BAGUIA
The health of the conversations in our public sphere can be assessed using two concepts formulated by critical discourse analyst Norman Fairclough: regulative practice and spaces of emergence.
Regulative practice, as I wrote last week, refers to controls for who are allowed into the conversation within a media ecology and to the degree to which there is framing and joint management of the conversation there.
I called on our doctors and health professionals to join the conversation and bring to the fore the point that our problem with illegal drugs is not so much a criminal as it is a health issue.
The conversation must not be dominated by law enforcers and crime-fighters if we are to save our own flesh and blood from the evils wrought by harmful, outlawed narcotics and their padrinos and keep those around them from becoming statistics categorized as collateral damage in an armed response to addiction.
I also intimated that our public sphere must not be fragmented into highly regulated smaller spheres that clash with each other. These smaller spheres are choruses. There is strong framing and no openness to co-management of the conversation with the other, the stranger, the different in them.
The strong framing is detrimental to spaces of emergence. People from different sides are framed as Dutertards, Yellowtards or Dilawan. These frames are dehumanizing. They reduce human beings to enemies based on often inaccurate perceptions about their political persuasions.
People are labeled addicts and criminals deserving of death, or plotters for the ouster of the present dispensation who deserve to be crushed. Their multifaceted selves are not allowed to shine.
Spaces of emergence within the democratic public sphere, Fairclough wrote, are spaces where people’s complexities are given a stage where they can unfold, and where each individual in his multifaceted-ness can position himself in dialogue with others.
By far, the most dangerous labels used to demonize people have been “drug suspect,” “drug addict,” and “criminal.” For many Filipinos, mere attachment of any of these labels to their compatriots has become the substitute for due process and a justification for killing the labeled.
This is a tragedy.
Sen. Emmanuel Pacquiao has admitted to having taken illegal drugs himself but has managed, I am certain with the help of so many apart from himself, to rise from the depths to be boxing star.
If you run a search on Google, you can find the story of a former drug addict who eventually became a Catholic priest.
In contrast, so many others are being knocked down without being given the opportunity to fight or to discover that they have a lofty calling. Their true selves are robbed of the space to emerge because for many others it seems easier to achieve prosperity and peace by pretending that there is no more to people they deem worth eliminating than their flaws.
To many people across the archipelago, Kian de los Santos, Carl Angelo Arnaiz and Reynaldo de Guzman are no more than addicts who courted their deaths.
Saint Teresa of Calcutta would have us think otherwise. Her thought points to the root of our social scourges, drug addiction included.
The saint said that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another.
Recognizing that we belong to one another entails creating spaces in our hearts where more and more of the other can be seen in a positive light. This can begin through an honest assessment of ourselves and of our own salvation histories. This is especially important among our brothers and sisters who feel they are in a position to deny the humanity of the other.
Who among us does not have a cross to carry? Who among us has been able to carry his cross alone? Who among us has been able to reach today without having fallen several times, without depending on others to bring them back on their feet?
An awareness of our individual journeys reminds us of our own vulnerabilities and dependence on the ones who love us. Such awareness helps us have compassion on those trapped in drug addiction and its networks.
Perhaps they had no one to influence them into making the right choices. Perhaps they never had the infrastructure that includes education, financial power and other privileges that would have led them towards the good life.
Perhaps they had no one to love them into the fullness of living.
Perhaps you and I are called to help them, to see beyond their shadows into their flickering light pleading to be not snuffed out but fanned once more into a flame.
The abuse of humanity is not humanity itself. Is there anyone on earth who is sane and yet wishes to be identified only with his sins? We take liberties in excusing ourselves and giving ourselves several chances. Why should we conclude that the prodigal among us are beyond redemption?
Each life is a story. None of us is the author. We have been given our lives many times over. Let us pay that forward to those we think are the least among us. Let us give them our hearts as spaces where they can emerge into the fullness of being.
In the public sphere, let us look again at those we call names. Naming can constrict or widen spaces of emergence. Stop calling other people retards or boxing them into a label like Dilawan.
In refraining from naming, you will see more and more of reason in the other, you will see the complexity of the other, that the other is no less patriotic than you are. Then you can talk to the other instead of talking at him.