When will Filipinos stop being such pussies about their future? At the moment, they are in the midst of a frenzy to nominate people who are all about the past and offer nothing to the future. As if it weren’t enough that Filipinos find some sort of perverse comfort in dwelling in the past, they also bizarrely dwell on what is absent from that past.
A good example is the idiotic thinking Filipinos apply to taking stock of a politician’s track record of performance. Rather than count points for things that were achieved, Filipinos prefer to highlight what wasn’t done. So it’s hardly surprising that politicians with no achievement emerge as the most popular. The way Filipino’s think goes like this:
Grace Poe hasn’t stolen anything; therefore she’ll make a good president.
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Or this gem:
Leni Robredo’s husband is no longer alive; therefore she’ll make a good vice president.
In the earlier it is the absence of a behaviour and, in the latter, it is the abrupt absence of a loved one.
What is the logic behind this sort of dysfunctional thinking? This collective approach to choosing presidents and vice presidents seems to be an outgrowth of Filipinos’ perverse way of practicing their Roman Catholic faith. It’s like Filipinos see politicians with dead parents and spouses as some sort of Jesus Christ figure. And that’s probably it.
Perhaps Filipinos suffer from serious Jesus issues at a national scale.
When you suffer from a bad case of Jesus issues, everything is all about “sacrifice”.
The thinking underpinning that condition is the notion that by and of itself, “sacrifice” gets handsomely rewarded. So, it seems, Filipinos think that when they elect a sacrificial politician, they will get a leader whose leadership chops are guaranteed by a heavenly kingdom that lavishes rewards on people who “sacrifice”.
So here is the problem that begs an obvious solution:
How do you cure a people who suffer from a bad case of Jesus issues?
It might help to find a more familiar, more readily-digestible analogue to this national condition: women with daddy issues. Women with daddy issues seem to be unable to form healthy relationships with men. Why? Because they grew up with a flawed role model for malehood. The highly-respected Urban Dictionary defines a girl with daddy issues as “A girl wanting to be submissive and adored by an older guy, who will put her above all others.”
Barbara Greenberg, PhD a “clinical psychologist who specializes in treating family, children, and adolescents” offers this snippet of insight on how women with daddy issues often miss out on the real deal because of a flawed mechanism for evaluating the characters of the men they meet…
You know the expression; you’ve probably heard a million of your friends say it: “He’s too nice.” It’s because that person probably is a really good person, and they’re not used to that. They don’t express the same kind of arousal; it’s not appealing to them. They are used to a lot more emotional volatility, people being loud, fighting, conflict. And that works for them, it’s sad to say. Unless they’ve been in therapy for three years, but most often it’s not until after their first or second divorce.
It all sounds quite familiar now, doesn’t it?
Filipinos seem to have been raised on a primitive flavour of Catholicism — one where emphasis was on the aspect of Jesus Christ’s teachings that revolved around a promise of everything after death on the back of “sacrifice” in this life. This sort of messed-up way of regarding life is what makes Filipinos so susceptible to bowing down to and eating off the palms of politicians who pitch themselves in the same way. Their “sacrifice” is their people’s salvation. Like Jesus Christ. Only better — because rewards in life are promised by these earthly prayerful people with a choir of dead people who will be watching over them from heaven (presumably) during their term of office.
Like women with daddy issues, Filipinos with Jesus issues will never go for politicians that apply a level head, systematic problem solving skills, and mature grace in the way they conduct themselves as top officials of the Republic. Instead they will go for the emotional basket cases; the ones who regard everything as a Laban (“fight”), the ones who are likely to polarise an entire nation by making their government a never-ending us-versus-them proposition, the ones whose psyches are hopelessly messed up by a recent loved one dying violently, abruptly, and senselessly.
These people will make their entire term of office all about making sense of their tragedy and their “sacrifice”. In short, their administrations will be all about them.
Filipinos deserve those sorts of politicians — because rather than bravely overcome their Jesus issues, they, instead, prefer to rest assured within the comfy embrace of this national pathological condition.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Better to have a Jesus issue than to have a no-braincells issue, which obviously the writer of this garbage article is afflicted with.
did you read and comprehend about the article?
Jesus was kind of an imagined personality marketed as the supersaviour but with a caveat. You have to die first before joining him in a place they fantasize as heaven. And guess what, most believers are hoping the long dead zombie will poke at our religous politicians and populace to elect people according to the plan of that supernatural thing called god. If only those dead people who by now must have seen jesus can vote, they could be the game changers.
Magsasaka Sa Nayon, let me just say that if someone would give you an enema you could be buried in a matchbox.
@Jim DiGriz And let me just say you are another idiot trying to sound, uhm, like an idiot. 😀
Sure….
And let me say that you’re just an attention whore. A TROLL. 😛
@Skull Face And you’re, what, an intellectual genius whose opinions we should cherish? LOL
kindly elaborate why you think the writer is an idiot in an objective and concise manner.
It’s that kind of thinking that makes your blood boil. “Ok na na yan pasta hindi ganyan”.
Dumbass spotted.
Please refrain from being a fallacious moron and please read the article.
@Indio
“Please refrain from being a fallacious moron and please read the article.”
I suggest that you start doing that yourself, Indiot. 😀
Some promdi manangs make thier daily “sacrifices” by going to church first thing in the morning, then again in the evening. Then spend a few more hours at home to doing the rosary. The rest of the day, do one-upmanship bragging of their “sacrifice” in very productive tsismis with kapwa promdi manangs. How industrious!
If 20 mil are in Manila, then imagine 80 mil were brought up by promdi manangs.
Your impression is inaccurate. It might be probably true 40 or 50 years ago. But today sexual liberality in the provinces may be at par with manila. That was also a bias I harbored before but when I moved to the provinces after spending my teenage and early adulthood in manila I was pleasantly shocked. Some if not most of the manangs are looking forward for the socialization after church services. Some even ended up grabbing and running away with somebody else’s husband while some manage to convince the priests to lay off their white cloth. And yes, the size of the community does not matter at all whether in a tiny barrio or large city.
Excellent!
ha?
Well, that is what I have been saying. As another example, Kris and Noynoy grew up in their formative years with Ninoy in prison. So, it is an “other or the rest of the world” issue. Everybody is really their enemies. Thus, they can’t judge other people well, so they have KKK and relationships that are fucked. It is “us vs them” at the level that is scary and pathological, and yet you have a media Queen and a President who is a pathological liar, lying and fantasies being the only effective defense mechanism for them . They should be mental wards.
When people vote by emotion, not looking at qualifications and result oriented performances, then we will always have politicians who are sira-ulo in the the literal sense. Look they were just twerking with Playgirls in Laguna — they were not ashamed to be gagos in public because they think the public are also gago. That’s another case of mentally disturbed individuals.
Since it is going to be expensive to demand psychological tests on all voters, cheaper if we demand it on all the candidates. Just look at Trillanes — that one is a very clear cut case of a mental ward on the loose, even surpassing PNoy’s mental sickness.
@Add You forgot to mention The Binays, Bongbong and Imelda Marcos in your list of gago and sira ulo.
You also forgot the Aquinos, who you worship as demigods. I’m very sure you cheered when the Mendiola and Hacienda Luisita Massacres happened, right?
@Skull Face The Aquinos were already mentioned in Add’s comment, so mentioning them again would be redundant and pointless; just like your nonsensical comment. Try reading the chain first before making an attempt to be smart. You’d end up looking like a drooling idiot otherwise.
@MSN:
You’re missing the point. That is because you’re totally EMO over the people you also mention like you overrate them. So you’re actually drooling like an idiot in the first place, pretending to be smart.
@Dio Please stop thinking of yourself as an intellectual. It gives me the creeps! LOL
It’s you who’s missing the point. I’m not EMO on anything. I was just reminding Mr. Add that the Aquinos do not exclusively own the traits of being gago and sira-ulo.
in a county where every living politician is either a thieving scumbag, incompetent hack or both, only the dead (or their memory) can approach (or be remembered as) being competent.
There is no use crying over spilled milk. This should be our motto in the coat of arms.
The “Jesus died for our sins” thinking and belief, are even questionable to me. Why Jesus died on the cross…is because the Romans and his fellow Jews crucified him. I think, it is like the 72 virgins, martyr reward belief in Islam.
If you use religion in Politics; it is a “Witch Brew”. This may be the reason, Russia’s Vladimir Lenin, banned religion, and called it : “the opium of the people”. I am not against worshiping God. I’m against Organized Religions, that have caused: wars, slavery, tortures, exploitation, idiotic beliefs, dysfunctional political system, etc…all the evils that mankind have now.
Let us remove the word “sacrifice” in politics. If you don’t want to run; don’t “sacrifice”…we don’t want your “sacrifice”.
We want your effective brain to solve our country’s problems. We want your experience, plans and efficiency; to cure the dysfunction of this nation…
Asshole logic, Filipino style. Never in all the world has there been a phenomena quite like it. This thinking is unbelievably idiotic and will get people nowhere, just like the country has been since 1965.
It’s sad to say this again, this is why the ideal Philippine savior must be someone like Joseph Stalin. A cunning, manipulative man who can easily bend people but have a strong will as well as a plan to get rid of his opponents. Remember, this was a man who began as a no name secretary. A few fudged documents later, he got his enemies wiped out and rose to power.
@Ricardo Diaz:
We don’t want a mass murderer, like Joseff Stalin in the Philippines. He created his “Gulags” in Siberia, Russia. He made these “Gulags” , his “slave camps”. Murdering about 30 million people, by working them to death…these people were from the previous Soviet Union…
Drastic, I know. I’m not too big on mass murder myself, but the fact that somebody else SUGGESTED that we should have a leader like Stalin may say something about how much of a basket case the Philippines already is is, and how much we need a drastic cure…
Banish all the trapos
The fact that somebody suggested an asshole like Stalin doesn’t mean his suggestion should be taken seriously.
Because. Seriously. He’s suggesting fucking Stalin.
@ R. Diaz , Yes, you hit it the nail on the head. You will notice that the only time you hear about Stalin murdering anyone, it is the Western mainstream media and they were not there and they have no idea what was happening in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s regime. Lenin got rid of the scumbag ‘Dynasties’ and the ‘Elites’ but then died. WW2 was all about preventing the Russian worker’s revolt from spreading to the West and it is why the USA backed Hitler and the Allies. They played both sides, as capitalists always do, to be sure of being on the winning side. The greatest achievement was getting the West’s working classes to see the U.S.S.R. as evil. Imagine,Western workers thinking other workers are evil and the corporations as being on their side.Well, as the West now knows (after 70 million unionized manufacturing jobs have fled the West for slave wage earning Chines/Indians) it was a mistake,DUH !!!
Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
Joker Arroyo seems to have been a truly rare politician, parsimonious with the public purse, yet a warrior for others’ human rights.
And with apparently no scandal knocking at his door.
How did he manage to get away with it for so long?
(maybe he thought more of others than he did of himself?)
walter p komarnicki,
Joker Arroyo’s apparent good intention for his country and people, turned out to be grounds of opportunities for exploit by others.
Aeta
I like Joker Arroyo, he has a cool name, never heard most of his joke though…
kanuto,
And you won’t—at least his current jokes. Joker Arroyo is dead.
Aeta