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Erle Frayne Argonza
We surely have housing backlogs on a perennial basis in the country. The backlog had never been sufficiently filled up amid the media hypes of stakeholders regarding this developmental problem. Even when civil society joined the housing arena together with the state and market, huge backlogs by the millions of houses remain.
I had the opportunity of working for the Ministry of Human Settlements in the early 1980s as a young junior executive. The posts I occupied (deputy provincial manager, acting provincial manager, …) allowed me to oversee state programs in development, notably community development, enterprise development and housing.
The institution of a line ministry as a strategy to meet the housing backlog, fast-track the construction and delivery of livable houses did work to achieve desired ends up to a certain extent. As far as my office was concerned then, our mandate was to plan and execute new projects under the shelter program (I directed the start-up planning for the house-on-stilts for new Cagayan subdivisions then, and had them approved for implementation), and monitor the ‘rural BLISS’ sites (BLISS = Bagong Lipunan Improvement of Sites and Services).
The rural BLISS sites were largely located in small towns and catered mainly to government employees. They were already constructed and occupied when I arrived as a community development assistant in 1981. A team in our regional liaison office monitored the sites by interfacing with the homeowners’ associations called the BLCA (BLISS Community Associations).
When our ministry was re-organized and expanded in mid-1981, management of the sites went to the Estates Management Office of the Regional Office (called Area Coordinating Center or ACC). My office (called Provincial Action Center or PAC) interfaced with the Estates Management group, got reports from them, and thanks heavens this relieved me of some heavy tasks regarding the matter.
Effecting recoverability was quite a tough one then, to recall. All of the sites’ homeowners somehow paid their mortgages on time, though some got delayed in remitting theirs’, save for one: the Tuao site. Tuao was headed by a warlord Mayor (Leonard Mamba), but who, being a fellow alumnus at the University of the Philippines, was very cooperative and cordial with me.
Having no problem in relating to the local exec, I can now deal directly with the Tuao BLISS homeowners. They simply refused to pay their bills (mortgage)! What terrible homeowners these ones were, one may rightly surmise. Because, as one can see, they were the only ones who refused to pay mortgage. Terrible! How should you deal with the matter, if you were tasked to do oversight job on it?
It wasn’t my office’s job to instill collection rules, but the matter was brought to my attention by the shelter staff of the regional office. They begged me to put my feet forward a bit, dip my hands in the fiasco, and negotiate with the homeowners. The residents could have gone to the mayor to stake out their stubborn attitude, but they realized I was ‘chika-chika’ (cordially related) to the mayor there (who was a brilliant lawyer in Manila before becoming the warlord mayor).
I immediately drew the tactics in my mind. It was still best to talk to them, this was Plan A. But if talks would fail, if carrots won’t work, then I will have to use sticks on the stubborn residents. The stick was to request the provincial commander of the Philippine Constabulary (who was my ‘chika-chika’ and distant cousin), and use the troops to drive out the residents. I was tough about doing Plan B.
But I was resolved in exhausting Plan A. For two (2) days I visualized myself like some Napoleon Bonaparte talking to his men and inspiring them with words. Inspire the homeowners with words, this was the tactic. Move them to tears, remind them that it would be better to have a home and pay for them, rather than live in the streets homeless. Move them with words, simple!
My own exposure to the theatre as a college student did pay off in this task. I had to role play for many hours, said my lines to my agency team, and then delivered my lines before the residents. It worked! There was standing ovation and loud applause after the talk. I can never ever forget the engagement, I myself was nearly brought to tears. The following week they began to settle their arrears and began to pay their dues.
Well, the occasion proved that good communications should be exhausted, and eloquence pays off much. Practice eloquence, maximize personal touch on clientele, and you can move mountains. That will brighten your day, as development is all about moving mountains anyway. It can be done.
[Writ 29 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Writ 04 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Good afternoon! Food be with you! (Hmmm that’s to borrow from Christian’s ‘peace’ maxim…)
You may wonder how we stakeholders of development do our coordination here in the Philippines, and I’d say coordination is practically the same everywhere. It involves ‘partnering’, an unraveling of distrust and a sincere effort to cooperate and collaborate. Partnering eventually creates strong institutions, thus catalyzing development further.
I was just a 23-year old enterprise supervisor in the defunct Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS) in 1982, when news came out that development councils will be constituted at the regional level. It used to be part of partnering mechanisms at the regional level, with the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) serving as secretariat, till it floundered and slept in the late 1970s.
When the regional development council or RDC woke up again, circa 1982, the MHS was already making waves in the development arena. This agency was eventually mandated to revive the council, in collaboration with the NEDA and all provincial governors. I remember then that the charismatic and management-savvy Governor Faustino Dy of Isabela was elected 1st chair of the revived RDC, with Area Manager (regional director) Tito Osias of MHS serving as convenor.
Down the hierarchy of power and influence the provincial development councils or PDCs were also constituted. I had the luck then of representing the MHS to begin building the PDC core in Batanes, the same core being the members of the KKK Secretariat (KKK = Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran or National Livelihood Movement, a major state funding program for enterprise) then emerging. My provincial and deputy bosses, who was almost always out of the region (their families were in Manila), mandated me to be the lead convenor for the core building of both bodies.
It was a fruitful work to begin with, the task in Batanes. State and business representatives were invited to comprise the core, down the mayor’s level. Civil society was weak here then, there were no developmental NGOs to invite here then, so it was purely a state-market synergy we had there in Basco (capital town). Within just three (3) months of consultations, our coordination outputs were simply enormous, the targets could overwhelm a single agency if it were left alone to implement them. But with many partners to achieve the goals, including modernizing the pier and acquiring a ship dedicated for Batanes alone (the islands were practically isolated from the ‘mainland’ Luzon), development goals are optimistically achievable.
Acquiring the experience I needed for my next task, Cagayan, I then moved to add inputs to a PDC core plan that was already begun then before I occupied my Tuguegarao office (capital town). Because there was a provincial manager-designate, and my post was just recently upped to deputy provincial manager, my first tasks were to travel to different towns and subtly convince the mayors and line agency partners at that level about the need for development coordination at the provincial level. That ‘massaging’ had to be done, because mayors were reportedly luke warm about the idea of a PDC.
After three (3) months on the job, my provincial manager was sadly sacked from duty, and so I had to take over as Acting Provincial Manager. Then did I do the convenor tasks at its core, with Governor Cortez role-playing PDC chair. Mr. Bagasao, provincial head of the Ministry of Local Governments (MLG), was co-convenor. There was no NEDA office at the provincial level, so the MHS-MLG-Governor’s Office served as lead implementers of the council. I myself prepared the agenda for all succeeding meetings.
It was quite tough a work there, I recall. Cagayan was quite large a territory to navigate, state officials and business groups too many to manage, but we did make headway in forming the active core. State officials could hardly see each other eye to eye at local levels, but there they were in the council, forging inter-agency linkages as semblances of ‘committee work’ of a gigantic cooperative. Sadly, the mayors were absentee, and this almost piqued me at some point to the extent that, warlord-like, I would challenge those pretentiously all-knowing absent mayors to some war games to show them I was serious in the job.
But again, like the Batanes narrative, the Cagayan experience was largely a state-market synergy, with nary a developmental NGO to invite. What we did then was to invite peasant and fisherfolk groups, which were largely enterprise-group types, but that was the best remedy then for the absence of NGOs there. (Contrast this to today’s Cagayan where dozens of developmental NGOs are in operation.) We set the rules of engagement, built interagency teams, ironed out convergences among state agencies’ plans, got inputs from the chamber of commerce and dealers’ groups, and then conceptualized new projects. Among those new projects during my watch was the industrial estate in Sta. Ana (today’s CEZA).
It was an altogether fulfilling experience for me then as a budding technocrat. I loved every bit of the job. Walls among state officials were broken down, cooperation gelled, new bold and ambitious projects were identified, existing ones were fast-tracked (irrigation, electrification, public works, enterprise finance, food sector development). It was beautiful!
Sadly, I had to leave that work, as I needed to go back to my schooling: to the University of the Philippines where I longed to take up my masters degree in sociology. I simply monitored the ensuing institutionalization efforts for the councils…till later, I heard about the constitution of municipal and barangay (village) development councils. That’s partnering at work, and mind you, it surely works if you put your heart and mind into it. It brightens up the world a bit.
Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Good day to everyone!
There is great reason to be electrified with joy in the Philippines over the electrification of the islands. For sooner or later, way before 2010 is over, no more town or village shall ever remain darkened by the eons-old absence of electricity. Power development will then move on to its more ambitious tasks, including electrifying the powerless zones of other countries.
As a little boy then who grew up in the entrepot town of Tuguegarao, I knew what it is to have zero electricity. Power generation was weak in the 1960s to mid-70s, and at times power was available only once every three (3) days. I had to use ‘candle power’ to light my way to academic success, but at the cost of ending up in high school with an uncorrectable near-sighted vision and missing out on the military academy that required perfect eye vision for entry.
With my eyes damaged by the weak power generation, I was “compelled” instead to study in the premier state university. After finishing my sociology degree, with some background in industrial engineering, I vowed to plunge my hands in my own boyhood region’s development, vowed “rage against the dying of the light” by coercing stakeholders, where necessary, to electrify the area, or else…
My agency of choice, the Ministry of Human Settlements or MHS, was so powerful we technical staff and execs practically sat and imprinted our hands in all of the interagency committees in any area, down to the grassroots. Cagayan then had the luck of prioritizing electrification, via the CIADP (Cagayan Integrated Area Development Project) that was directly under the country’s president, and so my task of monitoring and seeing to it that the set targets were done on electrification and other goals (irrigation, infrastructures) will be achieved as much as possible. Where bottlenecks will surface, my agency will refer the matter upstairs to quicken the resolution of the gridlocks. By dint of this arrangement, as convenor of the provincial development council here I had a real good chance of “coercing” (well, influencing is better) stakeholders to do their job well.
In Batanes, where I dipped my hands in 1981-82, there was already an advanced plan to electrify Batan and Sabtang islands via the National Electrification Administration’s intervention. Batanes had zero electricity then, save for Basco the provincial hub that was powered by a generator. My task here was more of listening to the local planners and implementers, report the same to my bosses, and to input the progress as a planning item for the forthcoming livelihood program KKK (knowing when power comes allowed us to project what enterprises to plan and support, since refrigeration will be made possible in due time there, thus enabling food preservation).
Those were the days, my friends. Today the national landscape is one where close to 97% of villages are lighted. Grid interface technology had already been perfected and attained ‘over-developed’ status, permitting our experts to help not only ourselves but even the USA perfect its current overflow problems in the east coast. In villages that cannot access to the main grids, hybrid technologies are the option tracks such as solar power. Our engineers design and mass manufacture solar panels right here, just to remind you.
Another source of our joy is the fact that our power sector is one of the most dynamic in the Philippines and in East Asia as a whole. Thanks at least to the brilliance of the development planners and managers in the sector, it had surged way ahead. The challenge for the sector, in light of possible global crisis over oil supply bottlenecks and problems, is to fast-track alternatives to petrol. RP’s dependence on oil is actually down to a mere ¼ of its supply, and is still going down.
But the technological revolutions here aren’t over yet. Solar, geothermal, and wind power are now in their advanced prototype mass production and implementation phases. Meanwhile, ocean power is silently being researched on. While ocean power R&D goes on, biofuels are being mass produced though this energy source is highly politicized and contentious. Biofuel is only a stop-gap, and by 2020 the nation may be on the road to geothermal, wind and ocean power as the chief sources of electricity.
There we go, partners. RP’s power generation, grid interphase leading the way more so, is way high above the clouds. Without doubt the energy sector here deserves accolades. Cheers to RP’s electrification!
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Writ 11 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Most recently, Philippine economic growth reached impressive levels of 7.3% GDP and 8.4% GNP. GNP is measured by adding the Net Factor Income from Abroad or NFIA, comprising largely of remittances from overseas workers and overseas investments. There is surely cause for elation over these developments.
How far has Philippine development progressed? Quite far, to say the least. In 1946, when the USA granted independence on this ‘far-east’ colony, the Philippines was a backward, agrarian economy that was dependent on manufacturing imports to move on. It was also coming out of its war-torn phase, and had to embark on an ambitious recovery program first as part of its development program.
Today that post-colonial past is now a distant epoch of a long by-gone time. The work-force is dominated by the services sector which also contributes to 55% of the GDP, while industry contributes 30% more or less though a measly 16% of the work-force. Agriculture itself had quite modernized, though it now contributes to just around 15% of GDP and 36% of the work-force.
Urban population had already surpassed the 55% mark by the middle of this decades and is still surging ahead as urbanization makes radical, sweeping changes over vast expanses of rural villages and small towns. Manila, the primate city, is as huge as a mega-polis, contributes 1/3 to the national output and is now a highly reputable 1st World city. Philippine investments have been moving out of the country as part of wealth production overseas, aside from overseas labor, and in long run remittances from investments will exceed those from manpower. The domestic banking sector is so awash with cash, that it can fund the most ambitious development projects conceivable, thus cutting off RP’s dependence on foreign debts.
But RP still has a long way to go before reaching a 1st World status. Using the industry cycle—where an industry progresses from ‘take-off’, to ‘growth’ stage, then to ‘maturity’ stage, then to ‘overdeveloped’ or ‘decay’ stage—experts can easily assess that RP is already at the tail end of the ‘growth stage’. It took so long a time for this to happen, as this stage began in the 1970s yet. The ‘take-off’stage likewise took so long a time to conclude, as it started in 1948 yet, more or less, got bogged down for some time in the 1960s, before moving on to the next phase during the technocratic-militaristic order of the 1970s.
But RP had already moved forward, this had to be recognized most of all. It is now a 2nd World economy, still an ‘emerging market’ though already no longer the backward/agrarian ‘carabao economy’ that it used to be, and no longer rural but predominantly urban. And this news is sufficient cause for euphoric jubilation.
If only the late economist & sociologist Joseph Schumpeter were still alive today, the Philippine experience would make him happy. RP authenticates well his theory of cycles, particularly the long-wave Kondratieff cycle. This cycle contends that long-period growth takes place over a period of 55-60 years, with expansion at the beginning half and contraction at the last half.
RP began its ‘take-off’ in 1946 (alongside the war recovery), and the long-cycle period officially ended in December 2006. Using this theory then, I forecast as early as 1999 yet that RP will experience another period of long-term growth beginning in 2007, and I hit the mark so precisely that I am sure the theory of cycles is as valid as ever. Discounting aside the possible effects of external shocks that we have no control over, our long-term expansion will be till 2036.
Which means that RP will reach ‘maturity’ very soon, around 2015, and then attain ‘over-developed’ or 1st world status by the period 2025-2030. No matter how slow the carabao (water buffalo) may work, it will still deliver results. And RP, which is justly signified by the carabao, had demonstrated this to the world.
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Writ 09 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. The author was former convenor, provincial development council of Cagayan, in late 82 till early 83.]
Imagine yourselves as young development planners, managers and implementers, all dreaming of waking up a sleeping province, vastly rich in resources but poor. Representing diverse agencies of state, bonded together by the shared sense of vision and duty, you find yourself confronting a population and a culture that didn’t share your enthusiasm for ambitious projects.
Such was my situation in the early 1980s in Cagayan, Luzon island’s northeastern most province. Already a deputy provincial manater for the Ministry of Human Settlements), at so young an age, I was convenor of the provincial development council there, and so it was my duty to prepare the agenda and call on the participants.
Fresh from my successful stints of handling enterprise development (with micro-finance) and community development, in no time at all did I rise to managerial post and help oversee development for an entire province. I had the luck then of co-partnering with other state officials, both local and national, who were very intelligent, competent, and visionary-type. Being like-minded, we were so happy being together in interagency bodies, and this wonderful social ecology facilitated our production of radical ideas to catapult the status of this province from the backwoods to the center of an emerging global economy.
This was the time when our collective efforts accelerated the installation of electricity, irrigation facilities, water utilities, telephone, new piers and infrastructures, massive financing support for diverse enterprises, and more. All of these were covered by development plans and the master plan for Cagayan.
Within the aegis of such development visions, plans and implementations did we envision a gigantic industrial estate and international trading facility for the pathetically rural province. On my side, I had the privilege of presenting key ideas and consolidating some feedbacks and recommendations from other stakeholders, notably the provincial-level officials and the mayors’ offices.
Each of the interagency groups had their own assignments, and forwarded the results to the Office of the President then, thru the NACIAD and its arm for Cagayan, the CIADP. The Governor’s Office also had its consolidation works, which it likewise forward directly to the presidential palace. Wading through all those committee networks was itself tough, and tougher was it to go through all the outputs and coming out with a final, consolidated plan.
Sensing that my tour-of-duty for Cagayan will be brief, I used the opportunity to refine the framework and rationale for an industrial estate cum trade facility. We then agreed to call it the ‘Port Irene Project’ for simplification, Port Irene being the backward pier in the reclusive town of Sta. Ana. The ideas arising from these were then presented to the mayors and local-level stakeholders who, like some enthused movie viewers, simply stared at me with stony faces during the session meetings at the famed Kamaranan Hall.
I likewise explained to the stakeholders that, for a rural provinces development to be sound at all, no polluting light or heavy industries will ever be established in any town, save for Sta. Ana where such industries will be concentrated. Only cottage industries will be allowed per town.
No matter how energetic were my elucidations then, I only got stony faces. Anyway, our efforts eventually paid, as the project was put into final plan format (mid-80s), enabled with legislation (new Congress), and implemented. I had already moved on to other development concerns since I left Cagayan in late 83, even became a social scientist and professor, but my level of elation and sense of accomplishment over our ambitious deeds then remains till these days.
It pays to dream and envision big visions that are seemingly hard to take off. This I can personally put so much words to substantiate, based on experiences worth narrating to one and all.
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
[Writ 09 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. The author was former Acting Deputy Provincial Manager, Ministry of Human Settlements, Batanes & Northern Cagayan, in 1982.]
A BrightWorld day to you all!
In the northernmost corridor of the Philippines is located the idyllic province of Batanes, a province with its own maritime ship. Small and sparsely populated, the province used to be perennially cut off from the rest of the ‘mainland’ (Luzon island) during inclement weather.
In the early 1980s, I had the privilege of serving this province as a development planner & manager for the Ministry of Human Settlements. My unit, the Provincial Action Center of PAC Gonzaga, covered Northern Cagayan and Batanes.
Handling the newly opened livelihood first, then later expanding to other developmental concerns, I immediately immersed in hard work for the province. At that time, there was no electricity, telephone, public transport, and those state of the arts utilities that one can have today. Contrast that with today’s Batanes, where internet facilities are available as far down as all of the rural villages, and essential utilities are present.
Integrated area development was then the in thing, and being from the urban/regional planning arm of government, we agency staff had the privilege of poking our fingers in all development efforts in a province and region. We consolidated the planning outputs into master plans which, for the first time, galvanized in all areas of the country. We state personnel did the same for this small province.
To recall, commerce between the ‘mainland’ and Batanes was quite scarce. Aside from the small ‘flying coffin’ PAL planes that traversed the Manila-Basco route, there was the Philippine Navy flat-bottom ships that were used for the purpose. Only two (2) scheduled trips of navy ships occur per year, once every semester, which brought forth rice, gin, and essential grocery items from Luzon.
Idyllic and paradise-like in its mien, Batanes is pathetic economically. To begin the development efforts there, core agencies got together to plan the installation of electricity, transport facilities and vehicles, warehouse and pier improvements, and development financing for micro family enterprises.
It was really tough and challenging a task to present ideas then to the natives, the Ivatans, who were real charmers but so simple and pretty satisfied in life. During those moments of duty, being a core institution-builder then of the development councils there, I presented the audacious idea of a maritime ship for the province. This will not only improve commerce between Batanes and its mother island Luzon, it will also be a booster to tourism and related development concerns there.
As to the question of who can own the ship, I remember having proposed the idea then of Batanes forming its own corporate unit. The said corporation can then own and manage maritime facilities and ships.
It was too said that I had to leave Batanes before I would ever see the crystallization of the idea. But I was happy to find out that the young development managers of the province, including some staff of mine who later became the dads of the province (today’s governor Castillejos was my part-time community organizer for Basco), developed the idea some more… Till the ship M/V Ivatan saw the light of day.
The locals decided to institute the Batanes Development Foundation that took care of ownership of the ship. It also engaged in other key programs to fast-track development there. I was so happy that my former staff (livelihood coordinator), Ed Puno, became its first CEO. (Mr. Puno later became vice-governor-elect.)
My fellows out there can go ahead and visit this paradise province of the North. The development story of this ‘cinderella’ province is a fairly successful story worth narrating.
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]
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Welcome to BrightWorld!
In 2006 I copyrighted a social marketing project I dubbed as BrighWorld! At that moment of project conceptualization, my aura was going through some changes which made me extremely sensitive to negative vibrations of whatever kind.
As a yogi and mystic, I already felt such sensitivity to vibrations before. Sometimes, when traversing the Taft Avenue route of Manila at night, I feel weakened by the negative vibrations accumulated in that portion of the city for the day. I feel the vibes everywhere, but most specially on the concrete pavement below.
Way back in the 1990s yet, when my path towards the mystical accelerated, I began to feel weakened whenever the persons I’m talking too stress too much on the negative, keep on recycling gossips and worn-out intrigues about their supposed office nemesis, and engage in limitless braggadocio and arrogant chatter.
But this decade, as my own meditation practice heightened, my sensitivity to negative imaging by the tri-media got added to my list of sensitivities. Wars, pestilence, pandemics, gossips, political intrigues and noise, crimes, drugs and related texts and images were proving to be too much for my chakras particularly my heart and crown chakras.
It was getting clearer to me that I do not belong to those people who thrive on the negative-pessimistic-destructive images. I clearly belong to those people who were attuned to the positive-optimistic-creative vibrations and images, and these were, to my mind, the harbingers of the new world unfolding.
Incidentally, there were people on the mass media, including the internet and book writers, who were conscious of the need to project positive imaging. Just a few minutes of exposure, for instance, to very positive images on TV about wonderful crafts, tour sites, historical sites and ecology tours can brighten the day for the viewer or text reader.
I now strongly opine that there has to be more concerted efforts to project the positive-optimistic-creative or POC images as a powerful current that can offset the psyche-destroying impact of negative-pessimistic-destructive imaging. The convergence of individual ‘social marketeers’ that highlight POC images, or LightWorker groups interconnecting through the internet, all bespeak of these efforts.
As my own version of response to the challenges of the moment, I copyrighted in Manila the BrightWorld! I originally intended this project as POC social marketing centered on Philippine reality, particularly macro-reality. The additional highlight was on the economic life.
In this blogosphere version of the project, the scope will be expanded to micro reality and non-economic life as well. It will also seek to cover positive experiences from other countries and those with an international-global character.
So, dear readers, welcome aboard the BrightWorld ship!
[Writ 03 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
erleargonza
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