Sanity amid insanity
You know that it’s an election year when many people start behaving, thinking and arguing in a strange way. Tongues are loosened. Thoughts are given a holiday in promiscuity. Lies, detractions and calumnies are given licenses and franchises.
All of a sudden the media get glutted by spins and hypes, exags and simplisms, ‘praise releases’ spewing thick and fast from different camps together with a torrent of ‘ad hominem’ attacks and insults against other camps. We have to be ready for a lot of pollution.
The ways of persuasion and deception are mastered and unscrupulously used. Public relations outfits with sophisticated weaponry are hired. Truth and charity are the first victims. Objectivity is in life-support, while the monster of subjectivism is released from the cage, or is it from hell?
Words and ideas get inflated to bursting point, aimed at revving up both good and bad adrenaline, giving us a flash that blinds us more than enlightens us. We may need blinders and beta-blockers for protection. Noise and excitement are staged, more to rob us of our need for reflection and discernment.
Rash judgments explode everywhere. Opinions are made into dogmas. Theories become laws. Suspicions turn into facts. Possibilities are now certainties. An isolated case assumes a universal application.
Clear fallacies and non-sequiturs are given the feel of logic. First, raw impressions are hardened into convictions. Civility is now just a mask, nothing more than a word. Reason and will are taken over by dark passions driven by things like greed and lust.
Roles get reversed and confused. Many politicians suddenly start behaving like saints and flaunt it. Even their efforts at self-deprecation are calculated to give them more political points. Priests sometimes stray into the arena, like fish out of water, as they make some partisan commentaries or worse, run for office.
These days it is going to be hard to distinguish between politicians and clowns, senators and entertainers, officials and thieves. We can expect all kinds of combinations between saints and sinners, decent citizens and criminals. Some politicians even dare to play God, acting and speaking as if they know everything and are omnipotent.
It’s an insane world that all of us have to suffer. We cannot escape it, as of now. The general culture, the mindset, the attitudes are such that we cannot avoid the circus. And yet, we can be sure, that some good thing always can come out. What it is, how it is going to be—all this will be a mystery for now.
Thus, we just have to take it easy to retain a level of sanity. We can always choose just to be amused at all these calisthenics displayed before us in this election year. Let’s be game. We can talk, discuss, exchange opinions, but let’s not get too serious as to create unnecessary tension and enmity among ourselves.
We have to be open to all people of all stripes. We need to respect each other in spite of our differences. Let’s try to cut out the puffed-up rhetoric, the shrill assertions, the barbs and the verbal molotovs. They hardly serve any purpose. We have to be quick to understand others and to forgive.
What we need to do is to pray for everyone no matter how sharp our differences are. In fact, the sharper the conflicts, the more prayerful we ought to be. This is the only way to keep not only our sanity and our humanity, but also our Christianity.
No matter how right we feel we are in our views, we have no right to take a break from charity, not even in the slightest way. If we have to suffer because of this way of acting, so be it. That suffering will be only in the short-run, in the temporal order. We will gain a lot more in the long-run, in the eternal order.
As priest, I keep quiet when the discussion turns into partisan politics. I allow everyone to express his views to the full. Even if I think there are already those things mentioned above, I just keep quiet. If ever I have to open my mouth, it is to evangelize politics.
In this regard, I quote what Pope Benedict said recently:
“I confirm the necessity and urgency of the evangelical formation and pastoral accompaniment of a new generation of Catholics working in politics, that they be coherent with the professed faith, that they have moral firmness, the capacity of educated judgment, professional competence and passion for service to the common good.¨
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
