The American Frank

 

The Great American Revolution

By Frank A Hilario
Published by the American Chronicle
8 September 2006

It took a handful of Roman Catholic nuns ignorant in mass communication to teach media experts how to use television to light fires of faith in 100+ countries and 100+ million households all over the world simultaneously broadcasting in English and Spanish.

The power of women, yes? No, the power of faith.

The faith of Mother Angelica and the Nuns of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery (OLAM) and their Miracle Baby, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

A quick measure of that power: In August 1995, 37 million American TV households are tuned in to EWTN broadcasting only in the United States. After that, the growth is nothing but phenomenal. In August 2006, the lower estimate is EWTN watchers in 118 million TV households in 127 countries (CNA, 2006); the higher estimate is 184 million households in 160 countries (ACB, 2006). These are astronomical figures. Details of information sources at end of the article.

Unknown, starting broadcast on 15 August 1981 in a small studio built in a garage, in the hands of the OLAM Nuns led by Mother Angelica, the Idiot Box has become The Great American Revolution.

Instinctively, those nuns knew in their hearts what Marshall McLuhan discovered decades earlier and published in 1964 in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man. Where lies the power of television? In its being a ‘cool’ medium, that is, it invites you to participate in what’s going on. Translating McLuhan, I say: If it’s good TV, it engages you. That’s what the nuns have; EWTN at its best is supreme TV.

Even after McLuhan, the rest of us haven’t learned much how to best use television. Still, the TV set is called the Idiot Box because it’s shaped like a box and every fool knows that if you keep watching TV shows, soon you become an idiot. We dummies keep entertaining the thought that TV has nothing essential to present about life except entertainment, and we’re better off entertaining ourselves!

I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s a knob called ‘brightness’ but that doesn’t work – Author unknown

This is the story of the OLAM nuns’ faith and the silent, intelligent, faithful American Revolution they have been waging for the last 25 years. Now then, let me tell you more about:

(A) Idiot’s Box: The Miracle Of Mother Angelica
(B) Idiot’s Box: The Miracle Of Engagement

(A) IDIOT’S BOX: THE MIRACLE OF MOTHER ANGELICA

‘EWTN. Sharing the splendor of truth.’ Voice-over accompanying a twirling icon of the globe.

That is the most expressive and most inciting station ID in the world today, and it comes from Mother Angelica’s first baby: Television, EWTN, Global Catholic Network.

Mother Angelica, a cloistered nun, has turned the Idiot Box into the Idea Box and revolutionized the art and science of evangelism not only in the United States but the world over. Great religious preachers all and charismatic – Pat Robertson, Binny Hinn, The Grahams (Father & Son), Jim Bakker, Norman Vincent Peale, The Schullers (Father & Son), Joyce Meyer among others – they have not been able to harness the nuclear energy of television to blast through layers of centuries of ignorance and indifference about the Christian God and turn millions of believers into active learners and willing doers of the Word of the Almighty all at the same time. How do we know that? Of several religious cable networks established, including Trinity Broadcasting Network and Christian Broadcasting Network, only EWTN remains running the whole day through (Kathryn Jean Lopez, 2001). As in 24/7/365. Mother Angelica’s EWTN costs millions annually to operate, $29 million in 2001 (Lopez, 2001), and yet for the last 25 years it has run entirely on donations by its audience and advocates (Lopez, 21 Dec 2005). Mother Angelica’s religious broadcasts are brought to you on a wing and a prayer. In 2004, non-profit EWTN reported revenues of #31.4 million and $32.9 million in assets (Jay Reeves, Aug 2006).

Mother is so extraordinary that 11 years ago yet she had TIME magazine putting down in black and white to describe her these two long superlatives in one short article (John Elson, 1995):

‘the most influential Catholic woman in America’
’improbable superstar of religious broadcasting’

Mother Angelica’s story is mass media’s Cinderella story; when it was good, it was very good; when it was bad, it was very bad. She started with a bad father, a poor mother and cruel Sisters – the nuns who taught in high school. She remembers the Sisters as ‘the meanest people on God’s earth’ (Elson, 1995). Still, years later, she would become one of them.

She was born 20 April 1923 as Rita Rizzo, an only child. She, along with her mother, was abandoned by her father when she was still an infant; she became embittered and her mother became suicidal (Lopez, 2001). Her parents divorced in 1929, and she suffered in school from prejudice because of the stigma of being a child of divorce. She found consolation reading the Bible, especially the 23rd Psalm (Wikipedia, 2006).

She comes from Canton, Ohio. At 4 or 5 years of age, she drank (small) beer with her pretzels outside his grandfather’s shop, because there was no room for her at the shop – she was unwanted there. So, she grew up conversing with prostitutes and gangsters (Christopher Willcox, 2005).

As a young girl, she suffered severe abdominal pains; when she sought the prayers of a local mystic, the symptoms disappeared, and she vowed her life to God, becoming a cloistered Franciscan nun (Shannon Mullen, 2005). In point of fact, it was the mystic who discerned her vocation and encouraged her to join a nunnery against vehement family opposition (Fr John McCloskey, 2005). And Rita Rizzo became Sister Angelica.

At the convent, Mother’s first incarnation, Sister Angelica became ‘Mrs Fixit of Catholicism’ (Hazel DeForrest Shea, 2005). At the convent, from ‘Mrs Fixit,’ Sister Angelica graduated to ‘Master Builder.’ She fixed and built with her team of Italian helpers from her own poor neighborhood (McCloskey, 2005), volunteers known as the Tonys because they were Italian (Shea, 2005).

Do you know who started her on her Catholic ways of the New Evangelization? Not Catholics. In 1973, some Episcopalians in Birmingham invited her to conduct some seminars in Bible studies (Elson, 1995). She went, she saw, she conquered. She had found her calling. Her listeners started requesting copies of her remarks (Lopez, 2001). After that, she appeared 60 times on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (Elson, 1995). Today CBN; tomorrow the world.

Eleven years ago, on 15 August 1995, EWTN began 24-hour daily broadcasts in English and Spanish to cable systems in Europe, Africa and South America (Elson, 1995). Why the recurring date 15 August? On 15 August 1944 Rita Rizzo became Sister Rita; she became Sister Mary Angelica of the Annunciation on 8 November 1945 (Wikipedia, 2006). That year we might say God began broadcasting to the world a new herald. 15 August is also the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. With apologies to the Beatles, Mother Mary came to her, speaking words of wisdom, let it be, let it be.

In 1993, with EWTN already a well-known presence, Mother Angelica announced that hers was ‘the Catholicity of the simple and the poor and the elderly’ (she was 70) and as Jesus himself taught, and woe to those who would tamper with it (Elson, 1995). Very Catholic.

Today, millions of people look to ‘beloved Mother Angelica everyday for inspiration and help with the problems of day-to-day life’ – she draws insights from her own faith, crippling health problems and personal experiences (CB, 2006; Mullen, 2005). There are more than 20 million copies in print of her spiritual booklets which are extremely popular.

With EWTN all over the physical and virtual worlds, Mother Angelica has built an empire of the mind and soul. She has done it, ‘achieving what even the highest levels of the Catholic Church had been unable to do’ (CFC, 2006). EWTN’s ‘vast array of programming’ includes documentaries, discussions by leading scholars of the Catholic faith, live coverage of Church events, prayers, devotionals, music specials, children’s shows, drama, cinema and daily devotions (Kansat, 2006). The Network is ‘an inspirational and didactic mix of religious news, panel discussions, masses, homilies and popular pieties’ – while challenging the powerful progressive wing of the American Catholic Church (Willcox, 2005).

Television: A medium – so-called because it is neither rare nor well-done – Ernie Kovacs

For what she’s done, this is what Lee Iacocca, legendary CEO of Chrysler Corporation, says of her: ‘Mother Angelica, a woman who may well be the Patron Saint of CEOs’ (CFC, 2006). The story of Mother Angelica, Italian, is ‘a very American story’ (Wilcox, 2005). Very moving, very inspiring.

Why is EWTN triumphant? President of the Network Michael Warsaw says, ‘EWTN is doing God’s will’ (Lopez, 2001). And for all that, EWTN has barely started. Pope John Paul II said, as quoted by Cardinal Oddi: ‘EWTN is the key to restoring the Roman Catholic Church in America’ (Stephen Hitchings, 2000), the Church that has been hijacked by liberals. This is the modern Good Fight of the US of A.

(B) IDIOT’S BOX: THE MIRACLE OF ENGAGEMENT

EWTN. ‘We never thought it would be this big or this beautiful’ – Mother Angelica (Lopez, 2001).

How did she do it? Of the miracle of EWTN, Mother Angelica reminded everyone so often: ‘It isn’t what we’ve done; it’s how we’ve done it’ (EWTN, 2001). What she means is that they owe it all to their faith in God. ‘EWTN is a work of God,’ she says (Lopez, 2001). EWTN runs on faith: there is no budget, no plan, no forecasts, no surveys of audiences, no fund-raising campaigns, no trust funds, no investments, no commercials. EWTN is a non-profit prophet.

No, EWTN has no budget. None. When early benefactors argued for a budget plan, Mother Angelica told them bluntly: ‘No, a budget is the devil’s handiwork. We live on faith’ (John-Henry Westen & Terry Vanderheyden, 2006). Mother Angelica had never heard of the capitalist world’s intellectual, John Maynard Keynes who had this to say: ‘The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.’ Good for her, good for us Catholics! Me, I never did believe in Keynes even when I was in college.

Mother Angelica is EWTN and EWTN is Mother Angelica. Part of the open secret (and open risk) is that she is ‘funny, garrulous and irreverent toward just about everybody but Jesus, Mary and the Pope’ (Willcox, 2005).

She is like the television set, short and squat. ‘God likes to do big things with little things’ (CFC, 2006) is her own explanation.

Mother Angelica had discovered something of the Idiot Box that all other religious superstars did not: the power not of persuasion but of participation. But she was not really thinking of participation as sociologists would have it: ‘taking part in the public life of your community and society’ (SCORE, 2006). She couldn’t have defined participation sociologically if it meant saving her life; she was only a high school graduate, remember? She couldn’t define it, but she knew it in her heart.

For some time, American bishops operated a rival Catholic TV network, ‘but Mother Angelica outplayed, outwitted and outlasted them’ (Mullen, 2005). In fact, she succeeded where several millionaires failed (Fr McCloskey, 2005). How come?

I would like to explain Mother Angelica’s faits accomplis (plural, yes) by focusing on her entry point, television, inadvertently following McLuhan’s lead, and presenting her practice, taken as one, as that emanating from what I call here a theory of engagement, which is this: TV is what engages you. And my theory is translated into what I refer to here as Mother Angelica’s 7 Rules Of Engagement:

(1) What you believe in engages you.
(2) You must be engaged enough as to be married.
(3) Your audience must engage you.
(4) You must engage your audience.
(5) You must engage the media.
(6) You must engage the enemy.
(7) You must engage God as your ultimate security.

(1) What you believe in engages you.

Mother Angelica’s faith is what engages her. Roman Catholicism attracts and holds her attention; she is engrossed in it – and she shares it with you. She insists on what I shall refer to here as The Wholly Trinity (you can’t take one without the other): The Bible, Magisterium, Tradition - the three sides of the Roman Catholic triangle of evangelization. The Bible as the inspired word of God, the Magisterium as the teaching authority of the Pope, and Tradition as a third source of truth. Mother is unwavering in this. I know that from surfing the Internet, subscribing to Wings (EWTN’s Weekly Electronic Newsletter), and from watching EWTN. She is a true-blue Roman Catholic. She does not dilute her faith. For instance, unlike some liberal Catholics (not to mention Protestants), she abhors abortion and she rejects women’s liberation and political correctness.

All television is educational television. The question is: What is it teaching? – Nicholas Johnson

What is Mother along with all those workers in the vineyard doing with EWTN? Cardinal Trujillo tells us (Trujillo, 2006):

Christ, the Bread of Everlasting Life, has moved the hearts of many to enthusiastically collaborate and dedicate their gifts and talents for this specific work of Evangelization. Mother Angelica has laid out an ample, varied and rich programming, explaining Sacred Scriptures and the Magisterium of the Church to lead viewers, listeners and navigators to its center, Jesus Christ. EWTN transmits the truth that what gives full meaning to our lives is loving service, and stimulates us to have the courage of faith, knowing that we are God’s children, in today’s world that risks moving away from the truth and not listening to the Lord, who says, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’

A sign in the EWTN’s small print shop, that which still puts out the same mini-books Mother Angelica’s teaching ministry started within the early 1970s, says: ‘The Master’s Print Shop. We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re getting good at it’ (Tom Hoopes, 2005).

Mother Angelica runs on faith, and you better believe it!

(2) You must be engaged enough as to be married.

When Mother Angelica was 20, she was healed of a debilitating stomach pain after making a novena to St Therese of Lisieux at the urging of a mystic, Rhoda Wise, in her own Canton, Ohio. She says of it: ‘It was the first time I really recognized God’s active role in my life. I fell in love with God’ (Lopez, 2001).

She engages Christ as her groom. She is consumed by Him. She is also consumed by her devotion to the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Note the name of her flock: Nuns of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.

In 1981, when she realized the power of television for evangelization, she founded EWTN with a handful of nuns, a few dollars and a lot of prayers in the garage of the OLAM Nuns to whom she was Abbess.

Mother Angelica is married to the promotion of conservative Catholic Church policies such as fighting abortion, birth control and ordination of women as priests (Reeves, 2006).

How is this for engagement? EWTN is the second garage story of technology that has shaken the very foundations of the world.

In the first garage story, Apple Computer was born in the garage of Steve Jobs, school dropout and visionary, with the baby of Steve Wozniak, engineer and genius – this one has brought us the personal computer (PC) that now we can access the libraries of the world even in an unfriendly place like a mountaintop. The PC began as a primitive computer. The two Steves began Apple with some money, the proceeds of the sales of Steve Jobs’ Volkswagen and Steve Wozniak’s programmable calculator. Steve Jobs didn’t finish college. He was engaged to what he was doing. He told the 2005 graduates of Stanford University: ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’ (Michael Peña, June 2005).

In the second garage story, Mother Angelica has brought us our personal Savior even if we live in the unfriendliest corner of the world – don’t forget that EWTN is satellite television + shortwave radio + Internet + podcasts + audio-video tapes + CDs + books. No matter where you are, Mother Angelica will engage you. She’s got all the bases covered. EWTN began as a primitive studio. Mother Angelica didn’t even go to college. She was engaged to what she was doing. She said, ‘Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous’ (Mullen, 2005).

(3) Your audience must engage you.

She wins over or attracts you to her side. She is reachable; she is earthy (Lopez, 8 Dec 2005); she is humble enough to make fun of herself, to patiently bear her worst torments.

Why had listeners been faithful to EWTN? ‘The listeners realized that Mother loves them,’ says EWTN Chairman Bill Steltemeier. ‘They could see that Mother loves them. The power of the Lord’s love compels us to do what God wants us to do. That’s dynamite stuff’’ (Hoopes, 2005).

Amen!

Raymond Arroyo has a little bit of a different explanation (Lopez, 21 Dec 2005):

Remember, Mother Angelica is a cloistered nun. That is her first vocation. Her primary focus is souls and helping those who are hurting, people like the ones she knew on the hard streets of Canton, Ohio as a (young) girl. The television network was merely a means of reaching those souls.

Amen!

(4) You must engage your audience.

She draws you into it; she involves you. Mother Angelica’s two live EWTN appearances a week features ‘her very traditional take on Catholic morality and her seat-of-the-pants musings on the problems of the world’ (Mullen, 2005).

She captivates her watchers-listeners with her ‘witty, take-no-prisoner Dear-Abby style’ (Shea, 2005).

EWTN is conservative Catholic, if you like to call it that; Mother Angelica has conservative views and comes on strong about that all the time. As TIME puts it: ‘In video terms, it’s totally retro, but it works’ (Elson, 1995). Everything works for the glory of those who love God. With the Catholic Bible and the Pope’s teachings and Catholic Tradition as her sources of authority, she has nothing new to say, but boy! It’s how she says it with her soft voice: sometimes with a reading, sometimes with a quip, sometimes with a correction, sometimes with a story, sometimes all of the above – always with love.

Mother Angelica once said: ‘Many of you listening tonight, you listen because I am earthy and rather saucy. You’re right … but I don’t want you to listen to me for that. I want you to listen to this network because you want to get closer to the Lord’ (Lopez, 8 Dec 2005).

She has had a series of strokes, the last one in 2001 and that ended Mother Angelica’s public life, but not ‘Mother Angelica Live’ – there are endless reruns. I have watched some of the audio-video replays, and watched the same again and again, and still they’re as fresh as the day they first aired. I’m judging them as a writer-editor. The one I particularly like is ‘Blueprint For Life,’ based on the Beatitudes. The one I’m referring to was originally aired in August 1994, 12 years ago.

Fr Thomas Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington says of Mother Angelica: ‘She’s the most successful Catholic TV evangelist since (Bishop) Fulton Sheen in the ‘50s’ (Elson, 1995). EWTN replays both. I watch Bishop Sheen myself whenever I can, and he is as bright as today’s sunrise. Bishop Sheen mesmerizes you with his brilliance; Mother Angelica smothers you with her affection – you can’t win!

‘Mother Angelica is one of the most recognized and beloved religious figures in the world’ – Raymond Arroyo. You watch her, you love her.

She engages her audience by sharing her life, her sad and happy life in relation to God. She has suffered much and been rewarded much. ‘People who undergo suffering on this scale are usually crushed by it. But those who accept these blows as ways to commune with God open up channels of grace capable of moving mountains’ (Hoopes, 2005). That’s Mother Angelica.

(5) You must engage the media.

She engages multi-media – she interlocks them. She networks all of them: TV, radio, print, audiotapes, CDs, podcasts, Internet. That’s EWTN, Global Catholic Network. She invented the multi-media network in both the secular and religious universes. She’s a genius.

EWTN is welcome news around the world. In Birmingham, Alabama, EWTN’s News Director Raymond Arroyo says (Lopez, 2001):

We get letters and emails from the Philippines, Malta, Puerto Rico, Africa, Lebanon, Britain and Australia when we broadcast the Holy Father – now that is the Universal Church in action. Mother’s vision and technology have allowed us for the first time in history to reach the entire Church with the Pope’s teachings. We have five separate signals going out of here 24 hours a day – each programmed separately. Who would have thought a nun from Canton, Ohio, could do that? But she’ll tell you it was the Holy Spirit. And after seeing it up close, I believe her.

Pope John Paul II was the 12^th Apostle; Mother Angelica is the 13^th Apostle; in their individual ways, they have been able to fulfill what Christ commanded the Eleven: ‘Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you’ (Matthew 28: 19-20, The Jerusalem Bible). Pope John Paul II was the Apostle of Youth; Mother Angelica is the Apostle of Engagement.

Go visit ewtn.com/ and you will see this menu: Faith * Television * Radio * News * Libraries * Multimedia * Religious Catalogue * Pilgrimages – the works, including Languages – including Deutsch. Today’s central image of the website has this caption: ‘The Birth of the Blessed VIRGIN MARY.’ Manila time, today is 8 September as I finalize this – I started to write 22 August; I didn’t know that was the Day of the Queenship of Mary.

This is EWTN, website of multi-media:

FAITH – Teachings, Catholic Q&A, Devotions, Bulletin Board, Prayer Intention Cards, EWTN Mini Sites, EWTN Kids.

TELEVISION – EWTN Prime, Television Specials, Television Series, Live TV English, Live TV Spanish.

RADIO – Program Schedule, Stations, Listen Live, Open Line, Catholic Jukebox, SW Frequency Guide, Listening Advice, SW Monitoring Form.

NEWS – NewsLink, The World Over.

LIBRARIES – Document Library, Audio Library.

MULTIMEDIA – Video, Live TV English, Live TV Spanish, Archived RealVideo, Audio, Live Radio – English, Live Radio – Spanish, Podcast, Archived RealAudio.

RELIGIOUS CATALOGUE – Art, Books, Children’s, Jewelry, Multimedia, Rosaries, Specialty Items, Statues.

PILGRIMAGES – OLAM Shrine, Eucharistic Pilgrimages, Welcome Pilgrimage Schedule, Live Show Tickets, Lodging, Maps, Essentials, Picture Gallery.

That’s media, that’s global, that’s network, that’s Catholic. That’s Mother Angelica’s legacy.

One of EWTN’s hosts is Fr Mitch Pacwa, SJ. ‘I have a lot of work to do,’ he says, ‘but it’s a lot of fun. I love the work we do as priests. Sitting back is nonsense. There’s too much good stuff to do. There’s so much need in the Church. I don’t know how you would have time to be bored’ (Eileen Wirth, 2004).

With EWTN, you don’t have time to be bored.

Why didn’t Mother Angelica do it first on radio, which is cheaper? She didn’t know anything about radio either. And no inner voice told her to mind this medium, to mine the gold in the ores that lay buried.

So far so good. On one hand, radio is a ‘hot’ medium, says McLuhan (1964), suited for driving people into a fad or frenzy – all things being equal. We Filipinos, and now the world, know that. In 1986, radio was the handmaiden of the People Power Revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Ferdinand E Marcos. People Power was instant revolution, mediated by radio more than any other mass media except word of mouth. I know; I was one of the nameless millions who paraded their bodies along Epifanio De Los Santos Avenue (EDSA). In the EDSA/People Power Revolution, it was radio that drove people out into the streets in droves, in millions. McLuhan is right.

The marvels of film, radio, and television – are marvels of one-way communication, which is not communication at all – Milton Mayer

Mayer is wrong about TV. TV is a ‘cool’ medium, meaning that it is not suited for clearly defined controversial subjects (McLuhan, 1964). In 2001, the anti-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo forces tried to summon forth People Power to dethrone GMA by TV images of people massing at Ayala Avenue in the financial district of Makati City, the Wall Street of the Philippines, and bodies gathering at EDSA, at the scene of People Power 2 (EDSA 2) that toppled President Joseph Estrada in 2001 on charges of corruption. That was their mistake. Wrong technology. If modern communication is to be the handmaiden of People Power, TV cannot be that medium.

And neither can print be the public servant of Instant Revolution. Did not McLuhan say? ‘The medium is the message’ (1964). Print is too detached, too non-participative except to the non-persistent letter-writer and the non-consistent opinion-maker. Today, 2 September 2006, I have had an epiphany: Print is wrong if you want to conduct a campaign where you want & expect instant change. Radio is it, because not only can you cover great distances at once, not only can you reach the remotest corners of the earth, but you can create frenzy. No frenzy, no instant change. That’s what the charismatic Christians know, whether Protestants or Catholics – in a prayer meeting, healing mass, or miracle crusade, they have to build passion if they want miracles to happen right there and then.

But not with TV. In the Philippines, the hate-GMA campaign went on from that barren failure of a coup in the ‘Oakwood Mutiny’ of soldiers in July 2003 and struck again 5 years later, in February 2006, this time with soldiers with fervor burning and stark firepower showing on TV – military might staring you in the face. It was meant to be a scary sight; it was intended to frighten people to panic. It was Independence Day for those Filipino soldiers who did not understand what freedom was all about. They forgot that freedom is like this; I will now paraphrase Dean Ricardo Pascual of the University of the Philippines from the mid-1960s: ‘You are free to swing your firearm short of my nose.’ (See my other article, ‘The Asian Flu, The Virus of Militarism & The Filipinos, a Separate Peace,’ American Chronicle, 3 March.) Well, let me be kind enough to say: The message was right, the medium was wrong. Soldiers or not, rebel communicators must study history or learn from the wise, go back more than 40 years, to McLuhan. ‘Television is for appearing on, not looking at’ – Noel Coward. TV is the Idiot’s Box for those who don’t learn from it.

Now then, what do I mean when I say the Idiot Box is the Great American Revolution? Let me rephrase that and say that The Great American Revolution is already here and is called Mother Angelica, she who has single-mindedly (not single-handedly) created EWTN, Eternal Word Television Network, now broadcasting 24 hours a day to 100+ million watchers and listeners in 100+ countries of the world. One nun evangelizing millions simultaneously. In faith, Mother Angelica and her nuns have recognized where lies the power of television, and they have multi-handedly built a garage-sized TV station into a worldwide wonder. They have shown that faith not only can move mountains; faith can move the whole world.

(6) You must engage the enemy.

In 1981 when Mother realized the need for her to evangelize via TV, she told a crowd of some 4,000: ‘For too long the TV tube has been in the hands of the enemy’ (Shea, 2005). Now it’s in the hands of a friendly, voluble nun.

And this nun with the pudgy face has done it in the Deep South of the United States, in the State of Alabama, in the Bible Belt (read Protestant). She knew that the Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura (Bible or Scriptures Only) as the source of truth, while the Catholics believe in the wisdom of the Bible plus the wisdom of the Pope plus the wisdom of Tradition. Mother Angelica knew that South is South and North is North, and never the Twain shall meet. What she was doing was ridiculous. But, as she tells everyone who cares to listen: ‘Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous’ (Mullen, 2005).

Mother Angelica is not afraid to come head to head with Protestants, and Catholics, even in the highest places. Critics call her the ‘Zinging Nun’ because she attacks feminists of all kinds (Elson, 2005).

In 1997, she tangled with Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles when she criticized his pastoral letter on the Eucharist, ‘Gather Faithfully Together’ – live on television. She told her viewers that ‘they could legitimately disobey Cardinal Mahony’s letter’ because it was ‘an incomplete, and thus heretical interpretation of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist’ (Lopez, 2001). Cardinal Mahony was properly incensed. She apologized on TV and explained, but Cardinal Mahony was not appeased. Some people then tried to move heaven and earth with Mother in-between. There followed a Vatican investigation ‘that threatened her community and her television network’ (Raymond Arroyo, 2005). Heaven and earth did not cooperate with those who wanted her down and out.

Years before that, during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Denver, Colorado at the 1993 World Youth Day conference, a mimed pageant on the Stations of the Cross was performed with Jesus being played by a woman. John Elson reports (2005):

Mother Angelica was aghast. Having a female represent Christ was ‘an abomination’ and ‘blasphemy’ perpetrated by unnamed Catholic liberals who wanted to ‘divide and separate and destroy’ the Church. ‘Enough is enough,’ she declared, her voice quavering with anger. ‘I’m tired of inclusive language that refuses to admit that the Son of God is a man. I’m tired of you, liberal Church in America. You’re sick.’

She had the full support of Pope John Paul II. Earlier, in 1990, with her third audience with him, he invited her to attend his Mass at Castel Gandolfo. After Mass, he told her, ‘Keep doing what you are doing’ (EWTN, 2002). In her 5^th papal audience and their last meeting, in 1996, Pope John Paul II announced to all: ‘Mother Angelica, weak in body, strong in spirit, strong woman, courageous woman, charismatic woman’ (ACB, 2006).

Fr McCloskey says of her (Nov, 2005):

In all her vicissitudes, she had one very important backer – John Paul II, who showed her many signs of favor in the face of her difficulties both within and without the Church. Indeed, she is the outstanding example of a person who ran with John Paul II’s exhortation to carry out the New Evangelization to the ends of the Earth. Arguably, she and John Paul II proclaimed the Gospel truth to more people than any two people in history.

From success to success in engaging the enemy, Mother Angelica’s physical pains went from bad to worse (Shea, 2005). ‘At every point, her success had been matched by suffering’ (Hitchings, 2000). But she went on; she offered all her sufferings to God.

The phenomenon called Mother Angelica, Stephen Hitchings explains this way (2005):

It is the story of a poverty-stricken girl whose parents were divorced, who hated her father, hated nuns, was poorly educated and had little contact with the Church, but who grew up to become the best known nun in the world. More importantly, it is a scarcely credible story of what Divine Providence can accomplish when matched with unshakeable faith.

If your faith is unshakeable, the enemy is in your hands.

(7) You must engage God as your ultimate security.

She believes that if your faith is honest and true, ‘God will provide’ ultimately and unfailingly. She asks Raymond Arroyo and answers her own question (Hoopes, 2005):

He (God) expects me to operate, if I don’t have the money, if I don’t have the brains, if I don’t have the talent – in faith. You know what faith is? Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.

This is what Mother calls her ‘theology of risk’ (Mullen, 2005):

My attitude is, if the Lord inspires me to do something, I attempt to do it. Money is His problem. Working for His kingdom is mine.

It’s her response to the business world’s theory of risk management. In the world of the business of making money, the wise manager tries to minimize the risk; in the world of the business of saving souls, this nun tries to maximize the risk – in terms of millions of dollars, because Mother Angelica knows that ‘God will provide.’ That was how EWTN started in the first place. Shannon Mullen tells the story (2005):

Then, in 1978, inspiration struck Mother Angelica again, this time during a visit to a television studio in Chicago. ‘Lord, I’ve gotta have one of these,’ she whispered in prayer, recognizing what a potent evangelization tool TV could be. With just $200 and no business plan whatsoever, Mother Angelica began building her tower which would have a satellite dish attached to it pointing toward the heavens. Never mind that a television network would cost millions. When the fancy cameras and other pricey equipment Mother Angelica purchased on faith alone began to arrive, she and her Sisters prayed all the harder. Again and again, large donations would arrive in the nick of time, days or even hours before EWTN would have been permanently knocked off the air.

Though the Network would continuously teeter on the brink of collapse, Mother Angelica kept thinking big. She started a worldwide shortwave radio network, launched an AM/FM radio network, built a grandiose shrine and founded two new religious orders, the Franciscan Friars of the Eternal Word and the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word. ‘Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous,’ she said.

Raymond Arroyo describes Mother Angelica this way: ‘The only woman in the history of television to create a network that for 25 years has sustained itself only with the donations of her audience’ (Lopez, 8 Dec 2005).

How could you build the biggest television network in the world out of the Idiot Box on the basis of religion? Ask the handful of enthusiastic, faith-filled, inexperienced nuns who did. Led by Mother Angelica armed not with technical knowledge but with the knowledge that ‘God will provide.’

Some 25 years ago, Mother Angelica had a vision for a TV network offering nothing but Roman Catholic shows (Reeves, 2006). That is was what EWTN has become.

How can a born leader who is a non-communication expert succeed in a field she knows nothing about? The President of the Pontifical Council for the Family Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo tells us how in his homily delivered during the Eucharistic Celebration on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of EWTN (EWTN, 2006):

Through her simplicity and sincerity, manifest in dialogues full of love for the truth and the teachings of the Church, with an unusual sense of humor and penetration, sealed by confident hope.

Mother Angelica goes on air, sitting on her chair in front of a captive audience, theme in mind, Bible on hand and a smile on her face – and no script. Tuesdays, she talks herself out on a topic of her choice, digressing here and there, inserting an anecdote or two, quipping, always making a point. Wednesdays, she talks with a guest or two, priest or layman, and always gets her point and her laugh. (‘She is one lady who laughs at her own jokes’ – Raymond Arroyo, 13 Aug 2006, on the air at EWTN celebrating its 25^th anniversary). In both days, she accepts calls, and she tries to answer the question or add a comment or two – always, you the listener are aware of a passionate woman. She talks softly and carries a big stick – you can’t see it but you know it’s there.

Mother Angelica’s amazing life story is a miracle in itself. And to think that a nun told her in 1933: ‘You want to be so much and in the end you don’t amount to anything’ (Lopez, 8 Dec 2005). Now I can imagine she can react to that part of her story and tell that nun, thinking of Jesus and what John the Baptist said: ‘He must increase, as I must decrease.’

Raymond Arroyo says of Mother Angelica’s work so far (Lopez, 8 Dec 2005):

Certainly, she has been one of the most successful communicators in the Catholic Church and the Network she birthed will go on. But Mother saw her witness, her reliance on Divine Providence as her greatest contribution to the Church. And considering the unlikely and long teaching success she has had, perhaps she’s right.

Arroyo has written a best-selling book: Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story Of A Nun, Her Nerve, And A Network Of Miracles (2005, Doubleday, 400 pages). Nicholas Sparks writes of it (CFC 2006):

Raymond Arroyo masterfully captures the complexities, humanity, and tenacity of Mother Angelica, who has long been one of my own personal heroes. The founder of the Eternal Word Television Network, Mother Angelica is a woman who dared to dream, to stand up for what she believed in, and whose faith showed that anything is possible. In Arroyo’s hands, she becomes someone you wish you had the opportunity to know and love. Read this book and believe.

I can’t tell you more about the book because I haven’t gotten hold of a copy myself. But one thing I know: Mother Angelica warned Arroyo when he began work on the book: ‘Make sure you present the real me. There is nothing worse than a book that sugarcoats the truth and ducks the humanity of the person. I wish you 40 years in Purgatory if you do that!’ (Fr McCloskey, 2005).

Intuiting the latent power of TV, armed with a fist-full of nuns and their prayers, Mother Angelica pushed the limits of technology and created the world’s biggest multi-media network of all time, bar none. They started with a handful of dollars ($200) and a pocketful of faith, Roman Catholic. (The $200 was invested on printing equipment – Willcox, 2005). Standing on their faith, they moved the mountain of decades of ineptitude in religious broadcasting. More than that, they moved the whole world of broadcasting. Let those who have eyes see; let those who have ears listen!

1970s: ‘Small is beautiful,’ says Ernest F Schumacher, and the whole world believes him.
2000s: ‘We never thought it would be this big or this beautiful,’ says Mother Angelica, and the whole world listens to her.
BIG IS BEAUTIFUL.

 

Sources
ACB. 2006, allcatholicbooks.com; Arroyo, Raymond. 2005 & 2006, raymondarroyo.com; CB. 2006. Catholic Books, catholicshopper.com; CFC. 2006. catholicfamilycatalog.com; CNA. 11 August 2006, catholicnewsagency.com; Donohue, Jacqueline. 2000, ad2000.com.au; Elson, John, ‘Mother Knows Best,’ 7 August 1995, Time, time.com); EWTN. 2001, 2002, 13 August 2006, ewtn.com; Hitchings, Stephen. 2005. ad2000.com.au; Hoopes, Tom. 5 December 2005, crisismagazine.com; Kansat, kansat.com.au; Lopez, Kathryn Jean, 15 August 2001, nationalreview.com or crisismagazine.com; Lopez, Kathryn Jean, 8 December 2005, Newspaper Enterprise Association, at raymondarroyo.com; Lopez, Kathryn Jean. 21 December 2005, nationalreview.com; McCloskey, Fr John, 7 November 2005, Spero News, at raymondarroyo.com; McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions Of Man. New York: New American Library. 318 pages; Mullen, Shannon, Ashbury Park Press, 27 November 2005, at raymondarroyo.com; OLAM, Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, olamshrine.com; Peña, Michael, 12 June 2005, news-service.stanford.edu Reeves, Jay. AP, 10 August 2006, http:www.forbes.com; Rose, Michael S. St Catherine Review, March-April 1998, aquinas-multimedia.com; SCORE. 2006. score.rims.k12.ca.us; Shea, Hazel DeForrest, 6 November 2005, Staten Island Advance, at raymondarroyo.com; Spero News, 12 August 2006, speroforum.com; Trujillo, Alfonso Cardinal Lopez. 13 August 2006, ewtn.com; Westen, John-Henry & Terry Vanderheyden. 16 March 2006, LifeSiteNews.com; Wikipedia. 2006. wikipedia.com; Willcox, Christopher, 6 September 2005, Wall Street Journal, at raymondarroyo.com; Wirth, Eileen. 15 December 2004, companysj.com

Copyright 2006 by Frank A Hilario. Image from Deep Fried Kudzu who captions it ‘Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, AL’ (flickr.com). Note the image of the Virgin Mary appearing at the door of the Shrine because of the angle of the photograph. Hanceville is where Mother Angelica’s OLAM is, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This article is dedicated to Mother Angelica who suffered a stroke in 2001. I am among those who are praying for her recovery.

 

Islands of The Lost

Published by American Chronicle 15 August 2006. Copyright 2006 by Frank A Hilario. Image by Tommy Oshima, ‘Lost Horizon V’ at flickr.com

IN MY WILD ROAMINGS AROUND THE WORLD, I HAVE ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVERED SOMEWHERE IN ASIA THE LOST KINGDOM OF MAIA. NOT SURPRISING – DISCOVERIES ARE ALWAYS ACCIDENTAL: PENICILLIN, THEORY OF GRAVITATION, HYBRID RICE, DNA, THE PHILIPPINES, PETER PRINCIPLE, CONTINENTAL DRIFT, AMERICA.

Maia is actually many islands; I am intensely studying the Maians now, living with them. The land is triangle in shape; the people are square in their outlook of life. The Maians believe in a Trinitarian God and the country belongs in the Third World and can’t get out of there.

The good old lost kingdoms have always fascinated me since high school, stretching back almost half a century, beginning with Atlantis. Agile and brave, Tarzan himself lived in a lost kingdom of good apes and bad men; if that sounds familiar, that’s art imitating life. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan’s creator, wrote another story, that of The Lost Continent, but that too was entirely fiction and I’m not in the mood for fiction right now. Hopefully to multiply the raw pleasure and discover the true treasure, in this essay I shall compare the real lost continent of Maia with six other lost historical kingdoms, one after the other:

(1) Rheged. (2) Shangri-La. (3) Atlantis. (4) Guge. (5) Tibet. (6) Tambora.

(1) Rheged, The Lost Kingdom

‘Rheged: The Lost Kingdom’ has two distinctions. One: It is the first all-British large-format film, 65 mm. Two: It is now ensconced in the Rheged Centre, the largest indoor visitor attraction in Northern England. The film was done 7 years ago and lasts 40 minutes. This is a docudrama about Northern England’s greatest leader, the warrior King Urien, believed to be the original King Arthur (BQ, northernmedia.org/).

Rheged is the name of the ancient Celtic Kingdom of the Dark Ages. The film is a story of lost ancestry, told from the point of view of a young American seeking his British roots in the mountains of the North. There are Celtic battles, there are ghosts, and there are those mysterious stone circles. It is directed by Brendan Quayle, who himself says of his film (my emphasis & minor editing): ‘There is a classic emotional climax as the Kingdom, (along with) the traveler’s place in it, is discovered’ (Brendan Quayle, March 2000, in70mm.com/newsletter/).

In this my Maian story, it is the privilege of the reader to discover his place in it.

(2) Shangri-La, The Lost Horizon

In 1928, Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock discovered and became the first Westerner to explore The Lost Kingdom of Muli, but bandits drove him out and Muli was lost to the modern world except in his articles on the pages of the National Geographic in the 1920s and 1930s. Surprise! Research of 20 years by American lawyers Ted Vaill and Peter Klika indicates that Muli is the true Shangri-La, the real-life inspiration of James Hilton’s The Lost Horizon, a book that immortalized an eternal paradise that has the secret of eternal youth (the people may be more than 100 years old), a utopian kingdom (Timothy Carroll, 29 July 2002, tew.org/).

Whatever. Muli, located in China’s province of Szechwan, is such ‘a stunning region of cultural and biological diversity’ so much so that it was designated recently as a national conservation area by The Nature Conservancy. The natives of Muli live in history; they still practice methods of farming and fishing that are thousands of years old (Snow Lion, 2006, snowlion.com/).

In contrast to Muli, in The Lost Kingdom of Maia that I discovered, in their farming and fishing, the people are trying their best to lose the productivity of their natural resources by abusing them. Like the Mayans who over-exploited their tropical forests (Glenn Walker, 1998, indians.org/), the Maians are not conservation-conscious. I don’t understand them. They are intriguing people who lead complicated lives.

(3) Atlantis, The Lost Continent

The philosopher Plato is now the most famous teacher in the classical world (my interpretation of Richard Hooker’s essay ‘Greek Philosophy: Plato,’ 6 June 1999, wsu.edu:8001/). Plato wrote of Atlantis, now the most famous Lost Kingdom of all, that of a highly advanced civilization (Lee Krystek, 2006, unmuseum.org/), a land of wealth and natural beauty, including exotic fruits (XH, 10 August 2005, blog.360.yahoo.com/). The capital city, also called Atlantis, was a marvel of architecture and engineering, being a series of concentric walls and canals. In contrast to Atlantis, The Lost Kingdom of Maia is a continent of pearls, a land of lush tropical forests, a group of islands of beautiful women, an archipelago of Eastern scholars who nurture advanced knowledge they can summon as by magic.

Plato wrote that the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, and the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake ripped the island apart; tsunamis rolled over everything and everyone; and Atlantis sank forever into the sea (Lee Krystek). I am told that the people of The Lost Kingdom of Maia are corrupt and greedy; if true, will their civilization be destroyed by the gods like Atlantis was? Only Time will tell.

Now, am I not mixing fact and fiction here? Plato’s student, Aristotle himself, said that Atlantis was simply a fable, a figment of the imagination of Plato, a figure of speech to make a point (Lee Krystek). Plato wrote on history and the nature of man, among other subjects, and writers of course invent stories to further elucidate meaning. But writer on writer, I don’t think it happened this time. In Plato’s book, the dialogues of Timaeus, the story of Atlantis is referred to as ‘genuine history’ and within ‘the realm of fact’ – and there are too many details about Atlantis for it to be simply a literary device (Lee Krystek). The Lost Kingdom of Maia is of course fact, not fiction – you may be able to find it now in the Internet if you just type the non-mysterious name MAIA (all caps, cap & lowercase, or lowercase), and search by Google or Yahoo. In any case, as you will see, I give you too many details about Maia for it to be simply a literary device.

But where is Atlantis? One of the most interesting theories comes from KT Frost, Professor of History at Queen’s University in Belfast; and his educated guess has been supported by archeologist Spyridon Marinatos (sounds Greek to me), and seismologist AG Galanopoulos (another Greek): Atlantis is Crete (Lee Krystek).

Crete is now part of modern Greece. Ancient Crete was Minoan, the civilization that saw the development of pictographic script, ceramics, ivory carving and metalworking reaching their peak; ancient Crete built luxurious palaces, and her maritime power covered the Mediterranean (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2005). With a powerful navy like that, I would not be surprised if the Minoans exacted tribute from other surrounding nations. Luxury and power go together; luxury enfeebles the mind, power corrupts.

Minoan Crete was one of the most sophisticated cultures at that time, with its grand architecture and art, highly developed agriculture with an extensive irrigation system, and a code of laws giving women equal rights with the men (Lee Krystek). Given that, The Lost Kingdom of Maia cannot compare with Minoan Crete. Its architecture is not so great; its arts are not so ennobling; its agriculture is not so well-developed; its irrigation system not so extensive – the theory is advanced, the practice is primitive. But its culture has its own high level of sophistication, and even before laws were ever written, women were already treated the equal of men. In other kingdoms, where polygamy is permissible, abortion is acceptable and divorce is legal, women are simply treated as objects of desire – and either the women don’t know it or they like it like that. That’s a shame. Not in The Lost Kingdom of Maia.

(4) Guge, Tibet’s Lost Kingdom

The great 17^th century kingdom of Guge in Western Tibet once controlled the trade in gold, silk and spices between India and China (IANS, 17 July 2006, tibet.ca/). Guge grew up by religion (Buddhism) and grew down by religion (Roman Catholicism). This time, reason and religion didn’t mix well. After all was said and done, the king’s brother headed the uppercrust monks, became powerful himself – and ambitious (NoName, 28 July 2006, tibet.cn/). Power corrupts the mind. Sensing that, the Guge king had the bright idea that to curtail the ambition of his brother, all he had to do was disgrace his followers, the monks. He saw his chance when a Portuguese missionary, Fr Antonio de Andrade, visited Guge in 1624; with that, the king tried to set up Catholicism as the state religion. He built a church and he himself became a Catholic; he forced many monks to be secularized or, if not, had them exiled. Violence begets violence. The monks rose in revolt and, supported by the neighboring state of Ladakh, overthrew the king in a long and bloody war. The rebels succeeded only in destroying what they fought for: Guge. In no time at all, Guge vanished. No one knows why, according to the IANS. I know; borrowing from Georg Buchner, German dramatist & revolutionary, I say: Revolution devours its own cause. In The Lost Kingdom of Maia, seculars and monks want to overthrow the Queen. They have not learned from history either.

(5) Tibet, The Lost Kingdom Itself

Tibet itself is a Lost Kingdom, without independence, without an accepted or popular ruler (the Dalai Lama is in exile in India, and so is his successor), without hope that its cultural identity will survive (today, Chinese outnumber Tibetans in Lhasa, the capital). China has brought to Tibet basic schooling, medical care, electricity, roads, and phones; it has built the world’s highest railway, running 4,000 km from Beijing to Lhasa; it has eradicated feudalism and instituted totalitarian rule (Eric Margolis, 10 July 2006, ericmargolis.com/). In The Lost Kingdom of Maia, the people have all those, except the world’s highest railroad, and except the world’s highest conceit, totalitarianism – that’s what the outsiders to the throne want to institute; that’s what they have been dreaming of. They will not succeed; the people will always disperse the barbarians at the gate.

(6) Tambora, The Lost Kingdom

Early this year, another Lost Kingdom was found, this time in Indonesia. On 28 February 2006, Haraldur Sigurdsson, Professor of Volcanology at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, announced that he and his team had discovered The Lost Kingdom of Tambora in the remote island of Sumbawa (Rosella Lorenzi, Discovery News, dsc.discovery.com/). Sumbawa is one of the more than 13,000 islands of Indonesia and lies southwest of Sulawesi (Celebes). Sigurdsson is of the opinion that the Tamborans were wealthy traders and known for their horse breeding, honey and sappan wood (for making red dyes). They knew more. But for all that, the Tamborans had no knowledge what would happen to their people: 117,000 of them were almost instantly buried under 10 feet of ash and pumice in 1815 when Mount Tambora came alive in the largest volcanic eruption in human history. This dwarfs the more-famous story of Pompeii in Italy, where 20,000 lie frozen in history by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD.

In the tropical islands of Maia that I am reporting for the first time, the people are buried under 20 years of deception, dis-information and unholy alliances led by the same group of renegade warriors who call themselves revolutionaries of the people. It’s a good thing the social volcano has not erupted. The people of The Lost Kingdom of Maia are not war-like; their history is more of keeping peace than making war. Their history repeats itself.

(7) Maia, The Lost Kingdom

So I don’t lose you, I will now tell you The Lost Kingdom of Maia can be found Northwest of China and Southwest of Borneo. The Maian civilization was already advanced centuries before the Europeans thought of searching for an alternate route to the Spice Islands (Moluccas), as evidenced by the fact that the Chinese already had trade and tribute relations with the island kingdom, which they called Ma-i. Unfortunately, the Maians were the ones paying tribute, lost in their subservience. They were highly civilized already by the 13^th century, but let me count the ways they have remained lost as a kingdom and a people.

The Maians have learning academies that rivaled the best – long, long ago and far, far away. Lost learning is what they now have, knowledge deteriorated to the point of being used to filibuster in the Maian Senate and derail any plans of Queen G to move the kingdom forward to the 21^st century. It is the pretenders to the throne, the male of the species, patriots all, who have tried their best to sabotage royal efforts to utilize the genius of the land for the good of the kingdom.

The intellectuals themselves are in the forefront of the battle – for their own interests. Proof: Today, the more vociferous scholarly Maians have lost connection with reality in the countryside. Farming in Maia has for the last 100 years been essentially unperceptive of the laws of Mother Earth. The white invaders taught them to add minerals to the soil instead of recycle vegetation to return to the earth what the crops had taken away from it: fertility. The White Fathers taught them that the laws of science were better than the laws of Mother Nature. Some people never learn – and that’s what they teach.

The Maians are lost in the mist of time. They live in the past; they have not shrugged off the burden of their Spanish slavery of 333 years. Some peoples never learn – they sleep in the dark night of their history. They have also retained the religion and much of the culture of their conquerors. Religion is the opium of the people – a shield for millions against the barbaric world created by people of their own kind.

Many of the warrior Maians are lost in their own conceit. I refer to those who have been attempting a coup for the last 20 years, the warlike minds, the ones who have the answers to the questions they themselves ask. Of course, they don’t ask too many questions. In fact, they think of the answers first before they think of the questions.

Many of Maian leaders are lost in the clouds of their own political ambitions. Quite a few of them are each The Man Who Would Be King. They can’t wait to be the sovereign of the kingdom. In their lust for power, they do not think twice about collaborating with anyone, including the enemies of the kingdom, those who have been plotting to destroy the very institutions of the islands and turn the whole kingdom into their own castle. Such men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Many of the youths of the Maians are The Lost Generation. They too do not love their country; they too do not love any country; they too do not love humanity. What then do they love? Themselves.

The Maia moguls of media are lost in the maze of their own making. The Maian purveyors of news and views, proclaiming themselves to be objective, fair and balanced, are patently negative in their reporting and editorializing. They are well-paid to do just what they are doing.

The noisy Maians who oppose the shift from the royal form to the deliberative form of government are either the lost sheep or more accurately the prodigal sons and daughters. Why can’t they appreciate the fact that the Queen herself is in fact abdicating her throne? That’s because they are members of the extended families of kingmakers who would perpetrate their local fiefdoms. They are joined by radicals who are not interested in a representative government but in a one-party rule. Bedfellows estranged from a sense of history.

The highbrow Maians who see nothing right about the kingdom are those who have lost their innocence to the wiles of William James’ pragmatism, the American philosophy that claims that ‘truth itself … is not that which contributes the most good to the community, but that which contributes the most good to the individual’ (Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/). To each his own, to teach his own.

And in science? Soon it will be a lost battle between the scientists who watch insects and the insects who watch the scientists and what they are eating. In the US and in Maia, the pests have learned to be discriminating in their food – and thereby escape the insecticide: they simply stop feeding when they come across a sprayed leaf, for instance (IRAC, US Insecticide Resistance Action Committee, ca 1996, irac-online.org/). The insects are learning where the scientists are not.

The Maians have lost the habit of higher-quality thinking and learned the easier habit of critical thinking, which requires only knee-jerk reaction. For instance, last year the high and haughty accused the Queen of immorality; right after that, several groups of hangers-on each initiated a movement to have her dethroned without an independent body investigating whether the accusation had any basis in fact. Shoot first, ask questions later.

To the Maians with their 100 diverse tongues, it is a lost cause to ever have one common, national idiom to unite them in heart, mind and tongue. Around the 19^th of August every year, the Maians celebrate their National Lingua Franca Week and proclaim the wisdom of the Maian king who decreed that a single Maian countrywide language be developed based on only one tongue, that of his own tribe, the Ts. This king is venerated who refused to acknowledge the genius of the other 99 tribes of his own race, declaring them, in effect, lost tribes of Maia.

The lost cluster of Maians are those tribes who did not support the revolution against the Spanish dominion of the kingdom: the Is of the North. That is because the Is did not believe that the revolution was wise and opportune. When finally the Is believed and joined forces with the Ts, the revolution succeeded – but the White Fathers stole the glory of a successful revolution away from them. How did that happen? Manifest Destiny.

Renowned and unknown members of Maian civil society today have largely become town criers of lost horizons. Just because the past Maian kings and queens had neither shown splendor in art or science, they deny that today’s Queen G has the wisdom to make a difference in the lives of millions of Maians wallowing in the mire of poverty. They cannot accept that civil society has no monopoly of intelligence.

Many of the current Maian media warriors are lost souls. Their wishes, or prayers, are for destruction. Some of them do not believe in a Supreme Being at all; others believe in a Superbeing who is vengeful, who brings his wrath on the people with just one wisp of a prayer of a preacher man, or a press man, or a priest.

Many Maians who make a living diving into coral reefs have lost sight of the virtue of thrift with resources. They go on, goaded by their own little greeds. So they blast those precious reefs with explosives or some such devices for them to pick up the pieces just like that. Landward, those coastal fishermen who wish to get rich quick use the exact same explosive devices, never mind tomorrow.

The voice of the people is the voice of God. The Maians had dethroned their kings twice in their history. The first one for not being a benevolent monarch, the second for being a benevolent monarch but corrupt and incompetent. The first is dead, the second remains a lost leader with a following. If the lost leads the blind, they both will fall into the ditch.

Meanwhile, the liberal-minded Maians have lost sight of family: they now want to be free of the institution of marriage. They want divorce. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

The Maian kingdom counts of many lost opportunities to advance its own civilization. For 69 years, the Maians have failed to develop a truly national language that further enriches their diverse culture. For 20 years, the Maians have drifted from reaction to reaction to coup attempts. For 20 years, political and social renegades have virtually incapacitated the 2 Queens and 2 Kings to carry on their duties as sovereign and to plan for the welfare of their people.

Not only some leaders but also some scientists of the Maian kingdom are guilty of losing touch with the people. Up to this day, the scientists of the land assume that they know what the people want as opposed to what they need: They bring to the people essentially material resources – which they like to call modern technology. In the arrogance of knowledge, they continue to ignore the fact that the principle ‘Customer is always right’ translates exactly into ‘Farmer knows best.’

As a whole, civilized Maian society has lost the skill of consulting the elders on matters of consequence. This goes against the grain of folklore where age means wisdom. The opinion givers have become the elders, dispensing wisdom at the click of a mouse.

By all accounts, Maia is a lost world. Yet, I know that while the Maians are lost in it, they do not lose hope of the future.

Or, The Wizard Of Rice Who Cultivated Minds

HIS NAME IS LESS IMPORTANT HERE THAN HIS WORLD-CLASS ACHIEVEMENT IN MANAGING RICE PEOPLE. HOW IMPORTANT IS THAT? RICE IS THE FOOD OF MORE THAN HALF OF THE WORLD’S 6,500 MILLION HUMANS. IN ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE, I GET 200 MILLION ENGLISH PAGES FROM GOOGLE IN 0.50 SECONDS SEARCHING FOR RICE.

In case you wanted to know: The actual search entries I typed were: rice -condoleeza -“rice university” -tim -anne -“edgar rice burroughs” – the minus sign (not hyphen) means ‘by all means exclude in the search.’ And the search results were only the pages published in the Internet.

Here’s a comparative data on the importance of subject knowledge based on Google search in number of English pages:

81.2 million, Shakespeare
79.2 million, Lost TV Series
55.3 million, Al Qaeda
33.8 million, Beatles
31.7 million, Da Vinci Code
31.0 million, Bill Gates
22.3 million, Albert Einstein
19.4 million, Tiger Woods
17.5 million, Britney Spears
02.3 million, Princess Diana
01.6 million, Maria Sharapova
01.5 million, Richard Branson
00.7 million, Steven Curtis Chapman

For control, I got 95.9 million for George W Bush (hero for the world?) and 00.3 million for Manny Pacquiao (hero for the Philippines).

With 200 million pages, rice is more or less 2 times more popular than George W Bush (politics) or Shakespeare (literature) or Lost (runaway TV show), 4 times more popular than the talkative and much-talked about Al Qaeda (running on scared), 6 times more popular than the Beatles (radical music) or Da Vinci Code (Catholic-busting novelization of Jesus Christ, Superstar) or Bill Gates (domineering software), 10 times more popular than Albert Einstein (creative science) or Tiger Woods (minding your sports) or Britney Spears (minding your publicity), 100 times more popular than Princess Diana (lady in distress) or Maria Sharapova (tennis princess) or Richard Branson (creativity on the loose).

Rice is life in terms of food for billions; rice is lien in terms of management for millions of farmers, a constraint, a limitation. Millions of farmers know how to grow rice; they don’t know how to manage it to optimize their economic returns. What they sow, they reap – but only so much. They earn little; they haven’t learned much. That is why the poor farmers we have always with us.

What can we do for them?
What can I do for them?

This article is a review of the life of an institution, a review of a man’s life, a review of his book, and a review of the world of management, all revolving around rice. The exciting thing is that I can relate all four one to the other three, and I believe I can make you see how we all relate to them, especially you if you are into rice or if you are into management. In other words, this time I am going to write about four things:

(a) Our relatedness & our management of rice

(b) Our rice & his wizardry.

(A) OUR RELATEDNESS & OUR MANAGEMENT OF RICE

He, in his own words, did ‘dare to dream’ about quietly contributing his own knowledge in science alongside his own thirst for knowledge in management, of which he knew next to nothing. Consciously, he wanted to reach the level of the best, if not spectacular; unconsciously, he assumed the relatedness of things – One began with The Big Dream and worked one’s way toward that, never losing sight of one’s goal. ‘A very great vision is needed, and the man who has it must follow it – as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky’ – Crazy Horse, Indian chief. Everything one thought and felt and did one had to relate to that goal. One made the relatedness happen. And since no one had seen any of those relatednesses happen, one had to persevere despite objections, naysaying, obstacles put across one’s path, despite the absence of a model institution and model employees anywhere one knew. Despite the absence of a blueprint in black and white.

The man succeeded beyond even his own expectations. He built from scratch the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) in the countryside, some 150 km North of Manila, and single-mindedly made it nationally respected. I said single-mindedly, not single-handedly. He needed the right people to make an institution, so he nurtured their minds too. And so, PhilRice won one of the coveted national science awards for an institution, Tanglaw Award (Beacon Award) from the Philippine Council for Agriculture and Resources Research and Development (PCARRD). Two PhilRice scientists won the nation’s most prestigious national award for young artists and scientists, the TOYM (The Outstanding Young Men), and he himself won several awards, including the Pantas Award (Sage Award) from PCARRD in 1993, and the Presidential Public Service Award-Outstanding Work Performance’ presented by the Civil Service Commission and conferred by the Philippine President in 1999.

Simultaneously, he single-mindedly made PhilRice internationally respected. PhilRice became the model national R&D institution for rice in Asia, with the the world-renown International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) looking on approvingly. One of the most successful collaborative projects between IRRI and PhilRice was on integrated pest management (IPM); IPM as implemented by PhilRice became an Asian cornerstone in the art and science of the control of pests along with the proper culture of the rice crop and the appropriate care of the soil. IPM requires that the farmer look into the non-linear, complex relationships of crops and soils and fertilizers and pests and pesticides. IPM enables the farmer to increase his net income essentially by reducing his cost of production, mostly in terms of fertilizers and pesticides, which in fact make up the bulk of cost of growing rice. In managing all that, the secret lies in relatedness, in understanding the ecology of it all.

‘The first law of ecology is that,’ says Barry Commoner, ‘everything is related to everything else.’ Google gave me only 24,000 English pages of my search entry “Everything is related to everything else” (including the double quotes). Which to me is an excellent sign that the first law of ecology may be true but most people don’t accept it as truth. To make it acceptable to millions more, I shall now revise it and restate it thus:

Relating is everything.

Those 3 words make a coherent, concise, clear and comprehensive statement that is as potent as it sounds. I call that Hilario’s Brief: 3 words say it all. Those 3 words are almost as powerful as ‘Love conquers all.’

Now, look at ‘Everything is related to everything else’ – you are assuming you can see the connections, that you don’t have to struggle to make the connections, that the relationships are given and obvious and all you have to do is acknowledge them. In real life, that is not so. That’s why you you have social classes, you have the rich and poor, you have Muslims and Christians, you have whites and blacks and browns, you have prejudice. That is why I have rewritten that first law of ecology into another and more realistic aphorism. ‘Relating is everything’ means the art and the science of it is in your effort to find the relationships even where others have claimed there was none, or where you are forbidden to explore.

I am not talking of statistical relationships, such as when C always occurs whenever A and B occur, A and B are positively correlated with C; therefore, if you want C, you have to have A and B – I don’t give that kind of ABC too much credit. I’m talking of value-adding or value-deducting relationships. The act of relating is the thing; it’s everything. For instance: Why are yields of rice varieties increasing while the incomes of farmers are decreasing in relative terms? There must be either broken or unsound or undiscovered relatedness somewhere between or among the factors of production: land, labor, capital, seeds, culture, crop protection, management, post-harvest practices, market. They must be found and corrected.

Relating is everything; that unarticulated by him but was in his guts, he accepted the challenge and proceeded to found an institution of R&D in rice with just a handful of staff and very little budget, related that small beginning to a big dream that he dared to build slowly but dared not share with anyone because it was too big – a Philippine R&D agency in rice relevant to the needs of the Filipino farmers and known and respected the world over on top of the awesome presence of the International Rice Research Institute in the country.

‘Tomorrow’s big dreams grow from little things done today’ – Lloyd W England. He succeeded because he was always relating every little thing that needed to be done with the big dream. He walked in faith in that vision. He achieved the vision because he did not wait for each relatedness to happen; he made each relatedness happen. He flew high and saw which relatedness had to happen.

‘An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is his story. It is time to reveal to the whole world who he is. He celebrated his birthday the other day, Friday 28 July; he is now 71 years old, being born in 1935.

(B) OUR RICE & HIS WIZARDRY

In the Philippines in June, the children go to school to cultivate their minds and the farmers go to the field to cultivate their rice. Both are necessary. To one man, rice has been both school and field where one can excel. And so Santiago Rigonan Obien will go down in Philippine history as The Wizard of Rice. Being the first and past (1987-2000) Executive Director of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), he has made a great difference in rice – he built PhilRice into a world-class institution as well as a locally relevant one, and now the Philippines is now very close to its dream of being self-sufficient in rice.

He is also a self-made man, an Ilocano, from Batac, Ilocos Norte. That’s what I read in his first book, titled Dare to Build, recently published by PhilRice. Most people know him with his initials, SRO, and he likes it like that. His accomplishments in the world of rice speak for themselves. Even UP Los Baños, PCARRD, Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR), Central Luzon State University (CLSU), and International Rice Research Institute recognize him as a great man of science and of management rolled into one. He is currently a consultant at BAR. Today, in the science of crops and administration, say ‘SRO’ and it rings a bell. The ring tone is one of passion, compassion, pride, humility, excellence. Yes, he is all that. I like the book enough, I like the man behind the book enough.

In his fertile mind, he dreamed of a world-class science campus. PhilRice is what it became. In his bare hands, he molded the men, like a potter his clay, to the image and likeness of what he thought they should be. He succeeded. Mightily. He convinced Japan International Cooperation Agency to hand over to the Philippine government a grant-in-aid of US$ 15.7M to build a world-class PhilRice headquarters building, internationally acceptable laboratories and facilities. He got more from JICA, scholarships included. Today, the staff of PhilRice continue to win awards and recognition. Based in the far-flung Science City of Muñoz in Central Luzon, PhilRice today is respected all over the world. (Visit PhilRice in Muñoz sometime.)

With Jean D, the woman behind the book, he has written his autobiography, the story of an idealistic farm boy who was nourished on the milk of honesty, the bread of hard work, the salt of persistence, the sugar of love, the dessert of visioning, the wine of an iron will. Man and woman make a perfect pair. It was a difficult book to write (it took Jean six months, she says), as SRO is difficult to accept, to understand. ‘You got to hate him (first) to like him,’ says Leo Sebastian, the current Executive Director of PhilRice, and one of SRO’s protégés. Borrowing from Frank L Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz, I say Leo is a horse of a different color.

A Horse Of A Different Color

SRO was a horse of a different color before him. If some boys thought of becoming President some day, this boy dreamed of becoming a great scientist. He failed. He became a great manager instead. By learning along the way. In the classical model, management is 4 of 4; SRO knew that the whole of management is greater than the sum of its parts, even if he didn’t know the names of those 4 parts. Management is planning – he had the vision, and he held onto it with heart, reveling in the happiness and enduring the hurt. Management is leading – his were the creativity and the initiative, and he pushed more than he pulled. Management is organizing – he pursued team work like crazy, even if the members did not understand it. Management is controlling – he trained and visited and inspected everyone, everything. Some people called that micro-management; in fact, it was macro-management – he was managing the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, minding even the smallest elements for the composite Big Picture.

He was an intellectual terrorist, as he himself admits in Chapter Four. I know; I worked for him too. Did you like what he was doing? I did not, no, but he insisted on doing the right thing in the right way, even if it was not in the way you liked.

He wasn’t perfect. PhilRice’s Roger Barroga knows, he who is a wizard himself, of computer networks. I should know. I was a Research Fellow of PhilRice Maligaya (in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija) for a year (1997? I forget) and we slept in the same house (Director’s Cottage) and ate the same food and rode the same car coming from and going back to Los Baños every week. (Thanks for the ride, Sir, and the food.) I was there as a writer. By that time, I was already in love with the computer. For many months, I tried to convince him to buy a computer, desktop or laptop, to be assigned to me. For as many months, he demurred. I didn’t know it then, but one of his major hesitations (his word, in the Prologue) was on the use of computers as a production tool, beyond spreadsheets, beyond occasional desktop-publishing of reports. Inside the Director’s Office, I was using someone else’s desktop computer while he was using his desktop typewriter. I didn’t mind his typewriter, but I minded that I did not have a computer assigned to me. I don’t write – I type. I’m a type-writer. If you want to make me unhappy, banish me to a wonderful land made of blue skies and ice cream and chocolates where computers are either unknown or unwelcome. Out of frustration, but to avoid confrontation, I left without saying goodbye to him, to anyone. I never returned. I never called. I was mad inside. I wasn’t perfect either.

Many years later, I met him again, at PhilRice Los Baños. I was walking toward him and when I got near hearing distance; suddenly he turned to his companion and said, ‘You know, it’s only now that I realize we need the computer.’ It was his way of saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ I smiled. I had forgiven him long before that. Nonetheless, I admired him for that because he was already retired and his remark could not have made me go back to work. Saying sorry is never too late. ‘Don’t be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect,’ says Nancye Sims. ‘It is this fragile thread that binds us to each other.’

As a man, he loves you, he loves you not. As a book, Dare To Build is an ambivalent read too, like that. In his heart SRO knows he loves you, but you don’t – the man with the will of steel comes on more strongly than the man with the heart of gold. Gleaming steel, pure gold, I can say now. Golden dreams. Dreams of empire – empires of the mind. I will now quote one of his favorites, Winston Churchill: ‘The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.’ With rice, we are in the future now. Thanks to him (SRO, not Churchill), we are almost 100% self-sufficient in rice.

In his book, he says he was building men. I disagree: He was building structures and systems, he was cultivating minds. It’s the attitude that counts. He was creating you with an attitude of excellence. It didn’t always work – it didn’t work with Roger, it didn’t work with me – but it worked a million times, despite people like us, who were horses of different colors ourselves. So what do we have today? Among other things, a PhilRice that is world-class. Like a coin, the Filipino is ambivalent, but the other side is that the Filipino is world-class, and don’t you forget it!

A Study In Fairness

SRO’s book is unique, as it is a study in fairness, as SRO’s life is: It presents an almost equal dose of the praise and dispraise. Included in the book are many brief testimonies of many of the PhilRice staff, past and present, speaking of him in fondness and fairness, frankly and honestly. With his first book, SRO makes history again.

SRO the book is ambivalent too in that it has two faces. One is that of SRO the manager telling you what ought to be done; the other is that of SRO the man telling you a compelling little story of what ought to happen. Read the book! With about 120 in all, those little stories are invariably those of rough diamonds being hewn to brilliance – if you were the diamond, you wouldn’t like what’s happening to you until it’s all over and you see your brilliance in the mirror of your mind. That’s the testimony of many, and you will find them in the book.

You must read the whole book, not just some parts. To understand, if not to accept, you must know the whole story. The whole story of SRO is one of dreams being pushed to transform themselves into reality as much as possible – so, push, push, push. That was SRO. That is SRO still.

A Man Who Believed The Filipino Is World-Class

SRO will go down in history as the man who believed that the Filipino scientist was world-class, and lived to prove it. He is alive and well, thank you.

I know he dreams still. He dreams of transforming no less than the Department of Agriculture from dullness to luminescence, from unproductivity to productivity, from inertia to motion, from drive to a purpose-driven life.

He belongs in the top. I was (I am) the Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science, and SRO knew that. Still, notwithstanding my standing, he did not ask me to edit his book. Anyway, he gave me an electronic copy and asked for my opinion; I saw many mistakes and so I volunteered to do the last-2-minute editing of the manuscript, not bossed it over him, as I would have liked. Why not? My answer is a joke, mine: ‘Why is SRO not a musician? Because he won’t play second fiddle.’ SRO will always be SRO. You love him, you love him not. I love him, I love him not.

I said he is the Wizard of Rice, didn’t I?

Two Wizards

After all the adventures/misadventures in fairyland, the one major lesson in The Wizard of Oz, the venerable story written by Frank L. Baum published in 1900, is this: In each one of us is the mustard seed of a miracle. Even if we are a Cowardly Lion, in fact we have courage within us; even if we are a Scarecrow, in fact we have a brain in our head; even if we are a Tin Man, in fact we have a heart in our body – all we need to do is recognize it within ourselves and nourish it. And that’s exactly what the Wizard of Rice did – he made men (embracing women) feel with their heart, think with their brain, take risk with their courage. He made them write their individual/institutional books of life in the institutions he managed: PhilRice, Philippine Tobacco Research & Training Center, Mariano Marcos State University. He succeeded, marvelously. He is the Wizard.

The Wizard has written his book, 350 pages more or less. There are mistakes. There are lines written in love, lines written in angst. In the writing of books, there is no end. In the making of mistakes there is no end. In the dreaming, in the keeping of faith, in the fulfilling of dreams. In the building of men, in the building of minds, in the building of institutions. That is the world-class story of SRO. So far.

We need someone like him around. Philippine agriculture needs the Wizard of Rice. Even if we cannot live on rice alone. We need someone up there to get things moving faster just to keep pace with globalization. In SRO the book you will see, as I can see him now, that SRO the man has the indefatigable mind and body. He is 71, but he feels much younger. His body is at work at the Department of Agriculture; his mind is at work there and elsewhere. I am glad he will never rest in peace!

Published by the American Chronicle 31 July Copyright July 2006 by Frank A Hilario

 

T3^rd World –> 1^st World / Web1 –> Web3

MY COUNTRY, THE PHILIPPINES, IS AT THE LOWER RUNGS OF THE TALL LADDER OF FIRST WORLD SUCCESS. ACTUALLY, OTHER COUNTRIES ARE JUST A BIT BETTER, NOTWITHSTANDING THEIR MUCH HIGHER WORLD RANKING. AFTER ALL, FIRST WORLD IS NOT ONLY ABILITY BUT ALSO SUSTAINABILITY, MORE SO EQUITABILITY. Image from Ruthie101 which she titles Sustaining_Hotmomma (flickr.com/ - that’s ability, that’s sustainability, that’s equitability.

True, the Third World can’t compete with the First World; when it comes to Goods, we’re only That Good. But we can compete in Services, and that we are already doing (and we’re Topnotch) – except that we’re doing it half-consciously, haphazardly. That’s the problem! I am writing this to wake all of us up to the reality that the Philippines has the genius to become First World. As has Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam.

But how do we compete with the other Asian countries? We don’t. We use our head. Let us simply excel in what we’re good at. Let us simply be the best in what we do. Only the best is good enough.

And to do that, here’s one lesson we need to learn, and it has to do with knowing. It is this: Knowledge is the new capital of the world, as according to Peter Drucker, the thinking management guru:

Knowledge, during the last few decades, has become the central capital, the cost center, and the crucial resource of the economy. This changes labor forces and work, teaching and learning, and the meaning of knowledge and its politics. But it also raises the problem of the responsibilities of the new men of power, the men of knowledge.

Hidden knowledge? Drucker wrote that 38 years ago yet in his book of intellectual discovery, The Age Of Discontinuity: Guidelines To Our Changing Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1968: xi). We never had an epiphany out of that one declarative sentence or two from one great mind. Where was our genius? (Well, we Filipinos have never been known as readers.)

Now we are in the Age of the Internet; by Drucker’s way of thinking, to explore the Net’s full potential requires that we use information innovatively, ingeniously, inspiringly – because if we don’t, the other Third World countries will catch up with the idea and the Philippines will remain as the Sick Man of Asia, The Laughingstock. We don’t have the oil and the forests of Indonesia; we don’t have the discipline of Singapore; we don’t have the managerial autocracy of Malaysia; we don’t have the spirit of South Korea; we don’t have the enlightened monarchy of Thailand; and we have not exhibited anything like the brain & brawn energies of Vietnam.

So how do we get out of the mud of the mediocrity of our achievements?

We must make a paradigm shift, and here is the tool I offer with which we can change perspective from knowing everything to knowing (almost) nothing:

Eng.

Now, that’s a thinking aid, a 3-letter word I have invented as my contribution to creative thinking Third World Development as of 2006. Consider the sight & sound of Eng: you can write it cap or lowercase, set it bold or italics, change the font or the size, whatever. Eng is a creation that is either an invocation, or act, or advocacy, or wish, or will – or all of the above. You can make it what you want to.

My Eng is the equivalent of Edward De Bono’s Po, which he offers as a device for creative thinking. In my view, De Bono is the world’s authority on thinking, having invented ‘lateral thinking’ as a technique for creative thinking. Following De Bono, the moment you think No, you are thinking critically, logically; the same as when you think Yes. No and Yes stop you from being creative; they are the enemies of creative thinking. So, when brainstorming, don’t anybody say ‘No’ and don’t anybody say ‘Yes’ – instead, say ‘Po’ all the time and go on and generate more ideas, the crazier the better. Once you get the hang of it – it’s not that easy – in a little while, a brilliant idea will come flashing through, from out of the blue, from out of the weird. (See Edward De Bono’s Web, edwdebono.com/. I first learned about lateral thinking when my good friend Orli Ochosa gifted me with a copy of De Bono’s Mechanism Of Mind almost 30 years ago.)

In my case, this 3^rd week of July 2006, I had been thinking along the lines of Po when suddenly I came up with my own Po, and that is my Eng.

To apply the idea of the Eng as a tool for creative thinking, we are going to play what I call The Eng Game.

Eng is a prefix, that which is in front of something else. Eng is an abbreviation, a shortened version of a name, place, thing, act or event. As a prefix, when you add Eng to a word or idea, you enrich it. As an abbreviation, when you spell out the Eng word or term, you signify a need-to-do. Both the enriching and the signifying a need-to-do are important in national development – as I am about to illustrate.

We will now use Eng in a mathematical formula to enumerate the factors that must work together for the complex growth of a country, Dev1 being 1^st World Development, – (minus quantity), + (plus quantity), ± (plus or minus quantity):

Dev1 = + (Eng1) – (Eng2) – (Eng3) ± (Eng4) + (Eng5) + (Eng6) + (Eng7).

In considering this formula, remember, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

So now we play The Eng Game of Third World Development. I am about to demonstrate a play of words even I have never seen before – I invented The Eng Game just this evening of 22 July, Manila time – and it’s all to show you that we Filipinos can run out of gas, we can run out of breath, but we will never run out of ideas – 24 July finds me still revising text and title, and now I have come up with the idea of another kind of Internet, which you can read about later in this article – and we Filipinos will never run out of hope.

THE ENG GAME BEGINS NOW:

(1) England as our model First World country? Yes. If it came to a plebiscite, I would vote for England. We Filipinos like the British, if only for Princess Diana and London, and I like the British version of the Parliament. We are playing the Parliament game already anyway with the People’s Initiative, a signature campaign. In the United Kingdom, there are two houses. One is the House of Lords, which comprises 724 Peers (595 of them appointed for life, the rest hereditary) and 26 Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England; the other is the House of Commons, which has 646 Members of Parliaments (the MPs), all MPs being popularly elected. The House of Commons is the center of political life in Britain, as even ministers have to explain and justify their actions to the MPs (UK, news.bbc.co.uk/).

Now, did you notice that the House of Lords includes a good number of Bishops and Archbishops? The Men in Faith. In the House of Lords, the Men in Black can vote. Yankees, listen! In Britain, where you come from, there is no separation of Church and State; there is no separate peace. If you separate Church and State, you separate yin and yang, thesis and anti-thesis, your heart from your brain.

Clueless, we Filipinos adopted the Yankee system and installed a President and a Congress made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the United States, the ladies and gentlemen of Congress are forbidden by law to share their faith. That’s why the Yankees have all kinds of laws beyond logic, like same sex marriages, and they have made it a transgression against society to say even a word about your faith in class or office. So, never mind those moonstruck Yankees! The bloody British are right. We Filipinos must adopt their system. The UK, represented by England, is a model country of how and why not to separate the Church from the State. You can’t separate the mind from the body, the spirit from the flesh. Beyond kindness and understanding, liberal democracy will be the death of the Yankees yet.

(2) Friedrich Engels as model political philosopher and, if Engels comes, can Karl Marx be far behind? No! The two together developed the theory of communism, one of the major counterpoints of democratism, the other being Muslimism. The two made a perfect pair, as Marx was at his best explaining communist theory to scholars while Engels was at his best explaining communist would-be-practice to the masses (spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/). One of the most famous lines in history is that one from The Communist Manifesto co-authored by Marx and Engels: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ In Marx’s revolutionary activities, Engels supported him financially and intellectually. After Marx died, Engels spent the rest of his life and money explaining what communism was all about, believing that ‘Marx had found a scientific basis for history’ (WJ Rayment 2003, indepthinfo.com/). And that is precisely why Filipinos reject the Communist Manifesto: Too much science and not enough humanity. Marx and Engels had abandoned the humanistic materialism of Ludwig Feuerbach and adopted Marx’s dialectical materialism (wikipedia.org/). When I was much younger, I tried but failed to understand dialectical materialism.

(3) The English Revolution as the model for the people’s ascent to power? No! The English Revolution in the 17^th century was the struggle between the ‘Divine Right’ of kings (as claimed by King Charles II) and the ‘reasonable right’ of Parliament. It seemed to have been religion versus reason, but only because the king wanted it to appear so (Hendrik van Loon 2003, authorama.com/). Religion is not the enemy of reason – the believers of reason insist that it is, and that is unreasonable.

In last year’s and this year’s attempts to dethrone the Queen, to unseat the Philippine President, there are parallels to the 17^th century English Revolution. There are two camps claiming rightful headship of the Philippines. On one hand, there are some honored military minds who believe that they have divined the best design on how to run this country. On the other hand, there are honorable men who have divined that in the meantime the Philippines is better off with Gloria-Macapagal Arroyo as President of her country, duly elected. Like what the Englishmen did with the Scots who then betrayed their king who was of their own kind, the opponents of GMA have tried to buy the Filipino people with propaganda, or entice them to wage a third People Power Revolution, but the people would not betray their Queen. The voice of the people is the voice of God. Those who claim to have divined their right to rule their country must be worthy of their countrymen.

(4) Engineering as a field to master to lead us to national development? Yes. I would recommend chemical engineering (since our farmers insist on chemicals for farming: inorganic fertilizers and inorganic pesticides). I would also recommend quality assurance engineering, since we Filipinos are not too keen on total quality management. And systems design engineering, since we Filipinos do not talk in terms of systems but in terms of components only. We do not seem to realize it is the relationships that make the whole, not the sum of the parts.

What about genetic engineering? This is seen as the new savior of farm crops from their age-old enemies, the insect pests. But the insect pests have come out with their own anti-insecticide adaptations against the genetically engineered super crops, so that now we have super pests, or those resistant to pesticides; already, some 1,000 major pest species have been reported as pesticide-resistant (Anne Platt McGinn 2000, usgbc.org/). Here is a big solution that happens to create another big problem.

I would prefer that we engage in value engineering. So then we can find out if indeed we are adding value via genetic engineering and all the other engineering projects we have. That of course depends on how you define value. Me, I define value in the moral, not the economic sense. Life is much more complicated than statistics. Let the economists and statisticians go figure.

(5) English as the medium of instruction in preschool, grade school, high school, college in the Philippines? By all means! English is the most powerful language in the world, so why not harness that latent energy?

The Philippine Star on 18 July carried the Page One news, ‘English to be fully restored as medium of instruction’ reported by Ding Cervantes:

Incoming Education Secretary (and Tarlac Representative) Jesli Lapus said here yesterday he will fully restore English as the medium of instruction in the country to upgrade the quality of education and make it ‘market driven.’

For the record, in the Philippines only the Philippine Star reported that piece of news. How do I know? On that same day, I bought copies of several newspapers: Manila Bulletin, Daily Inquirer, Business Mirror, Daily Tribune, Manila Standard Today, and not one mentioned Lapus’ plan to restore English in its exalted position in each classroom in all the 7,000 islands of the country – we had English in Grade 1 in 1947 when I was that high. A major story like that and they ignore it. Why the silence of the lamps, the failure of the light of reason in those proud papers? Why because it’s not negative enough to GMA; in fact it’s definitely positive for her. She believes in the 1^st World mind of the Filipino even if many Filipinos don’t!

Lapus would be historically the second remarkable man from the province of Tarlac in Central Luzon to dignify Philippine education. The first and very famous was Carlos P Romulo (1899-1985), the foremost Filipino diplomat, the only Filipino winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the first Asian to become President of the UN General Assembly. He was a distinguished President of the University of the Philippines and Secretary of Education (1963-196 (BookRags.com). He was a man. He was short but he was tall.

As was Romulo, so is Lapus convinced that in English lies the fundamental global competitiveness of the Filipino. I am glad to have read that news story because I myself have long been of the conviction that English would be the life of us. Because of our genius in mastering the English language, we have the facility to be ‘the best knowledge workers in the world,’ as GMA puts it (20 May, gov.ph/news/).

For all that, English is the way to go even if our skins are of the earth. The brain knows no color except gray.

(6) Database Engine to launch the national language project mandated by the 1987 Cory Constitution of the Philippines? Yes. That language-to-be I call not Filipino but Filipinas. I am using the database engine, which is that portion of a database management system (software) that actually stores and retrieves data, to represent the whole software itself for inputting, processing, storing and retrieving information. The 1987 Philippine Constitution mandates that the national language, to be called Filipino, be enriched with borrowings not only from Tagalog but also from the other languages in the Philippine islands and from foreign languages. To help build that new national language, we may need the regional colleges to build separate language databases to speed up the process. Let the 100 or so languages in the Philippines each contribute to the database a diversity of meaning and manner, substance and style, content and intent. Filipinas will be the richest language in history yet. Watch out! World.

(For more details on this, read my earlier article ‘A Damaged Academe: How can University of the Philippines save the Ship of State?’ also in the American Chronicle.)

Meanwhile, to the 100 tribes/languages in my country, I shout: ‘Amalgamate!’

(7) A different Search Engine to make creative minds of us all? Yes! We must redesign the Internet to yield not only information but information-in-context results, whatever the search may be. MSN, Yahoo and Google as search engines are fast, faster, fastest in that order, but all sophomoric when it comes to any search in context. They all are designed to search only for information and if they give you context, that’s accidental.

Context is crucial; context is like this:

I search for “NPK fertilizers” and that’s all I know about the subject.
The search results tell me that NPK fertilizers are inorganic fertilizers used as nutrient supplements for soils lacking such elements. My search results also tell me that on one hand there are also organic fertilizers that are used instead of inorganic fertilizers. I didn’t know that before; now I do. Context. That gets me to thinking: What about organic fertilizers? Now I can begin to relate inorganic fertilizers to organic fertilizers. I become more intelligent because I search for something and I learn something else I don’t know anything about but as it turns out I need to know.

Think!

Context helps me think better, much better. Assuming I have an open mind, if you give me more contexts, I will think even better.

NOW, TO SUMMARIZE:

For the Philippines, 1^st World Development = + (English Parliament) – (Engels) – (English Revolution) ± (Genetic Engineering) + (English) + (Database Engine) + (Search Engine).

The Eng Game we have just played tells us there are 7 steps to take for my country to go from 3^rd World to 1^st World:
(1) Accept England as model government; adapt its parliamentary system.
(2) Reject the political philosophy of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.
(3) Reject the English Revolution as a model to effect radical change.
(4) Think 7 times about Genetic Engineering.
(5) Engender a Database Engine to develop the new national language Filipinas.
(6) Advocate English as medium of instruction nationwide, as medium of official communication and record in public and private offices.
(7) Generate a new Search Engine on the Internet as a creative thinking medium, an enricher of mind, via the device of context, bringing you information, leading you to insights, perhaps giving you options you didn’t know exist but are related to your search and which you can use for decision-making in any aspects of life public or private.

Context is what is missing in artificial intelligence (AI). With context programming, I expect to see quickly reality AI, higher-order artificial intelligence. Why because context reduces your problems with ‘what ifs’ that are theoretically infinite – because context defines boundaries. AI should be context-driven, not answer-driven; it should be more than what-if-driven. It has been 65 years since the genesis of AI in the mind of Alan Turing (Andrew Hodges, turing.org.uk/), and AI has not succeeded in mimicking the workings of the human brain, which it has set out to do. In fact, it never will, because our thinking is too complicated, too unpredictable – it can change context in a split second, and that’s why it’s perfect for creative thinking. It’s difficult enough for man to teach man to think creatively; man can never teach a machine to think creatively, and I’m glad: else, man would be God. I’m afraid that even today, man thinks too highly of himself already!

With context in mind, we must redesign the Internet so that it becomes not just an endless virtual vertical file but an active mind. An Internet that thinks! That would be the World Wide Mind, in short WWM, a vertical flip from WWW, a paradigm shift if ever I saw one, my dream Web 3.0, beyond today’s reality Web 1.0, way beyond your dream Web 2.0.

With context, beyond the audio-visual delights and data derivable from the Internet today lies its nuclear power, creative, god-like, God-given. We are men of power, having jumped to the moon up there, and we are men of knowledge, having mapped the human genome down here. All that will be nothing when The Other Internet we learn to create. When we do, we can all be 1^st World after all.

Copyright July 2006 by Frank A Hilario.
Published 24 July by American Chronicle

 

On English & Taglish

Email from Nonie David in Lagos, Nigeria, having read my ‘A Damaged Academe’ (published by American Chronicle, 29 June,