Graffiti and the First Amendment
In another broadsheet that generally supports the presidency and, going by its history, enjoys a reputation as one of the oldest in print media, there is this professor who teaches in one of the best private learning institutions today. Armed with a doctoral degree, he writes a column for the paper and he writes mostly on politics — a
rather prickly and sensitive subject if there was one. From the many universities around, the school where he teaches has been responsible for some of the best minds and the best leaders of Filipino society. It has produced captains of industry and educated some of our finest officials. That the university along Taft Avenue is labeled a “school for tomorrow” even by its fiercest rival and has been recognized among the 300 best learning institutions in Asia and among the top 800 in the world is a testament to the kind of education imparted by the school.
The accolades are well-earned. These superlatives remind us of the criticality of intellectuals, mentors and scholars in molding the minds and attitudes of our youth and on the eventual impact these have on the future of a country violently buffeted by the worst physical and intellectual tempests.
Those influences are even more critical today as a perfect storm engulfs us from an apocalyptic pandemic, a misinformed public, bureaucracies that menace freedom and civil liberties, crashing economies, geopolitical tensions threatening to ignite an unwinnable shooting war, and both hunger and desolation now at the front door.
Where we flounder in the shallows, both inspiration and profound and honest self-actualization are needed for us to at least take our bearings and navigate away from a total disaster.
To the credit of the academe, our learning institutions and mentors have heroically stepped up, defiant and brave, threatened as they are by the mediocre, the miscreant and the mundane. To speak nothing of mind-numbing morons and unthinking malefactors who troll, intimidate and bully on the pretense of self-righteous ascendancy, however failing to engage in analytical and intellectual discourse.
In a highly charged environment such as we see in the United States during a contentious campaign period, or as in ours where politics infests everything, discordant and ruled by acrimony, debate and discourse yield to name-calling, labeling, insults and argumentum ad hominem. Shorn of reason, protagonists are unable to debate and thus sink to bitter and hostile malevolence.
As colorful as the interplay might seem, it is neanderthal.
In the case of our university professor, his attempts at intelligent discourse are met with disdain not so much for content but because he writes from the opposite side of a political aisle. Likewise echoing across the bureaucracy, trolls call to muzzle him and others.
If social media as such is the new medium, then it has indeed lost its ideal as a classroom for intelligent discourse critical to a democracy. More now where a crisis demands rational and intelligent engagement from an informed public.
When this happens, society’s intellectual maturity stalls. Truth takes a backseat to hostility or is simply thrown out the window. Never mind the First Amendment, or, in our case, the Bill of Rights, prioritized early in our Constitution, both guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression. Media then is nothing but a backstreet alley where everything is vandalized into ugly graffiti.
“If social media as such is the new medium, then it has indeed lost its ideal as a classroom for intelligent discourse critical to a democracy.
“Our learning institutions and mentors have heroically stepped up, defiant and brave, threatened as they are by the mediocre, the miscreant and the mundane.