Ceasefire, Ceasefire: Breaking the Escalation of Violence

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Social Distance in Facebook: Breaking or Building Barriers Among Differentiated Groups in Cyberspace

Source: http://www.sgclub.com/lifestyle

Social networking sites have captured the interest and aspiration of people especially Filipinos and Filipinas to make contacts and connect with families, friends, and others. To illustrate this, imagine Facebook having over half a billion account users all over the world. Twenty-six million of those are found in the Philippines.  Thus, albeit virtually, numerous contacts are made by differentiated groups through Facebook.

Research has shown that contacts among equals of differentiated groups reduce social distance. With the popularity and wide use of Facebook in the world including the Philippines, do contacts occur among differentiated groups? Or Facebook further solidifies the ingroup and marginalizes the outgroup? Does Facebook break or build social distance among differentiated groups?

It is hypothesized that Facebook facilitates ingroup formation and strengthens its cohesion. Moreover, Facebook does not intentionally marginalize the outgroup.  It helps reduce social distance among groups especially those who have a sizeable number of friends from other groups.

If you have a Facebook account, please take the survey here.

The results of this survey will be presented at the 2011 Philippine Sociological Society National Conference in Ateneo de Naga University in Naga City on October 14-15, 2011.

Thank you very much.

Searching for a Hero (Happy Father's Day)

“Only the leader’s own involvement in reality, within a historical situation, led them to criticize this situation and to wish to change it.” – Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

As we celebrate the 150th birthday of Jose Rizal, are we still in search of a hero?

Coincidentally, on the same day, we celebrate Father’s Day.

Oftentimes we are asked, whom do you consider your hero? And usually we enumerate names we just read from history books. We are told by their exploits and heroism during the times when we could not even relive their lives except the trying words of our historians, documentary shoots, and life-imitating films. Almost, yet persistent in their larger-than-life attempt to capture history, our scholars have provided us a near-to-life panorama of our academic past. We owe it to them if we see Rizal as repository of almost supernatural talents, Bonifacio as a brave man without fear of death, Aguinaldo as a revolutionary who waged his own revolution inside the Philippine revolution. These are the most known heroes and widely read about personalities in the history of our country.

Why Rizal or Bonifacio or Aguinaldo then? What about Bicolano heroes like Jose Ma. Panganiban or Tomas Arejola? Why not our fathers?

For one, our history-book heroes exemplified a life destined to be great, and willingly faced a death by sacrificing their lives. Of course, their deaths were their heroic acts that defined their heroism. To the idealist, they have done in an extraordinary way what any ordinary man could not. To the realist, they simply fulfilled the task assigned by the call of times. To the gestaltist, they completed the missing part of our aspiration for freedom and totality as a nation. To most of us, they responded to the challenge of self-determination. To the rest, they were merely the stories of men printed in the paper, or depicted in a monument, imaged in a bill, or painted in a card.

More than the epic life and death they led, their heroism was highlighted by the classic struggle to free our country from the bondage of colonization of Spain, to liberate from the oppressive imperialism of America, and to save the nation from the inclusive expansion of Japan.

Today the war waged by our heroes continues. It is not yet won but little victories were gained. Although our country does not confront armies of the imperious foreigners, it faces enemies in various forms. The most formidable of these is the prevalent poverty of its own people. Slowly, poverty is eating up what has been gained by our heroes, including the very foundation of our nationhood – our dignity as a people. In times like this, our country needs a hero. Soon, our new hero will certainly rise. I don’t know where I get my hope for this prayer but I am sure somewhere, someone will answer the signs of times.

Our Philippines definitely is in dire search of a hero who will empower its people to perfect its being and fate. Someone who while in power and given the responsibility will yield the same to the people. Have the Ramon Magsaysay Awards helped us find our modern hero? Has the Nobel Prizes eluded us for some reasons?

Your guess is as good as the whole nation who practically begs for everyone to share a piece of this responsibility and power for her/his own people. Our heroes responded to the signs.

And there are other nameless and faceless individuals who do their own share of heroism in our struggle to regain what we had in the beginning of history.

There is certainly one with a name and face that is familiar to us. He may even come with several names (Tatay, Ama, Papa, Father) - but there is only one that endears him to us. Call him, and a hero is with us.

Youth for Peace: Young Adults Who are Changing the World

The Junior Chamber International, or JCI, is a membership based, non-profit coalition of some two hundred thousand young people, aging in range from 18 to 40.  Their goal is simple: to create lasting and positive change in our world, using community-based initiatives to create a global revolution of positive progress.

Once a year, the JCI honors ten up and coming youths through the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World award. Ranging in age from 18 to 40, the award is bestowed upon those young leaders who have shown true innovation, extraordinary service, or a new and creative way to think about an existing community issue.

Of the ten, we will focus on three who are moving us, as a collective unit, toward a much improved and more peaceful world.

Melanie Hennessy visited Nepal when she was only 18 years old. She soon found a full time position in Nepal seeking to alleviate the plight of its children. Having been recognized in the humanitarian/Voluntary Leadership role for her JCI honors, Hennessy established a school in Nepal, with an Orphanage fund set up back home at her Irish University NUI Galway. In addition to starting another charity, TEAM Nepal, she returned in 2010 to create Walking Hospitals, in which volunteers shadow local doctors from village to village to provide assistance to those in need. Melanie was also selected as one of Ireland's Outstanding Young People of the Year.  

Uyapo Ndadi, of Botswana, turned down a well paying job at a law firm to pursue his passions.  Founding the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law, and HIV/AIDS (BONELA), he fights against the spread of the virus, as well as for the rights of its sufferers. As an advocate of people's rights, Ndadi fights against discrimination in the workplace while providing legal aid free of charge to clients. He works with communities at all levels in an effort to bring denizens into the fight with BONELA.  Uyapo is now the Director of the organization he started, bringing ethics and honesty to the role as he continues to fight for the human rights of his people in Botswana, a country which has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world.

For the Business, Economic, or Entrepreneurial accomplishment, the JCI gave the award to Emily Cummins. Known for creating the toothpaste squeezer for Arthritis sufferers and a water-carrying device designed for Third World use, Cummins bested herself with the creation of her award-winning portable refrigerator. The solar powered, sustainable device can be built from household items, making it the perfect instrument for Third World countries. In Namibia, Emily became known as the "Fridge Lady" as she toiled for five months in research and development phases. The work paid off—her invention is now saving the lives of countless Africans because medical supplies, as well as food, can now be moved in an uncontaminated fashion, regardless of local water quality. The sick can be treated like no other time in recent memory, all thanks to an invention that 21-year-old Emily thought up in her grandfather's potting shed.

To think on what these young people are accomplishing—all in their early to mid twenties—is truly mind-boggling. It gives us hope as a nation, a world, and as a community tied together in the global marketplace.

When you read about such positive and life-altering changes being made using creativity, wit, and intelligence, it belies an attitude that we can all step forward to make positive changes in our own communities.

Start with something small. You don't need to change the world with the first thing you try. 

Bryce Hammons is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog.

Human Rights Against Human Wrongs

“The conception, the idea of Right asserted its authority all at once, and the old framework of injustice could offer no resistance to its onslaught.” – Hegel, Philosophy of History

           Why is it that humans feature and point out what is wrong rather what is right?

            Whatever happened in Pangantucan, Bukidnon in 2000 that resulted to the deaths of 16 cult members of the Catholic God’s Spirit and 4 militiamen is up to the prayers to justice to both victims? While the public is painstakingly dragged to blur the truth, the authorities are digging holes to justify the unspeakable acts of their subordinates. They are trying to cheat the TV footages that bear the raw images of people being killed. The veracity of those shots of film could equal the law of gravity that all things that go up must come down. Yet they have the face to declare that what happened should be viewed in its entire context, not in a few minutes of footages. Conversely the public cannot be told to think in which way the authorities will want them to think. Those film shots sonorously unveil the only piece of truth the public can get hold of the gory incidence in Bukidnon, the Philippines.

            It is defined in the Rules of Engagement of the Philippine National Police that the use of force is justified only if it becomes the last resort when all other peaceful and non-violent means have been exhausted. With guns ready for action anytime, the authorities expose themselves to the slightest provocation of using force not as the last resort but the first line of defense. The two excuses are mutually dichotomized and yet can be referred interchangeably as if each one were of the same kind. These two are being invoked by the authorities as the justification of the enraged overkill of 16 people that should have been a simple arrest of one wanted person. Any concerned citizen would like to think that this becomes an exception rather than a rule with the activation of the CAFGUs. Otherwise the authorities are implicitly inviting citizens to arm themselves if confronted by the same undisciplined and haphazardly trained units of militiamen. This implication runs counter with the current drive of Dept. Interior Local Government in getting rid of the unlicensed and loose firearms, which are normally used in illegal activities and crimes. While the authorities are trying to confiscate the loose firearms and encouraging the citizens not to arm in order to protect themselves, they should also observe the discipline and training of those who are tasked and supposedly to protect the public. Unless this is achieved, they cannot talk peace and have guns at the same time.

            Anyway, what on earth has compelled man to do such ferocious act against another man? I am tempted to dismiss the notion that man is inherently evil but it brings me to light that we like to watch boxing and cockfighting, two figures scalping, hitting bloodily. It is further reinforced when Echegaray was sentenced to die and how we all waited for its consummation. Interestingly, the sight of blood and conflict excite the vulnerability of giving in easily to our temporal indulgence. However, the great Rousseau helps me to come to a personal conviction, that man is naturally good and that it is by institutions alone that he becomes evil.