By Rex Catubig

 

IT’S a morality tale for all time.

And it runs the length and breadth of the years—from the bible story of Judas losing his mind and killing himself, to the Greek dramaturgy of antiquities, on towards unraveling history and the present.

It’s the same throughout, with slight variations, and change of players. But it remains constant.

It’s predicated in Hubris from the Greeks; the Latin saying. “Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad”; the Plutarchian passage, “The mills of the Gods grind exceedingly slow, but they grind exceedingly small”.

It is when pride, arrogance, vanity, and ego take over and consume the individual and ultimately leads him to self-destruct.

We’ve known this all along, yet we had no way to describe it. It took a famous psychologist to articulate it in no uncertain terms:

“Man seeks for drama and excitement; when he cannot get satisfaction on a higher level, he creates for himself the drama of destruction”.

We’ve been hapless witnesses to this in the local political arena: The monumental meltdown that bordered on paranoia by brazen civil servants sworn to public order and decorum. Captured graphically by today’s technology.

The cussing that’s crisp and clear. The shameless shouting, the hysteria as if devil possessed.

Holding on to the tightrope of hope, we clung to the pipe dream of an apology the next day, or a semblance of remorse, once calm and sobriety ruled over.

We could not have been more wrong. In a bizarre turn, we did not expect for someone to fly over the cuckoo’s nest. We were assaulted and shocked by a delusional reference to a “second coming”. What? A reincarnation? Spirit possession? It was an instance of lunatic obsession.

The scandalous images of the blatant behavior of the power-tripping party gone bonkers was forever burned into our consciousness.

It’s a trauma we have to bear and be burdened with in our senior years. Just when we thought we’ve been there, done that; that we’ve seen and experienced everything, we were confronted by the tragic unfolding of an errant character gone wild.

Consequently, however sadly, we saw before our very eyes, an almost instantaneous self-combustion by this bunch of defiant, righteous, out-of-touch, self-entitled breed of Icarus in an inexorable flash.

“Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first turn mad”.

One wishes one can turn back the time. And have an instant replay of life, cutting, editing and splicing here and there. But time is relentless and the tide of life goes forward and knows no way back.

What happened next did not happen overnight but felt to have taken forever.

In the succeeding episode of this allegory, the unbeatable posse was humiliated and humbled as they were bulldozed off  and pulverized in the elections

“The mills of the Gods grind exceedingly slow, but they grind exceedingly small”.

So the pyre of self-immolation stands as a bonfire of vanities, of wanton disregard and disrespect for what is true and sacred. Blasting away all manner of claimed immunity.

In the end,  no one wins. We all lose. Because in the process of karmic destruction, part of ourselves, part of our innocence, of our self-esteem, of the love we keep, are torn away, torched and turned to embers as collateral damage in the process of rebirth and awakening.

It’s a morality tale that we have to live by again and again. Because we never learn. Repeating and reinforcing the sins of the past and perpetrating new ones.

The TikTok reel keeps rolling.

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