To be fair to the Philippine Opposition led by the Liberal Party (a.k.a. the Yellowtards), a strategic vision for the Philippines hinged on building infrastructure is counterintuitive to the average Filipino mind. This is because Filipinos do not have a strong historic tradition of building stuff.
Indeed, much of the really large historical civil works and infrastructure that existed in the Philippines before the United States granted it independence in 1946 was built by former colonial masters. Those picturesque churches, monuments and forts that serve as the primary stock of man-made tourist attractions in the islands were built by the Spaniards. Long-distance rail was by no means an indigenous Filipino initiative and many of the country’s ports infrastructure was built by Spanish and American colonial governments and private enterprise.
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Before Spanish colonisation of the islands that were to be collectively known as “the Philippines”, there were no large-scale infrastructure works and no big architectural wonders beyond the flimsy huts indigenous Filipinos live in. There did not seem to be incentive to build anything that could even withstand the tropical storms and withering monsoon rains that visited the islands frequently perhaps because, unlike in habitats with harsher climates with harder seasonal changes, Filipinos could actually live exposed to the elements all year round. As such, if a hut is blown down by a typhoon, the day or two (or three) it would take to rebuild it would not be as life-threatening as, say, being without shelter over even just one cold winter night.
We can see this abject lack of an ethic of building large-scale capital-intensive systems and structures that deliver huge economies of scale in the more than half-century of consistent failure of Philippine society to keep its infrastrucure apace with its galloping population growth since gaining independence in 1946. Indeed, without European supervision, Filipinos, quite simply, are not up to the task of building infrastructure for themselves. Left to their devices, Filipinos will likely have been happy carrying buckets of water from a well everyday than building a system to pipe water to their homes. The same attitude can be observed in the way they regard their public transport systems, their manufacturing methods, and even their national politics.
Whether deliberate or not, the Yellowtards are exploiting Filipinos’ culturally-ingrained aversion to large-scale civil and systemic works to further a partisan agenda focused on seizing power through dishonest means. Their key argument against a long-overdue prioritisation of large-scale infrastructure development is lacing their rhetoric with fear-mongering around the “dangers” of spending too much on big-ticket items. And, of course, no Yellowtard political rhetoric is complete without the trademark liberal use of non-sequitur references to the “evil” Martial Law “Regime” of the late former President Ferdinand Marcos.
But the road to true national greatness is not necessarily paved with good or even “holy” intentions. National treasure Nick Joaquin himself in his seminal essay “A Heritage of Smallness” suggested that a “muderer mentality” is even needed to achieve that greatness.
Is not our timorous clinging to smallness the bondage we must break if we are ever to inherit the earth and be free, independent, progressive? The small must ever be prey to the big. Aldous Huxley said that some people are born victims, or “murderers.” He came to the Philippines and thought us the “least original” of people. Is there not a relation between his two terms? Originality requires daring: the daring to destroy the obsolete, to annihilate the petty. It’s cold comfort to think we haven’t developed that kind of “murderer mentality.”
Indeed, Philippine society has a lot of social baggage that needs to be crushed in order to progress. Many of these impoverished legacies need to be killed in order for the new structures, new attitudes, new social orders, and new approaches to thinking to be established. No great civilisation was built without rivers of blood flowing out of the piles of corpses of those who resisted conquest and the changes the victors implemented upon their newly-acquired subjects. Not even the Roman Catholic Church itself could absolve the “holiest” of its wars of that approach to implementing change at a large-enough scale as to make history. In order to build and build big, one must possess the stomach to destroy and destroy big.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
I like this blog of yours @benign0, now if those Yellowtards should shut up their mouth & let our president do his “Murderous” works for our country just like what former Singaporean PM Lee Kuan Yew did to his country, then Philippines will soon to become the next “Disneyland with Death Penalty”. ????
Let’s make a better Philippines and destroy the old systems & cultures here in order to free us from extreme poverty & alienation that strained us for many centuries since the Spanish era of our country. 😉
It reminds me of a phrase in writing called “murder your darlings,” something I try to apply in writing here at GRP as well. It refers to when a writer puts in a word or phrase in his work that he initially likes so much and sees it as cool, even trying to build the rest of his piece around it. Later on, while editing, he realizes that his favorite phrase is clumsy, doesn’t fit his goal or is terrible. Thus, he has to cut it out, thereby murdering his darling.
Facets of our culture could be considered our darlings. Such darlings include our Pinoy Pride attitude, where we believe that “we are superior to all other countries! We are better, brighter and deserve to be their masters!” Or another could be “we are oppressed, so other countries deserve to give us hand-outs because they owe us for their oppression!” These are among the cultural darlings that need to be murdered and cut out, because they are dragging us down.
It’s like having a spouse or lover who’s demanding, doesn’t want to support and just throws burden upon burden on you, while insisting it is “love.” You’re better off without someone like that.
Awesome insight, Chino! ????
Yup. It’s difficult enough for most people to rid their house of junk, how much more parting from the stuff they hold dear.
The Roman Catholic Church had its history of Inquisition. Torturing and burning , “heretics” on public square, on stakes, to teach people, they are to be followed.
Filipinos are naturally passive people. Some of us , prefer to be Indolent. We have the , “Tambay Menatlity”. One of our web writers, hit a sour note on some readers, when she pointed out on our : “Tambay Mentality”. The Spanish colonizers, observed this Filipino nature, when they called us: “Indolent Filipinos”.
If the “Juan Tamad trademark”, is a good trademark for Filipinos. Like an indolent guy, under a guava tree, with mouth open, waiting for the guava fruit to fall into his mouth. Maybe, that would categorize us all, including me.
We lack the initiative to do greatness. We have no originality in starting new things. Or inventing new things. Maybe, we can again blame the foreign invaders, for making us be too dependent on them. Of course, they used Forced Labor on Filipinos to build infrastructures. The American colonizers initiated to further build and improved our infrastructures.
After the foreign colonizer left, we barely improved or improved these existing infrastructures. Instead , we concentrated on “politics of destruction”.
When a leader, like Duterte, calls us, to build and build, like the late Pres. Marcos did. Some of us, like the YellowTard opposition, find ways to Obstruct these programs, for fear, we would become bankrupt. Infrastructures are the “lifeblood” of a nation. Without them, the country’s commerce cannot be stimulated, and progress cannot be attained. Of course, we have to look for corruption/wastre on public works projects. Like what Aquino and Abad did to the DAP and PDAF.
So for me, we all should go ” shoulder to shoulder” forward and build. No procrastination. No second thoughts !
The Philippines is a Paradoxical & Illogical quagmire of ill-thought foresight, nay, ZERO- FORESIGHT. The Political Dynasties that have ruined the entire country have an iron grasp of the entire economy where the only way to survive is to be a thief or scam artist..
I have never seen anything quite like it. The idiotic logic of the average Filipino is such that they will cut a hose in half, thereby ruining it, instead of increasing the water pressure to make the water come out of the hose ‘FASTER’. OR by using a false conclusion in a deductive argument as a Premise in an indeductive argument, is the most idiotic logic I have ever seen and it is practiced by every single person in the archipelago that I have ever met.
So, to say that the idea’s and thinking of the past must be destroyed ‘BIG’, I do wonder if the writer understands just HOW BIG an undertaking he is talking about. The scope as well as the amount of change and the types of change that are necessary to affect a change in the logical thinking and day to day thinking of the average Juan and Maria in the Philippines is bordering on impossible.
DU30 is just like PM Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore. I’d even go further and liken him to Lin Ze Xu, a Chinese scholar-official of the Qing dynasty best known for his role in the First Opium War of 1839–42.
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.