I was once asked about what films have I seen that have had a definite impact or influence in my life.
Without fail, I answered Stargate.
No, not the series or several series that came after it, but the moderately successful film that set it off. The one that featured James Spader and Kurt Russell (the hero of The Thing). So what did I like about the movie?
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Well, one of the central parts of the story is that the Ancient Egyptian deities that primitive people worshiped weren’t really divine at all. As it turns out, they were just a bunch of aliens with super-advanced technology that looked, to very primitive humans at least, like magic. Anyway, using their advanced technology and lots of well-applied terror-tactics, the aliens (Goa’uld I think they called themselves) made early humans believe that they were god. Of course, through the action of the heroes, the humans enslaved by the Goa’uld realize that they have a right to be free like the heroes who fought against the same oppressors thousands of years ago and live a life free of fear and slavery.
Unfortunately, as I’ve come to see things over the years, typical Pinoys are no different from the primitive humans found by the heroes of Stargate that are utterly arrested when it comes to creative and critical thinking. However, instead of being beholden to advanced aliens, typical Pinoys are all too often beholden to politicians and celebrities. As commenter Kimberly Doe on our FB page states, there are those who will choose to defend their favorite celebrity as if they were a god or goddess whose benevolence somehow allows them to live. Sadly, this cannot be further from the truth as your basic Pinoy celebrity cares more about his or her own popularity and salary than the plight of just one Filipino citizen.
Over the years, it has occurred to me that Pinoys don’t want leaders per se, but masters. The reason why critical-thinking and creativity aren’t popular in the Philippines is because we don’t want people who will inspire us to be better people, we just want people who will do everything for us including thinking, managing our lives and taking responsibility for our wrongdoings. This is the reason why, try as we might, the systems and ideals of American independence will never jive with Pinoy culture.
Here’s something that I think most people miss when it comes to the idea of independence. Independence is essentially tied with one’s sense of responsibility. Independence is about being your own master and not being beholden to anyone. To be independent means being able to think for yourself, make your own decision in life, believe in whatever deity makes you comfortable and, most importantly, take responsibility for the mistakes you make. That’s right, by becoming “independent” you can no longer blame the government for being so poor, you can no longer blame the church for not being able to finish your studies and you can no longer blame the media for giving birth to more than twenty children.
Please people, we like to say that we are a “free country” but do we really know what it means to be free? Are we ready to take responsibility for our lives and make our own decisions? Will we ever try to understand the weight of each choice we have before we make them?
The answer to that sits with you, reader.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
I HAVE RETURNED TO LAY WASTE TO OUR ENEMIES!
Oh…it’s just a July 4th celebration for me. My family went to the Park to see the FireWorks. We have a good time.
Stargate is about some “Portals ” in the Universe” ; where we can go to other “Dimensions” and “Planes” . It has been Theorized, that we live in this universe, of “Dimensions” and “Planes”…It is Theorized, that there are Eleven (11) Dimensions in this Universe; according to some Theoretical Physicists.
On Planet Earth, we are on our Reality ,live in a Three Dimensional World…Thickness, Width and Height…
I believe, there are Beings and Advanced Civilizations in other Planets. Whether, UFO and EstraTerrestrial Beings are Real is Debatable…in our present time…
The Filipinos Slave Mentality is a hangover of us, being Colonized by foreign powers for many centuries. The problem is : we all cannot GET OVER, from this Stupid Mindset. The idiot Filipino politicians have taken over ; the place of our foreign colonizers. They want us all, to be as DUMB as we can be… so that they can continue to manipulate us…and rule over us; with their family and relatives; thru their political family dynasties…
FIRST of all:Freedom is an illusion,it does not exist until you are dead. The cost of true ‘Freedom’ is death.
A more apt word would MAYBE be ‘responsibility’. Example: Not littering is a choice, to do it or not, its simple. But to change the economic fortunes of the Filipino ‘massa’ is a much larger and more difficult task.
Until the electricity rates that are preventing business growth and literally killing people who can not afford Air-Con are brought down by at least 30%, business growth will remain flat.The worst part of this scam is that it is EXACTLY that, a scam.It is based on the ENRON scam of the early 2000’s….it must be stopped.
GOCCs must be audited, the guilty plunderer’s imprisoned and all the GOCC’s taken control of ,NOW !
A livable sustainable wage must be paid so as to stop the importation of useless ‘call center’ crap jobs to force the country to turn inward and find a solution to its home based economic fortunes rather than relying on OFW’s.
It is a much more complicated task than outlined here.
BUT the Filipino must start now, or fall even further down the shit-hole than has already occurred.
I guess we’ll need a snake plissken with his mighty mullet and a pre-balding ultron to save us all.
Kidding aside, does this mean that we need the help of the white man to move forward? It’s pretty on spot with “waiting for a hero” to save us from this damnation we created for ourselves. Though i do not have any beef with this i truly wonder if any one of them would step up and push us out of our backward ideologies… kinda like what t.e. lawrence did for the then-shattered arabian tribes.
Filipinos culture a more valuable than a masters of degree. That’s why till the end of life still in poor of pocket but a rich of happiness.
Alma, has it never occurred to you that a rich culture will naturally lead to material riches, and that a poor culture will lead to poverty?
If the Filipino really valued “culture”, he wouldn’t desecrate God’s gifts, steal and deceive his fellow man, and look down on those who are honest, hardworking, and successful.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.
Nothing is going to change, the populous have been dumbed down sufficiently so as not to rebel. Freedom may well be an illusion but I would rather have it overseas than here
Personal revolution may not always be applicable to the situation we are in right now. If you try to factor in the intellectual capacity of the majority of our ‘poor’ and may I include those stupid middle income peeps then we cannot just imply the ‘personal revolution’ to be the solution to this abysmal situation we are in right now. Its like forcing a grade 1 student to know the Pythagorean theorem right there and then. As much as you might want to suggest other things, what our country needs is a firm leader who will have the balls to put a leash on its ravaging and down spiral attitude and let the people be made aware why such an action is enforced. If lky has done it, I don’t see the impossibility of such feat. ive been day dreaming about owning a .50cal and just go trigger happy killing corrupt officials and then have a complete stranger take over the country and implement rules tighter than a fish’s asshole. and one more thing, abolish CHR hahaha
We are now liberated in the political sense; but not in our minds. We are still fettered by our inability to fly like eagles the way Malaysia Thailand and Singapore have. The corrupt mind defines freedom to be the liberty to do whatever we want to the detriment of our entire nation. Pee wherever we want, steal whatever we can while no one notices, and cheat every possible rule to make life convenient. This nation is like a band of wild monkeys on the loose having a heyday on messing up everything the former colonizers left. Look at Baguio before and after the Americans. Filipinos are experts in taking anything of beauty and turning it into a horrid mess. The freedom to create chaos all you want – that’s the pinoy version of independence. Can mommy come back and save this baby of a country wallowing in its shit and formula food? Any takers – unfortunately no foreign country is interested in inheriting a headache called the Phil even if we beg them to get us for free. So wake up guys and let the enlightened ones take the lead in solving our 1001 problems. Have a good day!
indeed american independence will not work for us. to be truly independent means we can survive without assistance from other people.
“I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.” – Invictus
by William Ernest Henley