The Philippines sits on an irony: we culturally pride ourselves on a state of harmony, yet we remain a highly polarized society. Thus, to preserve this harmony, one would rather not talk about their politics in relationships they wouldn’t want broken. Equally, to preserve this cohesion, it is reinforced that anyone who suffers from their choice to be the “other” deserves it. It is far easier to destroy what and who is different. For example, we stretch the definition of terrorism just enough to cover legal dissent, to withhold justice and empathy from all except those who voted similarly, rather than create an environment that learns and grows from such. The latter requires work, a suspension of bias, vulnerable confrontation, and a reckoning with the possibility that you might have been terribly wrong all this time.
Polarization (and the subsequent decay of democratic values) is far from a uniquely Filipino phenomenon. With algorithms possessing vast powers over the conveyor belt of content that is the newsfeed, on the internet, it is much easier to believe that differing opinions do not exist. Confronted with gut issues, the slightest disagreement over politics can suddenly morph into an existential threat.
What use, then, is dialogue in a society of those who refuse to listen to anything but echoes of their own beliefs?
When the Superior General of the Society of Jesus spoke of hope to the IAJU Assembly, of behaving as if the better world imagined was already reality, I came to the quiet realization that it was not realism keeping me from acceding to the exhortation to hope but the privilege to afford to live in a world that remains as it is. I saw power as the most efficient catalyst for change because it was available to me. Dialogue was secondary because, as I had discovered through the In Your Shoes and Resetting the Table workshops, I had no idea what dialogue meant operationally. Conceptually, I did. But, when I listened, I listened to interpret and solve. When I spoke, I did so to articulate what I thought more than what I had understood. Subconsciously, my own biases took center stage, and judgement colored my interactions. Up until this fellowship, dialogue had been between me and the interpreted “other,” changed only ever so slightly but no longer who they were originally.
Despite being detached in proximity to the “others” we were called to be men and women for, my understanding of solidarity was the clearest it had ever been. Power still holds undeniable weight, yet to be in solidarity with the “other" demands an honoring of dialogue as an equally weighty currency of change. After all, those who possess little on this earth often fight with nothing else but their stories and the hope that someone will hear and walk with them. Thus, to be in solidarity meant to take another’s truth as it is, to suspend interpretation and the instinct to solve, and to simply listen—especially to the silences.
There is always something to be discovered in what we cannot and refuse to say outright.
