The Politics of the Enduring Present
The shift of the temporal horizon from an enduring present to a future-orientation is characteristic of modernity. From being resigned to stagnation, modern individuals concoct notions of progress or development, engage in vision-setting or strategic planning processes, all of which presuppose horizons which look forward to the future different from the present.
The reaction (or lack of it) of non-organized citizenry to political events in the Philippines from 2005 onwards seems to suggest that for most Filipinos, politics is not the politics of future possibility but the politics of the enduring present.
This has not always been the case, of course. In the run-up to the 1986 EDSA Revolution, for example, when the social movements waxed after the Aquino assasination, and especially after the overthrow of Marcos, there was a sense that the future was pregnant with possibilities. In the days of EDSA II, there was also that sense of a future pregnant with possibilities (at least from the point of view of those who participated in that event. For the poor, Estrada represented a future pregnant with possibilities).
But both people power events ended up in the betrayal of the promise of the future and has consigned people to conceiving political time as that of a relentlessly enduring present. The future is conceived of as more-of-the-same: more of the same corruption, more of the same cheating in elections, more of the same dysfunctional governance. There is a sense that this state of affairs is not a function of who is in power. Everything that is wrong with politics has such deep foundations (both material and cultural) which are hard to uproot. "Sinong papalit," people ask when they hear suggestions that PGMA should resign, "pare-pareho lang naman silang lahat". Assuming arguendo that a clean individual is placed into a dirty system, that individual will be sullied or remain ineffective.
It is not the absence of vision that is the problem. There is some idea of what the ideal is and this is evidenced by the critique of the present. (Even the rhetoric of the ideal is part of the enduring present). What is absent is something that people can believe in, a realistic way of achieving that ideal, an approach that could be considered as having some hope of succeeding and introducing elements of an alternative future that will create foundational cracks in the enduring present.
The reaction (or lack of it) of non-organized citizenry to political events in the Philippines from 2005 onwards seems to suggest that for most Filipinos, politics is not the politics of future possibility but the politics of the enduring present.
This has not always been the case, of course. In the run-up to the 1986 EDSA Revolution, for example, when the social movements waxed after the Aquino assasination, and especially after the overthrow of Marcos, there was a sense that the future was pregnant with possibilities. In the days of EDSA II, there was also that sense of a future pregnant with possibilities (at least from the point of view of those who participated in that event. For the poor, Estrada represented a future pregnant with possibilities).
But both people power events ended up in the betrayal of the promise of the future and has consigned people to conceiving political time as that of a relentlessly enduring present. The future is conceived of as more-of-the-same: more of the same corruption, more of the same cheating in elections, more of the same dysfunctional governance. There is a sense that this state of affairs is not a function of who is in power. Everything that is wrong with politics has such deep foundations (both material and cultural) which are hard to uproot. "Sinong papalit," people ask when they hear suggestions that PGMA should resign, "pare-pareho lang naman silang lahat". Assuming arguendo that a clean individual is placed into a dirty system, that individual will be sullied or remain ineffective.
It is not the absence of vision that is the problem. There is some idea of what the ideal is and this is evidenced by the critique of the present. (Even the rhetoric of the ideal is part of the enduring present). What is absent is something that people can believe in, a realistic way of achieving that ideal, an approach that could be considered as having some hope of succeeding and introducing elements of an alternative future that will create foundational cracks in the enduring present.
Labels: Luhmann, Politics as a Social System, Time
posted by Leland at 1:10 AM
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