On The State University’s
100 Years Of Solitude
UP is preparing to celebrate being a centenarian. 100 years! By the way UP has lived her life, those are 100 years of solitude, that is to say, 100 years of academic freedom. When you focus on freedom, you focus on the individual and ignore the social, you concentrate on the singular and disregard the plural, you image in the person and image out the community, you remember the piece of the jigsaw puzzle and forget the big picture. Freedom, how many frailties are submitted in thy name! Freedom should only be for creativity, not frailty.
The UP Centennial is too serious a matter to be left to UP officials only. I must participate. I must participate in the very many ways I can – and this is one of them. I’m a ’65 graduate – no, not undergraduate – either you graduate or you don’t; certainly, I was extremed but I was readmitted, thanks to the kindness of the one and only Dr Filomena Campos. I took the very first Teacher’s Exam in December 1965 and passed with playing colors; I got a grade of 80.6%, not bad for a first-timer – and no review classes, and no leakage. Oh, and by the way, beloved, I’m from the Cow College.
100 years: UP is preparing to celebrate its being old. It should also be preparing to celebrate its being young once again. UP should be preparing to cerebrate too. To celebrate is to rejoice, to cerebrate is to re-juice. To simplify: To celebrate is to think of the chronological or consequential, to be critical; to cerebrate is to think of the non-chronological or inconsequential, to be creative. UP has never been known to be creative, only critical – an institutional neglect of the creative juice. Which explains the individual neglect of the creative genius – If your columnist is critical of the national government, he is probably from UP. Thank God GMA is from UP!
UP is old. She must now give up her ‘la triste, mustia vida’ – half a line from the most famous Atenean of them all, Jose Rizal’s Adios, Patria Adorada (my title) – ‘my life shrunk and forsaken’ (my translation); click here to read the full and very different English translation in my blog Adios! Patria! Adorada!) – what is academic freedom if it is only for the academic? Welcome, UP Beloved. Adios, Beloved Country!
The world is astir with global warming while UP is hardly astir – Rip Van Winkle 5 times over. Or, to say it differently, UP looked at the problem and called it tuition, and she saw that it was bad, and she made the logical decision of increasing it a thousand times over and above the objection of the people, the masses that she loves to love and in the name of whom she demonstrates at Mendiola over and above the objections of GMA. Logical – Is that all the cerebral competency that UP can show the world?
Look at the logo of the UP Centennial again (the first one). It reflects ancient, static art. Why can’t it be at least like the second, or the third? Hasn’t UP heard of Photoshop?
I’m old chronologically; I’m 67; I didn’t learn creative writing from UP; I learned my blogging and uploading and all that modern jazz all by myself. UP is old academically, having lived all her life with the old logic. Think Socrates. Why can’t UP learn something new by itself? Modern logic may have originated from the Peripatetic tradition going back to Aristotle (answers.com), who is ancient (born 384 BC), almost prehistoric, certainly static. Your logic is good, but we need cash.
