The Construct

‘Done because we were too menny.’

Alex @ September 24, 2008 | | Personal, Politics and Society |

Have we really reached the tipping point? A lot of people have been killing themselves recently but the one that still sticks to my mind was the case of Janeth Ponce.

On Tuesday [September 9], Janeth Ponce, 32, forced three of her children to drink a bottle of liquid toilet bowl cleaner before drinking the same substance herself in Magdalena town in Laguna province. Television reports said Ponce’s husband worked as a construction worker in Manila and has not been able to send them money for over a month.

Former cabinet member Dinky Soliman labeled the case as a reflection of how Filipino society is reaching its ‘tipping point.’

Experts are always trying to address such cases as an economic issue - that such grisly story is nothing more than the details behind a statistic. Poor people are killing their own families out of desperation. That was a mother who had shown us how far a desperate mother can go to “protect” her children.

Just last night, Akutenshi-13 and I were chatting about life in general and at one point were talking about the future of the local game development industry. He had full confidence that there will be a market for games despite the crunch. His reason: people will always resort to escapism. Smart guy, this fellow.

Giving it a bit more thought, I came to ask myself whether such certain complexes are influenced by drive towards escapism. Take my opinion on the whole mobile phone culture. Or perhaps this new bit involving jeepney drivers and Playstation Portables. Could the Filipino people be drowning their worries in pools of silica and plastic?

Now back to Ponce et al. For some reason I find myself disturbed and quite affected on a personal level when these things happen. Perhaps personal experience has programmed to feel as such. I was amazed to see my old Tabulas blog still up and running and came across this particular entry. It pained me to read and relive in memory those details. To some extent, I’ve reached the point of desperation myself. I know how suicidal and murderous one feels in such a situation. How hopeless one feels when there seems to be no escape. “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.” Well, thanks to friends, I’m still alive and well but I couldn’t even try to imagine how others with no other means of support can overcome such adversity.

So is this really the tipping point? How many of the poor should defy survival instinct before everything really comes crashing down? Perhaps when someone leaves a note saying “Kase masyado kaming madami.”

If you don’t get how this post’s title relates to any of this, get a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

***

Some people have been asking me why I have such a hypocritical hatred for well-off people. Perhaps it’s because many people don’t really get to appreciate what they have and how lucky they are. It just kills me whenever I hear someone complain about how messed up their trust-fund lifestyles are. Somehow I wish that I could trade places with them just to let them feel how being an orphan still burdened with his parents’ debts and shortcomings feels like.

But Alex, you’re not picking scraps from someone else’s table. You’re educated. You’re earning a decent living. Shouldn’t the rest of the world hate you for that? Yeah. I know. Maybe they should. But for some reason, I just can’t help but regard things this way. I know the life-dealt-you-a-shitty-hand excuse is no excuse at all.

Oblige me on this one. Else, bugger off. Haha.

Tags: Money, Personal, Politics and Society, Poverty