Pedestrian Observer GB: Raising Awarenes thru MyBlogLog Community Exchange

I have not participated in blog memes as my blog is focused on politics and social realities in the Philippines. Blogs that joins memes obviously help build their traffic with an increase in readership and revenues as well. Since it has worked with bloggers for financial gain, duplicating what has worked with them will serve our purpose in raising awareness in bringing attention to bloggers the need to stop and end senseless electoral violence in the Philippines. Musa Dimasidsing is the latest victim and to date there are more than 130 plus that perished along the way, it is time we take a stand against electoral violence collectively.

If you believe in sending the message of ending senseless political violence and at the same time reach a wide range of bloggers join the Raising Awareness thru MyBlogLog Community Exchange. The rules are very simple:

Join all of the MyBlogLog communities on the list below.
Copy the list and create a new post on your blog on the victims of electoral violence and paste the list onto your post.
Write a brief paragraph that explains what the game is above the list (just as I have done here).
Add your Blog using the URL of your entry on Victims of Electoral Violence plus 2 or 3 more MyBlogLog communities to the list and then publish the post.
If you want to be added to this list, simply drop me a comment below with your Blog Name/URL and MyBlogLog URL.

Participating in Raising Awareness thru MyBlogLog Community Exchange is just a small step that has the potential impact of raising awareness while increasing your traffic, increasing the number of regular readers as well as help increase the number of backlinks you have pointing to your site. Making a difference thru blogging is a rewarding experience that may lead the way towards a better community not just on the online community but in Philippine society as well.

The Raising Awareness MyBlogLog Community Exchange List:

Add Your Site here Join The Above. Drop A Comment Below!

raising awareness thru mybloglog

4 Speak Out:

fidel_umaga said...: fidel_umaga said...
June 18, 2007 3:55 p.m.

Your project is both liberating and revolutionary because it involves more than the propagation of our people’s awareness to our current national issues. As we sensed it, its short term objective is to propagate people’s awareness of the evil raging in the Philippines. Its long-term objective is something philosophical - the liberation of those who participate here from the confining values of the self. It is in that sense that your project is both liberating and revolutionary.

Ideas no matter how great, unless shared, are nothing, so said a wise man.

This old sow is as current as the dawn that comes to us every morning. Its importance never fades especially for us. Thus, your blog does not gather any moss along its wake because of the passionate ideas it offers to those who venture into it. As we read through its subject matter and commentaries, long lost feelings are rekindled and old paths are hacked again and traveled. New ones are also chartered.

But there is something far greater for us than spending some of our free time on this. Every time we participate and share our ideas with others through this blog, we liberate a part of ourselves. Unconsciously, we are, in a way, laying the foundations of what it is to be a FREE MAN. In our commentaries here, we are actually speaking for those among us who could not speak for themselves. And we all know, only a free man could speak for another.

This is quite contrary to our societal upbringing. Our society has nurtured us how to speak loudly and ONLY for those who are members of our family or clan. Our society has taught us TO BE FOR OTHERS ONLY when the other is visible.

While many would argue that our individual power to empathize with others is tremendously natural, as we have seen it in so many instances in our national past, it , however, takes a long time for that empathy to gel into a positive action especially when we deal with abstractions. Possibly, this could be the reason why we, as a people, are not confrontational. This could also explain why a people, with such a fierce independent pre-colonial history, was held captive for more than three centuries by a few foreign satraps. It is no wonder then why we frequently voiced our exasperation for our repeated delay , if not for our outright failure, to raise our collective action against public evils such as the poverty that raged against our people or the proliferation of unsolved killings and abductions in our midst ( abstractions to many because we read or heard them only from newspapers or radios) but we are quick to denounce the imposed poverty on our neighbor, living in a hovel or the death of his son from a disease borne by that hunger. To us, our neigbbors' poverty or the death of his son is something REAL. It is something PERSONAL. This is precisely because our brains, from our historical circumstances, are wired to act in that certain, predictable way.

Our heritage, both cultural and historical, has made us see truth through the eyes of a Superior Other. Through that learned view, " truth " became a means of control instead of being liberating. Many of us find it a monumental effort to decide with full confidence what is true or what is the rightness or wrongness of things if the approbation of a Superior Other is absent. The Superior Other refers to anything foreign. Anything indigenous is inferior. Ever wonder why our penchant for anything stateside or for the self-deprecating abhorrence of many of us to any thing local?

We might say that through the years we have gained independence from this Superior Other, the truth is that many of us are still slaves to the many ills from our historical past e.g. our maniana or the bahala na system or our being parochial in our perception etc. All these values, while of practical use in some instances to us, are far more oppressive in their unseen negative effects. One example of the negative effects of these values is their tendency to delimit the expression of our people's natural altruistic nature. Kaya lumalabas tuloy parang makasarili ang marami sa atin. How could one be so selfless for his kindred and exhibit the exact opposite value to others? Yet, we are fully aware of our people's deep reservoir for selflessness and goodness. For if such goodness does not exist, where does he get that selflessness to risk everything, in lands foreign from his birth, if only to be assured that those whom he/she loves may have a better today and a secured tomorrow?

It is with this backdrop that I consider participation in altruistic endeavors, for the FILIPINO people, revolutionary. It could be anything as long as it is not only for one self. It must also be primarily for others. To mention a few, we have your project of raising awareness and others of similar nature. To the last group, we also have the Gawad Kalinga. But I will not talk about it now. I will limit myself to what you have on hand.

Every time we extend what is right or give that which is good for others is to affirm to ourselves that what is right or that which is good does not only belong us but to to others too. Every act we contribute to matters of altruistic nature is to be altruistic in ourselves. Every effort we give to this endeavor is an act of liberating ourselves from that confining value of unconscious selfishness or self-centered instinct.

As a conscious departure from our old ways, we are now doing things primarily for the other. Slowly, we unhinged our self-centered pattern of doing things as we do things primarily for our neighbors. Gradually, we untie ourselves from our learned and unqualified instinctive acts of self-preservation and allow ourselves to move forward to a higher degree of self-preservation – the preservation of others.

This act of preserving or serving the other, to be liberating, must be done consciously, of the why's and wherefore's of helping the other. The rationale is simple The act of helping the other must grow on solid grounds, anchored as it must be on what is morally right, not on mere formalities as we are nurtured to be inclined to do things for strangers. The altruistic nature of doing things for others must take roots in us individually to overcome the ways of yore. This is the only way we could break the hold of unqualified, instinctive self-preservation in all of us. As one feels liberated, he finds a sense of improved self-confidence and growth. A sense of renewal, of goodness pervades us. And one who feels good could has the strength to free himself from the bondage of of his history. Others call this liberating act as heroic. Others say it is revolutionary. Some say it is the miracle of rebirth. What ever its name, it is for us the imperative reason why we at MFP joined this blog and why we at MFP will continue to find time and join other endeavors of similar nature.; 6/18/07, 3:56 PM
Anonymous said...: I wanna be in ,, I ll check what I can post at my blog; 6/18/07, 11:07 PM
Anonymous said...: I have made my post regarding this awareness here. http://halalan-2007.blogspot.com/2007/06/raising-awareness-on-electoral-violence.html; 6/18/07, 11:33 PM
Unknown said...: Welcome and thanks Fidel Umaga of Movement for Free Philippines & Rexted of Philippine Election 2007.; 6/19/07, 12:24 AM