"The unexamined life is not worth living."
- Socrates
February 14 - Valentines Day, a day where people feel the aura of love everywhere. Restaurants are fully-booked, cinema queue lines are so long, and roses and chocolates are very in-demand. Everyone seemed so busy especially those who look forward to a date planned with a loved one. Yet, for us, it's not just a day for dates, it's the best time to know more about love and philosophy through the 3rd Philosophers' Rally.
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| From L-R: Omar Manigo, Jessa Velle Ituriaga, Jenessa Jao and me :) |
The Philosophers' Rally is an annual event organized by the Philosophy Department of Ateneo de Davao University which started last 2013. It's always held on Valentines Day. One might be wondering why it is called a "rally" rather than just a forum/conference/seminar. According to my Philo prof., it's actually called as such 'cause the Philo dept. is striving to arouse the people's (esp. students) enthusiasm to philosophize through talks about love, philosophy and other fields. It's a campaign that they want to continue since it showed positive results for the last two years: more students submitted their papers for presentation and more have attended the rally and began the process of philosophizing afterwards.
This year's Philosophers' Rally was held at Finster Auditorium. Although it was Saturday and most of all Valentines Day, many have attended and showed enthusiasm for the event.
The program started around 9am and the talk commenced afterwards. This year's speaker was the chair of AdMU's Philo Department - Dr. Agustin Martin Rodriguez. His talk was entitled "Love at End of Life as we know it".
He emphasized many points in his discussion including how the world as we know will soon come to an end because of the current threats of global warming, end of oil, and water scarcity. He also pointed out many ironies in our world such as how civilizations were made for our aspirations but how these same civilizations also end them, how the Philippines experiences increasing economic growth now but fails to address the prevalent problem of poverty, how people are too "westernized" that they don't seem to see the problem of consumerism, and how people became so addictive in taking selfies as a way of showing their existence to the world.
"Kakainin mo na nga lang yung cupcake, pipiktyuran mo pa."
He then discussed the subject of the day - love, defining it as simply 'opening to the other as other' and how we can find our self by forgetting about our self. He stressed that the kind of love we need today is not the romantic/valentine one which is obsessed with the "I" (e.g. "I bought her roses = I'm so thoughtful"), the kind of love we need is the pure, genuine love that opens, responds and serves the other. Dr. Gus ended his talk by challenging everyone to "relearning love".
After the talk, a concurrent session followed wherein some students presented their philosophical papers. The concurrent session was a disappointment for me because some of the presenters were not that prepared, evidenced by their poor presentation and lack of answers for the moderator and the audience.
Despite of this, overall, I truly enjoyed the Philosophers' Rally. Celebrating V-day will never be the same, for now I know that it gets more fun by learning more about love and the self through philosophizing.
Hope to see you next year! ;)
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