This is not a eulogy.
Posted 12:37 AM by AD in Labels: angelo reyes, essay, ethics, life stuff, suicideBasically, this is my response to Ser Neil Garcia's proposal to see Angelo Reyes's suicide as approaching the levels of an ethical statement, one that wishfully will be eventually understood as such.
I've been thinking about suicide for maybe five years now. I have a few thoughts about it. I will admit that what will follow is more an excuse for me to begin to articulate some of these thoughts. I have hopes that this will lead somewhere farther than mere thought exercise.
I don't think I'll be able to make the jump just yet from seeing Reyes's suicide as an act of cowardice into something approaching an ethical statement, seeing as with suicides, intent is everything - the one question asked about it again and again is "why did he do it?" - and I bet he didn't do it to make an ethical point about guilt and conscience: he just wanted out of his day of reckoning really really bad.
To analyse and elevate this particular act of suicide as being something worthy of praise - to describe it as an ethical statement - is to separate it from (or more likely, to be selective about) its particular circumstance, which renders this particular act of suicide meaningless, or just as meaningful as jargon can make it seem meaningful.
In short, Reyes is not Mishima. In short, he did not kill himself for something he believed in. In short, the ethics boat sank when Reyes did not blow the whistle on all the money people were getting under the table way way back when it was first offered to him; it sank some more when he denied the allegations of the Magdalo soldiers; it sank some more when he said he couldn't remember ever pocketing P50 million. I think we need to thresh these things out first before we can talk about the CIA's behind-the-scenes manipulations, before we elevate the suicide into an ethical statement spurred by a son's failure to live up to his mother's memory.
I am suggesting, if context really is all, why not also talk about it along the lines of the suicide's likely concrete and immediate impetus instead of focussing only on its romantic nostalgic Catholic symbolism? I am thinking that both lines of inquiry will yield distinct yet complementary notions, especially if we're really aiming for a holistic context-is-all responsible ethical reading.
I've been thinking about suicide for maybe five years now. I have a few thoughts about it. I will admit that what will follow is more an excuse for me to begin to articulate some of these thoughts. I have hopes that this will lead somewhere farther than mere thought exercise.
I don't think I'll be able to make the jump just yet from seeing Reyes's suicide as an act of cowardice into something approaching an ethical statement, seeing as with suicides, intent is everything - the one question asked about it again and again is "why did he do it?" - and I bet he didn't do it to make an ethical point about guilt and conscience: he just wanted out of his day of reckoning really really bad.
To analyse and elevate this particular act of suicide as being something worthy of praise - to describe it as an ethical statement - is to separate it from (or more likely, to be selective about) its particular circumstance, which renders this particular act of suicide meaningless, or just as meaningful as jargon can make it seem meaningful.
In short, Reyes is not Mishima. In short, he did not kill himself for something he believed in. In short, the ethics boat sank when Reyes did not blow the whistle on all the money people were getting under the table way way back when it was first offered to him; it sank some more when he denied the allegations of the Magdalo soldiers; it sank some more when he said he couldn't remember ever pocketing P50 million. I think we need to thresh these things out first before we can talk about the CIA's behind-the-scenes manipulations, before we elevate the suicide into an ethical statement spurred by a son's failure to live up to his mother's memory.
I am suggesting, if context really is all, why not also talk about it along the lines of the suicide's likely concrete and immediate impetus instead of focussing only on its romantic nostalgic Catholic symbolism? I am thinking that both lines of inquiry will yield distinct yet complementary notions, especially if we're really aiming for a holistic context-is-all responsible ethical reading.
1 comment(s) to... “This is not a eulogy.”
1 comments:
"reyes is not mishima". tama,adam.
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