"Solidarity and Brotherhood."
Notes on José Rizal
on the day of his birth
Notes on José Rizal
on the day of his birth
"Solidarity and Brotherhood."
These are the words the Great Malayan José Rizal hath said during his youth at the University of Santo Tomas.
In his time mostly filled with disenfranchisement and injustice towards his fellow brown-skinned folk by the Spanish authorities, the need for solidarity and brotherhood had been asserted as such, in order to counter repression if not to assert the goals of those whose conditions pushed to turn every aspiration into a weapon of struggle.
That even until today there are those who still trying to assert the way it tries to remold character and seeking its own inherited goodness. True that the system has used Rizal as an example of a man who desired for change thorugh productive means including those of a change of one's character, but, he was the same Rizal whose works meant an assertion of a need to realise an aspiration, if not an ideal based on justice, equality, besides those of solidarity and brotherhood of his youth.
But come to think of this: since the system has used those words, how come injustice and disenfranchisement prevail? If they desired change of character, how come there are corrupt personages and repressors in every field? From the halls of Batasang Pambansa to those of social media, such degeneration brought by a repressive order rather negates Rizal into a mere aesthetic as the Philippine flag and various symbols meant to appease the tourist. Furthemore, it is as if that people just agrees to the views of Fray Miguel Lucio y Bustamante that the Filipino does not deserve education, or even help nor solidarity to uplift itself but instead be tied to its own carabao. As time goes by, with age-old repressions and disenfranchisements remain, of modern day Victorinas, Damasos, Salvis, Hermana Penchangs, what more of Tandang Basio Macunats, these personages aggravates tensions that has to be ended with modern day Simouns, Basilios, Salomes, and Cabesang Taleses.
Anyways, solidarity and brotherhood will always be heard same as freedom and justice to a cherished homeland. Rizal was like Rousseau in seeking goodness, of ibarra in a desire for reforms, but having an inconvenient reality has made everyone like Robespierre, a Simoun to justify an action driven by a desire to realise an ideal.
These are the words the Great Malayan José Rizal hath said during his youth at the University of Santo Tomas.
In his time mostly filled with disenfranchisement and injustice towards his fellow brown-skinned folk by the Spanish authorities, the need for solidarity and brotherhood had been asserted as such, in order to counter repression if not to assert the goals of those whose conditions pushed to turn every aspiration into a weapon of struggle.
That even until today there are those who still trying to assert the way it tries to remold character and seeking its own inherited goodness. True that the system has used Rizal as an example of a man who desired for change thorugh productive means including those of a change of one's character, but, he was the same Rizal whose works meant an assertion of a need to realise an aspiration, if not an ideal based on justice, equality, besides those of solidarity and brotherhood of his youth.
But come to think of this: since the system has used those words, how come injustice and disenfranchisement prevail? If they desired change of character, how come there are corrupt personages and repressors in every field? From the halls of Batasang Pambansa to those of social media, such degeneration brought by a repressive order rather negates Rizal into a mere aesthetic as the Philippine flag and various symbols meant to appease the tourist. Furthemore, it is as if that people just agrees to the views of Fray Miguel Lucio y Bustamante that the Filipino does not deserve education, or even help nor solidarity to uplift itself but instead be tied to its own carabao. As time goes by, with age-old repressions and disenfranchisements remain, of modern day Victorinas, Damasos, Salvis, Hermana Penchangs, what more of Tandang Basio Macunats, these personages aggravates tensions that has to be ended with modern day Simouns, Basilios, Salomes, and Cabesang Taleses.
Anyways, solidarity and brotherhood will always be heard same as freedom and justice to a cherished homeland. Rizal was like Rousseau in seeking goodness, of ibarra in a desire for reforms, but having an inconvenient reality has made everyone like Robespierre, a Simoun to justify an action driven by a desire to realise an ideal.