AT FIRST, I thought everything was just a simple case of agreeing to disagree, with people these days loving and living on arguing for its own sake. It is not so much for aiming to resolve anything, though, or to arrive at an impasse even.
Quite plainly, it is to merely run through the motions of it all and just to be heard, which is the most important thing.
I guess for many, that has always been the bottom line. In this, our digitally ruled global village, one’s own opinions can now sail a long way off to seek refuge among other voices of the similar kind. Birds of the same feather yak together.
The end result is everyone talking at the same time, vividly pictured in the lyrics of that Paul Simon masterpiece “The Sound of Silence,” which tells us of “People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening…” That song must be over sixty years old! And they say we’ve come a long way.
It has always been this way, and somehow, if one reads our history, that was how we got by. But just exactly where are we at nowadays? Wherever one looks, it is people locking horns with others, mouthing opposing opinions on corruption in government, thieving politicians, and most recently, vaccines (again).
It’s junk analyses and continuous noise (just like the still far-off elections in 2028) with the usual mud-slinging, as if to make the exercise more entertaining.
And while on that subject, undying impeachment attempts, care of the yearly hearings to oust a rival rumble like Mt Doom, while government appears dumb, deaf and blind to the floods drowning its people.
With all these going on, some would rather set these aside and talk about trivialities, like Jose Marie Chan singing again next month.
Our fate is set. While on one hand, we throw our collective voices in the arena that’s already filled with the saliva of those who came before us, ranting about presidentiables, a new government, or pickleball and Alex Eala even, we totally miss out on the fact that we still have not attained one voice, much less healed together as one.
Truly, we appear pathetic as a people and a country, toiling in a proverbial tower of Babel, and largely of our own doing. But who cares anyway? All we know is we have our own drums to listen to.
