Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Personalization

There seems to me a grandiose plan
To trick the mind into believing
That stones and mirrors enable one
To mimic the ways of the divine.
Colossal palaces, vast spaces
Portraits etched on stones and canvases
Create the illusion that everyone else
Is there to serve gods and goddesses.
Should greatness be a thing of birth
Or cast by wit or skill or fate
Does skin's color and dwelling's place
Define who a person is?


Tuesday, August 20, 2019

On Philosophy, Career and Survival

by Alan S. Cajes, PhD

I was asked to share my thoughts to some philosophy students and enthusiasts about my lived experiences with philosophy as a field of study. That brief discussion led me to reflect more about my lifelong companion that opened for me a box of ideas from the most profound thinkers of the human race. The result is this write up. 

This paper is for lay people who don’t plan to enter the religious life, but are planning to, or are now studying, philosophy as a major for their undergraduate or college degree. The goal is to share my humble and limited experiences with the hope that they could pick up some lessons that will guide them in decision making. I also offer a suggestion on how to improve the teaching of philosophy in our country.

Sometime in 1986 in a high school named after a saint, in a municipality named after a tree, in a province named after its sinkholes, in a country named after a colonizer, I was reading a book that discussed “defense mechanisms” or what Sigmund Freud called the “ego defenses”. These automatic defensive actions are psychological ways by which a person unconsciously deals with anxiety.  Denial is an example. Smokers and drinkers who are influenced by some great writers will use denial as a defense strategy in response to the prevailing knowledge about the bad effects of cigarettes and alcohol.

While reading the book and realizing what I have understood, I felt so happy, a feeling that is best captured in Leonardo da Vinci’s statement – “the noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” That feeling on cloud nine inspired me to choose psychology as a field of specialization when I took the University of the Philippines College Admission Test. I was accepted by the state university and was assigned at the campus in Cebu City which is now less than two hours away from my home province by fast craft (overnight trip in 1986 by boat). I enrolled, but eventually went home due to homesickness and other reasons.

By the time I enrolled at the state university, I was accepted by the Society of the Divine Word as a seminarian at a campus in Cebu City. When I decided not to pursue my undergraduate study at the state university, I went to the seminary for an advice. I was told to take up philosophy in a non-seminary school and come back when I am ready to pursue the vocation. I enrolled at Holy Name University (formerly Divine Word College) and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree major in philosophy. My rationalization or defense mechanism went something like this: since psychology is a child of philosophy, then it would give me greater happiness if I study the mother of all sciences. Thus my decision to take up philosophy as a major area of study for my undergraduate degree was guided mainly, but not solely, by a desire to learn and understand, aptly represented by Plato’s description of philosophy as the highest form of inquiry.

Desire to understand is a lofty aim, but there were factors that made me question my decision to study philosophy. This is not to say that I am disappointed by the decision to study philosophy. Several years after graduating from college, I completed a master of arts major in philosophy and then a doctorate that used phenomenology and hermeneutics as research methods. But there were factors that haunted me when I started facing the realities of life after school – earning a living and surviving.

The first factor has something to do with communicating what I know to some people who equate philosophy with being a “pilosopo” which, in our street language, means sarcasm. This type of people think that you are trained to shoot down every statement or proposition using complex, difficult to grasp, but useless concepts and rules of thinking. If you happen to apply for a job and your potential boss belongs to this type, you are lucky to get an interview.

The second factor is about the qualification standards of positions in the public and private sectors. Aside from religious life and teaching philosophy, other jobs hardly recognize philosophy as a relevant field of study. When I got accepted as a news correspondent of a national daily and as a writer for a senator, the key factors, I was told, were my experience as a school and community journalist, as well as my writing skills. The decision to hire me had nothing to do with my philosophy diploma. These were also the reasons why I got accepted to work in a public research and training institution where I have spent more than two decades.

There is no denying that my study of philosophy brought me so much joy and contentment. However, the realities of life led me to face the painful truth: that a philosophy degree is a liability unless you are a religious or a tenured philosophy teacher.

So how did an ordinary college graduate of philosophy survive the concrete jungle of a megacity? The short answer is I didn’t. What made me survive were competencies that I have gained along the way as an active participant of the student movement and civil society. But the lessons I gained from my study of philosophy made me live a life that is more than I could hope for. The key strategies that worked well with me are “challenge yourself” and “re-invent yourself”.

“Challenge yourself” is a concept that I borrowed from Arnold Toynbee’s theory of challenge and response. After studying nearly all civilizations of the world as reflected in his 12-volume A Study of History, he saw a pattern in the rise and fall of civilizations. Those civilizations that survived were able to provide appropriate responses to the challenges they faced. Those that disappeared exactly did the opposite.

In my case, I applied this theory by charting long-term objectives and setting the required standards for achieving them. For instance, my first strategic objective was to earn a master’s degree in philosophy. Although it was possible for me to pursue another field of study, I chose philosophy because I wanted to develop an expertise in a field that left me with some unanswered questions. I needed to have some closure or a clear understanding about philosophical issues that continuously haunted me. Recall that I decided to study this field because of the joy of understanding. Thus it was a burden to carry loads of questions that yearn for answers. It is right to say that a lack or absence of understanding can give you the exact opposite of the noblest pleasure.

To reach the goal that I set, I followed certain standards for four years as a working student and while supporting my siblings who were also in school. One of the standards was at least two hours of dedicated reading and reflection time every day. This appears easy, but when you combine the pressures of work, family, city lifestyle, and school at the same time, this was nearly mission impossible for me. Yet I persevered since it was what I wanted to do. I tried to ward off any distractions that came along the way.

Another standard that I still observe until today is to perform the assigned tasks the best way I can. There is no room for mediocrity, I always tell myself. That is why I challenge myself to implement the activities and produce the deliverables and results effectively, efficiently, and on time.

Goals and performance standards could spell the difference between success and failure. When the goals and standards, however, are no longer relevant given the circumstances that are always changing, then it is time to take a look at the contingency measures. This is what I did sometime in 2003. I applied for a doctoral scholarship overseas in accordance to my stretched goal of earning a doctorate, but I was presented with a middle-management level opportunity at work. After weighing the options, I decided to change course and took the job. That decision served me well in my career, although it also made me think of other possibilities if only I chose the other alternative.

The “challenge yourself” approach is obviously applicable to everyone. What made it relevant for me was precisely the disadvantage that I perceived when I was starting my career. 

There is another approach that helped me a lot in converting the "liability" into an asset. I call this the “re-invent yourself” strategy. This means looking for opportunities to learn new, or improve upon your existing, knowledge, skill, attitude and behavior or what are collectively called as competencies. Put differently, always look for an opportunity to create a better version of yourself.

I have seen how others have employed this strategy to their advantage. I have friends and previous classmates who studied philosophy and are now successful priests, teachers and lawyers. But I would like to focus my attention to ordinary individuals like me who studied philosophy and pursued a different type of career.

To advance in your career, it is important that you challenge yourself by getting higher education. In the public sector, a supervisory position requires a master’s degree. Or that you take up relevant management and technical training programs because some positions require minimum number of hours of relevant training. 

This implies that you have to fully appreciate the qualification standards of the position you want to qualify for and that you have a clear idea of the direction of your career. If you are a researcher now, and you want to be involved in teaching, then you have to learn new competencies, such as public speaking, adult-learning techniques, etc., and improve on what you have now.

Confidence and competence are important, but the most important of all is character. What does it profit a man or a woman if he or she has a doctorate from the top universities of the world and relevant years of training and experience, but works alone because no one could bear the weight of his or her ego?

In reinventing yourself, you need to challenge yourself. Learn new things and better ways of doing things. But develop expertise or depth. While you spread your wings to acquire new competencies, soar high to gain expertise in one or few areas of specializations. 

Thus, be a generalist, but have some specializations. This way, you are prepared for the challenges and opportunities that will come along your way. Remember that fate favors those who are ready, or those who are destined to be.

A degree in philosophy is a liability when you face factors that I encountered. When you convert that liability into an asset, you can see possibilities that will allow you to apply philosophy in your job, not just in your personal life.

A good example of this is project management. In general, government agencies and local government units implement projects that are funded by the government through aid or loan. Not a few projects fail because they are badly designed. This means for instance that the problem that the project is trying to address is not clearly identified. 

Problem identification and designing are phases in the project cycle that require a lot of critical thinking. This is an area in which philosophy graduates can excel. Other areas include leadership development, strategic planning, coaching and mentoring, evaluation studies, training management, and risk management, among others.

Which leads me to a suggestion on how to improve the way philosophy is being taught so that it can be made more responsive and relevant to ordinary human experience. The suggestion is to introduce applied philosophy courses, such as critical thinking in project management, philosophy of leadership, and philosophy of management. These courses will not just prepare lay philosophy students for post-college life, but may also encourage lay people to take up philosophy as an area of study. 

If this strategy works, then perhaps we can make philosophy attractive to people who do not plan to enter religious life or study philosophy for its own sake. By creating a critical mass of philosophers in this country, akin to the concept of planetary consciousness by Paul Ricoeur, we can help build a citizenry that will jealously defend human rights, decency, accountability in governance, and environmental integrity. This will then contribute in shaping a better future.