Tony’s Complaint & Frank H’s Salve – DevCom Special!

For the new PH Agriculture, where is DevCom when you need it most!?

Here is Antonio G Moran’s Complaint:

I wonder why no one inspired by Nora C Quebral and Juan F Jamias in the 70s seems to care.

Me, I have not seen much DevCom writing since Miss Nora invented Development Communication, DevCom, at UP Los Baños in the early 70s; Mr Jamias was a pioneer in agricultural journalism[1], which was reinvented into DevCom. Both have largely been forgotten, as far as I know, and I have been in and out of UP Los Baños since I was Freshman in 1959. I commiserate with Antonio G Moran!

In 1969, Portnoy’s Complaint was a public demonstration of repressed sexuality as Philip Roth dared write it[2]; in 2020, Tony’s Complaint above is a public confession of unexpressed textuality in DevCom – nobody is using DevCom to advance village development at the very least!

I’m not surprised. The problem with DevCom is DevCom!

As designed, DevCom is pro-choice.
You want Communication? Choose X.
You want Development? Choose Y.

No, the founders & followers of DevCom did not realize that it was pro-choice – just like Women’s Lib. “Do you want your Freedom?  Choose your Body. Do you want your Family? Choose your Baby. – Let Go or Let Live!” You are free to choose! (image of superimposed X and “Y” from Adobe Stock[3])

Unfortunately, in the almost 50 years of DevCom, the choice has always been the Body, X, not the Baby, Y. ComDev has essentially been Communication over Development.

Why? Sinless, DevCom founders chose to support much Communication, and less Development – without realizing it.

I know. I was in and out of UP Los Baños in the early 1970s when DevCom was aborning. Innocently, DevComers chose the Body; frankly, I chose the Baby.

From 1975 to 1981, as Chief Information Officer of the Forest Research Institute, FORI, based at the campus of UP Los Baños, I fathered FORI’s 3 publications: the monthly newsletter Canopy, quarterly technical journal Sylvatrop, and quarterly popular color magazine Habitat. Those 3 made FORI locally & internationally popular. I with my Communication went after Development.

I wrote and published a technical paper in Sylvatrop propounding my theory of Communication forDevelopment, ComDev. Deliberately ComDev vs DevCom. Yes, ComDev emphasizes Development; DevCom emphasizes Communication – in DevCom, Communication support for Development is deliberately a choice, not commandment.

Tony’s Lament above can be explained by Communication being relatively easy with Development being relatively hard. You choose between Expression and Exertion – you have to exert extra efforts dedicated to Development of any dimension in order to write. No, they did not teach you that in college.

Here is another of Tony’s Facebook sharing:

Tom Wolfe: "You can't come home again." Why? Because those places have changed, I have changed, and there are a thousand points of friendly lights elsewhere.

To help cultivate the new PH Agriculture, what DevComers can do is come up with DevCom Special – show everybody a thousand points of friendly lights of development everywhere!@517

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[1] http://commmedia.aijc.com.ph/comm_media/media_museum/comm_educ_jamias.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portnoy%27s_Complaint

[3] https://stock.adobe.com/ph/images/yes-and-no-vector-set-square-frames-isolated-grunge-graffiti-check-quizz-voting-symbol-design-ink-rejection-and-acceptance-query-choice-icons-yes-and-no-tick-and-cross-symbolic-marks/182189057