Answers:

Jose Rizal’s method of arguing about the backwardness of the colonizers’ notion of the
indolence of the Filipinos and colonialism became an avenue in learning the realities of their
actions. The common idea of the laziness of Filipinos was how the Philippine society then had
an ugly and distorted view of the masses, which is also among the reasons why the friars had
the audacity to speak ill of them - because they thought ill of them. What Rizal did to speak of
the realities of the Filipinos by looking at their perspective than the perspective of the friars had
given an amount of justice to those who are accused of being lazy when in fact they are only
products of oppression that are either even more hardworking or is subjected to vices because
of one general reason: they had no choice. They were not given any choices in which the friars
had deprived them of and judged them by the consequence. This issue of oppression is not
alien to the condition of the Philippine society today.

Numerous intellectual and physical oppression, like in Rizal’s time, are still issues of the
Philippine society today. According to Michael Pante, the social ills Rizal had fought against still
exist and are prevalent in terms of neocolonialism and silencing dissent.1 For instance, the
international relations of the Philippines with China have crossed over boundaries as China
invades the West Philippine Sea disrupting underwater life, destroying natural resources, and
costing fishermen limited areas to enter in the shoal. A fisherman in Masinloc said that the “coral
reefs of the shoal have dwindled” because of the Chinese’s destructive harvesting practices. 2
This issue is relevant to Rizal because of the similarities of how China takes advantage of the
Philippines because the administration shows a sense of submissiveness in lieu of creating a
bigger tension within both countries. This submissiveness, especially of the President, to China,
gives China the initial perspective that the Philippines is weak, therefore, it is ok to suppress the
Filipinos their territorial rights and livelihood. Aside from this, the class struggle between the
privileged and the poor is also reflected in the present administration. The drug war of the
administration is anti-poor, as the majority of drug users detained and killed are the poor. What
about the rich and powerful drug lords who source the drug users’ supply? Do they kill them
mercilessly as well? Without exercising their right of due process and trial. Because of the lack
of due process, the poor have been killed because they are wrongly accused of being a drug
addict. Why is this the case? Because the administration has created the image of the poor as
the dirt of society, Just as the friars restricted the territory of the Filipinos and how they restrict
the Filipinos of their right to trial. The problem with the Philippines is that they base capabilities,
actions, and other things on a singular perspective. The violence and oppression came from the
idea of strength imposed by western culture. If the ideas of Rizal were to be considered as a
lens in analyzing the social situation of the Philippines, then oppression would not even be
considered as a possible solution to end international and local issues.

However, analysis in Rizal’s sociological views requires not only those who are privileged
enough to enter tertiary education and those who continue to study the problems of the
Philippines. His ideas should be taught to the general public, as a secondary compensation to
the Filipino’s ignorance of oppression and manipulative/fraudulent public service and relations.
The primary should be focused on discussing the present realities of the Filipinos and the
causes of the problem. This may be difficult for the general public to understand as they are
alive in different realities, in which some are only proactively meddling in others. This idea of
knowledge among different realities is presented in the social construction of reality by Peter
Berger and Thomas Luckmann. If we are taught how to use Rizal’s method of analysis in seeing
the situation of the Filipinos from a different perspective, and how we can address the issues by
finding a different avenue of reference that may hinder us from judgement without validity, we
can analyze better the different realities present to other people and how we are interconnected
by these realities as we have constructed them from our knowledge of Rizal’s social criticisms -
and the greatest reality of the Philippines is poverty.

Poverty in the Philippines, using Jose Rizal’s method of social criticism, is caused by factors
such as corruption, lack of quality education, contractualization, capitalism, etc. These factors
that cause poverty are social constructs, which also makes poverty a social construct - they
exist because people decide they exist as agents for human development, which is where the
backwardness of judgement can be observed. Although poverty is not a choice for the poor,
there are patterns in which the society contributes to its existence. In Hans’ “The Uses of
Poverty”, poverty supplies different needs and advancements of living for the middle to high
class.3 In return, the middle to high class contributes to its existence by benefiting from them.
Therefore, Poverty exists because of society’s equal decision to allow it to exist. The beauty of
poverty being a social construct is that it can un-constructed. 4 By correcting the evils of present
social constructs (corruption, capitalism, etc) that benefit from poverty and elevating the uses of
poverty to meet the needs of lacking access to healthcare, good governance, and education,
such as we shaped Poverty’s existence, we can also destroy it.