1 pesetas advice.

The facebook phenomenon is one of the hip things I’d (gulp) admit I enjoy to be a part of. Photography is another, but I will not consider myself hip. I was tempted to add running but I’ve long been off my daily runs to actually consider myself “in” in the hip runners crowd. And also because I never owned any of those singlet things. And also because in the 10 years I ran, I never joined any single marathon, except the fun runs at school because during the time I was actively running, it was never hip to be a runner. Mountain-hiking, I also tried joining when I was in the university but I was too poor to be a regular member of those mountaineering clubs. My parents, my father especially, never supported any of those seemingly expensive hobbies. Funny thing is, he would also shop at brands which shirts cost at least 4 figures. A shirt costing more than a thousand pesos is always classy to a working class.

So what then, is my point?

As my ABD said, facebook is an image-building tool more than it is a social networking tool. It is in facebook where we build identities to show to the world what we want them to believe we are. Just look at how people would compose 3-sentenced arguments to expound the links they share, if only to show their level of, well, intellect. I am not pure, and as I said before, I enjoy using facebook so do not take this as an anti-facebook tirade.

At one point in my history of facebook use, I exploited all its free speech privileges to show to people how intelligent I am. Or how elaborate my taste in architecture is. What led me to discontinue this habit was that, my endless postings of clever musings to catch people’s attention, only gave me more than all the crappy responses I could handle. At the end of the day, I find myself lacking the cleverness I had at point 0.

As my friend Liby also said before: “Dapat ba talagang maging maingay?” (Should we really be loud?) It was one of the best thoughts I’ve read on facebook. (But this is not to offend the fighters who literally make very loud noise against tuition and oil price hike; noise to uphold human rights and our sovereignty. I think you are doing us silent types a favor, keep them coming.)

I suppose tact, (second only to common sense) is also very difficult to find amongst facebook users as it is only comes with age (but as for mature people without tact, don’t ask me for an explanation) and with experience. A set of tactful and sensible friends will also help but not if one does not listen to them.

Facebook helped spread the word on the RH Bill and everyone talked about it. Everyone, at least, knew a fraction about it. By the time it became super hot news, my newsfeed was completely flooded by each and every of those one claiming to know more than the others, each one trying to be more eloquent than the other. These everyone became half-assed RH Bill lobbyists, and the whole charade ceased being impressive. It made me wonder if they’re for real. If, in real life, when confronted by a wife or a husband who prefers a childless marriage, would they really apply the principles of RH Bill, or even just the basic freedom of choice?

[One weekend, when our friends and I gathered, we laughed at the most “’trying hard’ to be articulate” one. We’re tactful enough to keep the jokes to ourselves. But yes, that is right, it’s a cruel thing to do. But as this Matt Damon character in Syriana said: “It’s not racist when it’s something positive.” The same way, it’s not cruelty when we get a good laugh out of it—OH, Gad, I’m so sorry. Delete, delete, delete. ]

It’s the same thing with this green thing. Allow me to make a little diversion here. When we were young, my father would often tell us about throwing things in proper places (yeah, those were the days) which resulted in our early conversion to what was then a seemingly new religion called “environmentalism”. The conversion surpassed its rocky  superficial stage and I carried the environmentalist habits up until the present, exemplified primarily by my disdain for impulsive and unnecessary fashion shopping.

One of the things my father lectured was to not burn leaves of the trees (as I would later learn that open-burning is prohibited as per RA 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000) because they decompose easily  in no time can be used as fertilizer. He also taught us to not the importance of trees, animals and insects because in maintaining nature’s ecological balance. Up to this day my parents maintain an organic garden (literally organic, meaning, when a fruit of vegetable gets rotten, they just throw it at the corner of our backyard and wait for new plants to sprout. In few months, they will be harvesting fruits of these plants.) And because we are environmentalists we’re not supposed to throw things away unless they are beyond recognition from what they originally looked like. What I mean is, we were green even before green was in. it was just our way of life. (But, alas,  we lost our father to the glitzy stores of SM City and to his newly acquired purchasing power.) And now that it is really very very in, HIP is probably the more appropriate term, to be green, every person, even the top-ranking consumerist calls himself “green.” People easily buy that, too.

Again, what is my point here?

My point is, runners who pretend to run to promote/advocating green/er environment cannot even contain themselves from their running shoes shopping spree. Most of them would throw away their barely used trainers in favor of the hipper models. So where’s the green stuff there? Musicians who advocate earth hour organize earth day concerts, where the amount of energy they consume from all the lights and their high-powered gadgets is equivalent to at least a month’s worth of earth hour. (I am tempted to concoct an excuse that these musicians are just color-blind.)  Mothers who pretend to be so green and use wooden toys forget that the act of buying these hip, green toys actually fuel the need to manufacture MORE wooden toys. And you know where this kind of thing leads to. My friend gifted my kid a small wooden toy before, as a token of our friendship. I didn’t hold that against her as she is not the type who will buy a ton of wooden toys just for the hell of it.

I remember chancing upon the green episode of a local talkshow aired by the university channel. In that particular episode the show interviewed an architect who markets himself as the “Green Architect” because he makes, well, green buildings. (But are not buildings supposed to be green as a default?—says Keith). He arrived at the topic of electric consumption, said that household’s monthly electricity bill about PHP12,000-15,000. It’s a little heavy on the pockets, he said. And his solution? Install solar panels. That way, he says, you lower your monthly electrical bills. There is something very very wrong with this proposition, this way of thinking. Frankly, one doesn’t become an environment warrior or green hero by mere conversion of his/her energy source. One becomes so but using electricity sensibly. More so, you do not become green by converting all your 10,000 plastic wares to 10,000 wooden wares when you can live by just using 5 of them.  

The sad thing is, most of my friends in facebook subscribe to this idea--the end-of-pipe solution: change of energy source, change of type of material, change from leatherette bag to katcha bag. It should be outlawed and it should be made known to everyone that pop environmentalism is for idiots. 

I believe that the greenest thing to do is to live a very simple, basic life, and I don’t mean live like a hermit. That’s taking “green” too literal and too far out of context.

And again, because facebook is into image-building, many users will actually be falsely led into believing that their facebook friend is something that he is not. So be very careful of what and whose ideas to subscribe to, in absence of further reading, most especially in absence of the knowledge of the fundamentals of the issue being raised. After all, there is no such thing as facebook university.  

Just my 1 pesetas worth.