Not a damaged culture but a damaged soul
"WILL our country ever have any chance of getting out of the political, social, cultural, intellectual and spiritual rut it is in?" This is what more and more of our countrymen are asking themselves. And no one, it seems, has yet come up with a viable and credible answer.
I have talked to a number of foreigners, and these foreigners love the Philippines and the Filipino people. In fact, many of them even married local women. And they look at us with complete bewilderment and puzzlement.
"We cannot understand you Filipinos," they tell me. "You have probably the most abundant natural resources any country could dream of. You have a highly vibrant, intelligent and creative people, and you have a comfortable climate all throughout the year. But you and your leaders can't seem to put your act together. "Almost every leader of your country seems to be only after his own welfare.
This is very obvious by reading any of your dailies. And your people allow this to happen. Every election time, you put into power people who do not have the national interest at heart, but people whose ambition is only to amass personal wealth. "You applaud leaders who are merely popular rather than capable, merely verbose and bombastic rather than truly intelligent; the shrewd and merely clever rather than the wise, the dishonest and corrupt rather than the ones with integrity and mental honesty. "
When will you Filipinos ever learn? When will you ever wake up?" they ask me. And I simply can not provide any answer, intelligent or otherwise. Colonizers robbed us of our soul I don't know why we are the way we are. Some social thinkers say ours is a "damaged culture" because of what our colonizers have done to us. But one astute Italian businessman and restaurateur I met thought otherwise. "You do not have a damaged culture," he said, "you have a damaged soul!
You must restore the purity, the genius and the beauty of the Filipino soul, which is truly yours." He said the country's colonizers--the Spaniards, the Americans and the Japanese--have destroyed the Filipino's soul. And we have not fully recovered from the onslaught. I collapsed in my chair in his small but cozy restaurant in Makati. I couldn't say anything. It was as if he put a mirror to my face and made me look at the dirt on my face which I had long ignored. A "damaged soul."
That seems to be a good catchword for what ails our people. We cannot rise up to face and solve our problems because we have lost our soul. We have sold it--not to the devil, but to something worse--to the church, the politicians, the entertainers, the drug lords, the criminals, the board of censors, to almost anybody else outside of our own selves. Giving up our soul meant giving up our identity.
And what of our leaders? What can we expect from them? You want the truth? Not much! That's why, sometimes, some idealistic youth resort to mutiny or rebellion, because they see no other way to catch the attention of those that hold the reins of government. Have you not noticed that rather than addressing the grievances that brought about the July 27 coup or mutiny (whatever you want to call it), government investigators instead questioned the soldiers' grammar, their properties, and their perceived arrogance?
No one ever asked themselves, "What do we do now with the issues these young officers have raised against the government?" No, that was not important. What was more important was, "What do we do with your grammar, gentlemen?" Plato's ideal political leader And as for the rest of us, how do we choose our leaders come election time (if there will be one next year)? What kind of leaders should we put in government? There are no easy answers. But advice on this had been offered by one of the greatest philosophers and political thinkers of all time, Plato, who lived around 380 BC in Greece.
In his great work, "The Republic," Plato enumerated the ideal qualities of a head of state, if a country is to be rid of its evils and ensure the happiness and welfare of the people. He said: "Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils-no, nor the human race, as I believe- and then only will this our state have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."
From what I can see in our immediate political horizon, such a leader that Plato spoke of has yet to appear. Address letters to this column to 308 Prince Plaza I, 106 Legaspi St., Greenbelt, Makati City. Call 8107245 or 8926806. E-mail http://www.inq7.net/lif/2003/sep/30/jlicauco@edsamail.com.ph. Visit http://j.licauco.tripod.com/. Listen to his dzMM radio program every Sunday, 6-8 p.m. Because of a lingering computer virus, we had to delete again incoming e-mails last week. So please understand if we do not respond to recent e-mails.
http://www.inq7.net/lif/2003/sep/30/lif_22-1.htm
I have talked to a number of foreigners, and these foreigners love the Philippines and the Filipino people. In fact, many of them even married local women. And they look at us with complete bewilderment and puzzlement.
"We cannot understand you Filipinos," they tell me. "You have probably the most abundant natural resources any country could dream of. You have a highly vibrant, intelligent and creative people, and you have a comfortable climate all throughout the year. But you and your leaders can't seem to put your act together. "Almost every leader of your country seems to be only after his own welfare.
This is very obvious by reading any of your dailies. And your people allow this to happen. Every election time, you put into power people who do not have the national interest at heart, but people whose ambition is only to amass personal wealth. "You applaud leaders who are merely popular rather than capable, merely verbose and bombastic rather than truly intelligent; the shrewd and merely clever rather than the wise, the dishonest and corrupt rather than the ones with integrity and mental honesty. "
When will you Filipinos ever learn? When will you ever wake up?" they ask me. And I simply can not provide any answer, intelligent or otherwise. Colonizers robbed us of our soul I don't know why we are the way we are. Some social thinkers say ours is a "damaged culture" because of what our colonizers have done to us. But one astute Italian businessman and restaurateur I met thought otherwise. "You do not have a damaged culture," he said, "you have a damaged soul!
You must restore the purity, the genius and the beauty of the Filipino soul, which is truly yours." He said the country's colonizers--the Spaniards, the Americans and the Japanese--have destroyed the Filipino's soul. And we have not fully recovered from the onslaught. I collapsed in my chair in his small but cozy restaurant in Makati. I couldn't say anything. It was as if he put a mirror to my face and made me look at the dirt on my face which I had long ignored. A "damaged soul."
That seems to be a good catchword for what ails our people. We cannot rise up to face and solve our problems because we have lost our soul. We have sold it--not to the devil, but to something worse--to the church, the politicians, the entertainers, the drug lords, the criminals, the board of censors, to almost anybody else outside of our own selves. Giving up our soul meant giving up our identity.
And what of our leaders? What can we expect from them? You want the truth? Not much! That's why, sometimes, some idealistic youth resort to mutiny or rebellion, because they see no other way to catch the attention of those that hold the reins of government. Have you not noticed that rather than addressing the grievances that brought about the July 27 coup or mutiny (whatever you want to call it), government investigators instead questioned the soldiers' grammar, their properties, and their perceived arrogance?
No one ever asked themselves, "What do we do now with the issues these young officers have raised against the government?" No, that was not important. What was more important was, "What do we do with your grammar, gentlemen?" Plato's ideal political leader And as for the rest of us, how do we choose our leaders come election time (if there will be one next year)? What kind of leaders should we put in government? There are no easy answers. But advice on this had been offered by one of the greatest philosophers and political thinkers of all time, Plato, who lived around 380 BC in Greece.
In his great work, "The Republic," Plato enumerated the ideal qualities of a head of state, if a country is to be rid of its evils and ensure the happiness and welfare of the people. He said: "Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils-no, nor the human race, as I believe- and then only will this our state have a possibility of life and behold the light of day."
From what I can see in our immediate political horizon, such a leader that Plato spoke of has yet to appear. Address letters to this column to 308 Prince Plaza I, 106 Legaspi St., Greenbelt, Makati City. Call 8107245 or 8926806. E-mail http://www.inq7.net/lif/2003/sep/30/jlicauco@edsamail.com.ph. Visit http://j.licauco.tripod.com/. Listen to his dzMM radio program every Sunday, 6-8 p.m. Because of a lingering computer virus, we had to delete again incoming e-mails last week. So please understand if we do not respond to recent e-mails.
http://www.inq7.net/lif/2003/sep/30/lif_22-1.htm
posted by Misteryo Philippines Network (MPN) at 5:39 AM
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