DR. FLORO C. QUIBUYEN
PhD Political Science (University of Hawaii)

ABSTRACT

If the nationalist ilustrados of the late19th century basked in the Age of Enlightenment, we now wallow in the Age of Stupid (from the film with the same title). Would Rizal, the reputed Child of the Enlightenment, have anything relevant to say regarding our Age of Stupid? That’s the question I’d like to pose today, as we commemorate his sesquicentennial. Rizal’s Filipinas dentro de cien años (1890) says practically nothing about the global crises we facetoday—ecological, economic, resource depletion—which could lead to the collapse of the capitalist world system by 2050. To confront our predicament in the Age of Stupid we would need an apocalyptic vision, which seems to have been suppressed in Cien años. That vision drives a play in verse that Rizal had written ten years before Cien años—Junto al Pasig. TheJunto al Pasig poses the problem but answers it only cryptically—an answer that the Noli-Fili (I take this to be one novel in two parts) fails to disclose. Rizal’s exile in Dapitan was a blessing in disguise. It was in Dapitan that Rizal finally realized and put into practice the solution to the problem posed in Junto al Pasig. The answer is heralded by Himno a Talisay.This paper critically traces Rizal‟s intellectual-spiritual journey from Junto al Pasig (1880) to Himno a Talisay (1895), and concludes by relating Rizal‟s Talisay solution to the post-caplitalist solutions being envisioned today by progressive writers/futurists who foresee the collapse of industrial civilization and the end of the capitalist world system by 2050.

Read the article by clicking on this link: Apocalypse in the 21st century: Rizal’s Prophetic Vision FromJunto al Pasig to Hymno a Talisay