Take Your Mark
“Look at me, I’m a PolSci major. Pansinin niyo naman ako!”
Just kidding. I’m not, and neither am I that annoying.
I won’t badger you with my opinions and criticisms—however carefully and pretentiously constructed in highfalutin English they may be. I won’t bombard you with political theories left and right either. And, I most certainly will not drop big names just so you know I know what I’m talking about.
By nature, my default attitude when it comes to arguments can be summed up in one word: indifference.
As long as my pseudo-golden rule of “Walang basagan ng trip” applies, I won’t lift an argumentative finger. For me, it has always been a matter of acceptance—though tolerance may be the better word.
After all, everyone has their preferences, and what right have I to impose my own onto someone else? Similarly, it irks me to no end how some individuals (just because they’ve taken up the topic as their major in college) feel as if they have the right to be obnoxious.
In the chaotic and confrontational world of student politics, everyone and their mother has something to say about the governing body. Before I go any further, no, this is not the first volume in a series of Sanggunian apologetics. While I appreciate our student council today, I’ve had my beef with a lot of its officers in years past.
Although I’d like to attack our beleaguered Sanggunian as much as the next person, something other than my golden rule hinders me from doing so. Over the course of my numerous philosophy classes, I’ve come to despise one philosopher above all others.
Socrates was and, to my mind at least, forever will be a pain in the posterior. He claims to know nothing, but then goes on to obliterate your argument and render subsequent ones invalid. More than anything though, he’s just plain annoying—kind of like the brand of students I’ve exploited earlier on for more readership in my provocative introduction.
Okay, I’m digging my own grave right now, aren’t I?
If, and when, someone reads this and is offended, writing a rebuttal to this column would be ridiculously easy. The easiest counterargument would be, “What then of democracy? Of rational discussion in the agora?”
Of course, I don’t expect the governed to drone on mindlessly and not care about what the higher-ups are doing. Quite the contrary, intellectual discourse among all concerned will always be the best form of checks and balances.
There will always be points against the Sanggunian, and I know that Ateneo’s gadflies have the right, more than anyone else, to champion the cause of the masses. They know their stuff by heart that the mere thought of disagreeing with any of them scares me.
However, the fact remains: please all, and you will please none. I’m sure the student council values the discourse, but I trust them enough to know that their actions should speak louder than their words.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the gadflies. What worries me though is that all this talk will lead nowhere—that in the end, we’ll be stuck in a cycle of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Please. Don’t let it come to that.
[…] Otherwise, he won’t care. “My default attitude when it comes to arguments can be summed up in one word: indifference,” he says in his column. […]