Remembering to Forget

A lot has happened today, and our future remains uncertain. Calls to ‘never forget’ Martial Law have—for the first time in a while—been largely overshadowed by the clamor of an angry nation against those who have been reasonably accused of plunder and other forms of corruption.

”Yet the essence of a nation,” declared Ernest Renan, “is that all individuals have many things in common; and also that they have forgotten many things.” (What Is a Nation?) And many of us have forgotten that Martial Law, like other historical phenomena, was a product of various longstanding processes (the longue durée) that predated Marcos Sr.'s presidency by a long shot.

These, in turn, resulted from the convergence of various social and political forces that have been politically relevant long before the declaration of Martial Law. The effects of these longstanding (if not primordial) causes remain visible to this day.

And these go back hundreds of years, in fact. To view Martial Law almost in a vaccuum, a matter of historical chance, is to conceal the dynamics of power and change. Corruption and impunity did not begin in 1972.

Indeed, it is up to us to investigate those long term dynamics that made Marcos possible, that made Martial Law possible, and that made other nationwide developments possible. And they go way back: Marcos did not appear out of nowhere.

We say "never forget"! But we have forgotten everything but the summaries. The precedents and the processes that far predate our grandfathers have been long brought into oblivion. This is especially true given that many of us can't even remember past our grandfathers.

And the more we miss the forest for the trees, the more we venerate EDSA without understanding it, then the more we will truly forget what EDSA was good for and what made Martial Law possible in the first place. And this—not the resumption of classes—is how a nation forgets what it so seeks to remember. This is how we can and will, to use that tired adage, "repeat history."

Before we judge men we must understand them, and find their precedents in history as well as their legacies, for better or (especially) for worse. Lest we keep our beds atop monsters.

Daniel Tyler Chua is the founder and president of the Collegium Perulae Orientis. He is also a contributor to the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Sentinel PH.