Zen and the Art of Filipino Character Maintenance

It has been observed that Filipinos seem to live in the now, a wholly admirably quality of you have read "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle or are into Zen Buddhism. But it does make for a rather chaotic and reactive style.

Face it, planning ahead is not  commonly or skillfully done here. In the context of a prior blog, that's why taking a 2% excise tax on ore dug out by foreign miners seems like a good deal.  The 2% looks sweet compared to nothing.  Nevermind that a Philippine company, digging the same ore, would pay 13% in income taxes on it. Plus pay dividends. Plus reinvest profits to build more mines.

 It's a lot of work and time to get a Philippine mining company up and running. So many obstacle, so troublesome. So take the money that is available today.  Focus on the now.

"Ohmmmmmmmmmm . . ."

Not a care in the world about future generations. Never a thought about how precious minerals are. They are here, then gone. They aren't like trees at all, or rice that you can plant three times a year.

What's with this lapse of extended thinking?

I'd opine that it is not just a limitation in time. It is a limitation in space, too.

Take Enrile's million peso Christmas bonus to senators. It follows the laws. Sentors are top leaders and they should be well paid. So what's the problem?

"Ohmmmmmmmmmmm . . ."

The problem is the insensitivity it projects to poor people. That is what I mean by limited thinking, spatially. The traditional Filipino mind seems relentlessly unable to comprehend that others exist and have needs and feelings. That a healthy community demands the emotional well-being of a whole population. It is not simply a collection of individuals, each empowered to neglect the other.

"Ohmmmmmmmmmm . . ."

Enrile's gift, plain and simple, was insensitive.

So I view these limitations together.

• One, in time, the lack of accomplishment at thinking forward.

• Two, in space, the lack of accomplishment at thinking of the community of others.

So traditional Filipinos are indeed Zen, eh? Very focused, not only on the now, but on the self. Like a single point of light upon which to meditate and center life.

"Ohmmmmmmmmmm . . ."

Now before manualbuencamino comes at me with his hatchet, or GabbyD with his axe, I'd better hunt for a Filipino reference so they know I am not making this stuff up. So that readers know I am not racist or culturally bigoted.

I found a good one. The best, actually: Felipe M. De Leon Jr., Chairman of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

Professor De Leon* wrote an article on July 29, 2011 posted in the "infocus" publication of the National Commission for Cultural and the Arts. It is entitled "Culture in Development".

Here are some excerpts interspersed with my interpretive remarks, or elaborations, as it pertains to the subject at hand. JoeAm says look within. Professor De Leon says:

• A developing country should not look for the image of its own future in so-called developed countries, but in its own culture and ecology.

Hmmm, a reader just made the same point. Culture is distinct and should be appreciated for its distinctive qualities, not forced to fit into the box of critics. The good professor illustrates why this is important to the Philippines as it strives for development and greater wealth:

• All  models of development are essentially cultural. . . . Cultural identity is the fundamental source of social empowerment. Rob a people of their identity and they become passive, lost, indolent, uncreative and unproductive, prone to depression and substance abuse, and plagued by a pervasive feeling of malaise and powerlessness.

"Pass the  tuba, buddy."

JoeAm would propose that the powerless lose hope and the sense that they can be architects of the future. They lose the will and the skill to project forward, see barriers, imagine ways around them, and identify the steps that need to be taken. Problem-solving lethargy.

They also lose the will to be kind to others, and spend a lot of energy justifying themselves.

The professor has an idea as to why problem-solving lethargy is a trait of Philippine culture:

• Our educational system remains colonial rather than culturally appropriate. Many of our schools do not produce people who are highly resourceful, creative and adaptable to a fast changing and extremely complex contemporary world. They encourage dependence, a job-seeking, employability mentality rather than originality of thought, entrepreneurial qualities and self-reliance on native skills, knowledge and strengths.

Clipping patterns. No pattern, no dress.

• Our colonial experience seems to have conditioned us to seek rather than create work opportunities, to adapt rather than to innovate, and to conform rather than to lead. The captive Filipino mind, having been alienated from its creative roots, cannot generate economic opportunities within its native setting because of this alienation. The needs and values it serves are external to itself. We borrow alien thought and value systems and forms of expression and produce nothing but derivatives and clones, superficiality and mediocrity? We forget that we can only be truly productive using our own thought processes.

So this is the (notorious?) Filipino constraint on productivity, the failure to build a future into thinking.  Rather, the approach is to respond. To adapt. To react. Not to anticipate. Not to plan. There is no way to clone the future, so the architecture of a future path simply does not get done.

But the colonial damage is even deeper according to the good professor:

• Centuries of being regarded as backward and inferior by the white colonizers engendered in us a collective self-contempt, a psychic malady I would term the Dona Victorina Syndrome. The Dona Victorina Syndrome, a manifestation of acute inferiority complex, is disastrous for national development. It denies and confuses us about our identity as a people. . . . There can be no national unity without a sense of pride in being Filipino. For how do we expect a Filipino to care and work for the good of the nation if he does not even believe in being Filipino? If at the slightest opportunity, he would eagerly migrate to other countries in pursuit of a foreign identity? If at the slenderest sign of political instability, he will stash away his savings in a foreign bank?

Now he gets to Senator Enrile and to JoeAm's contention, expressed several months ago, that Get Real Post blogger benigno and Senator Sotto and his ilk have exactly the same character, self-righteous, condescending, and contemptuous of the common Filipino. The professor lays the malaise of the Philippines at the feet of the elite, those who, like Get Real Scribe benigno, despise Filipino culture:

• There is not such thing as a damaged culture, only a damaged self image. If a "damaged culture" exists a all . . . it is only among the Filipino elite, who has the lowest opinion of Filipino culture. . . . The colonial powers inevitably encouraged and supported the emergence of an elite class with whom it could easily collaborate. A serious consequence of this is cultural fragmentation. . . . As a result, the culture of the bureaucracy is more attuned to the needs and values of the elite than to that of the vast majority of Filipinos.

So the professor lays waste to James Fallow's 1987 Atlantic piece on the Philippines as a damaged culture. But he does not say the Philippines should retreat into complacent isolation:

• We have so much to learn from other countries when it comes to unity, especially setting aside our differences in times of crisis . . . If[we] are to become one nation, we have to begin deconstructing the very negative self-images we have imbibed through centuries of colonial misrule and mis-education, especially among the elite who are the power wielders and thus have the greatest responsibility to serve and be one with the people.

I wonder if Senator Sotto and Senator Enrile can grasp what the good professor is saying. Or if they would apply the Filipino cultural penchant for handling conflicting ideas like water off a duck's back. Shuffling them off as irrelevant. Even if they aren't.

• Negative self-images, whether individual or collective, can cause untold social and cultural damage. We have to begin celebrating our genius as a people and not continue to neurotically wallow in our defeats. According to Dr. F. Landa Jocano, why do we tend to celebrate our defeats - like the Fall of Bataan and the Death of Rizal - whereas other peoples celebrate only their triumphs. Abraham Lincoln was also assassinated but nowhere do we find his body being depicted as he was falling down. Instead, we find him at the Lincoln Memorial seated with dignity, majestically presiding over the destiny of his nation.

I suppose that is why winners like Manny Pacquiao and Jessica Sanchez are cheered so loudly. They are (usually) not flat face-first on the canvas. And it is why JoeAm could almost scream, "YOU WANT A HERO, LOOK AT YOUR PRESIDENT NOT YOUR TV!!"

The professor, fortunately, is more subdued. However he is also passionate:

• If all cultures on earth are to survive, most of them have to change some of their beliefs and practices in order to become compatible with one another. Cultural relativism has a limit as exemplified by our condemnation of such forms of behavior as exploitation, oppression, torture, terrorism, racism, and genocide.

Like, get right with good values. (Note to self:  send a copy of this blog to UNA honchos.)

And the good professor leaves us with good guidance for development. Like DO SOMETHING about the cultural impediments to healthy thought and productive work:

• . . . It behooves us to formulate a national action plan, if not a national policy, for culture in development. . . . We have to integrate cultural and economic planning and enable the government to adopt a cultural perspective in development planning. . . .

And JoeAm would specifically recommend a focus in the schools on better skills and disciplines in thinking forward, in time, and person to person, spatially. In simpler terms, how to plan and how to build community one positive, supportive relationship at a time.

_______________________

From Wikipilipinas:

• Felipe M. de Leon, Jr., is professor of art studies and head of the SubCommission on the Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. He was former chairman of the humanities department of the University of the Philippines. He is also a lecturer and researcher in the international academic circuit. He comes from a highly gifted and musical family. His father was the National ArtistFelipe Padilla de Leon.
  
  
  Hie is active in promoting and preserving Philippine indigenous musical forms, such as musikong bumbong. In 2003 he was project director of the First National Bamboo Music Festival, explaining that the country's bamboo music is a reflection of the Filipino people's ingenuity and sense of community.
  
  
  As Commissioner of the National Commission for Culture and Arts, de Leon delivered a series of lectures on Philippine culture entitled "Philippine Development: A Cultural Perspective" at the Center for Pacific Asian Studies, Stockholm University on May 2, 2006; "Approaches to Understanding Philippine Culture" at the Philippine Embassy on May 3, 2006; and "Management by Culture" in Copenhagen, Denmark on May 4, 2006.