‘create your own reality’ culture
Correct me if I’m wrong but the sequencing was this: Monday Mekanda, Tuesday Daimos, Wednesday Mazinger Z, Thursday Grendizer, and Friday was — of course — Voltes V.
To stretch it further: Monday was Teddy Benigno, Tuesday Julie Yap Daza, Wednesday Dong Puno, Thursday Louie Beltran.
Wednesday was also Miami Vice, while Thursday was The Equalizer.
That was the ’80s.
We watched MTV; listened to 88.3 (if you’re into jazz), 89.9 (what was then “mainstream”), 93.9 (for music mixed with jokes), and 107 (for a bit of edginess).
The point of that rather pedestrian walk down memory lane was that practically everyone did the same things. And usually did those things physically together.
We knew the same music, movies, fashion. The jokes were the same. You can bet that what was on television last night will be the conversation’s topic come recess the next day.
It was almost ritualistic. Which is the other point.
Because one had to wait for a specific time weekly to watch any of those shows, lasting mostly 30 minutes each, hourly for primetime shows (actually 45, commercials taking the rest of the hour; and yes, everyone then knew the commercials’ jingles).
Not every food was available on demand. Crispy pata, pizza? That’s for special occasions. KFC? You had to drive to Cubao to get it.
We knew it was Christmas because in December (yes, December, not September), CDO would come out with their outdoor display.
You vacationed in Hong Kong? What are you, some sosyal millionaire?
In short, reality was mostly shared and reality was acknowledged as one. And people waited for and endured those realities.
Life was based on a fixed rhythm beyond one’s manipulation: on this day this will happen, on this evening the family eats this food and does that activity together.
One conforms to the rhythm: miss an episode or a song, very likely because of school or social commitments, there’d be no repeats, that’s that, so just suck it up, and patiently wait again.
Sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton examined teenagers in 2005 and found a propensity to create their own reality, so much so that they’ve actually created their own belief system (which the researchers labeled as the): Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
Those adhering to MTD believe that God accepts whoever they are and whatever they do, that right and wrong is essentially equivalent to what makes them feel good about themselves, and religions don’t matter as they essentially are all same and your choice depends on what makes you happy.
This rubbish, however, is not something I’d confine to teenagers. Many of the older generation, from the Boomers to my own Gen X, are inflicted (actually self-inflicted) with this strange insanity.
Take a child studying in a good grade/high school teaching proper moral formation and values and you’ll surely find parents who think its all just pious nonsense.
Instead, come college-time, they’ll hurl their kids at any “prestigious” local university, so they can befriend someone from the elite families and cheer alongside them during basketball games.
The irony is that the elite prefer mixing exclusively amongst themselves (unless they can use you), most current employers prefer hiring from the non-“prestigious” schools, and nobody outside Manila actually cares who wins in those games.
Yet they’re valued, at the expense of the young losing their moral compass, being relativistic, and exposed to liberal “switik” catechism.
And people wonder why our country is like this.
Incidentally, with a national IQ rating of 86, isn’t it interesting how every child in social media is a genius?
Anyway, technology, surely shares a lot of the blame.
With smartphones, computers, and the internet, everything is available on demand: from movies to food to sex.
Nobody needs to wait. No need to go through the annoyances of daily life.
A lady friend observed something from social media: most women expressing difficulty in her marriage would have friends advising her to immediately leave.
That mama’s boys abound might be the problem. And yet, why did they marry those guys in the first place? Just to treat people, marriage, and the family as disposables discarded anytime they become burdensome?
Rod Dreher pointed out that modern technology is not morally neutral and the foregoing demonstrated that.
Technology allowed people to go full blast in creating their own realities regardless of facts, human experience, and logic.
Basta walang basagan ng trip.
For Jeebus’s sake, one can even change the reality that is one’s face.
In a world where anyone can log out anytime there’s someone/something unpleasant or boring, where anyone (regardless of merit or achievement) can have anything anytime anywhere: what’s the point of sticking it out, bear difficulties, and try making things work?
Just log out and reset.
Unfortunately, proper governance demands people believe, value, and celebrate the same things, and to endure and fight for such together.
Absent that, a broken society is what you have.
Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.
Twitter @jemygatdula
