Fac ut Vivas

— I —

While in Bukidnon about two weeks ago, I picked out a book amongst its
dust-covered companions lining up the shelves of Villamayor residence.
There, in the heartland of Mindanao. I began turning a few pages into a
classic which has become required reading in many universities around
the world. It was The Lord of The Flies (LOTF) by William
Golding. The finding of the book couldn’t have been more appropriate:
the southern regions of the country are still home to rainforests.
Under its vast networks of unbroken shades, one could imagine himself "traveling back to the earliest beginning of the world, where vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were king", as Conrad did, while writing his seminal work, The Heart of Darkness.
Interestingly enough, the work of Mr. Golding bears spiritual
resemblance to Conrad’s. One could fashion a strong argument linking
both works and with latter inspiring the former in many stylistic
elements and themes.

Short as it is (Golding’s story), I didn’t progress through the entire
material straightaway. Instead, when I was afforded a little time
during breaks in my "adventures", I managed to maintain a
chapter-an-hour pace. When lulling myself to sleep, I managed to up it
a little. Thus, running (almost) parallel to my "enterprises" in
Mindanao, was the staggered course through the tale.

Similar to the characters in LOTF, while in Camiguin, I felt like a
child who suddenly found himself in no man’s land on the shores of an
uncharted island with only the jungle to look forward to opposite the
empty horizon. Because the land was home to active and
dormant volcanoes (seven in all), the rich soil has sustained a thick
cover of trees and other indigenous flora and fauna. Waterfalls are
dotted across region. Some are waterholes rooted in the earth’s hot
interior. Others have cooled off after they have sprung up from below.
Each could cater to even the most sensitive and discriminating skin. Some like it hot, as the title of Marilyn Monroe’s film suggests.

The island’s haunting mystical beauty was
mentally stimulating. At one point, with my eyes closed, I found myself
listening to the 250-feet crashing of water columns and the avian
chorus high atop the hidden cloisters.

— II —

The central thesis to Golding’s work is the gradual devolution of
morals. In the Conrad’s story, the ominous Kurtz has taken up an
extended residency in the Congo. The result has muted any lingering
compassion he might have had left. He has become a savage jungle lord (worshiped like a god
by the slaves) who routinely exacts bloody vengeance on his enemies.
Thus Marlowe, Conrad’s main protagonist, confronted by conflicting
portraits of the man (Kurtz), was wholly disturbed by the whole
experience.

In Golding’s story, it was loss of innocence that affected the children
marooned on the island, like a disease. What was damning about the tale
was that the disease isn’t a randomly transmuted infection that began
with one victim: it was a primal force that was awakened from the moment the children were isolated from civilization. It was fearsome and "unkillable". Anyone was likely to fall prey to this ancient beast. Throughout the novel, it has claimed many victims.

— III —

I would stay up late at night just thinking about the possibility that
madness and evil lurked about. It was ready to pounce unsuspectingly on
anyone who had suddenly become lost, whether due to becoming detached
from family/friends/anything that connects us to life (in this age of
reason), or by becoming exposed to a darker and malignant force.

While growing up, there were numerous stories of men growing mad while
spending months on the open sea, far from any sighting of land. There
were even rumors that people living in the mountain highlands were
excessively brutal and had a taste for blood and violence because the
law of the jungle dictated: eat or be eaten / kill or be killed. At
first, it sounded like mere exaggerations and oftentimes ridiculous,
but lately I’ve come to accept its unusual power as something very real
and quite probable.

If we could use literature for evidence, we would have enough examples:
from R.L Stevenson’s Hyde to M. Shelley’s Frankenstein. In these
stories, isolation has unleashed the darker forces that ultimately led
each to their respective ruin. In Hyde’s case, he was in fact the evil
that was always bound to Dr. Jekyll. They were in the same person. Hyde
was suddenly given complete freedom and control by a potion concocted
by Jekyll after venturing to study the inherent contradictions of human
nature. In Frankenstein’s case, it was his manic obsession to create
life and his inability to take responsibility for his creation that led
to his downward spiral. While venturing into the deepest mysteries of
life, he has distanced himself from his fiancee and friends. As a
result, his obsessive drive had been unchecked. As he progressed
further into his "life" experiments, little did he realize that life
was greater than the sum of body parts and lighting bolts and
sometimes, it is "lived" alongside your fellow humans.