The Year of the Pigs

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The Year of the Pigs
Opinion by Maximo Tumbali, Forum Member

The year 2019 has this appellation in the 12-year zodiac cycle of the Chinese calendar—the “Year of the Pig.” It’s a big deal for those who believe in astrology. Taking into consideration the characteristics of a pig, astrology followers have noted down ways on how to approach, live, and deal with the current year as relayed to them by their favorite astrologers, along with what to expect during the whole year.

                                   IMAGE CREDIT: DEPOSITPHOTOS.COM


Be that as it may, what I find quite striking is the use of the pig as a metaphor. It’s a very widely encompassing metaphor, for if we are to observe the nature of a pig and how it behaves, this animal behaves in much the same way that many of us humans conduct ourselves. We actually can speak or write volumes on this commonality.

But I specifically would like to dwell on how pigs and how we ourselves handle our personal lives. Pigs litter; so do we. Pigs are voracious; so are we. Pigs are unsanitary, noisy, and unruly; we’re not much different. Aren’t these enough to justify the direct application of the Pig Metaphor to ourselves?

We have problems on obesity or of being overweight—an outgrowth of uncontrolled food intake, of course—that’s very much reflective of how a pig grows quickly owing to its insatiable appetite for food. We love to call other people “pigs” when they consume more than what their tummies actually need. We dub them pigheaded when, despite warnings, they don’t stop acting like pigs. So how are we to deal with this type of people?

                                             IMAGE CREDIT: GLENDALE LAPASTORA

TUMULTUOUS ANNUAL BLACK NAZARENE PROCESSION IN MANILA, JANUARY 2019

No less than Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte himself couldn’t help getting miffed and disappointed by people who, despite their avowal of the Roman Catholic faith, behave worse than pigs. One glaring example were the heaps of garbage left strewn all over Luneta (Rizal Park) by the devotees of the Black Nazarene during the recent Traslaciones—that irrationally tumultuous yearly event in early January commemorating the devotion of many Filipino Catholics to Jesus Christ.

                                                IMAGE CREDIT: EDD GUMBAN, PHILIPPINE STAR

MOUNDS OF TRASH LEFT ON MANILA’S THOROUGHFARES
BY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF RELIGIOUS DEVOTEES

The massive heaps of garbage left on Manila’s thoroughfares by the tens of thousands of devotees who participated in this religious procession are, to put it ever so mildly, a blatant manifestation of how people totally overlook their moral and civic duties when in the throes of their religious fervor. It’s a patent and embarrassing contradiction between what they do in real life and the misdeeds they unconsciously do when giving vent to their fanatic impulses.

And when we shift our attention to the government sector in the Philippines, it’s no surprise that we find people who are as greedy as pigs in almost all public institutions, agencies, and offices. We find most of them well-entrenched in all of the three government branches—the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. These branches are, so to speak, well-furnished and air-conditioned pigpens in stark contrast to where the majority of the poor Filipinos live in the country.

Many of these pigs greedily fatten themselves at the expense of the less fortunate in our society, shamelessly gobbling at every opportunity the taxes collected from the working poor. Is it any wonder that not a few of our legislators today are squabbling like pigs over allocations of their so-called pork barrel? Indeed, the ubiquitous presence of these pigs in government makes corruption a perennial problem in the country, making 2019 likely to be just another “Year of the Pigs” as it has almost always been in years previous.

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Worst, some politicians currently gunning for public positions in this year’s national midterm elections have also begun slaughtering their prospective opponents like pigs. These politicians look at every elective position in government as a pen where a pig can do anything to satisfy its greed.

We are all in for an unspeakable tragedy if we can find no way to purge or eliminate all these pigs in government. It’s really high time for the poor masses to contemplate putting up a slaughterhouse for all these insatiable hogs.