my Trade Tripper column in the 28-29 August issue of BusinessWorld:
Probably it was inevitable.
By which I mean the world turning into half mad, half insane lunatics.
And this thought was precipitated because a friend was correcting her Business course students’ test answers.
From a contract law question, this literary gem came out and is hereby quoted word per word: “Mark have to have case against to Pete because they have contract that 3 car garage on Mark’s house and Pete have not do for it Pete will payed damages and the obligation of Pete They will repair the garage of Mark house to have not do any case for Pete.”
But perhaps we can’t blame students if the people they look up to have developed new modes of thinking and rules regarding language.
Which leads me to Katrina Stuart Santiago’s marvelous piece (in another newspaper) on Senator Grace Poe’s International Youth Day speech given just a few weeks ago. The best part of which reads:
“Sino sa inyo, dahil sa mga baha, sa ulan, maramingmake-up classes hindi ba? Kahit na Sabado na kasama ninyo ang boyfriend ninyo o girlfriend ninyo o kaya tumutulong kayo sa inyong mga magulang na maglaba, magplantsa... Nagme-make-up classes kayo, kaya nga ang sabi ko ganito, dahil nga hindi pa natin kaya bigyan ang lahat ng estudyante ng tablet at ng computer at hindi pa mabilis ang ating Internet. Siguro sa DepEd mayroon nangstandard na libro lahat para kahit na kayo ay nasa bahay may workbook kayo na pini-fill out para pagpasok ninyo wala nang make-up classes.”
However, I must admit that my own profession, law, shares substantial blame for making gibberish the new intellectual currency.
Consider these random passages culled together from the writings of local “legal scholars”: “Scrutinizing the visual description in the curvature within the democratic framework makes a comparative grounding from a liberal perspective furnishing a metaphorical area for normative advocacies. Such problematique acquires an expanding accretion, broad prescience, and juristic clarification of institutional dynamics that categorizes the dualist character from the perspective of conceptual and practical progression.”
Journal after legal journal are full of this rubbish.
But, again, it’s hard to blame the younger lawyers when their teachers weirdly rhapsodize about gobbledygook like “penumbras” and “emanations” (see Griswold case).
Or this piece of sheer nonsense: “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” (see Casey).
Which makes the fortune cookie “reasoning” of Obergefell almost unsurprising.
And all complicit in teaching future lawyers the grand manner of confusion.
San Beda’s Fr. Rannie Aquino blames it on “a bad national habit: intellectual sloth”. Perhaps.
It could also be the descending national IQ levels that I pointed out in my massively unpopular 2012 BusinessWorld article “It’s more dumb in the Philippines”.
In any event, I’m reminded of Mark Judge’s article (“America has changed, but God hasn’t”; 2012), whose description of a deteriorating country is spot on -- just change the word “America” with “Philippines”:
“The truth is that America is now a leftist country. It’s Rachel Maddow and Jeremiah Wright’s country. You know that divorced fortysomething female neighbor of yours? The one who’s not half as bright as she thinks she is, and doesn’t know much about Libya or the national debt, but watches Katie Couric’s new show and just kind of didn’t like Romney because she, well, just kind of didn’t like him? America is now her country. It’s Dingbatville.”
But more than intellectual sloth is the turning of people’s backs on truth, with the latter’s un-hipster demands for logic and reason and their tiresome consequences and duties.
No wonder then why many today find the idea of defining “one’s own concept of existence” irresistible.
So, ultimately, I blame the Progressive Left for making idiocy the new normal.
This was laconically illustrated by Carl R. Trueman (“Welcome to the Age of Gibberish”, July 2015): Language needs to be anchored on a reality that is more than a linguistic or societal “construct”.
By determinedly detaching itself from truth (particularly about human nature, gender, family, and religion), which the Progressive Left considers hateful or bigoted, they end up making language “lose all of its rhetorical power and simply looks... well, ridiculous.”
Thus explaining why the language of the Progressive Left is either overly verbose or pseudo-sophisticatedly showered with F&$%! bombs -- a means of hiding the lack of coherence and logic, and instead uses words to target emotions, insult opposing views, or convey threats to shut down discussions.
And if you think that coherent language and thought have no real world implications, just remember the overwhelming damage done to the country when it elected president a person capable of writing this utter piece of daftness: “To be understood or misunderstood is not so much a struggle as it is to understand or misunderstand the longing for inner peace in each man’s heart.”
