On Simplifying Politics as a Morality Play Between Good and Evil

The surge of Noynoy Aquino's popularity, based from the latest polls, albeit only on limited but significant areas in Luzon (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20090914-225115/Aquino-tops-Luzon-poll) is very tempting for someone to toot the horn and celebrate the impending victory of the good versus the evil, or at the very least, that the good is winning over the evil.

While I am partial towards Noynoy, I would caution anyone against simplifying politics and life as a battle between good and evil. It is not, at least to the ordinary citizen.

Conrad de Quiros, in his column which appeared today, September 14, in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, criticized those who problematize the "good versus evil" narrative. I am one of those. In the column, he called us too theoretical, too confined in a tiny box, and too out of touch with the reality of politics and how the ordinary Filipino citizen thinks. (http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090914-225096/It-is-Good-vs-Evil)

I have high respects for Conrad, and have agreed with him almost 99 percent of the time. This is one of the rare one percent that I would strongly disagree with my fellow Bikolano.

The narrative of good versus evil, in fact, is a convenient template for those in power and those who challenge them to mobilize and rally their supporters. It is easy. And it is too simple. All you have to do is to reduce the complexity of people's choices into a dualism between the good (which is always whoever you support), and the evil (of course, the one you don't support). Thus, it is in fact less of a reality that people experience, but more of an image that one conjures and simulates. Using plain language, it is an advertising campaign, an image building strategy. And our experiences with ads and image make-overs is that they create a hype to manipulate people's search for completeness in the face of a flawed existence--buy this product to make yourself whole, so to speak.

It is the same in political discourse. We speak of an incomplete national experience, a flawed national narrative brought about by evil forces now incarnated through a short woman with a mole who loves expensive food. We want to sell an alternative, our "product" who embodies the "good." No matter how strongly one can agree with the demonification of Gloria, this should not cloud our judgment in being honest with ourselves. It is all but campaign hype. But to offer it as biblical truth is, if I may use the metaphor of boxes, not even thinking in a tiny box, but thinking in a very large but nevertheless very imaginary box.

The opposition between good and evil is a convenient tool of those at the top of the overt national narrative, the elites, and power strugglers and their apologists. It is never the discourse of the ordinary. To assume that ordinary citizens could easily fall in this trap is assuming too much of the elite's power to beguile and too less of the ordinary citizen's ability to discern.

To the ordinary citizen, the issues that matter most are survival, authenticity and how to cope and make best of what they have. In a situation in which uncertainty, complexity and the multiplicity of possibilities predominate your decision landscape, it is going to be suicidal and inauthentic to simplify your choices between a good and an evil. Ordinary peoples negotiate the complex pathways of their everyday lives by their willingness to compromise and suspend moral judgments to survive the cacophony of obstacles thrown their way and to retain their bearings. This is why there is a white lie told even by those who go to mass everyday to make their children secure and safe; of a traffc transgression occassionally done by a conscientious tax payer and efficient manager if only to be on time to a meeting; of a human rights advocate technically living in sin with somebody without the benefit of a marriage, or with somebody of the same sex, if only to satisfy his or her own right to happiness; or of a farmer tenant pilfering from his landlord's share of the harvest by not reporting the correct volume; or of the many who are forced into prostitution just to support their families. The list could go on and on.

And in the above examples, the acts of the people mentioned are not cases of pure evil. And the choices that they make are not simply choosing one over the other.

No, it is not us who theorize about the complexity of ordinary life that are out of touch with reality.

On the contrary, I value the experience of the ordinary too much that I am not about to be stampeded by an ideological desire to justify the candidacy of somebody, no matter how I like him, by calling the choices that people make as unreal and fictitious.

History may have been written as an opposition between good and evil, and great transformations have been painted to be triumphs of the good over the evil. But I have said this before, and I am going to say this again--the history that we know is always written by the winners, and not by the losers. There is much to be teased out from the silences that are not articulated there. It is in these spaces that life becomes a complex terrain of everyday struggle, seen in ordinary people's own personal histories of negotiating the pathways outside the simplifying templates of an ideal good and a demonized evil driving the choices that they make. In fact, a careful check even of grand events, or of actions of kings, presidents, revolutionaries and great intellectuals will reveal that these are not purely manifestations of moral decisions in the context of a good-evil moment.

Furthermore, while Barack Obama and Cory Aquino may have been children of this Manichean opposition between good and evil, as Conrad points out in his column, so was Adolf Hitler when he demonized the Jews and painted the great Aryan race as the vessel from which the good in the human race could be realized. Many historical goods have come out of the narratives of good fighting evil. But in the same manner, many evil deeds have also been legitimized by it. Besides, what is "good" and what is "evil" is relative to the one who speaks. In an elitist narrative, those who have been given the right to write history would naturally have the upperhand.

And the last time I checked, Imelda Marcos is still at it whenever she talks about the true, the good and the beautiful. And she was just recently honored by the CCP.

I would say this: let those who write and speak emotionally and with conviction on behalf of the candidates they are committed to support no matter what speak the language of good and evil. They are just doing their jobs. That is their box, their very large but nevetheless very imaginary box.