Two articles make for thought-provoking reading this weekend.

The first is Michael Tan’s Tisoy Kasi!, a romp through history, language, how we currently see ourselves and how we can see ourselves not only in a better, but more realistic light:

The historian Benedict Anderson writes about how Filipinos seem to have gone through a lobotomy, a removal of a part of the brain responsible for memory. The amnesia is selective of course; we leave out bits and pieces of our colonial history, and practically all of our precolonial past.

Most Filipinos know little about the precolonial era. In part, this is because of colonialism, both Spanish and American, and the way the precolonial period was depicted as a kind of Dark Age, of ignorant pagan natives running around naked. With the nationalist period of the 1970s, the pendulum swung to the other end as we romanticized the precolonial period in our search for The Authentic Filipino.

It is important, certainly, to go back to our precolonial period, but not to look for a pure Filipino culture. In the first place, the “Filipino” did not come into existence until the 19th century, and initially, it was a term reserved for Spaniards born in the Philippines. Later, it was expropriated by Rizal and other ilustrados, the illuminated bourgeoisie, who could see a Filipino as a loyal subject of Spain.

The roots of what we call Filipino culture today do date back to the precolonial period, and there is still much to do here around archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics to reconstruct that period. But what we have so far is already fascinating, including the way it reflects how our cultures were constantly being hybridized during that time…

…We need to avoid two extremes: One is to continue wallowing in a colonial mentality that sees only Western influences as good. The other is to attempt to look for a pure precolonial past. All cultures are hybrids and it can be fascinating unraveling all the sources and processes involved in this hybridization. Once we recognize that we are all mestizo, the product of more than one culture, we might better appreciate ourselves — and humanity.

The second is Breaking the Colonial-Cum-Victim-Cum-Cinderella Mentality, by Big Mango:

It is the great and profound gift of the Internet that allows for conservative ideas as much as liberal ones. Those ideas flow freely both ways, creating diversity and discussion. That’s the most essential thing to raise the bar. Not only can we laugh at the mindless things we can find on the Internet or delve to the mundane, but we can also raise the bar of understanding and rationality or choose either the conservative or liberal route. Where else can we find such a rich diversity of ideas, beliefs, point of views, and focus?

that’s not the real test, is it? if you’re reading this you probably are part of the converted, as in converted to the wonders of the ‘Net. The test is getting others to see this beauty. The test is getting them all online to taste the richness and profoundness and quiet simplicity of this gift and open them to a world beyond celebrities’ scandalous lives.

The first point of this post is to state that every generation sees decadence in it and in the generation that it sired. We can reopen discourse, we can return to civility and reason and understanding and thus, raise the bar of expectation. the second point of this post is accepting ideas, even though we hate it in our guts. It means thinking out of the box. It means embracing the mundane to the serious in a holistic way and, that is how we break the vicious cycle of what {caffeine_sparks} called “our culture of colonial-cum-victim-cum-Cinderella mentality”.

Both articles happily remind me of something my father wrote on national identity way back in 1996:

Just what our culture consists of, I am not competent to say. I can say, however, that it is extremely complex. It is that very complexity which often leads Occidentals to classify us either as Occidentals with brown skins or Orientals with a very superficial Western veneer.

It is that same complexity which leads some Asians to say that we are not Asian at all, although Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, Nepalese, Syrians, etc. do not deny it of each other, much as they differ among themselves.

It is that same complexity which bewilders us and drives us to attempt a total identification with West or East (in the sense in which Asians sometimes exclude us from it), an attempt impossible in one case, meaningless in the other.

It is the same complexity from which some try to escape by taking refuge in an imaginative reconstruction, more or less accurate as the case may be, of Philippine culture at the time of Magellan’s arrival, setting up that culture as the only true Philippine culture and de-Filipinizing all subsequent generations, including our own.

In my opinion this attitude is untenable. It separates the pre-Spanish from subsequent cultural developments, considering the former as wholly indigenous—they were not, in the narrow sense of the word—and the latter as spurious. The attitude gives too much credit to the ability of Spanish and American culture to supplant our previous culture and replace it with something different; the attitude also gives no credit whatsoever to our ancestors for any capacity to transform and assimilate foreign influences, giving them a distinctively Filipino character.

One who holds such a view turns his back to the most significant and most remarkable—I would say most admirable—fact about our culture and ourselves: that complexity has not prevented unity, nor unity led to monotonous uniformity. Instead of our being proud of our unique cultural achievement—it is our achievement, not the Spaniards’ or the Americans’—we are ashamed of ourselves, see only the faults and dangers of our culture and see them magnified out of all proportion.

YOU may have noticed that the Inquirer’s embarked on a series of articles about a growing number of people in our midst: Koreans. For an older generation of Filipinos, of course, Korea and the Philippines was about a shared defiance of communist aggression during the Korean War. For another generation of Filipinos, Korean-Philippine relations revolved around a shared commitment to democracy and People Power: Kim Dae Jung admired Ninoy Aquino and he  and Cory Aquino were -are- friends.

Recently I’ve been reading a very entertaining book, “Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles” (Simon Winchester) and there’s a passage that struck me that I’d like to share with you.

In his book, Winchester wrote,

If you see a Korean on a golf course, do not approach him, no matter how dreadful his play might be, and advise him on how he might improve matters; he would be deeply offended, and you would be deeply wrong. “To lose face is bad,” Confucius is supposed to have said. “To make someone lose face is unforgivable.”

The Confucian deal, in a society like Korea’s where Confucianism is still widely followed, is a simple one: if people will agree to forget their individuality and concentrate on their duties, then they can be guaranteed that they will be treated with respect and kindness by all. Self-abnegation is bargained, in other words, for universal respect. Happiness is to be gained through human things, coming to terms with oneself, one’s family, one’s community.

The modern world, which has Korea firmly in its grasp, offers a very different deal. Self-abnegation has been replaced by self-assertion. Human relationships, respect for elders, certainty of place in society -all these things are being overlooked today, and Koreans, like the rest of us, search for happiness through the purchase of goods and services, the quest for material pleasure and success.

The two systems, the material and the Confucian, sit uneasily together. the assaults on Confucian values result in many more frequent tribulations among those who still cling to traditional ways- and deep within themselves most Koreans do, for a myriad of reasons -because of their upbringing, their fondness for the country, and for reasons of sentiment and faith. “He made me lose my face” is heard more often these days because of the disharmonies between the two systems. We hear of cases… of what is called maum sang hada: a state of mental anguish over the loss of face that can make its victim want to give up, to throw in the towel, to retreat from society and hide in shame. You hear tales of people wasting away and dying, so sever is their shame.

Which, then, is the better of the two systems? Is a life of self-abnegation, respect for others, a sense of duty, and correct behavior more worthy than a life of self-assertion, of total freedom, of “looking out for Number One”? Or… do we have a more fulfilled society when all is carefully structured social harmony, where the jen and the yi, the yin and the yang, are in near-perfect equilibrium, where no one raises his voice, and every parent is revered by every child, where the elders are cared for, children are adored, imagination and innovation and invention are feared rather than favored, and the individual is forgotten?

I thought of this passage, or rather, this passage made me think, of other entries I’ve made here, on We Filipinos, and Randy David’s belief that what our country faces today, is a crisis caused by the dying of the old Philippines and our being in a kind of limbo, as we await the birth of a new Philippines.

THIS is a question I think we ought to consider this early on.

In a democracy, it’s the will of the majority that decides to vote, that counts.

The other interesting thing is, is it premature to write the obituary on the command vote? In 1998, I wrote that as far as presidential elections were concerned, the days of party machinery determining the outcome were over (the aberration would prove to be 2004: and that was a questionable election).
This election marks 100 years since we’ve had lower house elections; and 66 years since the first national senatorial election. We are only a young democracy in terms of our personal memories.

I’ve put together a summary of the elections from 1907-2004, and it is in the context of all these past races that the present one should be considered. Please take a look (unfortunately, 1971 is a kind of “ghost year,” I’ve never been able to find the House results for that year, though we have the Senate results).

(Erratum: a reader in my blog corrected the data for the 1951 senatorial elections: it was a complete defeat for the incumbent’s party; something pointed out in an Inquirer editorial as the only instance a total opposition victory in the Senate has been achieved; so for the data, the Senate results for 1951 should show 8 NP elected and 0 LP; the above’s been fixed)

In terms of the House of Representatives, the administration in power has not been the same as the party controlling the House only four times in our history, and all three were presidential election years. All three were unusual elections: the incumbents lost, though the party infrastructure the losing incumbents had carefully nurtured survived (until raided by the successor):

In 1953, when Magsaysay won the presidency for the opposition NP, while the administration LP kept control of the House.
In 1961, when Macapagal won the presidency for the opposition LP, while the administration NP kept control of the House.
In 1965, when Marcos won the presidency for the opposition NP, while the administration LP kept control of the House.
In 1998, when Estrada won the presidency for the opposition LAMMP, while the administration Lakas kept control of the House.

All four presidents engaged in the immediate courting and raiding of the previous administration party, and quickly established a “new” majority for themselves.

But for non-presidential election years, no incumbent has ever lost control of the House, and so it’s no achievement to retain control of it in a mid-term election. You could say no administration has ever lost the House in 100 years, that’s simply how local politics works (incumbents have lost the presidency though).

In terms of the Senate, from 1941 to 1951, bloc voting was in place and ensured administration control of the Senate in every election. After 1951, bloc voting was abolished and the results began to be mixed, with one exception: 1955, the Magsaysay mid-terms, when his massive popularity secured a complete senate victory for his slate, also the last time ever that a party secured a complete victory in the senate. Even Marcos at his most formidable, in 1967 and 1969, and even with the anti-Marcos backlash in 1971, neither party could secure a shut-out.

In terms of mid-term elections being a referendum on the sitting administration, the score cards of various presidents is as follows:

Roxas, 1947: 7 out of 8, very impressive
Quirino, 1951: 8 out of 8, very impressive (but led to abolition of bloc voting) All 8 of his candidates lost, the worst performance by an administration, ever.
Magsaysay, 1955: 8 out of 8, hugely impressive and unmatched since
Garcia, 1959: 5 out of 8, unimpressive, a sign of defeat to come
Macapagal, 1963: 4 out of 8, a sign of defeat to come
Marcos, 1967: 7 out of 8, very impressive
Marcos, 1971: 2 out of 8, worst showing of an incumbent; panic time
Ramos, 1995: 10 out of 13, very impressive

What sets apart the pre-1972 senatorial midterms, from the midterms since 1987, is of course that presidents prior to 1972 could run for reelection, and so the midterms also served as a test of how the incumbent would do when seeking reelection. Roxas and Magsaysay were widely expected to secure reelection in their time: but both died before they could do so. Marcos, who matched the Roxas performance in his mid-term, became the first president since 1941 to win reelection.

Since 1987, what the mid-term determines is whether the president will be a lame duck or not. Ramos’s strong senate showing helped propel charter change efforts; 2001 would have been the mid-term referendum on Estrada, but instead became a referendum on Edsa Dos; now the 2007 elections will determine if President Arroyo will be a lame duck or not.

This article serves as a reminder I get every year from my own mother: we are celebrating the wrong, and an untraditional, mother’s day.

I’ll spare you the “the shift in date is a conspiracy between the mall owners and greeting card companies because sales are traditionally low in early May” conspiracy theory, though that I get from other people.

LAST week Ricky Carandang in The Coming Deficit Blowout wrote that our government wasn’t collecting enough money, and so we’d all better expect an increase in taxes. He wrote this a few days before the national treasurer resigned, as he (Omar Cruz, the national treasurer who quit) acknowledged it, while the going was good.

So if increased taxes are in our future, what shape might those future taxes take?

One answer came out of left field. The Mike Abundo Effect started the ball rolling, by quoting from a Manila Times article (but not linking to the article itself, so that in commenting on the whole thing, It’s hip2b2 has asked for anyone, anyone, to find the original article) whose gist is that a gentleman named Edgardo Cabarrios was quoted as saying that the National Telecommunications Commission wants to classify websites, including blogs, to register with the government, presumably as a prelude to taxing them. Blogs and websites would be considered a value-added service, you see.

Edgardo Cabarrios has apparently been NTC department chief for common carriers authorization for ages now, and his name has regularly cropped up in the news, whether concerning the VoIP brouhaha, or the proposal to mandate compulsory registration of SIM cards, as well as rather nifty proposals to allow people to keep the same number, regardless of the network they subscribe to, for example. But this latest attribution has gotten bloggers all lathered up.
See Pinoy Problogger (using the famous line from the Borg) and Yugatech, who snappily borrowed the phrase“all your base are belong to us,” to headline his take on the NTC official’s alleged statement.

The Unlawyer takes a look at the potential basis for such a requirement, finds a TMC.net article to link to:

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has released a draft circular that seeks to put value-added service (VAS) providers in the telecom and technology industry under its ambit.

If the proposed rules are approved, all firms in the loose VAS provider industry - from mom-and-pop ventures to those owned by large multinationals - would have to register with the regulator…

Services covered by the proposed rules include messaging, audio and video conferencing, voice mail, e-mail, information services such as road traffic and visa application data, gaming services except gambling, applications services such as mobile banking, content and program services such as music and ring tones, audio text, domain name hosting, fax, IP multicasting, virtual private networks, and PBX hosting.

“The foregoing list of value-added services may be revised, modified, expanded or shortened by the Commission after due public consultation,” the regulator said.

The NTC defined “value-added services”, in an earlier circular signed in 2005, as “enhanced services” beyond those ordinarily offered by incumbent local and foreign telecom operators.

Unlawyer says the practical effect will be registration fees that may be easy enough for multinationals to absorb, but which will be pretty stiff for ordinary Filipino bloggers. If you read Unlawyer’s list of the kinds of websites that would be covered, you’ll understand why Mike Abundo says proposals like these is one reason companies like Paypal don’t set up shop in the Philippines (and the absence of a good, cheap, widely-used service like Paypal is often suggested as a reason e-commerce hasn’t taken off as big as it should, locally, among other things).

The income-generating aspect of the proposal, if true (my hunch is that the whole thing is a trial balloon, and who knows, perhaps the statement being attributed to Cabarrios is being airbrushed, so to speak, off the face of the internet?), will keep bloggers’ and others hackles raised. But here’s what raised my hackles: it’s all something that could be very, very useful, National Security-wise.

Imagine Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez armed with such a list, and on a bad quote day. Jeepers Creepers.

THE Nepales Report, the blog written by the Inquirer’s Man in Hollywood (and a real A Lister he is, indeed, I’ve been told) goes from strength to strength. Whether its people unwilling to acknowledge their Filipino ancestry, or the Filipino-American obsession with racking up awards (a home-grown phenomenon, originally, of course), or his latest, the vicarious joy Filipinos get from celebs mentioning fondness for our country or our people  -what Nepales calls, in a freshly-minted acronym, “FC” (”Filipino Connection” -and isn’t the acronym another of those things we so adore?)- there’s something not only charming, and entertaining, but oh-so-enjoyable-because-so-true in what he writes.

There are never enough Hollywood movies about or at least set in, the Philippines, though from before the war to during World War II, there was, perhaps, more of a reason for Americans to do so (see this Time Magazine article from 1939 concerning Sam Goldywn having to delete some scenes from a film about the American-Moro Wars). You can even find the Philippines and the war effort in terms of Hollywood, mentioned in academic literature. Most were well-meaning but, like They Were Expendable and its scene with John Wayne and friends singing “The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga,” offensive to us today.

Most of the time, we’re reduced to looking for Filipinos who feature as extras in American movies or TV shows. Everyone has their favorite examples. Apparently, though it’s an ole time habit. I remember watching TV in Los Angeles with my dad late one night in the early 1980s, and there was an ancient film about the Japanese invasion of China. A group of Japanese soldiers corner the hero and one of them barks, “Sumunod ka sa amin!”

Naturally, hilarity ensued: and then my father remarked, “you know, it’s as funny to you as it was to me the first time I saw this movie in 1939…” I only wish I could recall the title of the film. Ditto that TV series about Edsa featuring fantastic performances by Filipino actors but which ended, I seem to remember it being said, with People Power undertaken by Sri Lankans who, seeing Laurice Guillen playing Cory Aquino, made the Laban sign and shouted, “Curry, Curry!”

A show that has mentioned Filipinos is House MD, just the other week:

KEO: Sir, are you all right?

HOUSE: He’s drunk.

[Peng starts to make gagging sounds, with his mouth still closed. Keo, an experienced flight attendant, quickly moves to get him an air-sickness bag. Too late! He lurches forward and throws up multiple times on his food tray. House closes his eyes in irritation and disgust. Other passengers, including a businessman and businesswoman react the same. A sweaty Peng gags a couple of times and falls against his backrest, fatigued.]

KEO: [in Tagalog] Nilalagnat ka ba? [Are you sick?]

PENG: [Korean, strangled] [untranslated]

KEO: [urgently] Does anyone speak Korean?

[Peng lurches forward and coughs out some more puke.]

KEO: Is anyone a doctor?

[House looks around, hopefully. Nope! He rolls his eyes.]

HOUSE: Yes!

My favorite American tribute to the Filipino still has to be Steve Martin’s marvelous essay, In Search of the Wily Filipino: actually, I first heard it, in the audio book compilation of his essays, Pure Drivel.

David Halberstam died in a car crash today; he was 73.

He wrote essential books: The Best and the Brightest is possibly the best introduction to the Vietnam War, The Powers That Be possibly the best single volume on the rise of the modern media.

I can still remember the way he started Best and the Brightest, painting the contrast between the old Robert Lovett and the young JFK, one cold day in December 1960.

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IN his column today, Amando Doronila asks if the country isn’t headed towards joining the global list of basket-case countries:

The Philippines came up recently under intensified international scrutiny questioning whether it was moving into the category of a failed state in the wake of the incapacity of the country’s avowedly democratic regime to halt the wave of extrajudicial killings since 2001.

Doronila makes elaborate use of Noam Chomsky’s own interpretation of the failed state idea. But the debate on whether or not the country is is a failed state is something I took note of in my blog back in August, 2005.

At the time, I pointed to an entry in Global Guerrillas which explains the concept, and I think it still makes relevant reading today (more extensive readings can be found in Global Policy Forum). Back in 2005, the Failed State Index for 2005 had just been launched. In it, the Philippines came out No. 56. In the Failed State Index for 2006, the Philippines came out No. 68, between Israel and Peru. Since the lower your number, the closer you are to being a failed state, the 2006 rankings reflect a substantial improvement for the country.

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I was struck by the following coincidence of theme (or, to be more precise, agreement in metaphor) in three must-read pieces in today’s Inquirer.

Ceres Doyo, the only reporter in the paper with a regular column, wrote this newsfeature even before Palm Sunday. Its publication was, wisely enough, moved to Easter Sunday. The best quote, at least for newspaper-reading purposes, comes from Bo Sanchez, the Catholic lay preacher: “God is a fierce lover who will never let go.”

This is, of course, an old refrain — from the Song of Solomon, even. Sister Marie, a Carmelite nun, offers a more recent reference: “As Richard Hardy, a doctor of theology, said in a conference on St. John of the Cross, God loves us with an erotic love, with passion. In God, eros and agapé become one.”

The theme of lover is echoed in Patricia Evangelista’s weekly column, although we are in eros territory, rather than agapé.

Boracay sand is a persistent lover. It stalks you in the shower and slips beneath bed sheets. It strokes eyelashes, slides into every cleft and crevice, then sweeps into the sweat and heat of summer dreams long after the plane’s last shuddering stop on the airport tarmac.

Every cleft and crevice: I hope for young Patricia’s sake this compelling image is in fact an act of imagination, rather than experience recollected in some tranquility.

The peerless Gilda Cordero Fernando has another piece in today’s paper (she had one yesterday), this time about, well, the intimacy of connection.

No wonder the definition of one-ness is so hard to comprehend. Because it’s not something you can get by reading or intellectualizing or analyzing. It is an experience. And it’s momentary, a flash, a brief contact with the divine. And you can’t have it either just any old time you want it.

Gilda’s essay may strike some as positively asexual, which may be a good thing. But it did seem to me, insufficiently spiritual animal that I am, that her inventory of forms of connectedness, of one-ness with everything, missed out on one thing: lover becoming one with beloved. 

I think even Augustine had a thing or two to say about that.

MLQ has started a new topic, but I still have a few things to say about the first one (American influence in Philippine politics) and also some housekeeping points to list down. 

Let me, for now, write the following notes on this “work in progress.”

We welcome comments, of course, but unfortunately they have to be moderated. My own idea of a public square is approximated by an unmoderated comment thread, with the occasional offensive or obscene comment deleted after (if possible, immediately after) it is posted. But as Joey Alarilla has made clear to Manolo and me, the comment thread is also available by RSS feed.

… once a comment is posted, it’s already been sent out via RSS even after we delete it, plus our readers might already have been exposed to something very offensive.

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