WE are a country always searching for heroes. We proclaim as heroes our boxers and singers. Men and women who toil in the fields, deserts, hospitals, nurseries and kitchens of the world have earned for us the icons we need to place as heroes in the halls of our imagination. Maybe we are desperate because there are so few of them, and some are even pretenders and products of historical fiction. And more people would rather accept the status quo than fight windmills and city hall.
Then came the age of President Rodrigo Duterte, where it appears that more and more people are willing to speak up, until you realize that this exists only in social media, but not in real communities, everyday spaces and ordinary places.
Despite noise in social media, we remain a country that, in the name of harmony, prefer silence over speaking up. In our everyday encounters with power, the normal is the one that takes the blow. It has always been problematic that despite the need for us to challenge the system, it is easier for people to accept things the way they are. This is not apathy. This is simple resignation and acceptance due to fear — fear of reprisal, fear of the unknown, fear of disturbing the peace, fear of the consequences.
In fact, even among those allied with a particular political side, there is pressure not to rock the convenient partisan narrative for fear of being labeled a turncoat or a trojan horse.
And this is true not only among those with less in power and in life, but even more true for those who are privileged. In fact, I would argue that courage is even in higher supply among those who have nothing to lose than those who have lots at stake.
Even in the university, in which liberal minds are supposed to thrive, we are always cautious not to rock the boat. It is saddening that many people have deep problems with the system, but would remain silent or would not dare speak up, and would rely on those who have the courage (or stupidity, perhaps, or naiveté) to speak on their behalf. No wonder we have very few heroes and martyrs, even as oppressive and corrupt governments, and bad administrations and leaders flourish with the tacit consent of the many.
For example, it is a sad day when in the name of institutional harmony, employees would vote to tie their hands by allowing their employer not to implement the mandated retirement age of 65, and instead keep the lower age of 60 which is not in accordance with the law. In the guise of maintaining institutional peace, these people have voted against their interest, and in effect have bound the minority to vacate their rights not to be forced to retire earlier than what the law has provided.
Courage is supposed to be a virtue, but people choose to be afraid of the blowback because fear is more convenient, and safe.
We can always romanticize our proclivity towards harmony, and elevate it as a norm that justifies silence and acceptance. We can root this from many different sources, from our Catholic upbringing where forgiveness is seen as a virtue, in addition to poverty. But there is another domain which nurtures and naturalizes fear.
The domestic sphere of the home, as an ordinary space, may provide for insidious, yet seemingly innocent, mechanisms to constrain the production of courage. And this resides in the manner we deploy narratives of caring and nurturing embodied in seemingly innocent lullabies, games and songs.
Our Filipino lullabies that were supposed to lull us to sleep may seem innocent, but embedded in their texts are two dominant and threatening narratives: “Baby, you better sleep or something bad will happen;” or, “Baby, you have to sleep now since something bad has happened.”
Melancholy in some lullabies is associated with fear of separation. Take for example the Visayan lullaby that sings: “Ili ili, tulog anay, wala dire imong nanay, kadto tienda, bakal papay, ili ili, tulog anay” (Sleep, baby sleep. Your mother is not here. She is off to the store to buy bread.)
There is even one Bikolano lullaby whose message is appallingly morbid, putting into song the consequences of being a bad child. The miscreant asks his parents to cut off his head and throw it in the lake, with the hope that they would later take pity and take back the severed head when they see it floating in the water (“Ay Nanay, ay Tatay, kun ako maraot, pugutan nin payo, ibuntog sa lawod. Kun mahiling nindo na aanod-anod, ay nanay ay tatay, sapuda man tulos.”).
Imagine how babies would have reacted. In singing these songs, we in fact do not lull them to sleep. We scare them to death!
However, Western narratives for lulling babies to sleep are just as guilty. One can just imagine the effect on a child of being lulled to sleep by a song about a baby being rocked in a cradle on a treetop, being told softly that there is a possibility that the treetop will break and the cradle will fall, babies and all. I vividly remember the distressed face of my eldest son when he was still a baby every time I sang this lullaby to him.
Even nursery rhymes are also full of scary images of eggs falling from a wall and not being able to be made whole again, or of Jack and Jill falling down a hill. Many fables and fairy tales have a plethora of witches and ogres. The root of some narratives are actually dark, a thought that crosses my mind when I think about the seemingly innocent rhyme about rings of roses in a pocketful of posies being rooted in the Black Plague when children really “fall down” after sneezing.
While a more systematic study has to be conducted on the possible effects of these lullabies, nursery rhymes and fairy tales to future citizenship, others have already gone further to recast some of these in more “politically correct” ways, such as in writing children’s stories or rewriting popular fairy tales that already tell lessons about gender equality and critical thinking.
Maybe the moment we begin to sing lullabies of courage, tell nursery rhymes of bravery and read fairy tales of liberation will be the time that we will no longer be looking for heroes. In that ideal world, doing heroic deeds would become the new normal, and voting against one’s interest due to fear of institutional disharmony will no longer have a chance of winning.
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