The tragedy of authenticity

THE call to help others during these troubled times is necessary to assert our humanity. After all, while helping is organic in the Filipino’s psyche, bound by our sense of shared self or kapwa and pakikipagkapwa, this has been subjected to a severe test by an equally powerful sense of fear and self-preservation. It is the latter that turns communities and neighborhoods into protective enclaves ready to deny entry to anyone suspected of carrying the coronavirus, including even health workers.

It is indeed telling that this global pandemic has altered our social landscapes and made us into human isolates. Physical distancing, exclusion and seclusion have become norms for safety while connectedness and closeness become lethal and could turn into a death sentence. An embrace becomes an assault and keeping distance is an expression of affection and love. This new norm is alien to the very nature of the communitarian ethos of the Filipino, even as it is an inorganic construct relative to the millions whose habitat and habitus are sustained by the absence of spaces and hard walls.