Enacting the Whine

The other day I wrote about ambition and unity as elements of a vibrant Philippines. Today I'll address one of the barriers to unity. It is called authoritarianism.

Unity requires a joining of hearts and effort. Authoritarianism hardens hearts and diminishes effort.

From the outside looking in, one of the interesting facets of Philippine culture is the authority Filipinos grant within three hierarchies of respect that exist in civil society. Authority is allocated: (1) along the family "chain of respect" from the oldest down to the youngest, and (2) along the community chain of respect for those with any power whatsoever (mayor, barangay captain, policeman, civil registrar or LTO or other agent, banker, priest, doctor or, if you have a flat tire, the vulcanizing guy). Everything else (3) is "in play", competitive, one person or unit (family, clan, city) vying with another for supremacy based on this engagement or that. The winner has the power.

So in a very generalized way, the structure of Philippine respect follows authoritarian lines from top down:

1. Family authority, age-based respect, which is extended to include cousins, classmates and companions.
2.  Community authority, granted to people in important jobs who have the ability to either help or hurt others. This often follows class lines, from the ruling national elite down.
3. Peer competition for advantage, where such competition involves tearing opponents down, or building allies up. The competition can be seen in negotiating sales, posturing for popularity, or angling to get a job or contract.

In American society, the same general lines of authority exist, but they are weaker because individuals are expected to act for themselves rather than simply "do what I am told". In America, authority is built from the bottom up, or earned. Rather than demanded.

1. So in the American family, age warrants polite respect, but not mandated obedience. This weaker bind to the family helps promote the independence of self that Americans develop that impels them to leave the family at around age eighteen.
2. American laws promote a kind of "consumer power" that government agencies and professionals must respect. In the Philippines, consumers have no recourse, no where to go with a complaint. In America there are consumer groups and lawyers all over the place willing to advocate or sue on behalf of citizens who are cheated or abused. People are perceived as having worth or "equality" with those in power. As such, respect is conveyed upward when the individual wants to grant it (to a boss), not when it is demanded.
3. Peer competition in American has less room (less acceptance) for cheating or connivance and tends to be less acrimonious. It is like the difference between "fixed price" shopping and negotiations. One's standing in the Philippines is negotiated with each inter-personal interaction. In America, everyone walks around fixed-price. Equal, as a citizen.

Well, as in all gross generalities, there are a lot of exceptions on both sides of the Pacific. But we are striving for the general tendencies because it helps with the point I want to make.

The Philippine hierarchies of respect and power are deeply emotional. One steps outside the lines of authority at considerable risk. Try giving Lola some lip, or the priest some objection, or the doctor a question as to his diagnosis. There's hell to pay, hell to pay. Because the offended party takes the complaint or objection or rebellion personally.

In America, although rebellious dissent is recognized, it is generally not taken as a personal insult. The offending party may be considered thoughtless or brash, but not necessarily unkind or disrespectful, and the person with authority remains strong and warranting of respect. Only in the most severe of circumstances is respect lost. In the Philippines, authority and respect seem to ride on a whim, so must be protected at all cost.

In America, authority is a cat on the prowl. In the Philippines, authority is a cornered cat in a dead-end alley. American authority pushes out to embrace the underlings. Philippine authority defends itself from the underlings.

And the laws of the land reflect that.

Philippine constitutional mandates defend. They defend against foreign ownership, against the security threat of dual citizenship, and against threats to the family and established authority.

So libel laws are strict, defending the "honor" of those in power. And people in church are protected against the "Celdran Offenses". Where, in the US, the tendency is to rule in favor of freedoms for the individual, in the Philippines, the tendency is to rule in favor of the empowered.

The filing of a legal case in the Philippines has the effect of declaring someone guilty. The idea of innocent until proven guilty is not rooted in the Philippines. And an underling challenges a power-person at grave risk. The superior in the chain of respect and authority has a commanding presence. Just ask Senator Enrile, who dares the entire world to take him on.

And no one does.

Well, no one does, and gains by it. And Enrile is still in his Presidential chair.

So what does that promote, this legislation of protections for the empowered?

It legislates a shift in accountability for wrongs away from the empowered and to those of little power.

It is the legislation of authoritarianism.

And, indeed, it is the legislation of the whine. It is the casting off of responsibility for wrongdoing to the whistle blowers or the innocent or the weak. Just ask Senator Sotto what he thinks about whistle-blowers who don't like plagiarism.

The projection, to those of us who are outsiders, is that the power people in the Philippines are rather insecure.

Defensive.

Needing protection.

And with the protection comes "the great hiding", the sacrifice of candor and open expression and challenge. Even President Aquino is afraid to let the Public's eyes look at government information. Getting passage of FOI is like doing a root canal without anesthesia. The patient doth object.

Information is not seen as freeing the Philippines to produce, to work honestly and honorably. It is seen as a threat.

Authoritarianism hardens the heart and diminishes effort.

But something different is happening right now. It is dramatic. It gives us a chance to observe a profound sociological shift. Tectonic plates are on the move.

Social media are empowering the broad population to look, listen and speak.

Authoritarianism's underbelly is now upturned. The old sense of respect is being eroded.

The Catholic Church feels punished. Senator Sotto feels punished. Senator Enrile lashes out at everyone, defending his honor. President Aquino lashes out at the media for their relentless criticisms.

The Philippines is teetering.

The old authoritarian ways are no longer having the same clout. A thousand chickens have escaped from the henhouse and they are pecking at the fox's behind.

The people are relishing the ability to push for change.

People tell me to accept that Philippine culture is what it is, and not to overlay Western values onto it.

It is not me who is overlaying the values. It is Filipinos with the ability to communicate. I am simply depicting what I see. The Philippine model of authoritarian rule is under attack.

My own observation, looking at history around the planet, is that authoritarian forms of government don't perform well. Because they limit ideas. They stifle innovation and risk-taking. They hold back the power of the people in the belief that the ruling class is better at figuring things out.

I think the Philippines will progress because the cat is unleashed here, it is on the prowl. Or chickens are unleashed. I've lost track of my animals.

President Aquino will see that an FOI Bill is passed, or he will go down in history as just another failed authoritarian president in an era that values individual accomplishment. Because the individuals of Philippine society can no longer be silenced.

Authority is shifting to the people. We bear witness.

Nay, we help out.

And, yes, in the natural flow of things, the family rules of order will also start to weaken. New rules will come into play, nurturing ambition rather than undermining it.

That is not good or bad, I suspect. It is both. It simply is the evolution of freedom in an era where "the great hiding" is no longer possible.

Angry Maude Reports: Invasion of the Philippines

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Philippines Invaded!

Special Report Filed by Angry Maude

The Philippines suffered a stealth invasion overnight. Well, the invasion did not exactly take place overnight, but the Nation awoke and discovered itself invaded.

Rather like a woman awaking, rolling over, and finding herself face to face with some naked unwanted stranger, scruffy of beard, smelly of breath, and loud of snore right there on the pillow next to hers. Kinda makes you want to check out the body parts and wonder about the dream , you know?

But no matter how it happened, it was clear over the morning coffee, reading the morning blog, that the Philippines has been invaded. It is now occupied. Officially. Without question. Fo sho . . .

Strangers are in charge.

Normally we think of invaders as being from a different planet, or different country. A different place of geography.

But that is just a limitation in our thinking, rather like our thinking that history is a stepwise progression in time rather than a warp of space.  History is taking place instantaneously but on a magnificent spacial quantum twist of cohesion that we can only grasp iteratively. And if you can figure that sentence out, please send me a note, because I have no idea what I just said. Michael Crichton gets it, though, I'm confident.

Occupiers are distinguished, not by the land from which they emerged, but the by the control they exercise over the native man. Or woman. We are not gender biased here, no matter what my sisters think. We are occasionally inclined to use gender shortcuts, for the quickest point between two ideas is often a short word.

But I digress . . .

Christ this blog will never get written if my typewriter keeps running off at the lip . . .

We are occupied.

The invader

The invaders are the pampered patrons of dynastic privilege backed by the moneyed industrialists. This is a well-defined set of people, a unity, a community, a nation unto itself.

These creatures are chameleons of the body and public presentation  and are able to mold themselves into our likeness like a Roddenberry shape-shifter from Planet Xon. They look like us. Dress the same. Have the same language. And they talk the good word in that language, appealing to our historical pride in their father's deeds. Or mother's. Or great grand-aunt's, as long as the name is distinguished enough.

They are handsome or pretty, charming and intelligent. They smile and tell us of their good deeds. They get their 15 minutes of fame, generally once or twice a week.

But then they step away from the public podium of gracious bearing and they get down and dirty, down and privileged, down and powerful. They wave the law in front of our faces and say "obey" whilst running off to do as they please, where as they please means engorging their stomachs and wallets off the fat of a very thin nation. Nay, a starving nation.

Make no mistake. They are different. They are unified. And they are raping and pillaging.

You can tell they have something to hide because that's what they spend most of their time doing. They hide their money in secret bank accounts. They hide their deeds in public records kept from the public.  Getting SALN's out of them is like pulling teeth from a gorilla. They get their educations in foreign lands at strange places named Harvard and London School of Economics. They live behind gated walls with maids and servants and polished fast cars that haul them about while the rest of the nation is stuffed like crushed sardines in the back of a noisy, dirty, diesel-puffing jeepney.

They step ambitiously and assuredly upward along the path to fame, riches and power whilst the rest of the nation sticks in one place for a lifetime, monotonously jamming rice into the mud.

No, no. We are occupied.

Those people are "those people". They are different. They are not us.

They make the rules, and the rules favor them. The rules do not favor us.

If we open our yaps, the dungeon awaits. Senator Sotto represents the dark knight, a vivid  caricature, a hyper-sensitive ego engaged in sly, silky religious posturing that morphs into master and lord. He only lacks a horse and cape and "cue sound" for his thunderous, ominous approach, waving shouts of "libel!" as his mace. Like the armies of huns and mongols and invading turks, "suppression!" is his battle cry.

He seriously believes he has the correct definition of freedom of speech, and it is a lot more confined and confining than ours. Like, we get confined for 12 years if we open our yaps about the stench that emanates from the brains of the privileged.

The only thing that keeps the occupiers from hauling our bloomer bedecked derrieres off and flaying them is the internet and the knowledge that the entire world is watching. And they are trying to worm their way around that.

Two citizens visiting the Senate chambers . . .

Cybercrime Act my overlarge backside.

Citizen Oppression Act, libel enforcement of the internet built on the masterful illusion of caring for kids who are peddled for sex.

Clearly, legislators have learned from the Catholic Church. They've learned how to wield guilt and righteousness whilst avoiding the stigma attached to responsibility. Like responsibility for all the death and sickness and starvation in a nation the Church caretakes as moral custodians and the Legislature caretakes as legal custodians.

Who did it, I want to know. If not them, who?

The government recently hauled a 62 year old woman off to jail because she complained that miners were destroying the land and she ripped into the Mayor of her berg. The Sotto mentality got her. "Criticize the Mayor and learn your place, Woman!"

From the inside of a stinking cell.

They allow extra-judicial murderers to lie in wait like the biggest ugliest crocodile you can imagine. They don't cage the beast. They WANT it out there as a stark dark reminder to the common people that "you best not get out of line".

Fear is palpable in the Philippines. It is there every day. Lying, lurking. The knowledge that there are mean bastards with power here, and they know no limits. The alien monsters are drooling and snarling and they are in charge of this nation.

U-tube is the only thing keeping the Philippines from regressing directly back to the dark ages.

The soul of the occupiers is akin to that of Darth Vader. On some days you can hear the heavy breathing and swear it is enhanced by a borg machine behind the curtains pumping life and wisdom into a lifeless apparatus called Senate . . ..

Have you ever seen such a body of highly schooled people getting nothing done so magnificently? No RH Bill, no FOI Bill, no Divorce Bill, sitting on their SALN's. In the real world, among the commoners, they would call such achievement incompetence.

Here, it is just another day.

Because the Philippines is occupied.

And the occupiers play by their own rules. And they really don't give a box of bon bons about the natives. Except as to how they can be used to best advantage.

The proof is in their putrid, non-performing pudding, and their choice of acts that suppress over acts that open the government up to forthright inspection by the natives.

The Inquirer won't print the headline.

But you know, and I know, the nation is occupied.

Elitism, Mars and JoeAm's House

If you were fighting the rain last week, perhaps you missed the video from the U.S. about "Seven Minutes of Terror", the Curiosity expedition to Mars. "Curiosity" is a nuclear powered robotic rover that will help earthbound creatures decide if there is a different place that can sustain human life. Gadzooks, but NASA marketed this expedition well, selling it like a real-life suspense story. I'll link to two absorbing videos at the end of this article.

This is not a technology article, however. So if you detest science, just wade a little more and I'll get to the point.

The seven minutes of terror is the time between when the rover's pod hit the Martian atmosphere to the time it touched down on Mars. One of the videos focuses on the reactions of the Jet Propulsion Lab's blue-shirted technicians as they monitored the fruits of their work during the tense seven minutes. A guy is reading readouts into the microphone, most incomprehensible on the tape. Speed. Distance to surface. Checkpoints.

Curiosity below parachute; photo from orbiter

• Entering atmosphere.
• Popping parachute.
• Popping capsule base so instruments can read positioning.
• Dropping the crane and rover from the pod.
• Maneuvering sideways away from the parachute and toward the landing zone.
• Firing retro-rockets to stabilize the flying crane and slow its fall.
• Lowering the rover on a tether while continuing to drop.
• Touchdown and cutting the tether; wild cheering, hugging and backslapping.
• Crane rocketing off to a safe distance, splashing into the sandy dirt.
• First thumbnail photo and more cheering, hugging and backslapping.

Seven minutes of faith in a machine; faith in Man's accomplishments.

We will post appropriate photos in the gallery of the Church of Man. If you do not yet belong to our Church, please read the formation announcement in the pertinent article here.

The Mars landing was almost as dramatic as the first manned moon landing.

No, folks, it was not done in Hollywood.

Curiosity

Unfortunately, it is reported that China is angry and has summoned the US Ambassador to report for a lecture. Evidently China has claimed Mars because of the historical precedent that it is called "the Red Planet." They don't like the U.S. dropping one-ton off-road vehicles onto their dirt.

Well, that will play out as will nine-dash crayon drawings done by a Chinese seventh grader that authorizes Chinese warships to cruise off the coast of Luzon.

I think that whole nation is smoking dope.

The cost of the Mars venture is $2.6 billion.

At an exchange rate of 41.83 pesos per dollar that is:

• P 108,758,000,000 or 108.8 billion pesos.

That would feed a lot of Filipinos, eh? Build a lot of classrooms.

It would feed a lot of homeless Americans, too; give them a good meal, a bed and a shower. It would bail out a lot of underwater homeowners or college graduates sucking on loan payments.  Or help fund Social Security.

But the U.S. chose to invest the money in Mars.

Good idea or bad? THAT is the point of this article, or the essential question at least.

I happen to think it is good, and here are the reasons why:

• The U.S. needs to stay ahead of China in the space race because space is a military place. You lose that edge and you risk everything. China is not yet a peaceful and constructive player in the World community.

• The money gets paid largely to American companies and workers, so it is not much different than a road infrastructure project aimed at righting the economy; it is just a very long road taking some eight months to traverse. It is a lightly traveled road, but so is that freeway between Clark and Subic.

• The technology advances will eventually find their way into civilian uses, like smaller cameras and computers and useful health care equipment. Or 100 pound parachutes that can withstand 65,000 tons of snap. What the hell was THAT sucker made of?

• We can have a colony on another planet when our earth implodes in about 200 years. Survival of our dysfunctional, stupid, destructive species. I'll go out on a limb and say that is a good thing.

• It is great television. Better than movies and fake stuff.

A parallel dilemma.

Our neighbors and friends are always asking for money. They are poor. But we (our family) choose to invest  our money, instead, in ourselves (a car, a large house), savings for our son's college and savings for my wife (I'm older and will bite the dust while she is relatively young; she has no career or professional training).

It is the fundamental question on which all political theory rests. Take care of the poorest or take care of a few select people.

Well Marx and Engels and Adam Smith had a few things to say about this. They beat it to a pulp, socialism and capitalism. And history has played out and capitalism won. Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Barak Obama in the U.S. are beating each other about the ears regarding the single issue: invest in the people, or invest in the wealth-builders?

Socialism or capitalism?

At the core of the highly successful capitalistic American economic beast is the human drive called "motivation". Often it looks like aspiration or ambition. Sometimes it morphs to greed. But it is the fundamental drive to produce and excel. This is the beast that Ayn Rand spent several thick novels addressing. The societal advantage of egoism and productive might.

When individual effort and achievement is siphoned off to take care of non-achievers, over-all achievement slows and productivity goes stagnant. And poverty and malaise grow.

That’s why the grand ideal of communism is deader than Aunt Maude's dog that was run over by the morning milk truck.

My neighbors will never grasp the concept, but I think the Philippines is best served by a pyramid of capabilities where a pinnacle of productive might is sharpened and raised for the ultimate benefit of the base. I think when my son is 45 and sitting in the legislature or running his law practice or business, trained in American disciplines, the neighbors will be much better off for it. When he has lived a standard of living that is high and aspires to make it higher, the neighbors will benefit.

Beneath the highly productive pinnacle we will see emerge a happy-go-spending middle class.

Elitist? Hmmmm.

Uncaring? Hmmmmmm.

I'll coin the term "economic elitism" for consideration for the Humpty Dumpty New World Dictionary. It means an investment in a small set of wealth-builders whose success flows down to the broad population. Other economists refer to it as the "trickle down" theory, but that to me suggests it is just money moving down a pipe. No, no.

It is the BUILDING of the pipe.

It is investing in the productive enterprise that MAKES the money. It is not just taxing and passing around money like the church panhandlers do at offering time.

"Economic elitism" favors the few. It says that in a class of 400 high school graduates, 20 will contribute in a material way to making this a better, richer Philippines. Find them. Train them the way China does its athletes. Obsessively.  Make sure they thrive and stay in the Philippines.

Do a good job taking care of the other graduates. But do a sterling job of finding and polishing the jewels.

That is the point of this article. Filipinos are smart but not many are trained in productivity. Most are corrupted by values of subservience, the trade of favors, and ego over humility as it hampers discovery. So train them to think differently. Don't spare the funds. Develop a set of unaffiliated, super-smart thinkers and producers. Tell them to make the nation tops in Asia. Fast track them into positions of authority. They'll know what to do.

That would be the kind of elitist program the Philippines could use. In 100 years, there might even be a Filipino on Mars.

And so, to understand what quality elitism is, I refer you here to two videos that may possibly have redefined American willingness to invest in the elitism  . . . and the paybacks . . .of space travel:

• NASA's  "7 Minutes of Terror" Video which lasts 5 minutes

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory Control Room during the 7 minutes of terror and through the first images. Stick with it, the lesson is at the end.