HAMOG

Hinay-hinay nang hingbiya ang ngit-ngit

Ug gihagbong ang iyang mga bituon

Ngadto sa kayutaan

Ang uban gisalo sa mga dahon

Naglatay-latay  sa iyang tumoyan

Natagak ug gisabligan ang ugang yuta

Uban sa pagsidlak sa bag-ong adlaw

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More of being just a thing.

I am imagining myself writing this in a powerless home. My fountain pen replaced my computer and my candles replaced my lamps. I am tired. I am hungry. I am cold. I have never felt like less of a philosopher, yet, I have never felt like less of a person. As I look out the window and see other homes with power, their televisions tirelessly switched ON, I feel all the more alone, hopeless and depressed. How can it be that a brief outrage of a modern convenience has distanced me so far from my community, and the person that I thought I was?

I am a person with few needs and even fewer desires: a comfortable bed, something to eat and drink, and someone to talk to, that’s it, no more and no less. My personhood is intimately connected with my needs and desires: not having a way to fulfill them has, in some sense, made me less of a person. I feel alienated from my “species being”, yet, I know that I am not alone in my plight; the thousands of other individuals without power are, without doubt, experiencing similar feelings, but perhaps most paradoxically, the very people in whom our thirst for modernity is embodied, are themselves the most obvious victims of their resources. Their lives of movie watching, internet surfing and cellphone texting have not been interrupted, their fetishism for commodities has remained unchallenged at the same time that mine has been destroyed. For what mere commodity is mere desirable than warmth when you are freezing, company when you are alone, or bread when you are hungry? Would an iPOD be successful in nourishing my soul in its present, shattered state? Would a Ferrari 355? Would anything other than its most basic need?

My experience has demonstrated to me the reification of commodities is deadly to the intellectual life of the individual and the community of which he is part. When we lust after commodities, we ignore the interpersonal relations upon which the existence of commodities is dependent. Our existence as human beings, in need of meaningful relations with persons and not things is destroyed by our desire for nourishment in commodities, rather than souls. A life in pursuit of things does nothing other than transform oneself into a mere “thing”.

If I may be permitted the liberty, I should like to compare my situation in modernity to that which Karl Marx was analyzing in the 19^th-mid century; for in my view, they are wholly analogous.

The proletariat must toil to procure the bare means of his life. He must prostitute himself to the highest bidder to ensure his stomach is filled with food. The bourgeoisie capitalist lives content in the knowledge that his life of luxury comes from the mass exploitation of his fellow human beings. In both cases, the individuals and the classes are alienated from the very basis upon which human existence is dependent. For man is a species being, his life in its fullest and most complete sense can only be realized in meaningful and mutually beneficial relations with his fellow human beings. The individual exists for society just as much as society exists for individual. To ignore this relationship is to disparage the human condition to a relationship of self-interest and usurpation; it is to perpetuate the already pervasive cultural fetishism of commodities, it is to strip from the individual the last vestiges of his species being. To deny this relationship to others is to commit social homicide.

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