AN EFFECT OF GLOBALIZATION

Various forms of social communications media ushered in globalization. Gone where the days of mass media, where mass of people gathered together to hear and see something from a television or radio. Today, through computers, cellphones, ipads with internet connection, a single person can access an audio-video, text-graphics, email and the likes, via FaceBook, Youtube, Yahoo. Means of communication are now modernized, indeed making the world globalized; a global village.

When I was in kindergarten, I used to sing the song It’s a small world after all. The world then pertains only to our purok, where I could almost name my playmates. The real (whole) world then is simply incomprehensible, its actual dimension, and the billions of people living on it. I could not image where my relatives in America lives, and how do they go there. Communications with them happened only once a year, during Christmas season. It was through the postcards they sent that I came to know their place, the customs and traditions, the kind of clothes they wore. The messages they sent then were meaningful and kind, with carefully chosen words, for their space is limited. Thus, every postcard we received is treated with care, for one feels the dedication poured in by your love ones in preparing them. Communication, then, via mails took time; from preparation of the letters and postcards, to sending of the mail.  In the process, it allows the formation of values; for example the virtue of patience is formed as one waits for the letters to arrive, the poetry and passion in writing is encourage as one choose words to paint the message he would like to convey between the lines. With all the hurdles one needs to pass in order to communicate to the other person on the other side of the globe, it was difficult to imagine the real physical world as a small world.         

Today, the world had become a small world. The various means of social communication enable one to communicate to a person thousands of miles away from him. I have two siblings in the Abu Dhabi, in the Middle East. Should we had lived in the 90’s, we could had communicated via mails, but it is already 2016. We do Skype whenever we wanted to see and talk to them, via video call. We maintain a FaceBook group message, where we as a family can group chat and send message to each other. It is like holding a meeting together, for one is informed of what the other is doing through the message he posts via FaceBook messenger. Through these modern means of social communications (Skype, FB), communicating to persons becomes easy, and makes the world truly a small world. However, the values formed in the past, became optional. One may not choose the words he uses, after all he has unlimited space to write on. Patience is totally diminished as one’s message can be sent via click of the mouse; instant message. The vanishing sight of the virtue of the past, gives way, nevertheless, to the dawning of new values; such as giving a great emphasis on family ties, openness in the family in showing concern and care for them, volunteerism, participation to communal advocacy, desire to be informed. Values, after all, are not totally diminish, today, but emphasis among them shifts.

Skype, FaceBook, Youtube, and other modern forms of social communication media, truly, made a small world possible; a globalized world. The values of communication, found in the past, may seemed to be relegated to bygone era of mails and postcards. But truth be told, modern means of communication give rise to new values. However, unlike before that man was left with no choice but to form such values, man today has to choose to form them in him, or else he will be formed by these modern means in a way he might not desire.   

END OF METANARRATIVES

In his article, Do we really need a “Global View of History”?[1], Wu Xiaoqun discussed the entry of globalization in the field of history in China, through the so-called global view of history. Xiaoqun viewed globalization and the global view of history as a machination of the West imposing itself to the East, which the former perceived as an unsophisticated based on their definition of civilization. History, thus, is written from the point of view of the westerners, who conquered, colonized the non-westerners, to educate and civilize them. It is a form of exploitation by west to the detriment of east. Xiaoqun proposed the abolition of this metanarrative imposed by the west to the east. In this post-modern era, after all, discussions have become multi-centered. None has the monopoly of the center stage, for every one may have his own stage, presented in his own way. Xiaoqun advocated the promotion of local knowledge and history in contrast from the grand narratives of the west. 

In the Philippines, historians had long rejected this global view of history together with the grand narratives of the west and proposed local, regional narratives as norms in tackling the accounts of the Filipino people. Teodoro Agoncillo, Reynaldo Ileto, Renato Constantino, to name a few, present an alternative reading of the events that took place in the past and had long been discussed through the framework from the west. Theirs are history written from the Filipino point of view, by the Filipinos themselves. The instruments and materials used by these authors may not be able to fit to the western standard of writing history, or might appear to be totally new to them. Ileto, for example, in his book Pasyon and Rebolusyon, rendered the story of Philippine Revolution through the hymns, and prayers of the Katipuneros. He also analyzed the amulets, and various talisman of the Katipuneros decoding their beliefs during the Revolution. Ileto relates what used to be an unknown aspect of the Philippine Revolution, revealing a new understanding of the Filipino people through interpretations that deviated from the western-sponsored Philippine History. 

Globalization may had helped in the study of history in making sources available to researchers via Internet, improvement of transportations, technology used in carbon dating materials, etc. However, globalization too had become a means to promote ideologies, propagandas, and in the case of history, metanarratives. Globalization becomes a means for a “superior” culture to impose its own history to a perceived “inferior” culture, making the former the protagonist in a history it has written for the other. A truly globalized world, conversely, provides voices for both the superior and inferior, west and east. The east can indeed talkback to the west, who may might be imposing itself and his own grand history. The advent of local histories and narratives manifests the true globalization of the world in a postmodern era, sounding the drums, announcing the end of metanarratives. 

[1] Wu Xiaoqun, “Global View of History”?, in Chinese Studies in History, vol. 42, no. 3, Spring 2009, pp. 45-50.

TOUCH

Touch is a powerful sense experience.

I remember the good Fr. Carpintero. We used to have him as our regular confessor. Every time I confess to him, he would embrace me. And just like a long lost son or a friend, he would counsel me, while his arm is around my shoulder. I felt his concern for me, his compassion for a sinner. It was a touching experience. More than the counsel and the penance, it is what I remember.

Our Lord is good to us. In his desire to save us, he assumed a tangible nature; our humanity. Through the mystery of incarnation, our Lord became touchable. More so, through the same mystery, he was able to touch us physically; and save us personally.

But how do we value the touch of the Lord, the physical presence of God in our lives?

The Lord may not be in the form he had two thousand years ago, but still He continues to exist as a tangible God through the Eucharist. Every day, He touches us, indeed nourishes through his own body and blood.

Are we healed by His touch? Are we transformed by His physical presence? Are we renewed by the Eucharist? Few can answer in the affirmative, perhaps because we have lose our gift of faith from our tangible and touchable God. 

I would like to share with you the beautiful prayer composed by our brother Thomas on the touchable God.

 
I devoutly adore you, O hidden Deity, 
Truly hidden beneath these appearances.
My whole heart submits to you,
And in contemplating you, It surrenders itself completely.

Sight, touch, taste are all deceived in their judgment of you,
But hearing suffices firmly to believe.
I believe all that the Son of God has spoken;
There is nothing truer than this word of truth.

On the cross only the divinity was hidden,
But here the humanity is also hidden.
I believe and confess both,
And ask for what the repentant thief asked.

I do not see the wounds as Thomas did,
But I confess that you are my God.
Make me believe more and more in you,
Hope in you, and love you.

O memorial of our Lord's death!
Living bread that gives life to man,
Grant my soul to live on you,
And always to savor your sweetness.

Lord Jesus, Good Pelican,
wash my filthiness and clean me with your blood,
One drop of which can free
the entire world of all its sins.

Jesus, whom now I see hidden,
I ask you to fulfill what I so desire:
That the sight of your face being unveiled 
I may have the happiness of seeing your glory. Amen.