Be Compassionate: Help the Poor & Protect the Environment
It is not only happening in our country but everywhere else globally that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and very serious as the number of those living in extreme poverty is increasing, yet it seems no one seems to care to eliminate the worsening gap by helping the poor. Too, we are now in survival mood with regards to the environment as mankind is losing control of the state of the environment, yet, human activities are carried out with no sense of responsibility, commitment and discipline but all for short-term gains for money and power.
These two social and ecological painful realities may be different from each other but are rooted in one basic problem: the ABSENCE OF COMPASSION to one another and to sacred nature, contrary to spiritual teachings of all religions to love one another as God loves us. As pronounced in the Hebrew Bible “In compassion, righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” And in the New Testament, Jesus says, “Be compassionate even as your heavenly Father is compassionate.” In the contemporaneous world, humanity is giving so much veneration to the profit motive that has already captured the mindset of everyone, focused on maximizing short-term profit and power but not on maximizing values such as love and compassion. What is being followed is Dawin’s theory on the “Survival of the Fittest,” as “fittest” means the strongest, the brightest, the most aggressive who will knock down anyone who competes against him/her for wealth, fame and power, like a lion ready to eat a cornered prey.
The reign of the One-Percent of Global Corporations amassing tremendous wealth greater than the combined assets of the 99% of the world’s population of eight billion people has followed this “law of the jungle,” sacrificing the people and the environment to the altar of greed and power. In USA, these one thousand powerful corporations are called “the Masters of Mankind,” the “Masters of the Universe,” and the “Architects of Government Policies,” who are now in control following the dictum that “war is the health of the nation” as manufacturing armaments is one of their money-making. If anyone would dare to stop a war, he would be killed as what happened to then US President John F. Kennedy in the Sixties when he stopped the Vietnam War. Based on US Congressional Inquiries, it was not Lee Harvey Osward who assassinated Kennedy but the FBI and CIA in cahoots with a corporation manufacturing armaments. During those years, that corporation was earning five hundred billion dollars annually out of the Vietnam War which would be now trillion of dollars. Indeed, for these corporations “war is the health of the nation.” Such grim reality was discovered by the Isis Brothers from Iraq when they were taking-up Doctorate Degree (PhD) as scholars in Harvard University. They were shocked to know the truism that during the Iraq War, the one supplying armaments to two warring factions in their country was a US Corporation which was earning trillions of dollars then. The Iraqi Brothers stopped their scholarship schooling, went back to Iraq and formed the Isis Combatants calling USA as “an evil empire.” It is in this context that the Modern-Day American Imperialism is being advanced globally that now controls more than one-half of the world’s resources and geography-wise. This is the reason why the USA has more than one hundred military bases worldwide equipped with nuclear weapons, some of these are in the Philippines. Indeed, gross inequities social injustices poverty and the massive degradation of the ecosystems are the offshoots of the rule of One Percent which is also true in the Philippines under the control of the oligarchs. The One Percent domination is now being protested against by an amazing growing movement in the USA called, “The Occupy Movement,” which is now gaining ground not only in the USA but also in several countries except in our country as the Filipinos are still in deep slumber socially and ecologically.
As a Christian country, let us be reminded of what His Holiness Pope Francis said two decades or so ago in His speech in Malacanang who gave a categorical statement on the imperative need to debunk social disparities that are putting the country in disarray. He said, “It bids us all to break the bonds of social injustice and oppression that give rise to glaring and scandalous social inequities.” How do we then break these bonds of social injustice and oppression especially in the lives of millions of Indigenous Peoples whose ancestral domains are being land-grabbed in cahoots with powers-that-be and when they would resist, they are being killed? Where are the Christians who must exemplify compassion as taught by Jesus? Compassion should be for the least of our brethren not for those are rich and powerful. If you have that compassion, you will become the “strongest” which now means the most loving, the most caring as the law of the jungle does not apply anymore but God’s law. How can the poor and the oppressed be liberated and able to craft their own destiny? First, they must be empowered as they are so powerless. It is only through compassion that they will be empowered and conscienticized to be liberated from oppression. No Ceazar. No Politician. No leader coming as a savior like a knight in a shining armor can transform a highly skewed and pyramidal societal economic order. These leaders especially politicians cannot carry their cause; worse, these politicians are beholden to big businesses who have financed their candidacies in a country whose candidates seeking local or national positions cannot win if they have no money. Thus, the value of compassion for empowerment is the key.
As the destruction of the environment has now become an issue of survival, described by climate scientists that the earth, “our only home is now on fire,” we need a sense of universal responsibility by waging a revolution of compassion due to the unprecedented damage to the natural environment. As declared by His Holiness Dalai Lama: “Today’s younger generation has the ability and opportunity to create a more compassionate world. I urge them to make this twenty-first century an era of change rooted in dialogue and a century of compassion for all the inhabitants of the planet. Saving the world from the climate crisis is our common responsibility. We must find ways to exercise freedom and responsibility.” Indeed, we need a revolution of compassion and that the entire human family must unite and cooperate to debunk locally oligarchical rule and globally the reign of One Percent. By maximizing our values, we must wage a compassionate revolution to liberate humanity from unbridled materialism and consumerism, to unfetter the people from Satanic egoism that has buried human beings in collective insanity. Be compassionate in obedience to Jesus, a liberating force against the egoic pursuit of instant wealth, fame and power being continuously pursued especially by politicians. Indeed, elections can be likened to a “big circus” which can be described as, to quote Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Indeed, elections are just focused on electing transactional leaders not transformational, thus, waste of time and resources. The time has come to live a different way of life focusing on maximizing values, not on wealth and power – thus, BE COMPASSIONATE as a path to formless CONSCIOUSNESS then leap-up to the Transcendental Dimension for a better world, all for God’s greater glory!
