Helping Bohol Get On Its Feet Again

I feel a bit guilty because I haven't as yet given any donation for Bohol.  That's why when I read the newspaper today, I was very happy to know that the SVD brothers (I went to an SVD-run school when I was in high school) are still at it, helping the Boholanos get back on their feet.

Anyway, if you would like to make a donation, you can do so by depositing in this account -

SVD Southern Province Inc.
BPI Cebu Mango Branch
Acct# 1025-6401-32

Liberalism and State Coercive Power

Liberalism has struggle with the point of state boundaries^[1]. Liberals are dedicated to ethical fairness, so that the unassuming detail of humanity is appropriate to encourage a request for the same apprehension in addition to respect^[2]. Liberal philosophies are conventionally applied basically within the background of the regional government, which appears to place an uninformed perimeter on the series within liberal agreements will spread on^[3]. This struggle is predominantly unambiguous in the background of distributive impartiality; state limitations, subsequently, frequently gap not merely one authority from one more, however the rich from the unfortunate as well^[4]. Consenting limitations to govern distributive segments appears to place a practical primitive impression of birth right freedom back into the core of liberal philosophy.  This struggle has directed numerous philosophers to contend that certain review of liberal philosophy is essential. These suggestions often encompass either the request that liberalism put emphasis on previously deserted particularistic obligations, or the request that it abandon such indigenous concerns and sanction a broad-based visualization of distributive impartiality^[5]. Thus, liberalism might arrange with the doubts generated by the circumstance of state boundaries and a globally impartial liberal philosophy is not mismatched with diverse thinking of distributive impartiality applicable basically in the nationwide setting^[6]. This is correct, nevertheless, not for the reason that individuals care further about the fellow compatriots than individuals look after about outsiders, however because the administrative and lawful institutions individuals share at the state level generate a requirement for distinctive arrangements of justification^[7]. An apprehension with relative financial segments is a reasonable understanding of liberal philosophies merely when philosophies are useful to persons who share responsibility to the coercive arrangement of state domination^[8]. Such apprehension is not needed by substantial ideologies when individuals do not segment such associations of nationality. What a standard stresses changes contingent upon the setting it is applied; that people owe distinctive stuffs to fellow citizens need designate not bias toward those citizens, however rather an additional sophisticated understanding of what independence certainly stresses.

In creating the argument, there is about John Rawls's^[9] philosophy of impartiality in addition to a standard of independence underlying contractarian philosophies like that of Rawls's that depends upon enthusiastic acceptance of the practice of Rawls's philosophy as an democratic one courteous to the technique of Rawlsian hypothesizing. The approach seeks to sanction the knowledge that people can defend ideologies of sufficiency out of the country and ideologies of distributive fairness at home for the reason that principles can be assumed as distinctive implications of unbiased ideologies in distinct recognized perspectives^[10]. That is, the way out of the struggle distinguished overhead is to be set up not in exploration for reasonable partiality, nonetheless in the understanding of objectivity itself. Another point, the analysis of scarcity frequently takes within this arrangement. People can comprehend an analysis of a package of assets as the examination of complete dispossession^[11]. It appears plausible that much global poverty can be fated in expressions of complete dispossession. There is starting point to decent social functioning, under which the opportunity of independent social agency is uninvolved. It appears to be a substance of ethical seriousness every time people might stop somebody from dropping below lines and fail to organize accordingly^[12]. The ethical problem nevertheless, does not appear to generate several applications to the affluences of others. That further individuals have additional is not indispensable part of ethical prerogative; it is, at greatest, an indication that the dispossession in query could be improved.

The knowledge of absolute dispossession, nonetheless, does not reason for circumstances in which people want to denounce as unsuitable somebody's package of assets. Occasionally, people appear to look specifically to the dissimilarity among specific packages for the foundation of honest concern^[13]. In numerous liberal philosophies, liberal ideologies provide upsurge not basically to ideologies condemning scarcity however to ideologies directing some amount of financial fairness. Aside, such circumstances encompass an apprehension not basically with total dispossession, however with comparative dispossession as well. As soon as comparative dispossession is ethically unlawful, the ethical magnitude of the situation might be understood to upsurge as the gap among rich as well as poor broadens^[14]. The possessions of the improved positioned are not basically an indication that scarcity might be evaded; they are essential part of ethical blame of the delivery. Certainly, independence has an extended pedigree within substantial administrative beliefs. It is establish, most obviously, in administrative philosophies compelling off from Kantian^[15] principles, nevertheless a concern for independence is set up within a comprehensive diversity of techniques to administrative rationalization. The liberalism faithful to the international protection of distinct independence stands as a reasonable candidate for an impregnable and internally comprehensible broad-mindedness. However, such a standard generates no uninformed diversity amongst citizen as well as stranger nonetheless respects correspondingly the independence of all individuals although restraints on action will involve change contingent upon recognized background^[16]. Thus, by means of compelling liberalism to demand the safety of distinct independence, and understand what outcomes this assumption will require in the backgrounds of global and local distributive impartiality.

Furthermore, every mortal being have the ethical prerogative to exist as independent representatives, and consequently have prerogatives to those situations and settings in which this is conceivable^[17]. This standard redirects the substantial commitment to independence as a straightforward significance, and the certainty that the independent action of a stranger and of an inhabitant is comparable in ethical significance. Compelling independence as a value, nevertheless, does not decide which alternative of independence will be safeguarded. For instance, Joseph Raz's^[18] perception of independence, in which independent representatives is assumed to be part biographers of their particular lives; the independent individual is capable to improve as well as pursue self-chosen objectives and interactions. There are logically definite conditions that happen before a social representative could be assumed as independent. There must be the suitable psychological capabilities: the individual in query must require the aptitudes to arrange the multifaceted objectives essential of an independent preparation representative, and must make sure the systems of reasonableness are appropriate to trail through on what the objectives necessitate^[19]. For case in point, the psychological skills essential to perform as a representative, and the proper assertiveness towards one's particular life indispensable to understand one's nature as a representative. The latter capabilities, as they are subject to at slightest several control from administrative institutions, appear to be an applicable emphasis of impartiality^[20]. The previous capabilities, nevertheless, appear to be essentially further than the influence of politics. Thus, the psychological capabilities of choice need to be presented with alternatives among which choice is conceivable.

The independence is mismatched with the presence of coercion^[21]. This coercion as well as manipulation decreases the willpower of one individual to the willpower of an additional; they are manifested as damages of independence not basically in advantage of that circumstance, however because of the emblematic gesture the detail characterizes. In imperilling the willpower of one otherwise independent representative to the willpower of one more, coercion establishes an assertiveness of disrespect of a kind unreliable with respect for social representatives as independent, self-creating individuals^[22]. Coercion, mutually in itself and for the reason that it determines disdain for the individual pressured, is prohibited through a liberal standard that stresses admiration for the situations of independence^[23]. The conception of balanced independence redirects a concern with the Rawlsian knowledge of ethical powers, the influence to perform in agreement with a notion of impartiality as well as to arrange and chase an idea of the moral^[24]. Persons perceived of as free and the same in their ethical influences are assumed as self-authenticating foundations of significance, competent to provide importance to strategies and commitments through the permitted application of their ethical capacities. Rawls's perception of balanced independence can be understood and protected in agreement with the conversations given.

Rawls's^[25] particular philosophy of impartiality might beneficially be observed as a philosophy through which the coercive power of the state might be acceptable to open and the same individuals who have moral influences to be unrestricted from all intimidation. Nowadays, the worldwide defence of circumstances of independent functioning appears at the precisely slightest to be a reasonable preliminary point for an analysis of international substantial philosophy^[26]. The standard mandates that every individual, irrespective of established setting, should have interaction to goods and conditions in which they are capable to live as reasonably independent agents, adept of choosing and chasing strategies of lifecycle in accord with distinct ideas of the good. There are techniques through which individuals might be deprived of the conditions of independence; food shortage, life-threatening poverty, crippling community standards such as background hierarchies and all arrangements appear understandable as abuses of a liberal standard enthusiastic to the defense of the conditions of independence^[27]. It is an adequate amount in contemporary context to notice that a reliable liberal should be as worried with scarcity abroad as that at household, ever since limitations deliver no lining from the stresses of a morality grounded upon the substance of all independent social beings. Through coercion, individuals can be deprived of their independence through being starved, profoundly disadvantaged, or subjected to cruel and downgrading standards, nonetheless they can similarly face a rejection of independence that outcomes from unconditional coercion^[28].

Coercion is not basically a substance of what possibilities are obtainable; it has to sort out with the whys and wherefores of which set of choices is as inhibited as it is^[29]. Coercion is an intended act, envisioned to substitute the selected choice with choices of another. Coercion, then articulates a rapport of power, violating the independence of the individual by means of substituting that person's selected strategies and pursuits with individuals of another^[30]. Henceforth, those coercive schemes disrupt the independence of individuals in contradiction of whom they are functioning; they do so as to interchange particular action with the action of another^[31]. Maybe the greatest noticeable arrangement of coercion people might analyse is that of government penalty. Coercion by means of illegal punishments, writes Joseph Raz, is a worldwide assault of independence; imprisonment, after totally, eliminates "practically all independent pursuits" from the convict^[32]. This is not to guess that such castigation cannot occasionally be justified very limited individuals contemplate that all illegal castigation is, through its precise landscape, ethically forbidden however it is to say that it is unavoidably an insult to independence, and as such to some degree upright in requirement of rationalization. Coercive actions as well as practices are banned by the liberal standard of independence. Some conditions of coercion are at slightest in definite settings justifiable attacks of distinct independence^[33]. A query henceforth ascends about the suitable arrangements of rationalization, through which an otherwise impermissible attack of independence can be legitimated. There will be examination of issues of coercion in larger aspect, by means of analysing what might split honest and unlawful systems of coercion; and the concentration will be on imposition of state castigation.

Some arrangements of coercion comprising certain features of state coercion appear ethically acceptable and not want to sanction a substantial standard that expressed people that state pressure was not ever ethically appropriate. The query then rises: What categories of deliberations could rationalize what would be impermissible violations of independence? ^[34] The countries of businesses that are exposed to social control are, ethically speaking, unconnected from individuals that are not. Before a state of concerns can be doomed by the substantial standard of independence, it must be in certain intelligence agreeable to control by means of social agency^[35]. To return to the situation of food shortage, there might note that if the biosphere basically did not require the possessions indispensable to keep several of its residents active, then the damage of independence sensed by those persons could not be indicted as an ethical failing to some representative or cluster of representatives; no individual or cluster can be indicted with a defilement of the liberal standard of independence^[36]. The situations of the biosphere, would concentrate starvation predictable, besides social willpower could not courage to decrease or stop such misery. That starvation in the contemporary sphere is not like the world essentially does ensure the aptitude to keep its citizens and shows that an ethically problematic state of affairs, somewhat than a heart-breaking one, has risen^[37].

Nevertheless there can be cases of coercion that are noticeably engaged in through social representatives in contradiction of additional social agents^[38]. Rationalization for coercion through liberalism can occasionally arise as an outcome of agreement^[39]. In law, if a person consents to a possible maltreatment being done to him or her, then no lawfully cognizable damage has engaged in place. In ethics, likewise, if a person consents to eliminate from himself or herself, the resources of independent action in certain extent of lifecycle say, through willingly permitting oneself to be forced and then the ethical damage of coercion no longer appears to happen^[40]. Expending one's action to agree to the removal of formerly held alternatives does not, as regulation, interrupt the standard of independence. Not every contract is well-matched with the standards of independence like that of unpaid slavery, since it renounces the complete ground of independent preparation for the length of lifespan, might be barred however as a law, consent is a conceivable manner to rationalize what would other else be prohibited^[41]. In the process of understanding liberalism through coercion of state power, criminal castigation reveals the retributivist practice, on which people can guess that convict's chastisement is legitimated not for the reason of his chastisement will be beneficial for others, nevertheless for the reason that he himself, as rational representative, can be assumed in the suitable theoretical conditions as taking willed it.

Consequently, liberalism can steadily bound its apprehension for comparative dispossession to the local ground, and be anxious purely with complete dispossession in the global ground. A liberalism dedicated to the ethical fairness of all individuals, in addition to the alike safety of the independence of all mortal beings, might however delight citizen and stranger in a different way grounded upon pertinent dissimilarities in recognized connection. The specific measure of democratic justice implies that there is a need for similar respect of independence contingent upon established background. An apprehension for local financial fairness and global financial competence reveals a steady and systematic concern for the substantial standard of independence. For instance, the rejection of vote in an American voting to an American resident, would be obnoxious mutually over and done with the emblematic affront as well as stigmatization it encompasses, and similarly through the absence of independence essential in fronting coercive rules an individual cannot help to generate. The rejection of the right to choose in American voting to a French resident existing in France, by dissimilarity, has neither of ethically challenging effects. The plain situation of material unfairness larger than that permitted by difference standard, has currently been revealed to be ethically equal to the rejection of vote amongst individuals who share a state it is justly disqualified, nevertheless it is not a lawful implication of liberal impartiality for individuals who do not hold factual even if citizenship is the outcome of evidences that are morally uninformed. Substantial unfairness is consequently more like refusal of suffrage than greatest liberal philosophers have assumed. Both are ethically incorrect in the background of collective citizenship, however not of ethical apprehension when they take place amongst individuals not in position. Somewhat than positioning a primitive honour back into substantial philosophy, the limitation of concerns is realistic with comparative dispossession to local grounds redirecting details of individuals who are experiencing state coercion. Certainly, work keeps to be completed on exactly what is allocated to the distant people in addition to the world.

Supporting the Arts Even When It’s in the Red

Introduction

            The arts and culture are a vital part of any country’s identity so it is not surprising that the government and the private sector of many countries allot a significant part of their yearly national budgets to supporting the activities of artists and the institutions that preserve the cultural identity of the country.  One of the main goals of Australia’s Office of the Department of the Arts, as they unveiled as they unveiled their National Cultural Policy is to “Support excellence and the special role of artists and their creative collaborators as the source of original work and ideas, including telling Australian stories” (Department of the Prime Minister Office of the Arts 2011).  Moreover, according to the data released on that Policy, the Australian Government makes a significant investment in Australian artists and arts organisations through a wide range of programs and activities. One can say that culture has at least as much claim as any other aspect of the Australian economy.  In 2011–12, more than $164 million was given to the arts sector, including the country’s orchestras, the opera, other music artists and organisations, visual artists and organisations, theatre companies and artists, dance artists and companies, writers, publishers and literary organisations, multi-artform artists and organisations, and activities involcing sector building and audience development initiatives and programs.  This funding has enabled the creation of 7656 new works and support for 1922 grants or projects, attracting 13 million people to attend art-related events, exhibitions and performances.  A significant number also accessed work online, in print and through broadcast.  Grants were provided to 908 individual artists, and funding to Major Performing Arts companies alone supported the employment of more than 2700 people.  Cultural funding in Australia totals $6.6 billion a year across federal, state and local governments. This figure covers everything from the ABC and ‘heritage’ funding  for museums, libraries, zoos, the environment, etc.; to the relatively small sums given to the arts.  In 2011, cultural industries directly employed 531,000 people, and indirectly generated a further 3.7 million jobs. Copyright industries were worth $93.2 billion to the Australian economy in 2007, with exports worth more than $500 million.  All these data shows the vibrancy of the interaction between the artists and the audience in Australia and with the government strongly backing the arts, this bodes well for the continued development and evolution of arts and culture in the country.

Why We Should Support the Arts Even When They Are Unprofitable

            However, not everything is rosy when it comes to funding the arts and culture.  Sure, many forms of art are supported lavishly and without question, but what if that type of artistic activity is not profitable, and not very attractive to the masses.  Should the government continue funding these unprofitable artistic endeavors and just cover the losses generated by them?  Are these artistic activities worthy to be preserved, studied and presented to the people, even if they don’t generate as much buzz as more profitable artistic endeavors?

Much like industry, art is basically a system too, essentially a network of interdependent relationships composed firstly of the artists with themselves and the world in which they live, and then with the artwork they create.  Then there are those who experience the art and who then create relationships between the art, the world and themselves.  There is a giving and receiving happening in this dynamic structure of exchange in which order and disorder are in constant tension and flux. 

If one relates arts and culture to research and development in relation to industry, one can be able to appreciate what it does to the common people. The restless experimentation of the artists generates vitality to the wider culture, and the arts, even if they are not always profitable in themselves, can lead to highly profitable innovations.

Samples of Artistic and Cultural Endeavors That May Not Be Profitable

Museums

            The most obvious example of a nonprofitable artistic institution is the museum. The most interesting observation the writer encountered when making this paper regarding the profitability of museums is this:

            “My observation, after thirty years of working in the field, is that museums have an amazing ability to survive in the most adverse environments. They are the cockroaches of the nonprofit world--sometimes it really does seem like you can’t kill them with an atomic blast. Most of the time some improbable deus ex machina saves the day: for example an unexpected cash gift or a free building. Mind you, this often only saves the distressed museum from closure—it does not cure the underlying dysfunction. The museum may simply struggle along for another ten years before the next potentially fatal crisis.” (Merritt, Elizabeth. 2013).

 

            For museums, it has come down to survivability, but the writer feels that museums have to succeed as well, and to be able to attract more people into their space.  To be able to attract more people, the museum can do the following. First, it can offer core services that people depend on and need to survive. These may include jobs for employees and programs that address a societal gap which other organizations or businesses are not able to provide. An example can be when a museum provides job training for at-risk youth and the community relies on the museum to be able to consistently do this.  By doing this, it raises the social capital of the museum in the eyes of the community it is in.  Second, the museum can provide services that make them look awesome.  The museum then has to identify what drives people through their door, identify the exhibits that got them excited, and allows the people who visit them to connect passionately with the content.  It’s not so bad to be labelled as hip and interesting. 

Indigenous Australian Art

Many Australians would like to think that a shift in how white Australians perceive, understand and respect indigenous art and culture has already happened but the reality is that most Australians allow past ideologies and outmoded beliefs to rule their judgments and opinions.  For example, one of the strongest of these beliefs has always been that the indigenous people must be kept in their place – on the fringes of the white society.  White society does not like it when Aborigines demand their right to be visible in their own land and to determine how they will be represented.  There have been many attempts by the 'white' art world to homogenise

Aboriginal art.  After all, images like a fish, is still a fish, which is wrong since all indigenous artists are connected to specific lands which contain sacred sites and are more identified as distinctive 'art. The styles and specific cultural meanings are given to the symbols and icons that each community portrays within their art.  Even though two communities may share a symbol, the exact meaning for the symbol is clearly defined and particular to each community's land, stories, traditions and creation myths. 

            Unfortunately, the white art world of Australia has arbitrarily defined and divided

indigenous art by divorcing it from its essence, the artists who actually create the work.  They have defined indigenous art as either traditional, meaning, created by indigenous artists who come from regional and remote areas of Australia and who are viewed as authentic and real.  Essentially, it means, that they look stereotypically ‘blak’.  (The term 'blak' was developed by

artist Destiny Deacon as a part of a symbolic but potent strategy of reclaiming colonialist language to create means of self-definition and expression.)

            Aboriginal art has been seen as being of value culturally and economically to the Australian white art world, but contemporary work has been totally devalued even though it is also created by indigenous artists who tend to come from the urban centres of Australia.  Their work is more often than not perceived as inauthentic/not 'blak' enough and culturally vague,

unspecific and far too political.  They are also often seen as unable to attract big buyers that can allow their work to fetch higher value prices.  That way of thinking defeats the real purpose of creating Aboriginal art, which is to represent the true soul and spirit of the aboriginal people of Australia.  By becoming some sort of commodity that can be traded and whose prices can be artificially fluctuated to support the whims of an elitist art world, it cheapens the contributions of Aboriginal artists to the whole art world in general and just puts it as a commercial activity and not really an authentic artistic endeavour.

Conclusion

Many local and international studies have outlined the benefits of funding culture and art, demonstrated its positive effects in educational results to raising real estate prices, improving mental health to urban and enabling regional renewal, promoting economic productivity and decreasing crime rates.  It is also a good thing that Australians have an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards the arts. In a survey that looked at participation in visual arts and crafts, music, dance, theatre and literature, all key art forms supported by the Australia Council, the results showed that 38 per cent of Australians describe themselves as art lovers, for whom the arts are an integral part of their lives and only 17 per cent reported estrangement, believing that the arts attract pretentious elites, and a tiny 7 per cent feel no connection at all. Overall, 93 per cent of Australians reported engaging with the arts in the previous year. In fact, in 2009, more than 11 million people attended art galleries, more than the ten million that went to watch football.  With this data, it makes for compelling argument to support public funding for the arts since that is the only way in which the pleasures, rewards and liberations of art become available not only to the wealthy, but also to the normal working people since high ticket prices can make it elitist.  Furthermore, state funding is crucial to arts education since it decentralises the arts, allowing regional Australians not only to encounter their own culture but to create their own work and reach their own potentials. It was this state funding that has permitted regional companies like the Geelong-based Back to Back Theatre company, one of Australia’s biggest international success stories, to create work with its ensemble of disabled actors and allow audiences in Europe and America to receive them and enjoy their work.  It is also the funding that has given international success to the Bangarra Dance Theatre, which works closely with remote Indigenous communities to create their performances, or the long-term community-based work of Big hART. It funds touring and stimulates arts practice in culturally deprived regional areas, as well as outreach and educational programs in schools and the wider community.  Without public funding, many people would never encounter art at all.

Finally, art should be supported even if they are not profitable because every human being has what one can call the cultural right, which is the right of any person to access their potential as intellectual and creative citizens of their region and the wider world.  Through funding, one can realize this argument on human possibility, as a society and as individuals.  It emphasizes that people have a right to culture as a crucial dimension of their lives. It’s this notion of culture as a human right that most underlies contemporary public and philanthropic support for the arts.  With this backdrop, it is heartening to note that Creative Australia has been aiming to build on that foundation.  It has proposed a plan for the next decade, to ensure that Australian artists continue to operate at the highest levels, that companies and institutions are sustainable, that cultural products are innovative and engaging, that Australian identity and stories are not swamped in a globe awash with cultural products, that the full diversity of our society is represented and that citizens have opportunities to be both creators and audiences. These artistic and cultural activities will further reinforce the Australia brand as a creative nation.

Miss World 2013 - Megan Young

The social media here in the Philippines exploded when Megan Young won the Miss World title in Bali a few days ago.  It was the first title our country ever had in that competition.  Finally we have that title after missing it a few years ago with Gwen Ruais. Anyway, Megan is a local celebrity here herself, although before that crown, she was like a minor celebrity, but now with that crown, I'm sure all the TV channels here, which are currently dominating the entertainment here in the Philippines, are all scrambling over themselves to get her!