Limelight

I just want to share my points about Socrates’ method of knowing the truth through asking questions by discussing of what happened 6 months ago with the help of the Alternative Classroom Learning Experience that I’d attended. I know this topic is a bit late but I do hope you will find it educational especially for the first time voters last May 10 elections and also for the future voters of this country in choosing the right candidate to be voted for. Most of us criticize and judge the politicians without presenting evidences or proofs. For me, in order for us to know the politicians very well, we have to study their political ads and speeches.

Last May 10 marked another part of our history in the Philippine Republic and society, because we, again, exercised our rights through voting for another person whom we believe we can trust and follow as President of this republic government. Being a president is not that easy, an individual who is aspiring to be the president of a country must have all the machineries including of course the money, influential friends and experience. In order to be popular to voters, advertisement is needed through media. Like what we had experienced, the bombardment of the presidential aspirants’ advertisement commercials or infomercials on our T.V. screens, radios, internet and streets were just unlimited. These advertisements were the main topic of the ACLE, which I attended, that Philosophical Society organized with the help of a discussant and prominent professor and writer Professor Ruel Aguila.

The class was started by watching different advertisements each presidential and vice-presidential aspirants has which all of us were aware and have seen it on T.V. After that, Professor Aguila started his lecture by telling us a story about his experience as a freshman in U.P. Diliman forty years ago. He said that truths are not the truths that we shall believe in. Truths can be lies and lies can be truths if we will not be aware of our surroundings. He connected those lines to the ads of those presidential aspirants telling that all their ads were just creating an imaginary truth. The lecture implied the negative impacts of these truths that will be absorbed by an ordinary person who has no background in analyzing those political ads. Those ads were just one of the ways to spread lies and illusions to the public affecting the revolutionary minds of the people. The propaganda were changing the mode of activism to believing on their false and fake promises. He added that presidential aspirants were not promising in killing and making an effort to stop corruption in the government because they know that they can’t and most probably they will be corrupt also once voted as President. We cannot choose wisely if we know that they are just the same. In a society like ours, a semi-feudal and semi-colonial, those presidential aspirants are just member of the highest society creating illusions and changing lies into truths.

I incorporate those ads and the presidential aspirants and other politicians as the Sophists of the present generation. They are just spreading lies and false statements to the public and acting like they know the real situation of the country and sympathizing to the needs and feelings of the people. Sophists, back then, were being paid for their service to teach the people; today we are paying the politicians by means of allowing them to direct our future and giving our trust through voting. Being vigilant and curious will lead as to what Socrates method is all about and that is to be knowledgeable to our society. Also, don’t easily believe and fascinated with the things and information that the Sophists are saying and teaching. We can study the minds of the people running for government positions by just analyzing and knowing their true agenda through their political ads. Ask and dissect the ads and speeches to unravel the reality behind the illusions. Now, 6 months have passed, the question is, we already did our job but did we do it correctly? In the end, we still have our own rights of choosing the future leaders of this country so I hope if that time will come again we can do it correctly.

Hans Kevin R. Madanguit