The System

At first I was reluctant to consider every fabric of reason that will push me to go to our THEOLOGY class activity. It was definitely another world for me and the thing that snaps and twists my bones is a phantasm of dungeon, feeling a deep awareness that a cult of necromancy is celebrating at the top of my mind. Haunting themes and appalling intimidations bludgeoned my view everytime I glance to my notebook to check the queue of my academic activities. There’s a conflict between my youthful world and with the paragraph situated on my notebook stating this: Bureau of Jail Management and Penology-174; Theology Activity—do a visit and reflect!

I was pushed, under the plethora of my friends’ encouragement, to go on with the activity. But it is not that I’m afraid to get contact with it—I just don’t want to get an accurate description on how do I look like being clutched by my own ephemeral fears knowing my personal standards as vulnerable to those instances. My friends kept bantering me that they even gravely ridicule my reasons for not going, reiterating my gullibility in nature. Perhaps, I was hooked by the impression made by movies depicting the milieu of jails—having an array of massive brawls, phenomenal stench, chaotic gesticulations, and the worst, bullied by killing. I have grown with that kind of impression and even the scenes of Nora Aunor’s Bulaklak sa City Jail left me a vision, carrying the regulatory slogan, “Let no one enter here who is ignorant of such jail descriptions”.

Whatever happened to me afterwards? I don’t know, but I’ve found myself walking with the “one-track-minded” legion of youths who aims to visit the 174 unit of BJMP. That vibrant first day of the Yuletide Season for this year dogged with a diverse representation of a system. It became another footnote of my history—was it really I who joined this legion of youth who bears the fastidious position of a weird excursion? The so-called “system” had started to create a sense of reflection. Doing such activity was anathema for me, but, I’ve found myself in solace with the haunted figures of my soliloquies.

I couldn’t believe myself that there is really a gravity that will pull your heart and your soul once you step into that kind of place. The place was a different society. The people living in this society were tinged by a “system”. They were numerous and sorting them one by one will took of your time leaving you in question: have I reached any final figure? The space was so limited and you could feel the mystique of the scenario, not necessarily chaotic, but a furor suffused both by jubilance and sorrow. I could still remember how their reactions varied from time to time upon seeing legion of students entering their “society”.

Much of the “society” presented seems to be a parallelism to Karl Marx’s philosophies. Their society propagates its own system turning and turning resembling a machine by which it fumes and produces efficient qualities of diligence and dedication. Efforts were imbued with kindness and harmony. It is not actually slavery since they were not coerced to do something immoral nor it was a form of communism since they were not robbed by basic freedom inside of their “society”; but the fact that they were eventually robbed by basic freedom on the light of reality is observed here to be an indestructible form.

And just like what Plato fully conforms to his The Republic, the “system” must be ruled under the premise of the people who know what is good, once they have fulfilled it then that was the only time that they were fit to rule. I had scrutinized this philosophy and I’ve found its evidence on the “system” of that BJMP unit. Perhaps, that “system” had undergone the intellectual training, not literally taking full study of mathematics and physics, but an intellectual training of discerning the fruition of harmony and peace. And it seems the “system” is maximizing the happiness of their society as a whole and had put into censorship the wrong ideas which may transpire.

After visualizing the setting, me and my groupmates were brought into the smallest division of the system—the cell. And I was indeed exuberant to take the seat the inmates had offered. There, that distinct footnote of my life, I had seen the threshold of enlightenment open its gates to welcome me on which I have never felt before not even in Church. There, I have proven that dignity is not just measured only by looking the veneer of the form or of the person but by how does he or she effectively carry the divine fact that he or she is a creation of God, created in His own image and likeness. For this footnote of my youth catapulted me into such stratospheric heights of experience.

Seeing these people, who were labeled undisputedly by the law and by the media as “ferocities” of the society, turn to you and mingle to you in goodness and ample respect had churned me out of my nutshell. It seems I have received another gift from above. This is the highest abstraction that I have reached in my life, for they have taught me another side of life by using only their own experience and not by the ingenious reasons produced by the world’s confinement to academic essentialities. And here I ostracized Aristotle’s Metaphysics of saying that people can’t be educated just by experience but instead they need to comprehend with the arts (intellectual commands) in order to be educated.

The span of approximately three hours of mingling with them and letting their voices be heard by my youthful comprehension has projected a twisting fate on my character for it lit another candle of inspiration and instigated another shaft of light that promoted, again, inner awareness, societal perception, and would bring you closer to God. How had I acquired impressions of them was another story.

I could remember how I was moved, maybe by the little voice that speaks inside, from one place to another just to get a talk with the inmates; setting my then goal of acquainting to all of the fifty four members by which I failed to do so. I have felt that I’m solitary with a unique brotherhood for they have treated me and my groupmates like a friend who are with them all the times.

One of the persons whom I’ve got a chance to mingle with was Rey. I was lucky enough to make him talk with me because his nature, as he later admitted, was not that socially competent—he is not sometimes capable of communicating with others especially with visitors who enters the cell. This man has the deepest sentiment among all of the inmates whom I’ve talked with. He was a denizen of the prison for nearly nine years with the case of rape. As he spilled his background unto me, he was not the main character of the case. His reason seems unclear to me even if you base it on rational grounds but, again, that is another story. But his words are mixtures of feelings, of pain and joy.

Pain for Rey suffered the consequences without any formal rule of law. He shared me a virtue as he told “daig ko pa ang nakulong dahil wala pa akong pormal na sintensya ay inabot na ako ng siyam na taon dito sa kulungan. Yan, anak ang katotohanan ng hustisya sa atin”. The law definitely will speak of itself but the person has the stance of ideology by which he will hold on until his last breath. I was amused by his fiery eloquence. He even told me “nandito sa kulungan anak ang mga totoong tao, nandito ang Diyos na gagabay sa iyo”. For evil crept on his mind, goodness will cleanse his heart and soul. Rey even adds his sentiment, “sa siyam na taong pagkakakulong ko dito, dalawang beses lang ako nakatanggap ng dalaw”. And by that blow, I was driven by the impetus of his words bringing me into the pantheon of gods down to the elixirs of hell.

Recapitulating many of the stories and lessons that I have learned makes me, again, criticize the nature of the human law more so with our government. Hadn’t we learned that the true purpose of government is to enable its citizens to live the full and happy life? And the function of the state is to make possible the development and happiness of the individual? Then, what is lackadaisical must be seen morally—the powerful ones must know how to look and treat others with just and equal manner. What is rooted on our “system” was a dreadful mentality: that the affluent must benefit and the poor ones must suffer.

And realizing this kind of another undisputable fact of our real “system” was already disappointing. Differentiate it with the “system” they had inside, where harmony, peace, brotherhood, and spirituality are the only rules, doesn’t it give you another point of realization: how was it good to live in prison? Owing my inspiration with Freddie Aguilar’s song entitled Katarungan, this is my plea to all of the prisoners of the country:

Sa isang kulungang bakal ay may taong malungkot, umiiyak
Ang tanong n'ya sa sarili ay kailan magigisnan ang liwanag
Malayo ang iniisip at nakakuyom yaring mga palad

Bakit daw s'ya nagdurusa sa kasalanang 'di n'ya ginawa
Kahapon lamang ay kapiling n'ya kanyang asawa at anak
Namumuhay nang tahimik sa isang munting tahanang may tuwa
Ang kaligayahan ay pinutol ng isang paratang sa kanya
S'ya daw ang may sala sa isang krimen na 'di naman n'ya ginawa
Wala na bang katarungan ang isang nilalang na katulad n'ya
Ilan pang tulad n'ya ang magdurusa nang walang kasalanan
'Di ba't ang batas natin pantay-pantay, walang mahirap, mayaman
Bakit marami ang nagdurusang mga walang kasalanan Mga ilang araw na lang haharapin na n'ya ang bitayan
Paano n'ya isisigaw na s'ya'y sadyang walang kasalanan
Tanging ang Diyos lamang ang s'yang saksi at s'yang nakakaalam
Diyos na rin ang s'yang bahalang maningil kung sino'ng may kasalanan
Dumating na ang araw, haharapin na n'ya kanyang kamatayan
Sa isang upuang bakal na kay dami nang buhay na inutang
O, ang batas ng tao kung minsan ay 'di mo maintindihan
Ilan pang tulad n'ya ang magdurusa nang walang kasalanan