‘Freedom is not free, it has been said, but if we are unwilling to pay the price of accepting contrarian points of view as part of the effort to search for compromise (if not for the truth itself!) then realize that a little bit each day we are in fact saying goodbye to the freedom for which so many of our elders gave up their lives.’
ANOTHER Independence Day passed yesterday, and, for the nth time, it was NOT the Independence Day celebration of my youth.
The Independence Day celebrations of my youth – mainly, I need to admit, years when Ferdinand Marcos was president – featured grand parades with floats and flags and veterans of foreign wars and a fly-by of the country’s most advanced fighter jets. It was a day when my maternal grandfather, a veteran of World War II, would dress up and wear his medals. It was a day when hawkers would be selling Philippine flags of all sizes and though very few Filipinos display the flag on their properties, the way many Americans have their Stars and Stripes on their porches, many would buy the flags and some would attach them to the radio antennas of their cars and the day would not pass without you somehow feeling that it was a special day.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel that special feeling anymore. June 12 has become just another holiday, with next day photos in the newspapers of the VIPs doing the flag-raising at various historical sites. But beyond that? Nothing else. Valentine’s Day is even more significantly celebrated – from where I sit – than Independence Day.
It’s been this way for decades and it is sad.
And it is no wonder why Gomburza is now Majoha.
I am just as equally worried about another matter, which is losing our freedom albeit in a different way. In a way, in fact, that we actually make happen.
This freedom I speak of is the freedom to think different from others. It seems that more and more people are getting to be less and less tolerant of ideas that are the opposite of their “accepted wisdom.” The intolerance which is evident from both sides of any political debate provokes and promotes name calling and personal attacks rather than a heated but civil discussion on issues. There’s the cancel culture too, one which fosters silos of groupthink that is as dangerous to society as it is to companies. And that’s not the worst part of it.
The worst part of it is when universities become intolerant of “conventional wisdom,” by which I mean the political leaning that a majority of the faculty and students of the university subscribe to. In universities, someone is supposed to be able to think the wildest thing, maybe even say the wildest stuff, and feel safe from arrest and ostracism but not from hearing counter arguments and expressions of the opposite view. Learning happens in the safe space of universities when contrarian points of view collide.
But what happens when contrarian points of view are no longer “accepted” even inside universities?
Freedom is not free, it has been said, but if we are unwilling to pay the price of accepting contrarian points of view as part of the effort to search for compromise (if not for the truth itself!) then realize that a little bit each day we are in fact saying goodbye to the freedom for which so many of our elders gave up their lives.
