The festival of lights

Diwali is Hinduism’s celebration of the festival of lights. It is actually an official holiday in several countries around the world, and the dramaturgy of its religious observance takes five days this week for the Hindus. Happily, it is also a functional “holiday” for Thailand, currently besieged by the onslaught of northern waters that has flooded the beleaguered city of Bangkok. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and other ancient traditions have their own festival of lights.

Light as a metaphor for profound lucidity is universal, more so from those of us schooled in the European tradition of the enlightenment that is heir to the Greek vision of clarity, experienced by the ancients in the crystal waters and the pure lights of the Aegean Sea. The Age of Reason was a cultural movement of intellectuals in Europe that propelled the democratic revolution still transforming many societies worldwide.

We are long past the solemn observances of the festival’s religious significance, though we go through the motions of observing its cultural forms. We will, however, take the aspect of clarity about things to commemorate Diwali this week, and we begin with old Thomas Paine of the American Revolution on landownership. He said, Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land office, from whence the first title deeds should issue.

Of course, we do not find credence in Paine’s thought just because he said so, and/or he happens to be a revered figure in the American revolution of which, its 235-year political experiment, the US of A is still in the process of unraveling. We do so because we recognize something intuitively and profoundly truthful about his insight.

In the Northern Marianas, one of the hottest issues of discourse is the functionality of Article 12 of the Commonwealth Constitution that favors only those of Marianas descent to own land. The debate in the discussion has ranged in focus from the formula to quantify blood content to the constitutionality of the provision itself since it can only be justified as a temporary affirmative action rather than as a policy for perpetuity.

While some places in the world are moving toward a functional stewardship policy on landownership, proponents as well as detractors of Article 12 seem to both hold to the recent claim of absolute right to own land (a prerogative of previous monarchs), regardless of usage or universal value to the commonweal (the public good or welfare). Part of the contradiction on land usage in real estate development is the focus on speculative value versus actual residential housing and commercial needs, and the current collapse of worldwide financial structure is rooted in phantom assets related to real estate development and use.

A cursory glance at all the non-performing assets of buildings presently on Saipan is an indication of this malaise. Landownership as a “right” to an ethnic and/or racial group is discriminatory by federal law definition. It also underlies the other issue on who might lawfully reside in any particular real estate on the planet.

In 1968, struck by the image of the Earthrise of a photo from Apollo 8 of the Earth taken from the moon, I decided in my heart and mind that I was a citizen of the planet, and the absence of delineating lines separating states and nations on the “blue” has been the guiding light to my knowing, doing and being, ever since. Though holding a Philippine passport and qualified to immigrate to the U.S. then, my emotional and intellectual loyalty was less on my legal rights and definition, but more on my holistic sense of social obligation.

Occupancy of land anywhere in the planet has become a hot immigration issue in governance across the world. U.S. immigration laws emanated from the impulse to exclude. Add to that globalization’s propensity to identify human beings simply as units of labor leaves a bitter aftertaste of many imported workers as exploited items of assets and expenditures, and in the long run, a listed and disdained liability on many ledgers, particularly those who only had “use” of their labors.

American law balances individual rights and social obligation. State rights and federal law often eyeball each other in the ambiguity of the choice. The “Chamolinian” tradition is one molded in the tradition of social well-being before it is an adherence to rights. “Human rights” globally defined and practiced involves the integrity of individual prerogatives in the context of communal inclusiveness. Watch the proceedings of the European Union as they manage to finesse their assets so as not to leave Greece in the cold. Or, negatively, witness how we ignored the legal judgment to pay common obligation to the Retirement Fund.

Chamolinians who do not bother to treat those they invited to labor by their side to do the dirty work that they themselves would not do might want to look deeper on the previous pathways that formulated their Micronesian souls and how the usage and residency on these islands got formulated by their ancestors when all were strangers to these parts. We might reflect on this for a month, until Nov. 27, maybe?

Those familiar and observant of Diwali might want to ask themselves: What lights your path these days? The Earthrise still glows on mine.