“If the essential core of the person is denied or suppressed, he gets sick sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes immediately, sometimes later.”
— Abraham Maslow
The home is where the heart is. It is where the character is initially cultivated and eventually carried throughout life. I see the other side of a family continuum; a child groomed within a healthy family environment prevents risk-taking behaviors.
“Tell me about your family,” I began. “What were you like as a kid? And what effect has it had on your life since then?”
Having no clue about the roots of their brokenness, wounded children turn into traumatized adults. Knowing a person’s unique development requires understanding how that individual is intertwined in a rich familial, social, and cultural milieu, according to a contextual perspective of human development.31
Taking into the developmental continuum of Jojo, the 46-year-old former commander of MRGU of the CPP-NPA-NDF’s WMRPC which operated in the Zamboanga Peninsula, I had a series of interviews and counseling sessions with him to understand his lived experiences. 53IB troops captured him in Zamboanga del Sur Medical Center in Pagadian City, where he was brought by the International Committee of the Red Cross after being wounded in an encounter in Barangay Marangan, Dumingag, Zamboanga del Sur in September 2020. Jojo was then transferred to Kuta Cesar Sang-an Station Hospital in 1st Infantry “TABAK’’ Division headquarters in Barangay Upper Pulacan, Labangan, Zamboanga del Sur where the Army tendered him medical assistance for about three months.
The Army authorities allowed me to interview Jojo at the Tabak Station Hospital. During our first meeting, he was so skinny and sickly while recuperating from gunshot wounds. In the following months, I interviewed him at the Zamboanga del Sur Provincial Jail, where he was incarcerated because he did not surrender to the authorities. He said that he would rather face the consequences of his criminal actions rather than surrendering.
At the height of his suffering from a surgical operation, Jojo confessed to me in tears during our conversation at the military hospital. “When I was only five years old, I remember my father’s side of the family excluding my mother because she was only a daughter of a poor fisherman,” Jojo recalled. Throughout his childhood, he witnessed how his mother suffered in her in-laws’ hands. “I saw firsthand how my mother was mistreated as if she was a housemaid, responsible for all the chores and washing the clothes. I wanted to help her, but there was nothing I could do, so I kept all the pity I felt for her, hidden in silence all those years. But I was extremely pleased with her hard work. She holds a special place in my heart. She is the love of my life,” Jojo expounded.
“In response to unfair treatment and an oppressive attitude from my relatives, I was compelled to strive and study hard to show them that I am capable of becoming successful,” Jojo said.
Instead of being enslaved in a feudal family system, Jojo worked hard to develop a sense of competence and mastery. He wanted to enter the Philippine Military Academy but lost the opportunity. He pursued BS Accountancy at a university in Ozamiz City, where he diligently studied. In his second year in college, his father suffered from a heart attack and eventually died. “I believe that it was triggered by our relatives who grabbed our farm,” Jojo shared.
He continued his studies with the hope of pursuing his dreams of finishing college and bringing justice to his family’s misfortune. Because of his perseverance, dedication, and intellectual capabilities, he was recognized for having academic and leadership potential. A youth organization engaged in activism even appointed Jojo as a youth leader for the Western Mindanao region. But despite his intellectual capabilities, he struggled because of financial constraints.
“I was in my third year in college when I was forced to stop because I could no longer pay my tuition fees,” Jojo added.
Amid difficulties, a friend invited him to attend a youth gathering of a student activist organization, the Anak ng Bayan Partylist, also known as the ANAKBAYAN, affiliated with the communist coalition MAKABAYAN that supposedly advocates social change for the Filipino people. Jojo was eventually recruited to join the organization. According to him, their main goal was to pursue a collective voice that could contribute to the revolution toward a new society free of social injustice and inequality. “There is a need to overthrow the democracy of the republic and replace it with their own system,” he said.
“In the organization, I felt a sense of belonging with a group of young people that inspired me to become part of social reform and work to provide the poor people the services that only the rich have been savoring. We share the same experiences of being oppressed. I realized later that my urge for belongingness actually came from my inner desire to seek justice for my family,” Jojo hinged. Activism became his avenue to fuel his deep-seated hatred, originating from his past feudal family experiences. Also, in that group, Jojo was empowered to use his intelligence, energy, and courage to scream for social reform in opposition to the government.
Along with Jojo’s striving to achieve his goals, his inner struggles of living with a chaotic family environment, instilled feelings of rage, resentment, and inferiority in him, all under the guise of passionate activism to feel secure and powerful.
The activist ideology leaning to leftist communism gave Jojo a platform to express his fight for what he perceived as fairness. His way of pursuing impartiality and change in the government system has been ingrained in him because of his difficult childhood experiences and a strong desire to seek justice.
“I decided to become a member of the CPP-NPA-NDF because I felt we had a common meaningful objective,” Jojo continued. “My hope was to be able to bring my mother’s mistreatment by her relatives, as well as the death of my father, to justice. Also, I empathize with impoverished people who ruthless rich land grabbers had wronged, and I made it a point to do everything I could to assist them. It was only a small piece of land. Still, it was absolutely priceless because of its critical importance to our family—the same with other poor people who oppressive rich land grabbers maltreated. The poor people were even willing to sacrifice their life to secure their property. The traditional feudal family system has caused nothing but chaos in society. I want change. This is something I am passionate about. I realized at that point that change needed to begin within the family. It was the oppressive feudal family system that led me into the clutches of the CPP-NPA-NDF,” Jojo disclosed.
In my contemplation, I realized that the thought-provoking story of Jojo could be explained by using the Bioecological Systems Approach to human development as a framework. Psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory claims that we cannot truly comprehend growth unless we analyze a child’s development in the context of the interactions that make up their environment. Bronfenbrenner identifies several environmental “layers” that impact a child’s future development. The combination of variables in the developing biology of the child, his immediate family and community environment, and the societal landscape propels and directs a child’s growth.36 For instance, Jojo is immersed within a microsystem. At this level, the majority of his traditional childhood development work has been focused. It was his immediate environment during his boyhood. He lived with his parents, caregivers, and relatives when he was younger. They all had an impact on him, but he was not just a passive receiver. He actively participated in creating the microsystem, which shaped his local environment. The mesosystem level recognizes the direct and indirect influences that tie him within his microsystem, such as his parents, friends, relatives, and teachers.
In Jojo’s story, he revealed that during his childhood days, he observed that his mother was being maltreated by her in-laws. He was further aggrieved with his father’s death, who suffered a fatal heart attack because of intense sadness after learning that their own relatives had plundered their land property. Those events grieved his entire family, which directly and indirectly impacted Jojo as he grew up. And that became his motivation to work hard in school and learn to read at a young age.
At the same time, Jojo is growing at the exosystem level, which represents the broader impacts of societal institutions such as the local government, community, schools, places of worship, and local media. Each of these institutions has a direct and significant impact on his personal growth, as well as a bearing on how the microsystem and mesosystem function. Jojo’s developmental skills brought him to rise through the ranks in a large religious organization’s youth leadership in Ozamis City. This type of atmosphere aided in the development of his leadership abilities and worldview.
Jojo disclosed that he began joining a CTG during his college years in a school community. His environments, microsystem, and mesosystem significantly impacted his cognitive development and worldview. The macrosystem, which represents the more significant cultural influences on an individual, including society in general, types of government, religious and political value systems, is the next level that affects his growth. For instance, the value culture of a school community where Jojo spent his undergraduate years with the ANAKBAYAN influenced him to go against the government system. Jojo is a component of the greater educational and cultural system as well as the government. Jojo’s macrosystem, which influenced his development and shaped his goals and values, is the university where activism against the government is not outlawed.
Finally, the chronosystem is the foundation for all of the preceding systems. It is concerned with how the passage of time impacts children’s development, including historical events as well as more gradual historical changes. When examining Jojo’s growth and development, he divulged that one of his motivations for joining the CPP-NPA-NDF was his firm belief that past atrocities, particularly during the Martial Law under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, had a significant impact on why those who joined the communist terrorist group were so eager to fight to get justice for the unfortunate death of their relatives. One of his motivating aspects in joining the uprising is his empathy for the poor and oppressed, particularly those who go hungry and marginalized in their own country. In my understanding, Jojo’s position is anchored not just on how his macrosystem influenced him to create such ideas but also in the time he was growing up under the influence of his microsystem. Changes or disagreements in the layers affect the other layers of his development. Jojo’s development includes not only him and his local environment but also how the larger environment interacts with him.
Protecting children from radicalization can be seen as part of broader safeguarding responsibilities of schools’ childcare providers is comparable to protecting children from other harms such as narcotics, gangs, abuse, and sexual exploitation, whether they arise from inside their family or the result of external factors.37
The essence of family in human development resonates in my senses to my perception. In an area less traveled, self-awareness should be cultivated within the family circle. For many people, pursuing a good life merely centers on the materialistic way of life. But this mindset unconsciously cripples our brains and instincts to discern that the basics of being productive start in the formative years. Yes! The family is expected to act as the core giver of kindness and not guilt or shame, so children could foster the same and resonate it to the world. But it is so sad that many set aside the true meaning of the family in forming our purposeful identity.
Research in child development has found that some adolescent life experiences can stifle moral development. McDevitt and Ormrod noted that because of children’s traumatic experiences, they might perceive the world to be unjust and unfair. Social learning affects moral development as well. Adolescents may have witnessed adults in their lives make unethical decisions that disregard others’ rights and needs, leading them to develop attitudes and values that are opposed to those held by the rest of society.38 On the other hand, adults can help promote moral development by modeling the moral character we want our children to have. Parents are critical because they are frequently the first source of moral instruction for their children.39
However, in transactional analysis more chronicles with deep-seated negative emotions, surviving, and hatred could have been a thriving life if good guidance was present. Bitterness instead of happiness becomes the substance of living a life as these natural-born hardworking and loving individuals thought they are less of a person and, in effect, get into the bait.
Transfer of culture of abuse within a family system, modeled by young children while the terror and exposure of violence where transgenerational trauma could happen. When to stop, well, that is a decision of the actor in the system. Remember Lito? “That woman was murdered right in front of me. She is my mother who was murdered by armed men who appeared out of nowhere. My brothers, along with other CPP-NPA-NDF recruiters, stated that those men were soldiers,” Lito confessed. As a result, he was persuaded to join the CPP-NPA-NDF to exact vengeance and bring about justice. Also, the recruiters promised to provide his basic needs. Consequently, all the recruits got together with all their might under the guidance of Lito’s brothers to execute a more effective armed insurgency.
In this case, the social learning theory of Albert Bandura directs us to understand that Lito’s decision-making and risk-taking behavior were shaped by both behavioral and cognitive factors. This theory states that humans might learn new patterns by observing and imitating the conduct of those around them. This further illustrates that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social environment rather than a simply behavioral one. Observing and reflecting on the outcomes of another person’s behavior are two methods of learning. When you learn something, you do it by paying attention, assessing what you see, and then drawing conclusions from what you see. There must be active participation on both the learner’s and the influencer’s parts for learning to take place. Additionally, behavioral and cognitive processes are both influenced by the environment where they occur. Because of this, any effort to change beliefs must focus on sociocultural norms and practices at the level of the social system. Because they are all components of culture, people who can profit from instilling these cultural attitudes typically do so knowingly and systematically.40 Furthermore, criminologists Ronald Akers and Robert Burgess have proposed that criminality can be taught in both social and nonsocial contexts by a combination of explicit instruction, direct and indirect reinforcement, or observation, respectively. A person’s likelihood of encountering certain behaviors and the type of reinforcement they receive are both influenced by the norms of the group.41
The loss of Lito’s mother altered his perspective and ability to think clearly. He developed a risk-taking personality because of his early exposure to a hostile world at a tender age of ten subtly innocent observation. Even during his formative years, he was already exposed to violence and acts of terrorism.
REFLECTIONS
The home is where the heart is.
It is where the character
is initially cultivated and
eventually carried
all throughout life.
Nobody had ever envisioned having a wounded family. Their idealization of their role models turned out to be a disastrous option. They decided to take revenge rather than face their pain. They were dragged to their knees by the stones of hate. A person was killed, shattering their dreams and aspirations. It is true, we cannot undo the mistakes of the past, but we can always choose to no longer dwell on them.
A good place to start healing and preventing future generations from being traumatized is by forgiving the people who have hurt us in the past. We can avoid harmful emotions and apprehensions about the future if we accept the existing conditions. Even at the darkest of times, there is comfort in knowing that a new day will dawn and a fresh foundation of life will be laid. Learning to accept responsibility and forgiveness for harmful stories from our history can be a helpful first step toward healing and preventing transgenerational trauma.
Through acceptance, or the decision to keep our heart at peace in the present, we can avoid unpleasant feelings about what the future may unfold. As long as we understand what constitutes a good life, difficult days are as necessary as the air we breathe, knowing that they will pass and that another breath of freedom will establish a new platform of existence. We would be unable to appreciate the beautiful things in life if we do not have peace in our hearts.
Carry on, hold on, and bring it all the way to the door of paradise. You are God’s child, and you are loved. Your self-identity should be based on His character. Identifying your true self with spiritual clarity can be a healing step on the path to living a good life.
Leave a Reply