mondays with patmei

I am writing this as I am turning 56. I was born on July 19, 1970. And on my birthday this year, there’s a projected rally in the Philippines organized by a coalition known as the United People’s Initiative (UPI) against systemic government corruption.

Upgrade Innolab, Inc. President Richard Day shared a sweet message on Facebook as a way of celebrating me on my birthday: “Thank you for sharing your joy with those who are still searching for their own. Living a principled life is never easy, but you have guarded yours beautifully.”

It is such a wonderful message that it moved me to reflect on my unorganizable and unbribable life. As a response, I am sharing my reflections with Richard and his generation of changemakers through this special birthday edition column.

My idealism is tinged with an immediate, sharp disgust for organized blocs. I was raised in cynicism and my foundational worldview is that reality and official narrative are rarely the same thing.   I realized early on that ideologies were just competing for the driver’s seat of the same broken car.

I am too radical for the conservatives and too establishment for the radicals. I am, effectively, unorganizable. And in a political culture built on the patronage system, where loyalty is bought, sold, and packaged like a seasonal commodity, I am unbribable.

I grew up during several oil crises and steep devaluations of the peso. I’m an only child of my solo parent of a mother who was too busy surviving to hover over me so I learned to fend for myself early. She told me to stop waiting for my father to come back and that no one was coming to save us.

This bred a deep, almost pathological self-reliance. When a corrupt official offers me a deal, I do not feel gratitude, I feel danger.  A corrupt patron offers security in exchange for loyalty, but I never learned to rely on patrons. I relied on my own wits. You cannot buy a person who has never truly believed in the safety of a safety net.

Corruption preys on insecurity. The corrupt offer not just money, but validation. They make you feel important. They make you feel chosen. They make you feel like you are finally part of the club. That is why the most vulnerable targets are often those who have been overlooked, marginalized, or desperate for recognition.

To be incorruptible, you have to be already at peace with who you are. You do not need the system to validate you. You have an internal compass that is stronger than any external reward. This self-worth is not arrogance; it is a quiet, stubborn knowledge that you are enough — without the envelope, without the title, without the patron’s approval.

I learned this young. Growing up under Martial Law, I watched the adults in my life navigate a world where speaking the truth could get you killed. They taught me, through their whispers, that integrity was not a luxury; it was survival. I internalized that lesson. By the time I was an adult, I already knew that I would rather be poor and free than rich and owned.

The corrupt also offer narratives. They tell you that this time, it is different. But you have heard that before. You have watched too many “reformers” become “trapos.” So to be unbribable you have to be inoculated against flattery because they know, in their bones, that no one is immune to the seduction of power, unless they actively resist it. So try very hard not to believe your own press release.

Corruption is a closed loop. It relies on a network of mutual obligation — people who owe each other favors, who protect each other, who share the same secrets. To corrupt someone, you must first bring them into the loop. You must make them dependent on the network.

To be incorruptible, you need to maintain a social network outside the system. You have friends, colleagues, and allies who are not part of the patronage machine. You have relationships built on trust, not on transactions. Have a life beyond politics.

I have always made sure of this. My closest friends are not politicians; they are journalists, teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, innovators, farmers, peacebuilders and community organizers. When the system tries to pull me into its orbit, I have a gravitational anchor elsewhere. I am not easily captured because I already belong somewhere else.

Have a sense of historical accountability. The corrupt often think in the short term. They ask, “What can I get today?” What can I keep for myself?” They do not consider the long arc of history. The incorruptible person thinks in generations. They ask, “What will my grandchildren say about me? What will historians write? What will be the legacy of my choices?”

Richard noted “sharing (my) joy” and I realize now this capacity for quiet joy is a very important trait to have to be unbribable. The corrupt are often miserable. They are trapped in a cycle of fear, greed, and paranoia. They cannot trust anyone because they themselves are untrustworthy. They are lonely. They are anxious. They are never satisfied.

Incorruptible people have found joy outside the system. They have hobbies. They have relationships. They have meaning. They do not need the rush of power or the comfort of money because they have already found contentment elsewhere.

I have my local peacebuilding work. I have my food and refill revolution. I have my cooperative. I have service and fellowship with Rotary. I have Davao Historical Society. These are not grand achievements but they bring me joy. They connect me to my community. They remind me why I do this work. When the system offers me a deal, I ask myself: “Will this deal bring me joy? Or will it rob me of the joy I already have?” The answer is always the same. The system cannot buy me because I have already bought into something else.

But the most important lesson I have learned is this: no one is born incorruptible. Incorruptibility is not a personality trait; it is a practice. It is a daily, deliberate choice to resist the subtle seductions of power. It is a muscle that must be exercised often.

I am not incorruptible because I am morally superior. I am incorruptible because I have trained myself to be. I have said “no” so many times that it has become a reflex. I have surrounded myself with people who hold me accountable. I have built systems that make it harder for me to be corrupted. I have made my integrity structural, not just personal.

If you want to be difficult to corrupt, do not rely on willpower alone. Build systems. Build relationships. Build a life that is already full. Make it harder for the system to buy you — not because you are strong, but because you have made yourself unavailable.

The secret to incorruptibility is to build a life that is already richer than any transaction the system can offer — a family that loves you, a community that trusts you, a purpose that sustains you, and a history that reminds you of who you are and what you stand for.  So my advice is to design your life to be richer and fuller than anything money can buy. That’s how you “guard it beautifully.”

July is nutrition month and Davao City is taking this seriously by transforming the way we do our school-based feeding program.

Dubbed Project ALAGA (Advancing Learners through Accessible, Guaranteed, and Adequate nutrition), Councilor Antoinette “Petite” Principle, Chairperson of the Davao City Council’s Committee on Education, Science, and Technology, is championing local legislation that aims “to move beyond simply providing food to creating a comprehensive, sustainable, and dignified system for nourishing children.”

The ordinance is rooted in two key principles. First, moving beyond stigma by feeding all children, not only selected children identified as “malnourished,” through a universal feeding program for all learners (from kinder to grade six) in target elementary schools. Second, reframing feeding as an investment, not as an expense.

“If we feed only the identified malnourished children, we risk stigmatizing them and labelling them. Dignity matters,” said Councilor Petite. “And this should not be treated as an expense, but as an investment in children who will stay in school because they no longer feel weak,” she added.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) and Davao-based civil society organizations, notably the Mothers for Peace Social Enterprise, Inc. and the Rotary Club of Downtown Davao (RCDD), are all supporting this significant shift in our feeding program.

Mothers for Peace, which started the Davao Food Revolution in 2012 with the Department of Education (DepEd-Davao City) and the City Government of Davao, has been advocating for improved access to affordable healthy food in schools. Through this program, it connects local organic farms to grassroots women in barangays near public schools who will prepare and cook healthy meals and snacks to supply the schools.

With Davao City’s Project ALAGA, Mothers for Peace is reviving the Davao Food Revolution version 2.0 to expand its advocacy promoting universal school feeding using the circular model.

The current school-based feeding program is a linear model that is not sustainable. Budget comes in, food is bought through centralized procurement, children are fed, and waste goes out to the landfills.

It has achieved short-term gains, but these gains do not last. Studies show that only 48 percent of children maintain their improved nutritional status 12 months after the feeding period ends. Worse, only less than half of malnourished children are reached by the program.

Meanwhile, logistical failures plague implementation. DepEd’s cash-based budgeting creates fiscal mismatches. Fiscal year ends in December but the school year does not, leaving no budget for the remainder of the feeding period. Centralized food procurement has led to delivery of spoiled food (e.g., moldy Nutribuns) reported in multiple regions. And teachers are burdened with unpaid kitchen duties.

We cannot afford to repeat these mistakes. The solution is a circular school feeding model — a system that transforms schools from mere consumers of food into producers, educators, and resource-recovery centers. And Davao City is leading this circular food revolution in our schools that makes the program affordable and sustainable.

This year, DepEd Davao City, under the leadership of Schools Division Superintendent Reynante Solitario, is piloting 10 target schools — seven of which are in Marilog and Paquibato to serve indigenous peoples and geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas to be funded by the Local School Board (LSB). The remaining three schools will be adopted by the Rotary Club of Downtown Davao (RCDD) and its other partner Rotary clubs based in Davao City.

Rotarians will mobilize resources to donate needed equipment and utensils for the school kitchens and supplement the healthy food needed by the children (like milk, eggs, fruits, and vitamins) for an entire school year. They will also conduct nutrition education, medical/dental programs in collaboration with private sector partners to provide holistic health intervention for these schools. This is in line with this Rotary year’s theme: “Create Lasting Impact.”

Instead of the usual NutriBuns and milk, hot nutritious lunch meals that are culturally appropriate and planned with a focus on nutrition will be served to all children. All ingredients are locally sourced, ensuring fresh ingredients while supporting farmers cooperatives and the local economy. Central and on-site kitchens will be built and run by dedicated kitchen staff paid through funds from LSB so that teachers will not have the added burden of taking care of the feeding activities.  

The “Gulayan sa Paaralan” (school gardens) will be strengthened to supplement food sources and promote sustainable practices. Every school with available land must establish Biodiverse Intensive Gardens growing at least 15 varieties of indigenous vegetables using organic methods. To be truly circular, all leftovers and food scraps must be composted to fertilize school gardens — closing the nutrient loop. Schools then become a waste-to-resource centers.

With Davao developing into an innovative and smart city, it can upgrade DepEd’s SIGLA (System for Intelligent Growth and Learner Anthropometry) that automates the learners’ nutrition screening process. It can create a live dashboard tracking system that not only tracks each child’s weight-for-height monthly, but also school farm yields, and local market prices. The program can then use the data to adjust menus dynamically — if a child is not gaining weight, prescribe a fortified meal variant or pre and probiotic supplements; if a crop fails, shift to available alternatives. Under a circular model, tracking will include the percentage of food sourced locally, school farm productivity, and food waste reduction. Our city’s vibrant startup community can help innovate the current system to track the feeding program’s impact comprehensively.

Community-led central kitchen models have been piloted successfully in the Philippines. The model works because it builds community ownership — parents, teachers, farmers, local officials, and civil society organizations collaborate as equal stakeholders.

The 2026 School-Based Feeding budget of 25.6 billion pesos is historic, more than double the 2025 budget. But historic does not mean sufficient. It does not even guarantee impact. Without fundamental reforms, we risk pouring billions into a system that feeds children today but fails them tomorrow. This increased funding can fall into the same pattern of substandard implementation.

Davao City is embracing the circular model in its feeding program — not as an experiment, but as the new standard. With a circular school feeding program, we can do more than feed hungry children. We can nourish minds, support local farmers, provide livelihood for women who run community kitchens, regenerate our environment, and build a future where every Filipino child has the health to dream and the strength to achieve those dreams.

The funds are allocated. The children are waiting. The model is proven. There is no excuse for delay. Let’s do this all together as one community, Davao!

If you walked up to Socrates in ancient Athens and asked, “What’s the return on investment for this philosophy subject, sir?” He’d probably squint at you, tilt his head, and ask why you’re so obsessed with coin-counting when you could be asking what makes life worth living.

We seem to have tragically misplaced Socrates’ point somewhere between the Industrial Revolution and the latest Commission on Higher Education (CHED) proposal to cut General Education units from 36 to 18. Somewhere along the way, we collectively decided that the purpose of higher education is to produce “employable graduates.” We turned colleges and universities into employment agencies, students into “labor force,” and professors into skills-trainers.

But if we trace education back to its ancient roots, we find a radically different vision — one where the goal was not to plug you into the economy, but to unplug you from ignorance.

Let’s start with the Greeks — because they practically invented the Western concept of higher learning. The Greek term for education was paideia, and it wasn’t about learning to operate a loom or count pottery shards. It was about arete — excellence of the soul. Plato’s Academy, founded in 387 BC, wasn’t a vocational school for philosophers looking to land gigs as royal advisors (though that was a nice side-effect). It was a place to contemplate the Forms, to understand Justice itself, and to train philosopher-kings — leaders who could see beyond shadows on a cave wall.

Aristotle’s Lyceum was no different. He divided knowledge into three tiers: theoria (contemplation for its own sake), praxis (practical action guided by ethics), and techne (craft or skill). Notice which one he put on top? Theory. Thinking. Understanding the why before the how. For Aristotle, the highest human function wasn’t earning a paycheck; it was exercising rationality to achieve eudaimonia — human flourishing. Try putting that on a resume.

Even the word “liberal” in “liberal arts” comes from the Latin liberalis, meaning “worthy of a free person.” The liberal arts were designed for free citizens, not slaves. Why? Because slaves learned specific trades — blacksmithing, weaving, farming. Free citizens, on the other hand, needed education to govern, to deliberate, and to participate in the public square. They studied grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Not because employers demanded it, but because a free person ought to know the structure of the cosmos and the art of persuasion to keep tyranny at bay.

Let’s hop over to ancient China, where Confucius was busy shaping an educational philosophy that would last millennia. In the Confucian tradition, education was never about producing better factory workers (because factories did not exist then). It was about producing persons of moral character. The curriculum revolved around the Six Arts: ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics. Notice the mix? Physical, mental, and deeply moral.

Confucius famously said: “The gentleman understands what is right, whereas the petty man understands what is profitable.” Ouch. If he were alive today, he’d probably look at our skills-based curriculum and weep.

Meanwhile, in ancient India, the Gurukul system saw students living with their teachers in forest hermitages. They studied the Vedas, logic, grammar, astronomy, and philosophy. The ultimate goal? Moksha — spiritual liberation. Yes, they learned practical medicine and mathematics (they invented the zero, after all), but they were byproducts of a deeper quest for truth, not the primary objective.

So, what happened? We industrialized.

The Prussian education model of the 19th century — designed to produce obedient soldiers and punctual factory workers — became the global blueprint. Students were sorted by age, marched to bells, and taught to follow instructions. The British Empire exported this model to its colonies, including ours, to create clerks who could file paperwork but never question the Crown.

In the Philippines, the Americans supercharged this with the Thomasite curriculum. They taught us English, hygiene, and industrial trades. They taught us American history, not our own. The goal was never to produce independent, philosophically-minded revolutionaries. It was to produce reliable, English-speaking laborers for the colonial machine.

Fast forward to 2026, CHED’s proposal to slash Humanities and History feels like a spiritual sequel to that colonial logic. We’re stripping away the paideia to double down on the techne. We’re telling students: “Your worth is measured by your job title. Your mind is a tool. Your soul is irrelevant.”

Ancient education understood that a healthy society requires three things: citizens who can think, leaders who can reflect, and communities that share moral values. You can’t get those from a spreadsheet. You get that from studying Rizal not just as a name on a street or monument, but as a flesh-and-blood revolutionary who grappled with colonial oppression.

Authoritarians and corporate overlords love an uneducated workforce. It is easier to exploit people who don’t know history, who can’t spot propaganda, and who think critical thinking means choosing between two brands of detergent. Conversely, free societies depend on citizens who can question authority, sniff out disinformation, and demand accountability.

That is not “impractical.” That is the most practical thing there is.

Higher education is, and has always been, the art of becoming fully human. It is the space where we step back from the noise of daily survival to ask: What is justice? What is the good life? What do I owe my community?

When CHED tries to sell us a leaner, market-ready curriculum, they are selling us a smaller vision of ourselves. They are telling us that we are cogs in a linear, capitalist machine. But history tells otherwise. Plato’s students and Confucius’ disciples didn’t become factory workers. They became leaders — precisely because they understood that wisdom precedes wealth, and character outlasts currency.

Our universities are not factories. Let us not measure everything in units and outputs.  Factories produce things. They do not produce people who can look at power and challenge it.

That’s what history is for. That’s what the humanities are for. That’s what education is for. To find a better way to live and to be human.

Education is supposed to prepare students not just for work, but for life, citizenship, and leadership.

And if we lose that, we have lost the whole point.

We used to think mass school shootings will never happen in the Philippines. It was something that just happened in the United States. And then it did.

On June 22, 2026, two Grade 9 boys — aged 14 and 15 — walked into San Jose National High School in Tacloban City and opened fire on their classmates. Three students died. Twenty more were wounded. The country awoke to a nightmare we had long assured ourselves was foreign to our shores.

For decades, we comforted ourselves with cultural alibis. Filipinos are not violent, we said. We have close-knit families and bayanihan communities. School shootings are an American problem — a product of their culture, their mental health crisis, their easy access to guns.

We were wrong. The Tacloban shooting is now officially the first mass school shooting in Philippine history. And the reasons why it happened here are not so different from why they happen everywhere else.

Police investigators quickly identified two key motives. First, a grudge over bullying. The suspects, both classified as children in conflict with the law, had harbored resentment against their classmates. Second, and more disturbingly, the suspects appeared to be imitating school shootings in the United States.

One suspect was reportedly addicted to a mobile game called GoreBox, which features graphic violence and gun use. His social media account contained violent videos and footage of him firing a gun. The PNP spokesperson said they were “very obviously red flags that could have been prevented” if anyone had been watching.

According to investigators, the attack was planned for more than a month and the suspects even studied the Juvenile Justice Welfare Act, knowing their age would shield them from severe punishment.

The normalization of violence is a global contagion, and the Philippines is not immune. Through media, social media, and video games, violence is packaged as entertainment, glamorized, and made routine. When children see brutality celebrated, monetized, and rewarded, they internalize the message that aggression is an acceptable, even admirable, way to resolve grievances.

And I think we have been asking the wrong question. We ask why a child would commit such an act, but we rarely ask how we, as a society, created the conditions for such an act to feel possible.

The normalization of violence in the Philippines is not new. It is woven into our colonial history. The United States, in particular, did not just teach us democracy; violence was very much part of their governing logic. This embedded violence in our political system, especially the idea of exterminating political competition, is a story that dates back over a century. We learned that power could be seized and maintained through force, and that lesson has been passed down through generations. The horrendous Maguindanao massacre is a recent example and so is the “war on drugs.”

Perhaps, most insidious is how we have normalized violence in our very language. We use euphemisms to sanitize the most brutal acts. “Salvaging” is widely used for extrajudicial killings — a linguistic reframing that frames the destruction of life as its “rescue” or “salvation.” A local politician once lamented how easy it is to find “painkillers” in the country, using the word to refer to assassins. This equates murder with medication, a therapeutic act of removing a “symptom,” trivializing the act and neutralizing moral constraints. When we call a killing “salvaging” or a hitman a “painkiller,” we are not just using slang. We are engaging in a profound act of moral disengagement that makes violence seem benign.

So how do we stop the next Tacloban from happening? Not with metal detectors. Not with more police in school hallways — the PNP itself admits it cannot assign officers to all 50,000 schools in the country. The answer lies in something deeper: the normalization of nonviolence.

And here, we must be precise about what we mean. There is a critical difference between non-violence and nonviolence.

Non-violence (with a hyphen) is merely the absence of physical aggression. It is passive. It is a ceasefire born of fear or submission. A bully who stops hitting because he is afraid of suspension is practicing non-violence. It requires no courage, no moral conviction, no transformation. This is the space we have been occupying. We have mistaken the absence of mass shootings for the presence of “peace and order.” We have confused apathy with harmony.

Nonviolence (without the hyphen) is something entirely different. It is an active, militant, and courageous force for social transformation. It is not just NOT fighting; it is fighting with a different weapon — truth, empathy, and moral courage. It requires discipline, training, and a willingness to confront harm without perpetuating it. This is the philosophy Gandhi called “ahimsa,” or non-harming, which is a dynamic and active force of love.  This is what Martin Luther King Jr. called “soul force,” the redemptive power of love confronting evil. Nonviolence is not a tactic; it is a way of life.

The Philippines needs to normalize nonviolence, not just aspire to non-violence. And that requires deliberate, institutional action, and a reckoning with our own brokenness.

First, we must break the cycle of violence in the home. We need to eliminate corporal punishment, legally and culturally, and shift parenting norms toward positive discipline. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) itself has described this as “cultural violence” — the belief that using violence to discipline children is an accepted part of our culture. In doing so, we teach them that violence is not just acceptable, but is an expression of care — creating a cycle that is incredibly difficult to break. This normalization of violence in childhood is a direct pipeline to future violence, as children who experience or witness it often channel their aggression through bullying and other harmful behaviors.

Second, we must institutionalize Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in every school. Emotional literacy, active listening, and conflict resolution must be taught daily, alongside math and reading. When children practice “peace circles” every week, de-escalation becomes as habitual as breathing.

Third, we must replace zero-tolerance discipline with restorative justice. When a student causes harm, the first question should not be “What punishment fits?” But “Who was harmed, and how do we repair it?” Restorative practices build accountability while keeping students connected to their community rather than pushing them out and toward resentment. 

Fourth, we must treat violent content as a public health concern. The Department of Education (DepEd) is institutionalizing child protection across schools, but we need to do more. We need media literacy programs that teach children to critically deconstruct violent imagery and parental guidance that monitors social media and gaming habits.

Fifth, we must address the root causes — bullying, isolation, and untreated trauma. The Tacloban shooters said they were bullied. They were angry, alienated, and unseen. Nonviolent communities actively seek out their most marginalized members and wrap them in support before resentment curdles into rage.

Finally, we must change the narrative. We need to elevate peacemakers to the status of cultural heroes. We need to celebrate the student who de-escalates a fight, not just the one who wins it. We need public campaigns that frame nonviolence as strength, not weakness. We need to stop using euphemisms like “salvaging” and call murder what it is. We need to reframe our language so that violence is never made benign.

The Tacloban shooting shattered our illusion of exceptionalism. We are not immune. The question now is whether we will respond with reactive security measures that treat the symptom or with a cultural revolution that treats the disease.

Nonviolence is not passive. It is not soft. It is the most difficult, most demanding, most courageous way to live. And it is the only way to ensure that no Filipino parent has to bury a child killed in a classroom ever again.

An 18-year old probinsyano who had been in Manila for exactly four days had become a national obsession. Why can’t we stop talking about Rene Clert “Bobet” Baterbonia? And why do Filipjnos call him a hero?

Rene’s story is the Filipino dream in its purest form.

He was a 4Ps beneficiary — a child of the government’s poverty reduction program. His mother sold fish in the market. His father drove a tricycle. They had seven children. When he chose Ateneo de Davao for senior high school, it wasn’t because for the allowance. It was because they offered a scholarship for his younger brother, too.

He gave 80 percent of his basketball earnings to his family. Before leaving for Manila, the told his coach: “Coach, I won’t return for about five years because I want to succeed first and lift my family out of poverty.”

And he was winning. He led Davao Region to its first-ever Palarong Pambansa basketball championship in 2025. He was named MVP. He won a gold medal at the ASEAN Schools Games. He was recruited as an incoming freshman student-athlete for the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) Blue Eagles basketball program.

From fish market to national champion. From 4Ps to Ateneo. From a small town in Agusan del Sur to the big stage.

He was proof that the system works. He was the exception that justified the rule. He was the one who made it.

And then the waves in Dipaculao, Aurora took him. The dream did not just end. It was cut short at the very moment it was about to bloom. That is what makes his story unbearable. He did everything right. He worked harder than anyone. He carried his family on his shoulders. He was actually winning.

And still, the system failed him.

Filipinos don’t call Rene a hero because he died. They call him a hero because of how he lived.

He was a hero to his family. At 18, he was already the breadwinner. He supported his siblings’ education. He gave most of his earnings to his patents. He told his mother he will take care of her. That’s not just a son, but a savior.

He was a hero to his community. Talacogon, Agusan del Sur is a small town. When Rene won the Palarong Pambansa MVP, it wasn’t just his victory, it was theirs. He put their province on the map. He gave them something to be proud of. He was living proof that kids from small towns could reach the national stage.

He was a hero to the poor. Rene was one of them. He wasn’t born with a sliver spoon. He didn’t have connections. He had nothing but talent, discipline, and grit. And he made it. For millions of Filipino families struggling to survive, Rene was their representative. He was the one who proved that poverty isn’t destiny.

He was a hero because he carried hope. He wasn’t just playing for himself. He was playing for his mother, his father, his six siblings, his town, and everyone who believed in him. He carried the weight of an entire community on his shoulders.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth. Rene is a hero because the system is broken.

We celebrate him because he overcame impossible odds. We call him inspiring because he escaped poverty through sheer effort. We hold him up as proof that hard work pays off.

But if the system worked, we wouldn’t need heroes like Rene. If the system worked, a child’s future wouldn’t depend on being extraordinary. If the system worked, we wouldn’t need 18-year olds to carry their families out of poverty.

We call Rene a hero because we need him to be one. We need to believe that hard work is enough. We need to believe that the dream is real. We need to believe that our children have a chance.

We can’t stop talking about Rene because his story is ours.

Rene’s story is the Filipino story — the story of a people who have been told for centuries that if they just work hard enough, they will succeed. It’s the story of a nation that has been conditioned to believe that poverty is a personal failure, not a structural one.

And his death is the tragic punchline to that cruel joke. He did everything right. He was the best of us. And still, it wasn’t enough.

The meritocratic myth —the belief that if you study hard and work hard, you will succeed — exists because it is convenient for those in power.

Believing that myth absolves the system. If the poor fail, it’s their fault. It divides the oppressed. It pits the “deserving poor” against the “undeserving poor.” And it perpetuates the status quo. It convinces the successful that their wealth is earned, justifying their right to hoard power.

The meritocratic myth told Rene: “Work hard and you’ll succeed.” But the truth was: “Work hard, and the system will use you until it’s done with you.”

Yes, we can talk about Rene all we want because he was a really good kid, but we need to stop believing the narrative of meritocracy that helped kill him and replace it with structural honesty.

The reality is we do not all start from the same place. Success is not just about effort under this rigged system — it is about privilege, luck, and connections.

True success for the poor requires not just individual grit, but universal healthcare, affordable housing, free quality education, equitable taxation, and the dismantling of bias.

Without these, the mantra of “study and work hard” is not a ladder — it is a leash. 

We can name all the gymnasiums after him, write many tribute songs, give all his siblings scholarships, renovate his family home. None of this brings Rene Baterbonia back.

But in his honor, we can start building a different country where no child has to be a hero just to survive. ###

I am not a sports fan and I do not play any sport. But I am familiar with basketball because it’s all over mainstream culture. I may not be an expert on sports training but I do not understand the logic of applying military-style training to playing basketball.

The tragic deaths of Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) student-athletes Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili have ignited a crucial conversation about the alignment of certain coaching practices with the principles of Ignatian spirituality.

The “band of brothers” philosophy — the belief that shared hardship and suffering forge the strongest team bonds — has a powerful romantic appeal, particularly in sports. However, in the context of team building, a growing body of modern research suggests that the “no pain, no gain” philosophy is not just old school; it’s scientifically bankrupt. It is a high-risk strategy that sacrifices long-term athlete development and well-being for a myth of short-term results,

Studies show that the real path to greatness lies in building a culture of psychological safety, where athletes are challenged, supported, and trusted, and where growth comes from smart, sustainable training, not from suffering.

Google’s Project Aristotle validated what the Harvard Business School research found that “psychological safety is the single most important factor distinguishing high-preforming teams from low-performing ones.” Athletes must feel safe to take risks, admit mistakes, and be vulnerable with each other without fear of punishment.

The HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers” popularized the idea that an elite unit of paratroopers was forged into an unbreakable force through the shared ordeal of a sadistic, demanding training officer. This is a deeply romanticized view of military history.

The logic is simple: If a team can survive a brutal, unfair, and terrifying experience together, they will be united for life by that shared trauma.

ADMU’s coach Tab Baldwin’s Blue Eagles Band of Brothers (BEBOB) system was deliberately designed to “break the man, reduce the man to a state where he can’t do things on his own.”

While a shared ordeal can create a superficial sense of bonding, modern research reveals significant, often invisible, long-term costs.

The military’s high-tech equipment and rigid hierarchy can force compliance despite low morale. But in a sports team, where creativity and intrinsic motivation are key, this fragile externally-imposed “cohesion” often shatters when the team faces a real crisis. This kind of bonding is essentially “identity fusion,” which is a powerful psychological force where individual identity merges with the group. While this can inspire sacrifice in dire situations like battle, it also encourages extreme, self-sacrificial behavior in sports that is neither healthy nor sustainable.

An exclusive “band of brothers” mentality often creates a closed, insular culture. Research and military testimony reveal a dark underbelly to this mindset, including institutionalized hazing rituals, a fear of reporting mental health issues, high suicide rates, and a toxic culture of impunity. This insularity protects the group from outside criticism, but it also prevents members from seeking help or speaking out against dangerous practices, creating a “fog of war” where unethical behavior can go unchecked.

It’s the long-term damage to individual well-being that shows the “band of brothers” philosophy is a myth. The shared negative experience can be a breeding ground for trauma bonding, which is an “emotional attachment that develops between a person and an abuser” — in this case, a coach — through a toxic cycle of punishment and reward.

This philosophy can also turn the team into a destructive echo chamber. Because no outside feedback is welcome, a cohesive team can reinforce negative behavior patterns, creating a “band of brothers” that becomes “a band of dysfunctional siblings” where winning justifies any means, including harming others.

This internal bonding fosters an aggressive external posture, creating a hostile “us versus them” siege mentality that dehumanizes opponents. Research suggests the same bonding mechanism that fuels self-sacrifice for the group can also drive an extreme mindset akin to suicide bombers when the group’s identity is threatened.

The fundamental flaw is that this trauma-based cohesion is always forged by fear and dependency, not genuine trust. And this “break them down” philosophy and its culture of winning at all costs clash with core Ignatian principles in several key ways.

Cura Personalis — care for the whole person — demands respect for an athlete’s dignity. Breaking down an athlete to intentionally break an individual’s ego is an act of deconstruction, not holistic care. A cura personalis framework would view such methods as a profound violation of trust, especially given the inherent power imbalance between coach and athlete.

Magis — a qualitative call for excellence and depth in service to God and others — is the opposite of the culture of winning at all costs, which is a quantitative and often amoral pursuit. Magis would ask: “What is the more loving, more just, and more excellent way to build a champion?”

Finding God in all things is a principle that also applies to sports. A “hell week” that pushes athletes to exhaustion, injury, emotional breakdown, and death is not an environment conducive to finding God. It is a space of fear and suffering.

Being men and women for others is about using one’s freedom and talents to serve the common good. A “win at all costs” culture, especially one built on fear and dominance, is self-serving for the institution and the coach, not a service to others.

The deaths of Baterbonia and Adili, who were put in a clearly unsafe situation during a “team-building” exercise, represent the most extreme contradiction of cura personalis. A culture that normalizes such risk has abandoned its responsibility to care for the whole person.

A commitment to Jesuit values demands a complete and public repudiation of the “break them down to build them up” philosophy. The Ignatian way teaches restorative practice. An Ignatian lens would focus on the “how” and the “why” to ensure the athlete’s respect and dignity were prioritized through a process of reflection and growth.

I hope ADMU practices true Ignatian humility starting with the families of Baterbonia and Adili by apologizing without hedging or justifying, but simply saying: “We failed to protect your children. We are changing everything.”

“Intangible cultural heritage is alive and dynamic,” declared Assistant Professor Andrea Malaya Ragragio of the University of the Philippines (UP) Mindanao during the monthly Throwback Thursday of the Davao Historical Society (DHS) last May 28, 2026 at La Herencia Davao.

This declaration made me reflect on what it means for a heritage to be truly alive. When we say something is alive, we mean it exhibits certain properties — it grows, it responds to its environment, it reproduces (but not exactly), it ages, it adapts, it can get sick, and eventually it can die.

A heritage that is alive changes over time. A chant performed today is not identical to the chant performed 50 years ago, even if the same person performs it. Memory shifts, emphasis changes, the occasion differs, the audience responds differently. This is the inevitable result of being performed by living bodies in living moments.

A heritage that is alive responds to its environment. When a community faces a typhoon or a pandemic, their rituals and practices adjust. Offerings might change. Protocols might shorten. New prayers might be composed. The heritage is in dialogue with reality, not sealed off from it.

A heritage that is alive reproduces through transmission, but with variation. A master weaver teaches an apprentice. The apprentice will never replicate exactly because their body is different, their muscle memory unique, their aesthetic sense shaped by different influences. The tradition continues because of that variation, not despite it. Perfect replication would be a photocopy, not a living lineage.

A heritage that is alive can die. When the last speaker of a language passes away with no fluent learners, that language is dead. Not because the words are forgotten (they may be recorded), but because the capacity for spontaneous, novel utterance is gone. A dead language can be studied but a living language can tell a joke about last week’s Senate session. And the same applies to dances, rituals, crafts, and epics.

Listening to fashion designer and educator Emi Alexander Englis and visual artist and Datu Bago Awardee Lito Pepito talk about promoting Davao’s intangible cultural heritage in their works without being accused of cultural appropriation made me understand what makes heritage dynamic.

Because if being alive suggests an organic process, being dynamic suggests directed energy — movement, tension, force, response. Dynamic heritage has momentum. It pushes back. It changes direction in response to pressure.

Dynamic heritage has internal tensions. Friction between elders and youth; insiders and outsiders; secrecy and disclosure; preservation and adaptation. A static tradition has no arguments while a dynamic one is full of them.

“These tensions are proof that our heritage is alive,” affirmed Professor Ragrario.

Heritage adapts for a reason. Communities make conscious choices about what to keep, what to modify, what to abandon, and what to create anew. A ritual might be shortened not because people have become lazy but because they now have jobs and cannot afford a three-day ceremony. A weaving pattern might change not out of ignorance but because a new design tells a new story. This adaptation is strategic, not a sign of decay.

Heritage is also resilient. Because it can change, it can survive shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many indigenous rituals to adapt to online gatherings, solo versions of group dances, postponed initiations. Communities that insisted on “exactly as before” simply canceled while communities that adapted kept the heritage alive. Dynamic systems bounce back while rigid systems break.

A living heritage looks forward as much as backward. It asks: What do we want our grandchildren to inherit? What will they need?

So if intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is alive and dynamic, why do so many policies still treat it as if it were a stone carving?

First, the institutional bias toward rigidity. Museums, UNESCO, national heritage commissions, and funding bodies are built on documentation, listing, and monitoring. They need stable categories: this dance, that chant, this craft. A living, changing practice does not fit neatly into application forms or five-year plans. The system rewards freezing, not flowing.

Second, the tourist and donor demand for “authenticity.” Visitors want to see “real” indigenous culture, which they imagine as unchanging, ancient, untainted by modernity. A weaver using a smartphone is “less authentic” to the outsider gaze. Funding follows that gaze. Communities are financially incentivized to perform a frozen version of themselves, even as they live dynamic lives offstage.

Third, a misunderstanding of what “safeguarding” means. Safeguarding is not about stopping change. It is about ensuring that the community retains the ability to manage change on its own terms. A language is not safeguarded by recording 10,000 words; it is safeguarded by ensuring children learn it and use it to talk about their world – which now includes words for “email,” “vaccine,” and “AI.” Safeguarding is about transmission, not mummification.

No culture is pure. Philippine ICH is full of borrowed elements — Spanish-influenced dances, American-introduced instruments, Islamic patterns in Mindanao textiles. These borrowings were once innovations. Today they are “tradition.”

Dynamic heritage continues to borrow — from K-pop, from anime, from global activist movements — and makes them indigenous. The strongest sign of a living heritage is that people make new things using its principles. A traditional epic inspiring a graphic novel. A weaving pattern appearing on a sneaker. A chant sample added in a protest anthem.

Healthy living heritage communities argue. They argue whether a new song is allowed, whether a new design is respectful, whether an old practice should be revived or retired. The arguing is the process of collective decision-making. Silence means either total consensus (rare) or total suppression (more common and more dangerous).

The tension between innovation and appropriation is not a line to be drawn once and for all. It is a conversation — ongoing, messy, context-dependent. And that conversation is the living heritage.

Innovation without appropriation is possible. It requires trust, power-sharing, and the courage to let go of the fantasy of purity. And in the Philippines, where every culture has been shaped by centuries of borrowing, resistance, and reinvention, we should know better than most. The line between theft and transformation is drawn by those who hold the power to define it. And that power must return to the communities themselves.

Heritage is not a noun we preserve, it is a verb we perform.

My heart breaks while watching the news about what is happening now in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). And my thoughts take me back to June 2013 when I helped facilitate a workshop on Bangsamoro Political Party Building at the Bangsamoro Leadership and Management Institute in Cotabato City.

Yes, as early as 2013, even before the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was signed (it was signed in 2014), the MILF was already preparing to form a political party that will participate in the envisioned parliamentary elections. In fact, the name United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP) was inspired by that workshop. That’s how serious they were to transition from an armed struggle to a parliamentary struggle.

There were 25 workshop participants from the MILF, mostly base commanders, led by MILF peace panel chair Mohagher Iqbal. In his opening remarks, Chair Iqbal shared the journey of the MILF from a “period of armed conflict” (1972-1997) to the peace process, which began in 1997. He noted then that the MILF “now subscribes to the supremacy of the peace process.”

During that period he described as “the last stages of negotiations,” MILF was in the process of deciding whether to transform itself into a political party or into a social movement with a separate political party in anticipation of the elections for the new Bangsamoro government.

Chair Iqbal emphasized, though, that even as they are open to learn about various political parties and electoral strategies, the MILF must “find our own correct formula.”

I remember the thoughtful discussions from that workshop where the participants noted that political parties in the region started “good and strong” but were later eaten by the system (“nilamon ng sistema”) so they saw it as a priority to change the current system. However, they also noted that changing the rules of the game in the Philippines entails constitutional change, which may take a long time to happen.

MILF reflected that it needed to win first to be taken seriously so it can effectively change the rules. But in the current political landscape, it also needed to learn how to effectively build coalitions without being co-opted by traditional politicians. And MILF recognizes that, sadly, there is no genuine autonomy in the region as politics is still dominated and controlled by the national government.

When we talked about their training needs related to building a political party, one thing stood out to me — “handling of contradictions.” That it came out as a training need implied how the MILF was entering this new phase of political battle completely grounded and with eyes wide open. They knew it could happen to them — co-optation and manipulation — within a terrain that is unfamiliar to them.

Learning to handle contradictions means you do not pretend that the tension does not exist. It means learning to “walk with a limp” — to move forward even through you are carrying two opposing truths at the same time.

One contradiction is between speed and legitimacy. The armed struggle logic is the system is evil so no more waiting, change must happen now. The parliamentary logic is it takes time to make reforms within the system and change takes votes, committees, and compromises. You wait years for one small law. Handling both might be taking what you can get now while pushing for more.

Another contradiction is between purity and alliance. The armed struggle logic is we do not negotiate with oppressors. Our side is right and their side is wrong. The parliamentary logic is to pass an anti-political dynasty bill, you need votes from people you despise — corrupt centrists, old regime leftovers, even former enemies. Handling both may mean never trusting them but needing their votes now.

And there is the contradiction between transparency and strategy. The armed struggle logic is we are the righteous, we hide nothing from our people. The parliamentary logic is sometimes you cannot say everything publicly because it will be used against you. So sometimes you negotiate behind close doors. Handling both could be learning the difference between secrecy for survival (acceptable) versus secrecy for privilege (corruption).

Then there is contradiction between memory and moving on. The armed struggle logic is never forget the martyrs, never forgive the crimes. The parliamentary logic is you have to work with people who once shot at you. You have to accept amnesty laws. You have to “move forward.” Handling both may be not forgetting what they did, but not letting revenge destroy the peace you built.

The armed struggle teaches you a binary worldview: us versus them; good versus evil; fight or die. That clarity is what keeps fighters alive in the jungle. It is beautiful in its simplicity.

But governance is gray. It is messy. Governance demands that you wake up every morning with a knot in your stomach because you are making deals with people you once swore to kill.

Many revolutionaries break when faced with these contradictions in governance. They either become rigid purists who refuse to compromise, then lose all power and achieve nothing or become cynical sellouts who abandon every principle, then become indistinguishable from the old elite.

Learning to handle contradictions is the third path. It is not comfortable. It is not heroic in the movie sense. But it is how you actually accomplish something without losing your soul.

A former rebel commander once told me: “In the mountains, my enemy was the soldier with the rifle. Now my enemy is the bureaucrat who delays the budget for three years. That’s not simple. But if I scream at him, I get nothing. If I learn his system, I might win. I hate learning his system. But I hate poverty more.” That is how he handled contradiction. Holding his disgust and his pragmatism in the same hand.

This means accepting that you will never feel fully clean again. You will always have one foot in the mud of compromise and one foot reaching for the stars of your original dream.

They say the pure never win. And the corrupt never should. The ones who endure are the ones who learn to hold their principles with open hands, walk through the gray without losing their way, and stay loyal to the dream without becoming a slave to the compromise.

Let us hope and pray that it is not yet too late for the MILF to “find our correct formula,” as Chair Iqbal said back in 2013.

The entertainment industry has spent more than a century perfecting the art of holding people’s attention. Performative politics has stolen every trick in the book.

We have the Senate (the upper house) and the House of Representatives (the lower house). Otherwise known as the balcony and the orchestra (of a movie theater). That used to be the joke when entertainers started to enter politics. But it seems all politicians have turned entertainers these days.

Yes, our politicians have learned something dangerous: Governing is hard. Performing is easy. And the public consumes performances more readily than policies.

Performative politics is the use of political actions primarily for their public image value, not for their substantive outcome. It is the press conference called before the investigation begins. It is the legislator who files 20 bills a term and attends zero committee hearings to deliberate them. It is the resolution condemning a foreign country that has no diplomatic consequence.

It is theatre. And theatre does not require truth. It requires a script, an audience, and applause. They are acting. We are laughing. Nothing changes.

Our politicians have learned these lessons from entertainment:

Lesson 1: Conflict is content. No one watches a show where everyone agrees. So politicians manufacture enemies. The Marcos camp needs the Duterte camp to be villains. The Duterte camp needs the ICC to be a conspiracy. Even within the same faction, there are “principled disagreements” staged for the cameras. Congressional hearings on both chambers become reality TV showdowns. The impeachment becomes a season finale. The “shootout” in the Senate is a cliffhanger. And we, the audience, keep watching.

Lesson 2:  Emotions sell; facts do not. An angry senator pounding the table gets retweets. A calm explanation of budget allocation does not. So the performance is always angry. Always aggrieved. Always on the verge of tears or violence. The political class has learned that outrage is a commodity. They manufacture it daily, package it in 30-second clips, and sell it to news networks hungry for ratings.

Lesson 3: Simplicity beats complexity. Corruption is complicated. Discussion of confidential funds involve line items, subcommittees, and appropriation bills. But a video of a legislator screaming “corrupt” at a rival? Simple. Performative politics reduces every issue to a hero and a villain, a good guy and a bad guy. The public gets a morality play. The elites get to avoid the messy, boring work of actual reform.

Lesson 4: Recurring characters build loyalty. In entertainment, franchises survive on familiar faces. In politics, dynasties survive on familiar names. Marcos. Duterte. Aquino. Estrada. Cayetano. Villar. The public does not vote for policies. They vote for characters they have seen before. The elite knows this. They brand themselves like soap opera stars. They release “origin stories” during campaigns. They stage “redemption arcs” after scandals. And the audience stays loyal — not to the person, but to the character.

Lesson 5: Cliffhangers keep you watching. The Senate adjourns without a vote. The investigation is “ongoing.” The report is “being drafted.” Every scandal ends with a cliffhanger, so you tune in next week. Performative politics never concludes anything because conclusion is boring. Accountability would end the show. So the show never ends. The fugitive is never caught. The funds are never recovered. The impeachment never reaches a verdict. Just…next episode.

Lesson 6: Spin-offs distract from the main plot. When a scandal hits too close to home, suddenly there is a “special committee” on a different issue. A new “investigation” into an old rival. A “fact-finding mission” to a nice resort. These are spin-offs. They change the channel while the original crime is forgotten. The audience follows because shiny things are easier than hard truths.

Lesson 7: The fourth wall is invincible. In entertainment, the audience knows the actor is not the character. In performative politics, the audience also knows, but plays along. We know Senator X is corrupt. He knows we know. We know he knows we know. Yet the performance continues. The fourth wall is not broken. It is reinforced by mutual cynicism. The politician performs integrity. The public performs belief. And nothing changes because everyone is pretending.

Performative politics is so hard to break because it works. And it works because it is cheap, fast, safe, and addictive.

Going live on Facebook is cheaper than actually investigating something. A viral clip spreads in minutes while a court case takes years. Performing outrage carries no risk but actually prosecuting a powerful ally carries enormous risk. For politicians, applause is a drug. For the public, outrage is a drug. Both sides are hooked.

You cannot defeat a performance by arguing with it. You cannot fact-check a feeling. You cannot debate a meme. You have to change the channel.

First, we need to stop applauding the performance. Do not make them famous for acting. Attention is their currency. Starve them.

Second, demand the boring stuff. Ask for the audit. Request the committee report. Read the proposed bill. Support journalists who cover process, not spectacle. The boring stuff is where actual accountability lives. Performative politicians hate boring. Use that.

Third, teach media literacy in your household. Explain to children that the screaming senator is acting. Discuss why conflict sells. Raise a generation that sees through the performance. That is the long-term cure.

Let us remember that the show cannot go on without an audience. The elites perform because we watch. If we look away and turn our attention to something real, something local, something constructive, the cameras eventually stop rolling. Performative politics die from neglect, not from attack.

The Senate chaos was not a political crisis. It was a season finale. The fugitive, the gunfire, the finger-pointing — all scripted, all performed, all designed to keep us watching while the real crimes continue off-camera.

Stop watching. Start doing. The only way to cancel this show is to change the channel to accountability. And that channel does not need ratings. It just needs citizens who refuse to be an audience anymore. ###