notes from me to you

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For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Anton Cu Unjieng. I started this blog as a way to crystallize my ideas on politics and atheism, and in general I wrote for it only during my free time. I had a lot of free time when I first started, but I’m back in school now, and basically this blog has not seen much updates since February when I enrolled.

I study in Australia now–I was living in the Philippines–and many of my ideas and attitudes have changed or been clarified since I came here, mostly thanks to my interactions with some very politically minded people. This Blog is therefore going to undergo a radical rethinking. For one thing, I do not think I will be attempting to destroy religion anymore, I had always known and admitted that words couldn’t really do that. The only people that cared to read what I had to say were either friends or agnostics-atheists anyway, really you are only convinced by an argument you want to be convinced by, that seems to be the limit of reason.

Many of my articles were confused if not completely specious anyway, and my ideas were so completely contradictory and blinkered. In one of the religion articles I said that banks were an integral part of any functioning society. If I ever claimed that there was a functioning society on the planet (functioning as I at least would like to see it functioning) then I was wrong, and certainly I never believed that human society as a whole was functioning very nicely. The current financial crisis puts a fair amount of egg on my face for that one. Actually society does not function very well at all–or if it does, then it works towards the wrong ends entirely–and banks certainly ARE integral to that fact!

Sometimes my articles have suffered from cowardice. I wrote a somewhat facetious article on the need to struggle for gay marriage. The tone had a very specific intention: it was a constant refrain of “I’m not gay…” as if that were either here or there. In that article I subjugated the fundamental right of gays and lesbians to equality under the law (a principle i did not even explicitly give voice to!) to my vindictive attitude towards the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). I even claimed that what was needed was a political body that would achieve its ends then become inert–why I should have thought that I cannot even imagine anymore. True, I would not necessarily want a gay rights lobbying group to permanently acquire the power of the Catholic Church but that would not even be possible anyway, furthermore what such a group could do with that power could not be particularly bad and probably often very good. A group like that that was mired in identity politics might be a bit troublesome, but that is a particular thing as opposed to a general principle. Actually, a group combating sexism CANNOT become inert–it must necessarily perpetually attest to the dignity and rights of every human being regardless of gender, or else it will only lose what it gains. To anyone that read that article and was rightly offended I apologize. I did even then believe sincerely in equal rights–I have for as long as I remember–what I lacked was the courage to say so and an understanding of how this could be won.

I am not going to delete anything that I have written, they are not all of them without value, but more importantly they track the evolution of an individual’s politics and some might find that interesting. I own my errors and am working to slowly rid myself of them.

The reason I write now, is not because I want to win those with ideas opposite from my own, but because people should not stand in silent isolation with their ideas. Like minded people meet and clarify their ideas, they give each other support and direction–I want to be part of that process, in whatever way I can.

What you will be seeing is considerably less moderation in my ideas. I will not be watering down what I think in the interest of getting more people to swallow them, I may withhold some ideas with the intention of explicating them later and perhaps building up to them, but I will endeavor not to compromise or to balk at my own thoughts. This blog will therefore be both more considered and also more honest.

In the past I said I wanted your ideas and contributions. I am still open to them, and I still reserve the right to comment or review. You can email me at anton.cuunjieng@gmail.com

Finally, the new title–the blog used to be “The Word and The Golden Monkey”–I have written about poverty and exploitation in the past but I had not really cast my lot with the poor and exploited. I am not from a hard to do family, I was born into that section of society–that class–that does the exploiting, I am aware that my material interests are not with the poor or the exploited. That said, I will not grow up to be a big time capitalist–I will not even be a small time capitalist–I may not be poor, I may even make my living by selling to the wealthy, but I will not own the wealth. Class traitor is not a label I deserve but one I aspire to. I know that another world is possible, and I know who must make it, and I hope I know whose side I will be on.

In solidarity,

Anton