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Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Banal, Boomboom, and Penalosa just won their respective fights in boxing stints held in Manila just last Sunday. What an impeccably impressive record!
Add these wins to the strings of victories of other boxers led by the unbeatable Manny Pacquiao, and one can see that this euphoria over boxing triumphs has been a well sustained campaign for nigh close to a decade now. The Philippines had without doubt emerged as a world-class performer in boxing’s lower weight divisions, nay as the top in fact, dethroning Mexico and shaming Thailand that used to be in this class too.
And that’s not the end of the line yet, fellows. PI’s triumph is no ‘bubble victory’ that had reached a dead end and is about to crush back to ground zero, for Christ’s sake that’s a damn faulty perception of the matter. What might emerge from this sustained campaign is that in all the lower weight divisions, from 140 lbs down, Pinoy’s would be champs for at least another decade to come. Mark this well: the world has now shifted its eye on those divisions away from the higher weight divisions.
Should that be the case, then indeed there will be enormous celebrations at the end of this decade and next’s. These victories are simultaneously happening as the economy has been sustaining victories since 2002 yet, with indications that RP might make it to the finish line of ‘developed economies’ by 2015 and ‘1st world’ by 2020 thru 2025.
For the hoi poilloi, professionals, executive and business classes, the boxing ascent of PI comes as an impeccable respite from the dirt coming from out of ceaseless political turmoil here. Just recently, the country has been going through turbulence arising from corruption-related scandals, with the ZTE deal detonating the chain reaction of events. The aggrieved civil society groups want no less than the resignation of the President Gloria Arroyo, and their concerted actions have captured the global media since Valentine’s.
Amid all the sonorous calls for upheavals, boxing triumphs come, easily tilting the balance of public perception back towards optimism from the gloom of the turmoil. And this should be so, as the end of 2007 saw, per result of the Social Weather Stations survey, that over 60% of Pinoys are optimistic about their future. Victories like what we have in boxing bring our psyche aligning back to the good vibes of optimism.
Among those we Filipinos dream optimistically is the final end to insurgency with the permanent muzzling of all guns via political settlements, and sadly, this hasn’t been happening yet. But we are optimistic this will happen. Nothing can darken the prospect of this victory for peace.
But look at the warring forces when boxing fights come, most specially those Pacquiao fights: they completely stop from shooting each other in order to watch boxing. What a spectacle to behold! Not even the United Nations can make our contending forces cease fire, but just one Pacquiao is so powerful a figure enough to make everyone watch the fight including those soldiers and rebels in the boondocks.
Filipinos thirst for victories in many fronts to. After being shamed planet-wise due to failures in the past, even at one time dubbed as ‘sick man of Asia’, we need every victory we can gain and sustain to be able to get us all out of the rut and regain our collective self-esteem as a people with a common vision.
Boxing had been the bridgehead among the competitive sports in providing those victories. Cheers to Philippine boxing!
[Writ 08 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
[Writ 04 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Good day, Fellows!
This primate city, my beloved Manila, was dubbed as the Pearl of the Orient before the 2nd World War. Reading through accounts of the city during the late President Quezon’s time, and viewing pictures of it during those halcyon days, one’s jaw would surely drop at this jewel of the orient.
I was never that lucky to have witnessed that great past. But I’m lucky enough to bear witness to Manila’s unfolding into a gigantic over-developed metropolis that it is today, which had since expanded into a ‘greater Manila area’ comprising of 17 cities and towns. And it is still growing into a megapolis.
It was simply too tragic a thing that the Philippines, like its sibling nations in Asia, got entangled in a war that was not its own. That catastrophic event fated Manila to be flattened back to the Stone Age by ceaseless carpet bombings, rendering the once jewel city into an apocalyptic wasteland that was 2nd in devastation only to Warsaw.
The city had grown after the war, with the execution of a master plan for a greater Manila that defined development expansions on through the outlying lands. It became the hub of the industrialization efforts started by the Roxas regime, gave birth to a new city called Quezon City (as envisioned by the late president Manuel Quezon) that was to be the administrative and educational center, housed the financial center that was to be Makati, and out came forth every commercial activity without let up across the decades.
True, just like the rest of the primate cities of Asia, Manila attracted vast hordes of migrants from the rural areas. Squatting, pollution, traffic jams, flooding during rainy days, and population congestion calcified as its chief problems. By the 1990s Manila was all but a picture of apocalyptic urban decay, no different from what it was in 1945 after the end of World War II.
That situation had since changed. Manila had surely jettisoned off to the ‘overdeveloped’ or 1st world status. New arterial boulevards have arisen, 17 key mix land-use commercial hubs grew as its model areas, floods have been put under control, light rail systems are rising rapidly around it, and many former polluting industries were disseminated to other regions.
Today Manila is a gigantic metropolis and is fast moving to become a megalopolitan hub or ‘megapolis’. It produces 1/3 of the gross domestic product or GDP and has sufficient resources to build its own ambitious infrastructure projects including international airports. Being so awash with funds, it had been compassionately donating aid to calamity-devastated cities and towns that are less fortunate (i.e. 3rd world communities).
It had also arisen as the fashion and shopping capital of Asia, an esteem that used to be bestowed only on Hong Kong and Tokyo. It boasts of huge shopping malls, most of which are of wonderful architectural designs. Underlying this cultural landscape is the multi-cultural template of a postmodern city, which makes it a natural attractor of culture producers and cosmopolitan bohemians from many parts of the globe.
Now that it had risen to its present state, Manila, this time grown to a megapolis in size and influence, is fast regaining its ‘pearl of the orient’ image of a foregone era. And most likely this image can be surpassed in the coming years and decades ahead.
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Hello, dear readers! A sunny day to you all!
I thought all the while that we had only one world on Earth, since we have only one planet. I wish to believe, even as I refuse to hear some alternative versions otherwise, that we are One World, One Planet!
In the 1970s, as I was studying sociology at the premier university in the Philippines, I encountered the 3-Worlds theories for the first time. Brilliant in their expositions, the theories converged on the idea that the planet’s nations are divided into the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd worlds.
Following from the same theories, whether the UN-initiated or the Maoist version, my country supposedly belongs to the 3rd world, this being agrarian-dominated and backward. On the other hand , the advanced industrial economies of the north—the USA and USSR per Mao’s contention, the USA and OECD countries per UN theory—represented the 1st world. Sandwiched in between are developing countries that were dubbed as 2nd world.
By the 1990s, as globalization’s march was heading onwards in powerful tsunamis, it was clear that the 3-worlds theories were crumbling. No longer capable of holding water for long, as the newly-industrializing countries were reaching their zeneath, the theories crumbled.
Globalization made even greater strides around the years 1998-2001. The aegis of borderless economies was in, those of walled or ‘iron curtain’ realities was out. We were all headed towards a one-world reality, as international institutions have been emerging that ushered intensifying cross-border cooperation and collaborations.
Judging by the way that the ‘ borderless discourse’ has been accelerating each year, effecting powerful dents on erstwhile indestructible walled worlds of the older aegis, it won’t be long when a planetary government will also arise. This will cap so many epochs of struggles by humanity to unify and think as a single human family and probably put an end to wars and conflicts among nations.
Today I believe, and this reality I see increasing by the day, that there are two (2) worlds. One is the world gravitating around the ‘Light workers’, a world of hope amid a mindset of positive-optimistic-constructive or POC world outlook. The other one is a world gravitating around ‘Dark workers’, a world of despair and doom, a world founded on negative-pessimistic-destructive or NPD world outlook.
The first world, which I will label as BrightWorld, comprises of a huge web led by POC resonators and their enthusiasts among the folks. The other world, which I will label as DarkWorld, comprises of an equally huge web led by NPD Pied Pipers and their followers among the folks.
The two worlds actually intermesh. Within any given context, the two worlds are almost certainly represented. This reality of intermeshing has semblance to what St. Augustine cogitated then, about a ‘city of man’ and a ‘city of God’. And today I understand Augustine much better.
So be it that we have two worlds, that the clash between these worlds is as real as breathing air every day. I’m very optimistic that, given a little more time, the balance in fellowship will be more towards the BrightWorld as folks get tired of excessive gloom, doom, despair and what have you.
Let the BrightWorld shine and claim its true heritage among you all, sons and daughters of the Sun!
[Writ 03 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
erleargonza
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