 I wish I could spare you the platitudes you've all surely heard in those GE subjects that everyone in UP takes about how important the arts and humanities are to our professional and personal lives. But this being an academic gathering I feel obliged to lay down a few premises before moving on to my main argument this morning for why the arts should matter. Don't worry, this won't be a very long presentation and should be fairly easy to follow, no PowerPoint, whichever discipline you come from. I'm going to be drawing on two previous papers, one I presented before the National Academy of Science and Technology in 2004 on the humanities in our intellectual and cultural life, and another I co-authored with national artists Griglio Armario and Ramon Santos a few years ago, proposing the creation of a department of culture. It has become practically a cliche to say that our lives and certainly our learning would not be complete without some appreciation of the humanities. Our tradition of liberal education has primed us to the necessity of cultivating what we call the well-rounded individual, schooled in the basics of various disciplines. At the University of the Philippines, and in many other leading universities, we take this as an article of faith that I see little need for belaboring the point of why a balanced education is a good thing. On a brief personal note, my own education has been as balanced as it could possibly be, though not necessarily by design. I'm something of a geek who likes to disassemble and tinker with Apple computers as a form of therapy, but on the analog side, I collect vintage fountain pens as a hobby. I graduated from the Philippine Science High School and had dreamed of becoming a scientist in my youth. I entered UP as an industrial engineering major in 1970, dropped out to go full-time as an activist, was arrested and imprisoned under martial law. It didn't return until many years later, this time as an English major. In the meanwhile, I worked for the National Economic and Development Authority, from where Dr. Jerry Seacott sent me back to UP to take up development economics as a special student. And subsequently, I even worked briefly for the United Nations Development Program as a professional officer. I could have stayed on in economics, but decided that what I really wanted to do was to write and teach, and so I resigned and took graduate degrees in English and creative writing. Within my own field, I often find myself arguing for the importance of being able to adopt a rationalist outlook, of grounding our artistic judgments and perceptions on the concrete appreciation of our economic, social and political realities. I've always urged my creative writing students to take an active interest in history, technology, business and public policy as a means of broadening their vision and enriching their material as writers. But conversely, for the purpose of our exercise this morning, let me ask, why indeed are the arts and humanities important? I'll turn to conventional wisdom and quote what should already be obvious to most of you, this time from the Massachusetts Foundation for the humanities, and I quote, the humanities enrich and ennobles, and their pursuit would be worthwhile even if they were not socially useful. But in fact, the humanities are socially useful. They fulfill vitally important needs for critical and imaginative thinking about the issues that confront us as citizens and as human beings, understanding and appreciating the experiences of others and the ways in which the issues that confront us now would have now have been understood in other times, places and cultures. The humanities concern themselves with a complete record of human experience, exploring, assessing, interpreting and refining it while at the same time adding to it. We need the humanities. Without them, we cannot possibly govern ourselves wisely or well, unquote. Now what strikes me here is the word govern, which seems to be, to me, of utmost importance to us at this juncture of our history and which is key to our topic today. The role of the humanities in our intellectual and cultural life is to enable us to govern ourselves wisely and well. They deal with issues and value judgments with defining the commonalities and differences of human experience, hopefully toward an affirmation of our most positive human traits, such as the need to work together as families, communities and societies. In sum, they help us agree on a common stake based on which we can make plans, make decisions and take action. That notion of a common stake is crucial, especially on this eve of one of the most contested elections in our history. Despite all the predictable rhetoric and the real need for national unity, we find it difficult to unite beyond short-term political expediency because we remain unable to agree on our most common ideals, the national dream, as it were, or the direction of the national narrative. What is our story? Who is its hero? Are we looking at an unfolding tragedy, a realist drama or a romantic myth? These are the questions that are answerable less by scientific research and inquiry than by artistic imagination and insight. Let me ask a few more questions. What is important to us as a people? Where do we want to go? What price are we willing to pay to get there? I submit that it will be mainly the humanities and the social sciences that will provide that vision in all its clarities and ambiguities as it will be science and technology that will provide the means. This does not mean that scientists and engineers will have little or nothing to contribute to the crafting of this vision. I firmly believe they should and that one of our worst mistakes has been the fact that we have largely left national policy to the politicians, the priests, the lawyers, the soldiers and the merchants. Scientists have had little say and artists even less in the running of this country and the plotting of its direction. We may canonize our boxing champions and beauty queens and even elect them senator while our national scientists, our national artists languish in obscurity and indifference. At least we artists have won Dubya's advantage over our scientific brethren. Filipinos are besotted with song and dance competitions which many see as the apex of artistic achievement while there seems to be no comparable public enthusiasm for quizbies in math and science. Ours is an appallingly innumerate society. Most of our people do not know the simplest numbers that describe our lives and much less what they mean. We are raised on concepts like the national flower and the national bird and the national tree but even in college we are hard put to say what the national population, the national birth rate or the gross domestic product is and why they matter. This innumeracy is balanced sadly by cultural illiteracy. Our notion of culture often consists of pretty images, pleasant melodies, theatrical gestures and desirable objects. Our compatriots abroad can hardly be faulted if they think that they are preserving Filipino culture by dancing the tinik ling and serving pancit on June 12th only to bicker among themselves afterwards the first cans they get which could be more Filipino than pinak bit. So we not only lack a scientific culture but we also have a superficial grasp of culture itself as a way of life rather than an assemblage of artifacts. We have much to do by way of cultural education and artistic expression is a vital means by which this can be achieved. The arts are the key to those parts of us that reason and logic alone cannot reach but I came here this morning to go beyond the obvious and to present an aspect of the arts that few national and even academic policy makers ever think about and it's this. The arts should matter not only because they're good for the soul but also because they're good for the body as well. Taking the body to mean our economic and material well-being. In simple words and moving from the philosophical to the practical sphere the arts can mean big business. The arts underlie what we call the creative what have been called creative industries and these industries have made tremendous contributions to the economies of countries as diverse as the US the UK China Japan Brazil and Thailand. This area of study seems to be so relatively new that the nomenclature has yet to be fully standardized but the world intellectual property organization or WIPO has taken the lead classifying creative industries. It prefers the term copyright based industries into four sub sub sectors core interdependent partial and non-dedicated support industries depending on the degree of their involvement in the creation manufacture production and performance of copyrighted products. A greatest interest to us are the core creative industries which the WIPO enumerates as and I quote press and literature music theatrical productions and operas motion picture and video radio and TV photography software and databases visual and graphic arts advertising services and copyright collecting societies unquote. In 2009 when the joint foreign chambers of the Philippines initiated a focus group discussion on creative industries in the Philippines they defined the sector as embracing and I quote a wide array of sub sectors including advertising animation architecture broadcast arts crafts culinary arts cultural and heritage activities design film literature music new media performing arts publishing and visual arts. While I have yet to see a comprehensive and updated study of the sector in the Philippines there was enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that CIs or CBIs are serious contributors to our economic growth. In 2010 the last year for which I have solid figures copyright based industries or CBIs contributed more than 661.23 billion pesos to the economy according to the intellectual property organization of the Philippines. In GDP terms the economic contributions contribution of CBIs climbed from 4.82 percent in 2006 to 7.34 percent in 2010 core CBIs comprising companies and the arts media and advertising largely accounted for this search. A corresponding rise in employment occurred in the sector from 11.1 percent of the total number of jobs in 2006 to 14.4 percent four years later. So this is a rising trend. In 2014 the DTI and BOI held a series of trade and industry development updates to present six industry roadmaps one of which concerned creative industries. In that particular forum the DTI's presenter noted that Singapore and Thailand led ASEAN in creative exports while our creative industry and while our creative industries have grown we remain a net importer of creative goods as of 2008 with books and movies apparently accounting for the bulk. So there seems to be a greater awareness on the Philippine government's part of the economic utility of our artistic talent. In 2012 for example R8-10557 was passed to promote a national design policy highlighting the use of design as a strategic tool for economic competitiveness and social innovation. However culture as a whole remains a low priority often subsumed to other activities like tourism entertainment and sports and it's getting worse. Very recently cultural funding by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts the NCCA the largest source of government funding for the arts practically dried up because of onerous conditions imposed on cultural organizations in the wake of the pork barrel scam requiring them to undergo a tedious accreditation process by of all things the DSWD. You tell me why. Unlike many progressive countries we do not even see it fit to have a standalone department of culture so the DBM and even the DSWD can push the NCCA around. It remains supremely ironic that the last Philippine government to have seriously supported the arts in however skewed a fashion was the Marcos regime. While I cannot and do not quarrel with the current institutional bias toward science and technology it would be a gross mistake on the other hand to leave the arts too far behind not only because of their intrinsic value but also because of their tremendous but unrealized economic potential and here let's take a note that UP's high ranking in global university standards depends quite a lot on its humanities figures. Many countries around the world have already factored the creative industries into their development programs. In the United Kingdom for example the Department of Culture Media and Sport clearly recognizes the economic value of arts as art arts and culture as drivers of creative industries that contributed 6.2 percent of the UK's gross value added in 2007 a year during which exports of services by the creative industries totaled 16.6 billion pounds equaling 4.5 percent of all goods and services exported. In 2010 that department reported that creative employment provided around two million jobs in the creative sector itself and in creative roles in other sectors. In the United States several states have passed laws to promote their creative industries. In Massachusetts the creative economy and encompasses all careers and trade sectors that provide creative services like advertising architecture arts film computer games multimedia design and intellectual property. In Spain creative industries are recognized as an important contributor to economic growth. In 2008 it contributed three percent to GDP employing 556,600 workers with spillovers in other sectors of the economy like IT communication and tourism. Brazil hosted a high level panel on creative industries and development under UNCTAD auspices in June 2004 which concluded that and I quote creativity is deeply embedded in a country's cultural context. As such it is a ubiquitous asset present in all countries and its effective nurturing and use can provide new opportunities for developing countries to leapfrog into new areas of wealth creation consistent with wider trends in the global economy. Unquote. While the Philippines may yet lack the official mechanisms that would maximize the economic contributions of culture and the arts and of creative industries as a whole a proposed department of culture could assume this concern among its most important functions and begin by promoting a greater awareness and acceptance of the sector as a major contributor to national growth. But even as I say that I of course I know that we cannot solve problems and move forward simply by creating new offices and bureaucracies. The first change we need to make is in our own minds in the university in this university toward a humbler and more hospitable appreciation of cultural and artistic concerns. We need to see the arts as more than a frivolous diversion that keeps on drawing funds without producing appreciable payoffs rather like an expensive and exotic pet you keep around the house. But rather as an area of strategic and profitable investment that will yield both moral and material dividends. Just as we need to develop more PhD level scientists and researchers we need to support advanced practitioners and theorists in the arts as they have every capability to achieve world class status with the right incentives. Let me end with a message perhaps even a plea to those who hold the purse strings of our institutions. That literary journal that dramatic play that art exhibit that concert or that workshop is always more than a line item expense supporting and patronizing these artistic endeavors is the price we pay to understand ourselves in all our complex and wonderfully wonderfully unquantifiable humanity and also in ways we may never expect to create new knowledge and new wealth in many forms. But I'm insalammable.