It takes a brave young Iron Male to...

 (Published in ENRICH magazine, 2022)

LET'S TALK ABOUT "IRON MALES," shall we. Iron Males aren't a new gender classification.

This neologism of mine has nothing to do with gender. Iron Males are the guys that have to cope with, or have embraced, physiological and psychological accidents or behaviors many "real men" (the "Macho ito!" gang) don't consider manly.

These men have to, or dare to, be different in a monochromatic society such as ours where accepted gender norms are almost sacrosanct. With this swirl of confusion out of the way, let's talk about "moobs" and "fisss", and what they have to do with Iron Males.

Muscles or moobs?

A muscular chest reeking of raw power is most every man's dream, but being weighted down with "moobs", or man boobs, is a nightmare no man wants. It doesn't help that the medical term for moobs is "gynecomastia", which is Latin for "women's breasts".

Moobs are an embarrassing affliction for males, especially young adults, and with good reason. What young man wants to have big breasts that look more female than male? "Nakakahiya" is the apropos word that comes to mind.

It takes a brave young Pinoy male -- an Iron Male -- to reveal his "moobs" to the world. For a young man with moobs, stripping from the waist up in public or going to the pool or the beach demands an immense amount of courage.

Curiously, we seem not to be horrified when shirtless older, fat men reveal to us how nasty-looking huge moobs can be. We think moobs are normal among the fat and elderly. This double standard is unfair to young guys. Youngsters, however, have an edge over their older compatriots.

They can change their stars by resorting to a lifestyle marked by healthy diets and healthful exercise. Yes, moobs can be removed or "re-moobed" (pardon the pun) by a combination of diet and exercise.

Gynecomastia, TYPES 1-7

A widespread disorder

The Philippine College of Endocrinology Diabetes and Metabolism (PCEDM) defines gynecomastia as a "condition wherein there is an increase or enlargement of the breast tissue in males. 'Man boobs' or 'moobs' are commonly used terms for gynecomastia, but they may also pertain to having excess fat in the chest area, not necessarily the breast glands".

Moobs are quite common, however. They appear in up to 35% of British men, according to a clinical study published 2016 in the British weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, The BMJ.

The study called gynecomastia "the most common benign disorder of the male breast tissue". It also revealed moobs are most prevalent in men with ages ranging from 50 and 69. The same might probably be said for Pinoy males, as many of you might attest to.

The study also said it's normal for up to 70% of adolescent boys to develop gynecomastia. Of this number, 75% will resolve on their own within two years of onset without need or medical treatment or surgery.

"If the condition does not resolve within two years, or if it causes embarrassment, pain or tenderness, treatment is warranted," warned the study. This treatment includes surgery.

One type of moobs called clinical gynecomastia is caused by a hormonal imbalance between estrogen (the female hormone) and testosterone (the male hormone) in the breast glands. Men with this kind of moobs secrete more feminizing estrogen than testosterone. This imbalance stimulates the growth of glandular breast tissue around a man's nipples.

Estrogen stimulates breast tissue growth while androgens inhibit this growth. Men and women both have estrogen but the levels of this hormone are significantly less in men with moobs.

Testosterone is mostly converted to estrogen in our fat cells. The excess estrogen then binds to receptors encasing the nipple and stimulates breast tissue growth. This means the fatter or more obese a man is, the more likely he is to have women's breasts.

The other type of male breast abnormality is caused by excess fatty tissue (or chest adipose tissue) but isn't called clinical gynecomastia. This type of gynecomastia is called “pseudogynecomastia” or “adipomastia” and is commonly seen in obese men.

In both gynecomastia and pseudogynecomastia, swollen male breasts exhibit a more female-like appearance. Breast prominence is typically a combination of enlarged glandular breast tissue and excessive chest fat.

Moobs are classified according to severity from Grade 1 (minor enlargement with no skin excess) to Grade 4 (marked enlargement with skin excess). The latter is the worst to look at.

There are also seven types of gynecomastia that classify the degrees from horizontal a breast sags. The worst, Type 7, or an extreme sag, will see the top of areola below the chest fold.

You must be aware that only a doctor, preferably an endocrinologist specializing in male hormonal health, can tell if what you've got is gynecomastia, pseudogynecomastia or something else. His medical advice will determine what you do next. Don't self-evaluate.

Gynecomastia

How not to moobs

In the case of moobs, prevention is better than cure. Some doctors say moobs are entirely avoidable given the right exercise routine and an appropriate diet. It turns out losing weight and fat through diet and exercise might gradually cause moobs to fade. Daily exercise for young men will help boost testosterone levels, lower body fat -- and lose weight.

Some experts recommend two types of exercises to limit moobs: cardio exercises that burn body fat, and chest exercises that increase the size of the pecs or pectoral muscles located beneath the breast tissue. Recommended exercises are push-ups, walking, swimming, cycling and weight training.

On the other hand, some physiologists argue the key to reducing moobs is to lose weight. That's because spot weight reduction, or losing weight in one particular area such as one's moobs, is ineffective when it comes to weight loss. In other words, it's your body that decides where it wants to lose fat.

"Soy-tenly" not

If there's a food group mooby guys should avoid it's soy-based food products such as "taho", tofu and soymilk. These products contain phytoestrogens that might contribute to hormonal imbalance. Phytoestrogens are bioactive compounds with estrogenic activity.

Consuming too much alcohol is another no-no. It's been shown excessive drinking might suppress testosterone levels.

Beer, wine and other alcoholic drinks are high in calories. Imbibing too much alcohol will also lead to weight gain, which leads to more body fat. Keep this in mind since moobs can occur at any stage of a male's life.

Moobs is now an accepted colloquial term for "man boobs". It became a bona fide English word only in 2016 when the Oxford English Dictionary gave it an official seal of approval.

To "fisss" or not to “fisss”

Japanese "dansei" do it. Swedish "män" do it. German "Männer" do it, as well, as do men in other Central European countries.

The "it" that men of all ages in these countries have in common is they urinate while seated on a toilet. Pee sitting down?

This form of bladder relief isn't common among Filipino males. Almost all Filipino males piss standing up at home or away from home. It's a cultural thing our young guys have to unlearn.

It takes a brave young Iron Male to piss sitting down. We don't even have a Filipino word for this action. Me, I'll go with my invented word, "fisss", which sounds like piss but isn't piss so there's a difference.

The Swedes call it "sittkissa". The German equivalent is "sitzpinkler". The Nihongo (the Japanese language) word is "suwari-shon". There is no single English word for "to urinate while seated".

This practice has been accepted in Sweden, Germany and Japan -- more or less. But as with anything "unnatural", peeing while seated remains a hot topic.

“It takes a brave young Iron Male to piss sitting down. We don't even have a Filipino word for this action. Me, I'll go with my invented word, "fisss", which sounds like piss but isn't piss so there's a difference.”

 

Filipino males, especially young men, should seriously consider fisssing and pass this hygienic practice on to their sons. Filipinas should take the lead in convincing their men this is the culturally correct and healthy way to relieve male bladders.

Surprisingly, fisssing might be a common occurrence in the United States. A study released in 2007 revealed that 42% of married men fisssed, likely due to pressure from their wives. A perfect example of what women can do if they set their minds to it.

In Germany, some public toilets have signs telling men not to urinate while standing. The issue of a man's right to pee while standing became a very public spectacle in 2015 when a court in Dusseldorf ruled in favor of the male plaintiff in this case.

The judge said peeing while standing was within the plaintiff's rights and that this method was within cultural norms. He also said "urinating standing-up is still common practice" among German males.

The landlord had sued the plaintiff for damage (or stains) the latter's urine "splashback" inflicted on the bathroom floor. He sought damages worth $2,200.

Sign reminding German men to sit down to urinate

It's been reported more and more Japanese men practice suwari-sho to eliminate the ugly stains created by their splashbacks on bathroom floors and the disgusting stench of urine.

A survey in June 2021 showed that more than 60% of male respondents aged 20 to 60 prefer to sit. More than a quarter of men in their 20s said they had always been "native toilet sitters".

There are medical benefits to fisssing. Peeing while seated encourages a “more favorable urodynamic profile”, said a 2014 study by the Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands. It also helps men with prostate problems urinate with greater force.

Fisssing will also allow guys to use their mobile phones while parked on the toilet seat. That's a dubious advantage, however.

Urine is a hygiene risk because it can damage floors, carpets, furniture and other items. There is a mountain of online videos touting "solutions" to prevent pee splashback damage to toilet floors. Some homes have even installed urinals to prevent splashback damage.

Every man knows that even the best "aimer" misses the toilet bowl a lot. The result is that piss droplets ricochet off the toilet rim and could land up to three feet away, according to one study.

Pissing while standing also creates a fine but invisible urine mist that will accumulate over time on objects inside the toilet. That's one reason why porcelain sinks and bowls turn an ugly yellow color. This mist is also to blame for sticky bathroom floors.

The simplest solution to all this mayhem will be for Iron Males to fisss. No splashback; no stains; no stink.

Countries where men sit down to pee

 

Is ‘quietting’ your cup of tea, or would you rather ‘lie flat’?

 (Published in ENRICH magazine, 2022)

THERE'S A "QUIET" REVOLUTION raging among youthful employees in two of the world's richest countries that might just change our deeply held views about working hard for the money and the primacy of work in our lives.

By some fantastic coincidence, a growing number of young adults in the United States and China -- the former a champion of corporate capitalism and the latter the bastion of state capitalism – are simultaneously protesting their exploitation by companies that pay them a pittance but demand they work almost to death to boost shareholder value.

Their protests, which began in early 2021 amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic, have gone viral both online and in the real world and show no signs of abating. Some call this phenomenon a resistance movement against wage slavery. Others refer to it as a spiritual rejection of workaholism (or work addiction) and the workaholic culture. Still others claim they're anti-work movements.

What exactly is happening in the disparate workplaces of America and China?

In the U.S., young employees fed-up with low pay and long hours have taken to protesting today's more rabid rat race by embracing "quiet quitting", or "quietting", while also disengaging from their companies.

These people just "coast along" and do enough so they don’t get fired as slackers. In this sense, they're somewhat similar to the Hippies of the 1960s that were their grandparents.

Quiet quitting is basically a loud protest by young Americans against workaholism, which today goes by the new epithet of "hustle culture". The main objective of quiet quitting is to pay more attention to one's mental health and personal well-being. Workaholism defeats this aim.

In China, disillusioned young workers have taken to "lying flat" ("tang ping"; 躺平), or have embraced its more extreme offshoot called "let it rot" ("bai lan"; 摆烂).

Young Chinese are doing this to protest the widespread and brutal "996" (jiǔ jiǔ liù) work-to-death culture in some companies that drives them to despair -- and sometimes suicide. An online post described lying flat (or lie flat) as a “new cultural movement of the new youth in a hundred years”.

Another called the movement “a silent protest to unfairness, often the result of structural and institutional factors that can no longer be altered by personal efforts”.

On the other hand, going bai lan means an employee must "actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around". It means what you think it means: if the going gets tough, let it rot. The phrase has its origins in Chinese basketball where a team losing badly makes the decision to lose the game instead of mounting a furious rally to try to win.

Both tang ping and bai lan seek to restore the healthy work-life balance shattered by China's notorious workaholism culture. The young Chinese that bravely decide to go these routes seem to want to earn just enough to meet their physiological needs without undue and unwanted stress.

In both countries, these young people see no need for working above and beyond, especially in what's being called "bullshit jobs". Just do what the job demands. Period!

Quietters and anti-966ers don't want employers to earn tons of money from their doing extra work without extra pay while being treated as mindless money-making machines.

The mobile phone is the leading tool for employee oppression. Quietters have taken to not responding to voice calls and texts from their bosses to discuss work after they clock out at 5:00 p.m. or during Saturdays and Sundays. No more “pakiusap”.

They're doing the right thing so they can attain the duty to enjoy life outside the office and spend more time with their families. They also want their jobs to align more closely with their personal values. One working American mom put it succinctly: her kids don't care how great an employee she is; all they want is for her to be a great mom.

Employers are taking notice of quiet quitting but can't figure out if they should be sympathetic or punitive towards employees embracing these new forms of labor protest. Some U.S. companies, however, have resorted to "quiet firing" employees they believe are quiet quitters by making their office lives so miserable they quickly resign.

Tang ping and bai lan cats

Dangerous "Dreams"

These twin protest movements imply a rejection of the "American Dream" and the "Chinese Dream" of prosperity through hard work. These dreams are now seen by more young people as tools worsening the massive income inequality and intractable inequities that are their daily lot.

The young reason that if the game is rigged against you, why play at all? Why not be like bench players on a professional basketball team that still get paid despite not playing as hard or as often as the team's superstars. Makes sense, right?

Employees that are Millennials (Gen Y, or those born from 1981 to 1996) and Zoomers (Gen Z, or those born from 1997 to 2012) are involved in this epic struggle to restore humanity in the workplace. The consequences of this fight for respect might profoundly affect the future nature of work in other capitalist economies such as the Philippines.

What's occurring in the U.S. and China is the latest take on the eternal "war" between employees and bosses, or between those that sweat and those that reap the rewards of this sweat.

Some countries in Europe have also been infected by the quiet quitting and tang ping viruses. It's unclear if these resistance movements will prosper to the levels they've attained in the U.S. and China, however.

What can't be denied is the repudiation of the idea that being a workaholic is both "good" and "necessary" for personal financial success. It seems there's a renewal of an old argument that people shouldn't be forced to sell their labor for the right to live decent lives. People aren't farm animals.

There must be alternative ways of working and living that employees and employers can agree upon that don't demand so much of employees' lives in return for so little reward. What this is, I don't know.

But the rise of work-from-home (WFH) or remote work, and hybrid work due to the pandemic might be a step in this direction. Hybrid work is a flexible work model combining in-office work with WFH.

It allows employees the autonomy to choose to work wherever and however they're most productive. The pandemic led to the popularity of both models as people reevaluated their jobs and careers.

Young Chinese lying flat

Goodbye office

The waning of the pandemic threat in 2022, however, revealed that employees worldwide no longer want to go back to their offices. A survey released in April 2022 by the ADP Research Institute that provides labor market and employee performance research confirmed return-to-office mandates will drive Millennials and Zoomers to quit their jobs.

It showed that 64% of the global workforce has already, or is considering, looking for new jobs if their employers order them back to the office full-time. The same resistance to full-time office work has manifested in the Philippines.

This rejection of in-office work persists in the U.S. The results of survey conducted by U.S. business intelligence firm Morning Consult and released in September 2022 revealed that four in 10 employed adults said they'd rather quit their job than return to an office full-time. Six in 10 said they’re more likely to apply for a job with a WFH option.

In the meantime, we're stuck with the phenomenon of quiet quitting, tang ping and bai lan. These protests don't seem to have the makings of a short-term trend that will disappear when world economies rev-up in a few years' time. The fuse has been lit and that's what matters.

Made in China

In April 2021, a Chinese employee named Luo Huazhong published an innocuous post entitled "Lying Flat is Justice" in the online forum, Baidu Tieba.

Posting under the username "Kind-Hearted Traveler", Luo said he had chosen to live a minimalist lifestyle in his home town of Jiande in eastern Zhejiang Province. He said he quit his factory job in 2016 and spent the next few years wandering around China. He survives by doing odd jobs, subsisting on $60 a month from his savings and eating two meals a day.

An apparent lover of Western philosophy, Luo waxed philosophical in his Baidu Tieba post. Here are his original comments in full:

“I have not been working for two years, just having fun and don’t see anything wrong in it. Pressure mainly comes from people around you who position and compete with you. It also comes from the values of the older generation.

“All sorts of pressures keep popping up before you all the time. Every time you search for a popular news, it is all about romances and pregnancies etc. of celebrities in ‘procreative surrounding’ (生育周边), as if some ‘invisible creatures’ (看不见的生物) are creating a kind of thinking and pressure on you.

“But we don’t have to be like this. I can just sleep in the sun in my wooden bucket like Diogenes, or I can live in a cave like Heraclitus and think about ‘logos’, since this land has never had a school of thought that exalts human subjectivity, I can develop one of my own. Lying flat is my wise movement. Only through lying flat, can humans measure up to things.”

This thoughtful post triggered the lying flat movement; created the “philosophy” called “lying flat-ism” and ordained Luo as the “lying flat master”. It also took the working Chinese youth by storm and angered China’s communist masters who saw it as subverting the officially sanctioned Chinese Dream movement.

Lying flat soon became a buzzword among the masses and the Communist Party of China (CPC) moved quickly to quell its popularity. The CPC removed Luo's original Tieba post that had over 10,000 followers. It ordered online platforms to "strictly restrict" posts about tang ping. Searches for tang ping on the Chinese internet now yield no results.

The CPC also banned the online sales of tang ping-branded merchandise such as the hugely popular lie flat cat cartoons on T-shirts, bags, keychains and other items, calling them subversive.

In May 2021 or less than a month after Luo posted on Tieba, Xinhua (China's official propaganda arm) published an editorial assailing lying flat as “shameful” and a “poisonous chicken soup”. In October, CPC secretary general Xi Jinping called for "avoiding 'involution' (nei juan) and 'lying flat'" in an article published in the CPC journal Qiushi.

Let it rot

Modern slavery

Life is tough in China, especially for young adults. Oddities in Chinese society mean many young people can't afford to marry, have children, buy car and own a home due a combination of paltry salaries and way too expensive items.

Young people have to bear the “burden of the three mountains” -- education, healthcare and housing -- while taking care of their elderly parents and in-laws. Most Chinese are struggling to stay afloat, especially with the continuing series of pandemic lockdowns, droughts, floods and an economic downturn threatening recession.

Premier Li Keqiang revealed that “China has over 600 million people whose monthly income is barely 1,000 yuan ($140) and their lives have further been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.” That’s four in 10 Chinese. In March 2021, Li said over 200 million Chinese hold “flexijobs”, which is official-speak for a person working two jobs at a time to make ends meet.

Overworking in China hit new lows when the brutal 996 working hour system came into vogue over the past decade. The number 996 means employees work from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., 6 days every week for a total of 72 crushing hours per week. Free time has become non-existent.

The most notorious champions of 996 are Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, who infamously called 996 a "huge blessing," and Richard Liu, founder and CEO of JD.com, one of China's two top B2C online retailers. Liu, the "Jeff Bezos of China", has been blasted for saying employees that avoid 996 are nothing more than slackers.

Employees committing suicide because they couldn't cope with the brutal pace of overworking demanded by 996 turned Chinese public opinion against the practice. In August 2021, the 996 working hour system was declared illegal by the Supreme People's Court.

It was also criticized as a violation of Chinese Labor Law since employees are only allowed to extend work hours by up to three hours for special reasons. The law says employees should not work more than 36 extra hours in a month.

The 996 culture keeps being attacked by Chinese as "modern slavery". The practice continues, however, due to lax government enforcement of the law.

Born in the USA

Quiet quitting began as a unique American phenomenon and was born out of the de facto massive labor strike otherwise called "The Great Resignation". Oddly, The Great Resignation or The Big Quit was recognized for what it was -- an unprecedented wave of nationwide mass resignations -- in April 2021. This was the same month Luo published his lying flat post that ignited China's lying flat movement.

In April, demographers reported a record four million Americans quit their jobs. By July 2022, that huge number had swollen to 11.2 million. The number of vacancies peaked at 11.9 million in March 2022.

Quiet quitting is more akin to tang ping, which is a rejection of societal pressures to overwork. In quiet quitting, an employee does only what his job demands and nothing more. It's also been described as "acting your wage". Quiet quitting is believed to have been inspired by the tang ping movement.

The word quitting in quiet quitting doesn't refer to an employee resigning his job. It means employees are "quitting" going the extra mile for the company without pay, and refusing to do jobs and overtime they're not being paid for.

People aren't farm animals. Neither are they mindless money-making machines.

The Chinese cat symbolizing lying flt

Today’s ‘New Ilustrados’ and the resurrection of the Filipino intelligentsia

 (Published in ENRICH magazine, 2022)

EDUCATION IS NOT MERELY the acquisition of rote knowledge. Neither is it a tool for ruthless political or material gain. At its loftiest, education is an arsenal of ideas -- and ideals -- wielded by informed citizens that must advance freedom, democracy and the liberal values girding them.

It presupposes critical thinking, moral values and a capacity for action. An educated person realizes his hard-won knowledge must ultimately be used for the good of society. He knows he must do something that keeps his country a haven for freedom and democracy.

All these words are majestic concepts. They have to be. Patriotic Filipinos have died for these ideals throughout our tumultuous history.

“Ignorance is servitude, because as a man thinks, so he is; a man who does not think for himself and allowed himself to be guided by the thought of another is like the beast led by a halter," admonished our National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal.

He believed freedom from ignorance can be had through education. His dream was to see a class of educated Filipinos lead his country in its fight for political reforms and equal human rights.

"Without education and liberty, which are the soil and the sun of man, no reform is possible, no measure can give the result desired," declared Rizal.

Filipino ilustrados in Madrid, Spain, 1890

Rise of the Ilustrado

In Rizal's time, the class of intellectual Filipinos were the "Ilustrados". "The enlightened ones" or "the erudite" launched the Propaganda Movement in 1872. Written words, both scathing and uplifting such as those published in “La Solidaridad”, were the Ilustrados’ chosen weapon in their fight against Spanish tyranny.

The Ilustrados of the 19th century consisted of well-educated young men from the elite or landholding class of native Filipinos ("Indios") and "mestizos" such as Rizal, and were roused to action by the liberal ideals of the Age of Enlightenment during their studies in Europe.

Among the demands made by the Ilustrados was for Spain to establish an educational system in Las Islas Filipinas independent of the rapacious Spanish friars or “frailes”. The Ilustrados demanded Spain grant Indios basic human rights, which would accrue once their Motherland was a Spanish province with representation in the Spanish Cortes.

"There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves," asserted Rizal.

While ultimately futile, the Propaganda Movement inspired the founding of the Kataastaasan, Kagalanggalangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan in 1892 by warrior-patriots under Andres Bonifacio, an ardent devotee of Rizal. Revolution followed in 1896 and independence from Spain in 1898.

“A nation need not be the colony of a foreign power; it can be the colony of its own leaders.”

Salvador de Madariaga, Spanish writer and historian

The New Ilustrados

The Ilustrados were an intelligentsia. They were an educated class of intellectuals and university-educated men regarded as the country's vanguard in political, artistic and social thought.

Like Rizal, a number of Ilustrados were scholars, academics, journalists, literary writers, scientists, artists and teachers. More broadly, an intelligentsia consists of the educated and intellectual people in a society or country. Our intelligentsia today also comprises young adults whose intellect is being honed by their exposure to the immense amounts of truths on the internet.

The fight against Spanish tyranny in the late 19th century was ignited by the first Filipino intelligentsia. Today’s young Filipino intelligentsia -- which I call the “New Ilustrados” -- also has to confront grave social challenges but a revolution against imperialism is not one of them.  They face a new antagonist.

“A nation need not be the colony of a foreign power; it can be the colony of its own leaders”, noted the late Spanish writer and historian, Salvador de Madariaga, at his Jose Rizal Lecture in Manila in the 1960s. De Madariaga was one of the principal authors of the Oxford Manifesto on liberalism that details the basic political principles of the international Liberal movement.

The imminent danger facing this country stems from leaders wedded to ambitions at odds with the noble aim of seeking always the common good. In Roman Catholic social teaching, acting in the common good means respecting the rights and responsibilities of all and sundry.

This is not the case among segments of this country’s political elite that covet absolute power and brook no dissent in their quest for personal empire.

Endemic poverty, stubborn income inequality, the devastation wrought by climate change and social upheavals in Philippine society are some of the more intractable challenge the New Ilustrados must confront.

But where is this young Filipino intelligentsia?  

Does this collection of gifted intellectuals and knowledge workers exist as a distinct level of Filipino society? Is it at the forefront of intellectual thought in science, the arts, culture, technology, the academe and politics?

Or must we hunt for these beings with the intense zeal of astronomers searching for extraterrestrial intelligence? Do they gather in secret online chat rooms for fear of persecution by the jaded masses, there to revel in their shared knowledge among others of their kind?

Are the New Ilustrados the richly educated? The religious orders steeped in arcane learning? Are they civil society? Or, were I a game show contestant, is the answer letter D, or “All of the above”?

Are they the faceless intellectuals venting their anger at the rigmarole called Philippine politics and its endemic corruption while beseeching God to “deliver us from evil”? Is the Filipino intelligentsia the imperceptible academia engrossed in scholarly pursuits while banishing all else?

Do they write for the respected daily newspapers and media that fiercely uphold the holy tenets of responsible journalism against unhinged online bloggers and vloggers?

And who are the leading lights of this invisible stratum of society? The Ilustrados had Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar and Graciano Lopez Jaena. Who speaks for the Young Ilustrados of today?

Who are the Young Ilustrados thinkers? And where can one read about their multitude of opinions, and of the invigorating clash of ideas that mark an intelligentsia? Who are these people?

Without an intelligentsia, who is there to speak out with authority on the complex issues that bedevil the Filipino? Who will wield the intelligentsia’s power of using knowledge to goad governments and corporations into positive action for the common good?

In this Information Age, why are Filipinos who know more afraid to show society they know more? Is knowledge still a Scarlet Letter?

Yes, a Filipino intelligentsia does exist, but nothing much has been heard of or from it. Perhaps it’s because intellectuals prefer to work muted in the background, as if they were merely the neurons giving life to that most vital of organs we call the human brain.

Silence, however, is not always golden. There is a ringing truth to this centuries-old comment by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer: “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”.

The Filipino intelligentsia must take action to change this country for the better by using its vast knowledge to make sense of the world around us. It must proudly announce its existence as a force-in-being.

It must assert itself as the intellect of this nation against the strident voices of sock puppet internet trolls, bombastic amateurs, rabble-rousers and those bent on kleptocracy. Where is the Filipino intelligentsia?

Dr. Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar and Mariano Ponce

Resetting Democracy

National Artist of the Philippines for Literature, the late Francisco Sionil Jose, essayed an answer to this question in 1988. In his diatribe, “The Filipino Intelligentsia”, he argued that our young and culturally weak country is “bereft of a system that assures civic continuity and that we are not heirs to an ancient intellectual tradition”. The outcome: a maimed intelligentsia.

He noted the brevity of our country’s history compared with those of our Asian neighbors such as Japan and China has helped stifle the full flowering of the Filipino intelligentsia.

“Without an anchor to such a past, we cannot really blame anyone and the building of a society in which the intellectuals have failed is still the Filipinos' sole responsibility”, said Sionil Jose, who was one of our foremost writers in English.

To our New Ilustrados will fall the enormous task of building a society where the contribution of our intellectuals cannot be denied and overlooked. Like their forebears, words and courage will be their weapons.

The question now is will our New Ilustrados take action. Over time, they will, and their actions might lead to consequential outcomes.

The main challenge facing the New Ilustrados will be to forge a true Filipino identity. This identity must be anchored on our cultural values and founded on the ideals underlying a strong liberal democracy such as freedom, equality before the law, constitutional government and opposition to tyranny. Call it “Resetting Democracy” for the better.

The core values Filipinos hold dear include a strong bias towards social harmony or togetherness as embodied in the “pakikisama” syndrome; a strong love of family; a yearning for education; promoting the common good; an expansive tolerance, friendliness and hospitality, and religiosity.

Pervasive materialism, however, is corrupting many of these values. The challenge facing the New Ilustrados as leaders will be to liberate our core values from the destructive influence of money, greed, politics and patronage. No easy task given our country’s everlasting poverty. Resetting Democracy must be a key goal for the New Ilustrados.

Sionil Jose came to the stunning conclusion that the “values which we have regarded as the foundations of our culture … must now be re-examined and discarded if the country is to change”. He also challenged the intelligentsia of his time to do more to advance social reform while upbraiding them for being “more concerned with the form than the substance of democracy”.

“I measure the stature of our leaders, and the members of our intelligentsia, by how much genuine commitment they give to this basic Filipino problem”, he pointed out. Sionil-Jose died in January 2022.

Where is the Filipino intelligentsia?

F. Sionil Jose

 

 

‘Like puberty and pimples’, or a closer look at Rich Asia’s ‘unseen epidemic’

 (Published in ENRICH magazine, 2022)

POPULAR CULTURE (including our own) tends to portray nerds as young people wearing oversized eyeglasses. Same goes for older nerds, or the guys we like to call scientists. Nerds and glasses go together like puberty and pimples, right?

We see this well-worn trope on our big and little screens. Think bespectacled super wizard Harry Potter whose eyesight “really was awful”, said Hermione Granger. There’s also shy Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent ditching his nerd glasses as he transforms from Supernerd into Superman. But what kind of vision disorder afflicts nerds in real life, and these two superheroes?

A decades-old epidemic raging among children and young adults in East and Southeast Asia's richer countries gives us a clear answer. Kids with glasses have to contend with the curse of myopia and the many health maladies it brings in its train. Blindness is the most serious.

Also called nearsightedness and short-sightedness, myopia exacts a painful personal toll among some in the "glass-class". There's social ostracism (hot girls hate nerdy guys), and the risk a nerdy guy or girl will wind-up an "incel" (involuntarily celibate). Not a suitable state of affairs if your life-goal is to have kids and raise a happy family.

Levity aside, myopia is a huge and serious health problem in the Asian countries I mentioned. Happily, Filipino kids have evaded this worst of this plague for now -- but for reasons that aren't all that flattering.

Rich Asia's curse

There were some 2.6 billion nearsighted people worldwide in 2020, or 33% of the total world population of 7.8 billion, according to the German statistics portal, Statista. Myopia, however, runs rampant in the region I call "Rich Asia". The prevalence of myopia has been reported as ranging from highs of 70% to 90% in the Asian countries comprising Rich Asia: mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Singapore and South Korea.

This means myopia isn't only a nerd problem but one afflicting a lot of kids and young adults in Rich Asia. The rest-of-the world is also becoming more nearsighted. The World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts that 50% of the world’s population will have myopia by 2050. That’s close to five billion persons.

These stats reveal why myopia is the most common eye problem in the world today. Myopia’s wide prevalence in East Asia, which includes Rich Asia, is high enough to warrant the use of the term epidemic to describe its scope.

This “unseen epidemic” is at its worse in Singapore with a population of only 5.7 million persons. Myopia's pervasiveness is so bad some Singaporean pundits have taken to calling their own country the "Myopia Capital of the World" and "the epicenter of the East Asian myopia epidemic".

"The prevalence of myopia in Singapore is among the highest in the world, with 65% of our children being myopic by Primary 6, and 83% of young adults being myopic," revealed Prof. Wong Tien Yin, former Medical Director of the Singapore National Eye Center, in a speech delivered in 2019.

"As such, Singapore is often labeled as the 'Myopia Capital of the World'. By 2050, it is projected that 80 to 90% of all Singaporean adults above 18 years old will be myopic and 15 to 25% of these individuals may have high myopia".

In sheer numbers, however, it's China that has the most number of myopes. China's myopia rate of 31% means more than 400 million of today's 1.4 billion Chinese are nearsighted.

Myopia's prevalence in China's high schools stands at 77%. This figure jumps to a stunning 80% among college students.

In South Korea, the myopia rate comes to 50% in kids aged 5 to 11 years-old and 78.8% in those 12 to 18 years of age. A decade ago, 96% of 19 year-old males in Seoul had myopia, according to one study. Of this total, 22% had what can be called high myopia, which is a rare inherited type of high-degree nearsightedness.

Taiwan back in 2014 reported that 18% of first graders, 52% of sixth graders and 80% of university students were myopic. A study by Taiwanese doctors found the prevalence of myopia among schoolchildren increased rapidly from 1983 to 2017.

A study in 1983 confirmed some 70% of Taiwanese high school graduates needed glasses or contact lenses to see properly. This percentage has ballooned to 80% today.

Japan still struggles with short-sightedness. A study by Japanese researchers revealed the prevalence of myopia in Japan rose rapidly from only 11.6% in 1949 to 62.3% in 2017 among high school students in all of the country's 47 prefectures. It also said "the prevalence of myopia among adults will increase" as these teenagers grow older.

Bespectacled Chinese boys

Reasons why

Knowing all of this leads to the obvious question: "Why do many children and young adults in Rich Asia suffer disproportionately from myopia in the first place"?

There are a number of credible answers including heredity, but the three most prominent are deformed eyeballs, far too much "near work" and not spending enough time outdoors in the healthy sunshine.

Eye doctors agree most myopia is caused by misshapen eyeballs. This consensus can be appreciated when we consider an accepted clinical definition of the disease.

"Nearsightedness, or myopia, as it is medically termed, is a vision condition in which people can see close objects clearly, but objects farther away appear blurred", according to the American Optometric Association.

"Myopia occurs if the eyeball is too long or the cornea (the clear front cover of the eye) is too curved. As a result, the light entering the eye isn't focused correctly, and distant objects look blurred. Myopia affects nearly 30% of the U.S. population".

A refractive error in the eye, myopia also tends to be progressive i.e. it worsens over time. A myope's vision will deteriorate throughout childhood and adolescence before becoming more stable in adulthood. Myopia tends to run in families.

Without treatment, high myopia complications can lead to blindness. This makes it a must for myopes to have regular eye examinations and to wear corrective eyeglasses or contact lenses.

Myopia is also defined as blurred vision beyond two meters or 6.6 feet. It worsens when the eye grows longer, a deformity that causes the retina to stretch. Over time, a misshaped retina makes the eye vulnerable to serious diseases like macular degeneration, retinal detachment, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, according to ophthalmologists..

Too much near work is a no-no

Excessive near work, a major cause of myopia, was defined as " . . . the sum of activities with short working distance such as reading, studying, writing, doing homework, watching TV, or playing video games, etc", by  a scientific paper published 2015 in the  peer-reviewed open access journal, PLOS One.

The PLOS One study found "that more time spent on near work activities was associated with higher odds of myopia,” but added a caveat the associations between time spent reading and myopia have not been consistently observed. Singapore’s experience confirms the link between near work and higher odds of myopia.

"In fact, a higher exposure to near work is the main contributing factor -- besides heredity and genetic factors -- to increased risks of myopia . . . among children in Singapore," said Clinical Associate Professor Dr. Lee Shu Yen, Head of the Surgical Retina Department at the Singapore National Eye Center (SNEC), in 2019.

These findings lead to the hard-to-accept conclusion a child seems more likely to become nearsighted the more years he spends in school. It also suggests nearsightedness is basically universal by the time children reach college.

“The more educated you are, and the higher your grades, and the more you participate in after-school classes and tutorials -- the more likely you are (to be myopic)”, said Dr. Ian Morgan, a retired biologist who studies myopia at Australian National University, in Canberra, Australia.

It seems myopia, for the most part, is an affliction of the bookish and is correlated with academic performance. A number of studies confirm a strong link between myopia and education, especially the excessive near work demanded by too much reading and writing. 

"The prevalence of myopia has increased dramatically in recent years around the world and, in some highly educated groups such as law and medical students, it now exceeds 80%," said the PLOS One study.

Youngsters excessively eyeballing small smartphone screens as they play video games for hours on end also worsen the myopia epidemic. A Filipino doctor believes 90% of frequent mobile or online gamers have myopia.

Barbaric stress

A crucial reason why many students in Rich Asia study so inhumanly hard is the inordinate pressure placed on them to do well in school. This pressure reaches a peak in high school when they face the daunting task of passing their country's punishing college admission examinations. Acing these exams is seen as the guarantor of future success in countries such as China and South Korea.

Failing has been known to destroy lives. Student suicides due to intense academic pressure are a horrific fact of life in Rich Asia.

Depression and suicides are unfortunate by-products of educational systems such as those in China and South Korea that place barbaric stress on hapless high school students to pass a single, all-consuming exam.

South Korean parents believe a good university is a passport to professional and financial success for their children. They’d rather their children take college at one of the prestigious "SKY" universities: Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University.

Chinese parents share a similar outlook. Their dream is to see their children matriculate at top tier universities such as the big three (Tsinghua University, Peking University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University) for the same reasons as Korean parents. And, like Korean parents, many Chinese parents apparently push their children to the limit of their endurance to pass these exams.

In China, kids have to hurdle the dreaded "Gaokao", or the National College Entrance Examination, considered by some as the world's toughest college admissions test.  Gaokao was identified as a contributing factor in 93% of student suicides in China in 2014.

It's just as bad in South Korea. Since 2007, suicide has been the leading cause of death among young Koreans, according to data from Statistics Korea. Having to pass the country's dreaded "Suneung" (the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test) is one of the reasons why close to one in three students see suicide as a means of escape from the almost unbearable academic pressures they must endure to attain this aim.

Myopia

Let there be light

Excessive time studying and cramming, and spending long hours playing games on smartphones means young people in Rich Asia and elsewhere are spending more time indoors. The still raging COVID-19 pandemic that began spreading in 2020 has added immensely to time young people spend bereft of healthy sunlight.

A number of studies have found that time spent outdoors is strongly associated with a lower risk of myopia. The corollary is that kids who spend less time outside are more likely to become nearsighted.

One of these studies involving children in California published in 2007 found time spent outdoors is strongly associated with a lower risk of myopia. Simply being outdoors is the key factor so it doesn't matter if kids play sports or just stroll around.

Another study, this one in 2008, involving Singaporean children of Chinese ethnicity studying in Australia and Singapore came to the same conclusion. It found that 29% of Singaporean students in Singapore had myopia compared with just 3% of those studying in Sydney.

The main difference was time spent outdoors by the Sydney Singaporeans. The kids in Sydney spent 13.75 hours a week outdoors compared to a scant three hours for those in Singapore.

“The big difference was the Chinese children in Australia were outdoors a lot more than their matched peers in Singapore,” said Dr. Morgan.

He estimates children need to spend around three hours per day outdoors to lower their myopia risk. A WHO report on myopia released in 2015 found that children should spend more than two hours a day outdoors.

The protective effect from being outdoors might be due to the intensity of sunlight releasing more retinal dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter. Dopamine appears to help regulate the rate at which our eyes grow. Too little dopamine causes our eyes to grow too long to focus properly.

Also called the "feel-good hormone", dopamine is associated with learning, memory, pleasurable sensations and other bodily functions.

This exposure to sunlight reduces a child's risk of myopia even if the child has two myopic parents and does near work. This theory explaining the positive effect of the outdoors, called the "daylight exposure theory", has gained wide acceptance.

Taiwan has taken this theory seriously. In 2010, the government began a nationwide program called “Tian-Tian Outdoor 120” that goaded schools to take pupils outside for two hours daily. The results of the program reversed a decades-long trend of rising myopia rates. Myopia rates fell from 49.4% in 2012 to 46.1% in 2015 among the millions of Taiwanese primary-school pupils involved in the program.

Myopia isn’t the Philippines’ biggest problem

Studies reveal that up to 29% of Filipino children suffer from myopia, said ophthalmologist Dr. Alexander Gonzales II of the Ospital ng Makati at a conference in 2018. He noted that 90% of frequent mobile or online gamers are nearsighted.

The prevalence of myopia in the general population is even higher. It's been estimated at 40% by Dr. John Ang, vice president for Education and Professional Services of Essilor Asia Pacific, Middle East, Russia and Africa. He also said school kids must spend more time outdoors.

"Changing lifestyles is very important like in Sydney where students have two hours outside play per day, they are three percent myopic," he said.  "I'm not sure, but maybe we Asians push our children more to be indoors and study, unlike the Australians, they are more the sporty type".

It's long been proven that myopia can be corrected and managed. Early detection of the disease is vital to curbing its potential to inflict more damage to one's vision.

"Eyeglasses are the simplest and safest way to correct and manage myopia", said Dr. Ang.

Among his suggestions for eye health is for children to spend at least two and a half hours outdoors daily. Kids should also have an eye exam every six months and take a break when using computers or using smartphones and other digital devices.

The low myopia rate among Filipino schoolchildren compared to their peers in Rich Asia is something to cheer about but it’s not the worst problem our youngsters face.

In late 2019, the Philippines was assailed by the humiliating news Filipino students ranked the lowest among 79 countries in mathematics, science, and reading. The report that disclosed this shameful news came from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

It revealed that in mathematics and science, Filipino 15 year-olds rated 353 points and 357 points, respectively, compared to the OECD average of 489 for both categories. The Philippines ranked second to the last in math and science, and last in reading.

The report based on the 2018 survey said more than 80% of students in the Philippines did not reach a minimum level of proficiency in reading. It called this failure “one of the largest shares of low performers amongst all PISA-participating countries and economies”.

 “Fifteen-year-old students in the Philippines scored lower in reading, mathematics, and science than those in most of the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2018”, said the OECD report. “No country scored lower than the Philippines and the Dominican Republic”.

The poor results categorized four in five Filipino students as Level 2, or “low performers,” in the subject. OECD said Level 2 students have a proficiency “too low to enable them to participate effectively and productively in everyday life”.

The Philippines’ score in PISA has been on a steady decline for the past two decades. It dropped by 61 points (from 358 in 2003 to 297) and by 83 points (from 332 in 2003 to 249) in math and science. The PISA survey is held every three years with the last one taking place in 2021.

Another international test rubbed more salt into this wound. Our Grade 4 pupils posted the lowest scores in mathematics and science among the 58 countries involved in a 2019 study by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.

Clearly, myopia is not the major problem besetting Philippine education. Ignorance is.

Philippine education is failing our youth