Circumstance is Political

Adrian Roque U. Turay Gil Mari Santero

Student - BPA 3-1 Professor - SOCI 20013
 Circumstance is Political
By Adrian Roque U. Turay

Why do we find ourselves in the circumstances that we are in? I’m not exactly sure myself. My
circumstances might be direct results of my previous actions, or maybe it is predetermined by
society for a Filipino young-adult Public Administration major. The question about our
circumstances proves to be too hard to come up with an answer by just examining my own
circumstances. James Baldwin famously said to a friend convincing him to settle down that the
place in which he’ll fit will not exist until he makes it, not alone, but with the grace of those who
have kept on working. His thoughts exhibit a sense of realization that there is a necessity to
create a space for minorities and outcasts like him because of an existing structure that inhibits
them to fit in the general society. This implies that his individual circumstance, which is also
shared by many, is caused by the structure that inhibits him to fit in. But then, he says that he
must make it, though not alone. Thus implying that an individual, with the help of others, has
the ability to create a circumstance favorable for himself. This idea is echoed by his peer in the
civil rights movement, Maya Angelou, by saying that “What you're supposed to do when you
don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.” Both
ideas establish that there is something in the society that puts us in a circumstance where we are
prompted to act.

Carol Hanisch and her peers from the feminist movement certainly heeded Maya Angelou’s call
for action. Hanisch famously coined the phrase ‘personal is political’ in her essay of the same
name. The phrase is extremely intriguing as it is as open ended as it is assertive. In the context of
the feminist movement, as intended by Hanisch’s 1969 essay, it asserts that the women’s personal
problems are political problems. Which is a claim rooted from Hanisch’s observations with her
therapy groups. In a way, talking about their personal problems becomes a political action as
they cannot solve these problems in a personal manner but in a political manner through
collective action embodied in the feminist movement.

Hanisch’s claims might be politically controversial in 1969, but this is already conceptually
established. C Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination conceptualizes that there should be a
balance in understanding social structures and individuals in order to fully understand the
dynamic relationship between them, ultimately viewing individual and social circumstances in a
broad view. Additionally, Mills’ Sociological Imagination establishes that history, and how
individuals learn it, affects the dynamic between their circumstances and their attitude towards
societal circumstances.

I personally agree with most, if not all, of the concepts that I presented. Yet I am troubled with
how an important aspect of our humanity is somehow left out in the conversation about
circumstances. I do believe that our personal problems are reflective of societal structures and
thus having an impact on our (both as individuals and as a society) circumstances, but I believe
actions also do impact our circumstances. For as much as we are spectators in society, we are
also actors in it. We act as much as we experience and therefore our actions might need to be
included in the examination of circumstances. I would like to establish that the circumstance is
political, with the ‘personal’ as part of the ‘circumstance’. This is in no way an attempt to reject
the former ‘personal is political’ phrase, but rather an attempt to recreate the former’s attempt to
understand women’s personal problems vis-a-vis political problems now into understanding
individual circumstances, holistically, vis-a-vis socio-political problems and structures.
Additionally I want to establish that circumstance represents both individual experiences as
well as actions. In the end, this paper is not an attempt to magically understand every single
circumstance but an attempt to create a process that will help us understand at least some of our
circumstances.

Individual’s actions and experiences reflect, at the very least, the existence of socio-political
structures and systems that affect them. I am not arguing that individuals do not have free will, I
am attempting to shed light on the fact that there are several systems that mingle with our free
will before we decide on our actions. Contrary to cinematic and artistic actors, our role as actors
in the society are influenced by structures but not limited by them. Experiences on the other hand
are more acknowledged to be external factors with individuals having little to no control on
them. While that is true, I would also want for us to reflect on our role in the dynamic of being a
spectator in society. Understanding the dynamics of individual actions and experiences vis-a-vis
socio-political structures and systems culminates to our understanding of an individual’s
circumstance in society, or at the very least its existence.

What are actions anyway? I would like to characterize ‘actions’ in this model as any voluntary
activity executed or not by an individual to achieve a goal. Some of these actions by individuals
reflect the experiences that they had received from society. Individuals, in fact, adapt their
actions because of social influence.

A study in 2013 by Moussaïd et al titled “Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of
Opinion Formation” determines two main elements of amplification loops that drive the
formation of opinions among individuals which are the expert effect and the majority effect.
Both are social influences that prompts an individual to form an opinion on a certain matter
though differing in reasons. The expert effect is an influence caused by the opinion coming from
people which the society calls experts for having adequate skills and knowledge on certain areas
of knowledge. Majority effect on the other hand is an influence caused by the sheer number of
people believing or acting in an opinion, making it seem the right opinion. One might argue that
opinion formation is not an action. It is in the first place, as it is an act made by the individual by
choice to determine what concept or idea to believe in. But more importantly, opinions are the
basis of individual actions.

Let us take the case for the opinion formation in the Philippines regarding COVID-19
vaccinations as an example for analyzing the dynamics between social influences and opinion
formation. We Filipinos received the first batch of Sinovac vaccines that were purchased from
China by the 29th of March, 2021. By May, Social Weather Stations (SWS) had released results
from their surveys claiming that only 32% of Filipinos were willing to get vaccinated against the
COVID-19 virus. But by November of the same year, Filipino willingness to get vaccinated rose
up to 64%. The expert effect and majority effect both played roles in this spread of opinion
throughout the population. We can see the expert effect being applied by various sources but
ultimately by experts in media who continuously promote getting vaccinated. Whether it be
nationally-known doctors in the news urging everyone to get vaccinated or local clinic doctors
encouraging their patients to get the vaccine, the expert effect has been an amplifier in the
establishment of the opinion that it is good to be vaccinated as a reliable truth. The majority
effect cannot be downplayed as well. Whether it be direct promotion of celebrities from the
memeable Baron Geisler being serious on promoting the message to the constant conversation of
talk show hosts like in Eat Bulaga about being vaccinated or even just the myday posts of your
friends posing with their OOTD in the vaccination sites, these public actions contributed to the
promotion of the opinion. Now this is not to say that all who share the opinion will automatically
get vaccinated as different people still face different individual situations, but they all share the
circumstance of acting to believe in the pro-vaccination opinion through social influence.

Probably the most undervalued factor of individual actions is the society’s history. All people,
regardless of nationality, creed, race, religion, or sexuality are influenced by it. Let me note that
history, in the context of an individual, becomes subject to interpretation. History, in reality, can
only be one thing, the truth of the past events that came before ours. But we as humans are most
of the time incapable of knowing history in its full reality, given that we are not omniscient and
are limited to sources, thus we make do with what information we have. Thus the history that we
perceive is limited to our capacity. Taking this to account with the fact that we sometimes act and
create judgements according to our understanding of history is fair but incredibly dangerous. I
say so because it is only fair that we act depending on what we know, but then again, it is equally
dangerous to act depending on a reality that we may just as well come up with.

In Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditation essay in 1874 “On the Use and Abuse of History for
Life” where he criticizes historic academics for abusing and making history too difficult. He
argues that history should be helpful to life instead of being a burden, he identifies a useful
trinity of methods for history: a monumental method, an antiquarian method, and a critical
method. Monumental history heeds our necessity for human faith, a method wherein we as
humans re-affirm ourselves of our momentous legends and myths to remind us of what
adversities we can conquer and feats we can achieve. Antiquarian history heeds our necessity for
identity, it is the method wherein we take into account the historical culture of those before us
and evaluate from whence we had come. Critical history heeds our necessity for change, it is the
method wherein we determine the wickedness and condemn the atrocities of the past and thus
break away from them. Although it might be extremely hard, perhaps balancing this trinity is the
optimal method to use history for our actions in our individual lives.

We might not realize it but we are likely to use the histrinity of methods for history in our
actions, though it might not be as balanced as Nietszche would recommend. I would go so far as
to suggest that this trinity is not only methods on how we perceive history but the three forms
that history manifests itself to us. History, again in this sense, becomes subjective to what an
individual identifies as historically believable. As a nation of Christians, I think it is fair to state
that a huge number of us Filipinos use the method of monumental history to influence our
actions. In Christian faith, it is believed that Jesus and his disciples once lived throughout history.
The teachings of Christian practice are then modeled upon the kindness and perfection of Jesus
Christ. Thus, Christians examine the momentous history of their religion and therefore act in
accordance to it. The method of antiquarian history on the other hand is used by all to determine
our cultural identities, though some more than others. This method sometimes lead to biased
judgment, as the individual using it might try to focus on what he identifies with in his history
and turn a blind eye on those he doesn’t. Critical history method is a stark contrast to antiquarian
because it seeks to identify the mistakes of the past and make a judgment out of it. This however
also may lead to biased judgment as it may only determine the events in the past that are
detestable in today’s standards. These two clashing methods can be seen in Filipino attitudes
towards the Marcos tyranny. One might argue that it is a stereotype, but nonetheless it is evident
that the Solid North sentiment of the Ilocanos toward supporting the Marcos legacy still stands
strong today. The decision of the individuals to support the sentiment that Ferdinand Marcos’s
leadership was great is rooted in the inclination to use the antiquarian method. Most people who
identify with the Solid North sentiment are people who came from the Ilocos Regions who were
unaffected by the tyrannical actions of Marcos when in power and even experienced prosperity
in the region in the tyrants’ regime. Thus when using the antiquarian method, these people
determine the prosperity and pride in the identity of the lakay’s legacy and most fail to realize the
harms those prosperous times came along with for other people. People identifying as
Anti-Marcos on the other hand use critical history as a method of identifying the wrongdoings of
the tyrant while denouncing almost every grain of that regime’s success in an valiant effort to
destroy its legacy and prevent another of its kind to arise. I will not point out what is right or
wrong as it will not be beneficial for the realm of this discussion, I am only using these
circumstances to prove my argument that history stands as an influencer in our actions, as it is a
socio-political structure that affects our circumstances. It is notable though, as Nietzsche argues,
that we have a choice to balance out how history affects us with the trinity.

The other end of circumstance is experience. This end is already well argued for as it is the
predecessor of the concept of this discussion. In Hanisch’s ‘personal is political’ and the
continuous arguments and actions of the feminist movement, they had already established that
the experiences of the people are reflective of socio-political structures, at least in the context of
their struggle. Yet the establishment of an argument being true in one area of society is not
enough to support its larger context of my claim with experience being a part of the
circumstance’s dynamic vis-a-vis socio-political structure.

Whether it be good or bad experiences that individuals receive from society, it is undeniable that
it is the society and its structures that has the power to subject individuals to experiences in the
first place. Michel Foucault’s concept of pouvoir-savoir or power-knowledge reveals to us that
power-knowledge is a constant dynamic throughout history and society. In its simplest essence,
those in power use the knowledge it gathers to propagate more power.
Foucault discusses in Madness and Civilization how madness depends on the society it exists in.
His analysis reveals the poignant reality that society determines who is mad and what to do with
them. At the early ages of human history, ‘madmen’ or in people who suffer from mental
illnesses, in most cultures, were subjected to the same treatment with normal people due to the
fact that the cases for their behaviors haven’t yet been fully understood. People who we would
nowadays diagnose with mental disorders were subjected with the same rewards and
punishments equal to other people who may have not. Around the eighteenth century however,
as Psychiatry’s school of thought and practice with the alienists had been born, people diagnosed
to have psychiatric conditions were given different treatment from other people. In those ages,
most people with such conditions were subjected to standards which we might consider
inhumane nowadays. In the modern day and age, people with mental health issues are treated
more humanely and normally.
The different states of mental health have existed from the time of our predecessors to ours, they
might have not been diagnosed then, but somehow their mental health issues have the same
symptoms as some of ours. And yet there is a glaring discrepancy on how people with mental
health issues were treated then and now. This is where the influence of the social structures and
knowledge-power play a huge role. In the early ages of human civilization, society had a huge
focus on the community. Communities back then were made up of people with different roles to
contribute to the function of the community. Taking into account that mental health issues exist
in a spectrum, some people suffering from it at these times also were in a spectrum of roles that
were beneficial for the communities to those that aren’t. For instance, a farmer might be
suffering from depression back then but still doing his role in the community while a drunkard,
though may be despised by the community, has been accepted by the community into having that
role. Society around the industrial revolutions placed a heavy burden on productivity. Thus a
dangerous concept that people who weren’t productive were cast out was put into place. Those
who don't have the mental capacity and weren’t in good mental condition to be productive would
be subjected to a different system while those suffering from mental illnesses but are still
productive should endure or risk being subjected into that system. That system was to put
unproductive people into asylums and other forms of societal isolation in order to ensure that
they do not cause trouble for the productive population. Society in the modern age however
places a huge emphasis on liberty. People of today possess privileges to be accepted as
productive members of society despite some people struggling with mental health conditions. In
western societies, therapy is even being normalized as a tool to improve mental health thus
indicating the shift to oppressive treatment of mental health conditions in a more normalized
manner.

Power lies behind where society places it. And thus an individual’s experience is influenced by
the power-wielding structures of society. Foucault explores this concept in another aspect in
society. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault points out that the penal system not only punishes the
soul of an individual but creates it for the individual as well. The penal system, as a structure of
society, forges the psyche and behavior of the individuals under it. Our idea of the penal system
tends to be a cruel system of punishment that does not make the people subjected to it better but
just punished. Yet in some societies, their penal system focuses on rehabilitation and rightfully
achieves so. Norway’s prison system is one of these structures. In fact, the rate of prisoners being
rearrested or recidivism in Norway dropped to 20%. Aside from humanely built rooms, the
prisoners are subjected to different activities and programs that contribute to their rehabilitation.
This manifests the power that social structures can wield depending on what those in power
decide their focuses to be.

In the end, us individuals have the capacity to act and process emotions and thoughts without the
influence of society. Self Determination Theory teaches us that we have intrinsic and extrinsic
goals and thus acting in either or both. Some of these goals may not be influenced at all by any
socio-political structures and events. Additionally, some of the circumstances that we might face
in life can be just by chance, total absurdity, or irrational. Thus this establishes that not every
single circumstance that we find ourselves into is inflicted on us by society. Yet I stand by my
statement that circumstance is political, which is not an all encompassing metaphysical claim.
But a statement that we may find useful when we examine the circumstances that we are facing.
At the end of the day, as Hanisch wanted the women to examine their personal experience and
determine the political structures behind those, I want us as individuals to be able to examine our
personal circumstances and determine if there is and which socio-political structures influence
them so that we can move forward to change or preserve them.
References

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