Jose Rizal's untimely death is the greatest tragedy of his life.

The societal disease he so accurately

identified in his two novels, Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo, never had a chance to develop into
anything more virulent, tyrannical, or controlling before his untimely death. Having paid the ultimate
price for his country's freedom, he now lay helpless in the face of the resurrected social disease that
threatened the very lives of the people whose liberation he had sought. Rizal, who was born into wealth,
was removed from the everyday struggles of the vast majority of Filipinos at the time. To the extent that
he was able to do so, Rizal exemplified the scholar who holds the view that the educated person,
regardless of their race, is above bias.

His time spent in academia in Europe solidified his belief in the absolute reliability of Science, not only as
a truth-finder but also as a liberator from tyranny. This view was obviously grounded in a presumption
that the colonizer possessed a wellspring of kindness and simple goodness that would compel him to
right the wrongs he had committed against the Filipinos. Rizal's appeal for change and integration is
evidence of his conviction. Before he passed away, he publicly rejected the revolution. His passing,
however, was the final nail in the coffin for the Spanish colonial administration in the Philippines. After
the tyrannical priests were overthrown, all of the feudalistic structures that they had helped establish in
the pursuit of absolute control of power and profit collapsed as well. In the wake of Rizal's passing two
years later, the inauguration of the Malolos Congress sparked a wave of optimism across the country.
With the colonial crisis seemingly resolved, it appeared that freedom and democracy were here to stay.
One hundred and fifty years after Rizal's birth, even the most cynical critic would have to admit that the
problems are not yet finished, were never gone, and have merely been molecularly rebuilt into
something scarcely identifiable and, therefore, generally accepted.

Given that only via evaluating the past can we rationalize societal change, history is a potent instrument
for both peace and progress. However, one must be harshly critical in order to rid history of its
teachings. Become a Rizal figure. An emerging colonialism can be seen here. It amounts to stifling
dissenting voices. Assassination is used to quiet the critics. Death, like that of Rizal, is used to quiet
critics. Similar to the Cotabato broadcasters who were gunned down and buried. It's unlikely that Rizal
ever had to deal with a crisis that was ultimately determined by the state of the financial markets or the
banking system. A crisis occurs when either of these two financial institutions experiences severe
difficulties and begins to fail. Too often the government uses taxpayer money to rescue failing financial
organizations. It follows that the wealthy grow even wealthier while the poor fall further and further
behind. Colonialism undertones? Filipinos now have access to a wider variety of employment than ever
before, many of which require them to be technically savvy and able to access information and
communication at the tap of a screen. It has resulted in a high demand for technically savvy Filipinos to
work in call centers, giving the impression that the Philippines is a provider of cutting-edge forms of
labor. High technology, however, does not guarantee financial success. A low-skill, low-paying, non-
unionized work market is a reality. This misleading technological "bonanza" would have been obvious to
a modern Rizal. For as long as he could remember, Rizal argued that schooling was the best route to
national liberation. He had long since passed away by the time the United States established a public
school system that made it possible for even the impoverished to receive an education. Unfortunately,
the modern public school system is not a good place to learn analytical thinking and creative problem
solving. In today's culture, education is primarily the catalyst for the dissemination of knowledge
essential to the established order. A government that publicly claims to be democratic while outlawing
the rights of its own citizens (the working class) is not a democracy at all. A modern-day Rizal would
have no trouble locating his Capitan Tiago groveling before business corporation owners and bending to
their whims for financial gain in every facet of government service. Will Rizal be startled by the agenda
of globalization, which assumes that nationalism and protectionism are incompatible with social and
economic development? Rizal was labeled a national hero and guardian of the Filipino people. As Rizal
pointed out in his writings, Filipinos are not inherently sluggish. In defense of the Filipino people, he laid
forth the factors at play in their daily life. Still, he placed the majority of the blame on the colonial
economy for the deterioration of social norms in the Philippines. Nowadays, it's common to hear that
Filipinos are culturally inferior, responsible for their own plight. This presumption is sometimes tacitly
supported by educational institutions. The English spoken by the privileged is referred to as proper
usage, whereas that spoken by the masses is deemed substandard slang. The subtleties of the wealthy
are now a measure of social standing. Many Filipinos were disenfranchised because of their language
skills due to an old colonial justification meant to demonstrate the colonizer's supremacy.

Rizal foresaw a long time ago that the colonizer would need to teach the Filipino to despise his own
heritage in order to succeed. The invaders bolstered the Filipinos' tendency to reject their own culture
by spreading the misconception that it was unattractive and subpar. Rizal portrayed the bitterness and
isolation of the people in his works Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo in a way that had never been
done before. Instead, than trying to transform society by battling against existing institutions, he took a
reformist approach by working within them. The plan was unsuccessful. Maybe remembering the
ineffectiveness of the propaganda movement, people under the American rule altered tactics and
instead relied on legislation and judicial litigation to secure constitutional rights. In later times, direct
action strategies emerged, tapping into the potential influence of the masses along political and
economic lines. Mass civil disobedience is an example of this, as it would cause the kind of disruption to
society that would get the government's notice and prompt corrective measures.

Heroes exist outside the norm. As heroes are needed, it's clear that the government isn't doing enough
to fix the issues plaguing society. As was the case during Rizal's lifetime, governments frequently aid and
abet the issues they create for the sake of their own gain at the expense of the populace. If you read and
reread Rizal, especially his novels (twin vortices of truth), you will be drawn deeper into a different
hidden plane of philosophy that is so unlike Rizal, and more of the dark, brooding filibustero we have
come to know as Simoun, whose final purpose in life was to infiltrate the colonial authorities and spread
the fire of revolution among his people People like Rizal are dangerous because they threaten the
wealth and power of those who use oppression to keep their subjects in line.

Even if Rizal is already dead, they must still stop him. However, how can they oppose such a well
recognized national hero as Rizal? They won't be able to stop him, but they can lessen his legacy's blow.
By surrounding Rizal with a thick and obfuscating complexity of minutiae, Rizal will become little more
than a school subject to be memorized, respected, and finally discarded as an anachronism incompatible
with the modern computer age.