10 Filipino Cultural Traits That Has Been Holding our Nation Back
And The Alternative Attributes We Need to Develop
It isn’t an understatement to say that ALL nations around the world seek prosperity and peace for all its citizens. There are several criteria that are considered universal in the wholesome development of a country. There’s the literacy and over-all quality of its education system which has been determining the quality of future work force and policy makers alike. Its economic prosperity brought about by the established trading systems participated by both the public and private sectors. Then there’s the leadership role and management practices by the government ensuring policies are carried out for the unhindered advancement of society.
However, we tend to forget that a nation’s power could only be as great as its foundational system- its citizens. To be more specific, the ideologies and coherent narrative that its people believe which allow the trait that greatly characterizes the human species- cooperation in large numbers. These stories and myths that has united the people then serves as the foundation of the culture in which modern societies are laid upon.
There are of course some cultural traits that has risen out of some dark episodes in the history of a nation. For worse, such malignant traits continue to forestall the progress of the people. We are after all a specie wired for stories.
In this post, I’m sharing the 10 traits (some combinations of) that has been preventing the Filipino Nation from moving forward. And some counternarrative which we could use to dispel such bad traits.
Indolence and Passivity
While it is true that Filipinos in general have a reputation of being quite industrious in any field of work (especially abroad), it is sad to think that most of us are not as conscientious and diligent towards the improvement of our selves as an individual and as a society. In many aspects, we tend to be sluggish in doing activities that would enrich our selves and consequently the communities where we live in. On the individual level, we don’t engage in activities to strengthen our bodies or even take on any book that could open us to new and valuable knowledge. Collectively, we’d rather watch noontime variety shows and evening dramas than have meaningful conversations within the community to address perhaps a simple matter of trash collection. As a matter of fact, we avoid such undertakings due to layers of complex reasons.
First obvious reason that could explain our laziness to self-improvement is socialization. Let’s admit it, we are notorious for spending most of our free time with our peers or relatives doing some form of social bonding. We love to bond in any form available. Mostly eating and cooling it out in the malls. We thrive in tribes. We compel ourselves to always be part of any leisurely activity because missing out will also mean a missed opportunity to post a status on our social media account. It doesn’t matter if it’s in cyberspace or the physical world, we spend most of our idle time getting to know the latest trend, gossiping the most recent news and basically fear on missing it all out.
Another reason might be that it has never really occurred to ask ourselves the aim of self improvement. We grew up inside this culture bubble of ironies. When we were growing up, it isn’t uncommon to be always commended for how special and precious we are. We have been making our children believe that they are destined for natural greatness. That in any field they choose, they shall excel. On the other hand, perhaps ascribable to our colonial past, we are misled to believe that certain people who are fortunate to have some more desirable natural traits (beauty, intelligence, etc.) are simply destined for more success in life. This has resulted in the normalization of being passive. We simply submit to the status quo. We think that if something is wrong, the good people are the ones in charge of changing the fate of society wherein the exact opposite is true, each citizen should take responsibility for the change we want for the society.
These combination of traits are further exemplified by the more common habit of our procrastination and even the infamous phrase Filipino Time. The former is a habit sparked by indolence while the latter is a result of a disastrous cumulative Filipino phenomenon.
Irrationality and Sentimentality
Stories from the past, both actual and mythical, has served our nation the role of unifying narratives. The great story of colonialists oppressing and exploiting the locals have sparked the flames of revolution in the great era of nationalism. This era has culminated in the event known to us as our Independence.
Unfortunately, many of us are still stuck in the story of the oppressed and exploited. So much so that our national subconscious mantra is that our country is still run by oppressive and exploitative group of people. Although this is true to some (if not most) degree, the bigger issue is that we almost always tend to fall under the irrational sentiment without seeking the facts. This habit of not paying attention to the things we rationalize has created an automatic habit of impulsive reaction to things. It has consequently led us collectively to abandon reason and critical thinking.
The great story of our independence is just one of the many historical events that has shaped the way we perceive things by default. Our irrationality plays a great role on why a vast majority of us make false assumptions of things on many levels. Many of our arbitrary behaviors were shaped by the overly sentimental trait we have developed over the years following our independence. We almost always use ‘tradition’ as a means of defense for any progressive new policy without considering the potential good it could do for the future generation. For instance, even though abortion is has been legalized in many progressive and modern societies, our country still refuse to open the argument and instead blurt out that god would punish our people for such acts.
Unless we come into terms with dispelling our irrationality by admitting our ignorance, and until we overcome the the hurdle of our sentimentality, we would continue to reject progress because we’re sure to find some ‘traditional’ albeit groundless reason to do so. Let us consider that if the colonialists indeed endowed us any good traditions before they left, we wouldn’t be in the ruts now.
Resignation and Blind Faith
It’s a consensus amongst us Filipinos that above all the gifts of the Spanish masters, the religion of Christianity is the most important of all. After all the mighty chieftains around the archipelago left their pagan gods to worship the one true God. Religion has had a tremendous aid in conquering the vast and scattered islands of our country. The strategy of faith conversion was so effective that along with the generals and soldiers sent to the colony, priests were also sent in to act as intermediary between the indigenous population and God.
Overtime we have replaced the diverse stories of our ancestors with the story of Jesus Christ. The Son of God became the center of the Filipino narratives, his teachings and miracles has filled the imagination of our colonized ancestors. Pre-Catholic stories became simply folklore that were meant primarily to entertain as opposed to being a source of ancient wisdom and life lessons.
With this societal transformation, we were taught (and learned relatively fast) to trust in the great salvation from eternal damnation. Heaven and Hell were two places distinctly added in the minds if many. Thereby polarizing people into someone favored or punished by God.
What naturally happened is that we learned to resign ourselves to the will of the lord, not realizing that those wills are nothing more than the subjective whims derived from the cognitive biases of the clergymen. Bit by bit, this habit of resignation (not only to the Christian God) has deeply rooted in our subconscious making most of us blindly faithful to doctrines.
I am not proposing that the Christian doctrines are essentially bad. My primary concern is the fact that we have misused the teachings by simply resigning our morals and submitted ourselves blindly. The act of submission to life is quite contrary to the church teaching of carrying our cross and act according to our conscience.
Easily Distractible
In our country with a population too dense for its actual size, competing for attention has been a customary capability in any field if you want to get ahead of the pack. Such proclivity ensures that there will be consumers of our product. We have become so used to ostentation that it led over flamboyancy as the only way to get the attention we need. Although this mechanism plays an essential role in market competitiveness, it has inadvertently turned our attention and ability to focus (both individual and collective) to deteriorate.
Unfortunately, in this modern world of data overload and social media, the ability to concentrate and focus on pressing issues and actual adversities is exactly the skill that a nation of any size will need in order to come up with the solutions necessary. Our current problem in the Philippines is therefore not just a simple issue of bad governance but essentially of bad attention habits on all scales. Lay people and pubic officials alike no longer know which of the matters actually matter. We are engulfed in a sea of irrelevant dispatches that distracts us from seeing each other on a common ground. We are like children diagnosed with ADHD feeding ourselves with sugar.
Status-Obsessed and Title-Hungry
If you go around the residential areas of some provincial centers, chances are you’d see gates studded with plaques of certificates and diplomas for households where any of the following resides- a doctor, an engineer and a lawyer. It’s part of our all-pervading adulation for any member of our immediate family who has been able to enter the realm of the highly-regarded professions. Although the practice has dwindled over the years, it’s still apparent for many of us to seek professions which we view as lucrative and highly esteemed. By this, what I mean is our collective preference to seek careers that are not just well-paying but also status-elevating. We want our jobs to be able to convey our place in the social hierarchy within and outside our work.
One of the common symptoms of this hierarchal pursuit is our fixation with collecting of certificates. It’s as if the more certificates you collect, the higher you level up in the game of life. We seem to think that having more certificates would be a proof of our high value. Such status-elevating careers are commonly indicated by jobs that has a denomination added to the person’s name (i.e. Doctor, Professor, Attorney, Engineer, etc.). It’s somewhat customary for us to address people of such professions with their title alone even outside their work and jurisdiction. While this simply shows our deferential trait towards authority, what happens is that (aside from inflating their ego) we unconsciously emphasize the societal gap already omni-present in all aspects of our lives. People without titles are disregarded while we venerate individuals with their corresponding titles. As a result, we unknowingly contribute to the implicit ways with which our society is polarly divided between the privileged and impoverished.
On the other hand, the same trait that we hold towards people in authority could also lead individuals to feel offended if they were not venerated in the same manner as they would have preferred. This cognitive bias disguised as a subservient trait towards people with authority (made apparent with job titles) plainly creates a false sense of self-importance which we use to present ourselves to society.
The next trait will explain why we have developed this trait (defense mechanism in reality) in the first place.
Deep Insecurity and Ultra Competitiveness
We love games. From early childhood, a Filipino kid gets his initiation from aunts and uncles who hold a competition for the best dancing nephew/niece. This usually involves your siblings and maybe cousins as your first set of contenders. You win, they lose, you get a price. It feels great. We experience the thrill of triumph over others. As we grow up, we realize our environment is full of these ‘games.’ Ranking the Top 10 students in class. Class-to-class face off in a choreographed dance contest. Interschool sports competitions. The list goes on. And we willingly and gleefully participate especially if the price is motivating enough, and even if it isn’t, we normally push through as long as we can ‘prove’ ourselves.
Such is the underlying philosophy that we are subconsciously passing on to our children. Perhaps we don’t know any better since it’s the one we’re born into as well. We’ve always been primed to be competitive. To be the one applauded for it will give pride to our family. It doesn’t matter where if it’s in academics or sports or any other winner scenarios, as long as we can come out ‘winning.’
Unfortunately, as life would have it, we don’t always win. There will always be people better than us in any aspect. So without the proper guidance we tend to become insecure. And since our friends don’t know any better, they feed that fire of insecurity by being extra supportive. This pushes us into the direction of being ultra competitive.
Before we know it, most of us have been misled into thinking that life is just about taking because the resources are limited. And to survive, we need to compete with everyone else. Perhaps it’s one of the lasting aftermaths of colonialism. Everybody was in a defensive and competitive stance since opportunities were limited. One has to work their ass off so they can have the crumbs. Life was difficult back then. So the habit stuck. And now, it has become our trait.
Poor Mindset
Growing up anywhere in our country, you’re to be sure that there isn’t any shortage of the best-selling fiction-made-real story that’s being narrated over and over again. And yet, we seem to never get tired of it. So much so that we’ve actually become the story-teller ourselves. This is the narrative of the Poor Filipino.
For one, our grandfathers seemed to be deeply convinced of this narrative that one of the solutions they believed was to have more children who could then in turn help them out in the lands (since we are primarily an agrarian society). Sadly, even with the extra pair of hands that were available, our predecessors were not able to erase this belief from their consciousness. Quite the contrary actually. The more our population increased, the more the story got propagated. We talk about how hard it is to be poor. It runs in our collective consciousness. That our race is so overpowered by poverty.
Another thing that has indirectly corroborated this internal mindset is our Christian faith. Through the parables we hear, we tend to convince ourselves that by being poor, we shall become favored by God. That the lord shall be more merciful in our eternal salvation if only we abandon worldly things like money. We tend to associate money with greed so we’d rather not have something that would lead us to temptation. Of course all these dwell in our subconscious. It’s something we never think about because it could shatter the whole story we’ve spent our whole lives telling ourselves.
Lastly, since our perceived society and faith have been indoctrinating us ever since about being poor, what naturally happens is that we cite being poor as the reason for all our misfortunes however random it may be. This puts us into a loop of self-pity which ultimately prevents us from taking deliberate actions out of poverty.
Corruption
The cultural trait that everybody knows but nobody’s really admitted to. It’s somewhat our skeleton in the closet who’s gone into our living room and everybody just pretends it doesn’t exist. If you ask any Filipino how they would describe the government is (past or present), most would simply say that it’s corrupt and untrustworthy. It’s so commonplace in society that we can no longer discern it’s many forms in many levels and as a result, we unknowingly commit it ourselves.
When we cut the lines through social connections. When we exaggerate value so we can increase stature and reputation. When we use names and prominence to exert power. When we present our privilege to gain favor. All these are acts of corruption in our mundane daily lives. The worst of all, we have cultivated a corrupted mindset justifying it by stating everybody is doing it anyway.
What we don’t realize is that corruption is another symptom (or mechanism) resulting from the lack of security we feel in our own society. This skepticism towards each other makes us enact in a way that supersedes our morality and integrity.
We just can’t seem to afford to give integrity a shot.
Expectation of Indebtedness
Being the sentimental people we are, we usually hold dear certain individuals in our lives whom we sort of attribute our success. Be it the immediate family members, neighbors, professors or anybody who has helped us in a way through life. This could actually be considered as one of the good traits that we have. However there’s the other side of the coin, us. The person who has given the help somebody needed at some point. This gratitude culture is so strong that people who are on the ‘helping side’ are always prone to expecting some favor in return. Be it an outright one or something that we hold on for ‘future use.’
This other side of the coin when left uncheck goes to such an extent that some even feel that without them, the person who received their help wouldn’t be in any successful position if it weren’t for them. So they hold on to that memory of helping the person. Making sure that it’s well stored in the personal lore by telling anybody so that there would be a narrative in exchange for a future favor that one may ask. Perhaps it roots from our hunger for recognition. To add to one’s ego and significance, to be relevant and accredited.
Fragmented and Disunified Aims
Being an archipelago nation and with the history that our country has, it is quite unfortunate that the common thread that all our islands share is based on the bitter narrative of colonialism replete with subjugation and abuse. Since our forefathers seem to be reeling from the shackles of the past through many limiting beliefs (another post) we, as a people united under the same flag, can’t seem to find a unified approach dealing with the national challenges we face. Everybody seems to agree on the problems we have but no party could agree on how to approach it. With our diverse demography, we could hardly put ourselves in anybody’s shoes.
Everybody knows the bigger picture of our reality but nobody seems to want to move from their ill perspective. Consequently, this leaves us a fragmented mess of unrefined solutions to ill-defined problems.
This disunified approach inevitably leads to a mentality of ‘every man for himself.’ In a country of more than 100 million people, that’s a downright recipe for chaos.
What Could Be Our Antidote
In this modern times where opportunities are everywhere (although access to opportunities is a different topic unto itself) it might be worth thinking that it will only be through a unified nation that we can move on to tackle the challenges of the progressive world.
First thing that we have to acknowledge and let go of is the Limiting Belief that was inadvertently implanted by our shared history of colonialism. Under this premise, we seem to downright believe that our nation is destitute. This main narrative that we tell ourselves and our children becomes the core of our decisions which leads to unfulfilled dreams, amoral actions and expedient solutions. Banishing this mentality will not only liberate us from self doubt, but could also foster a sense of purpose in things we pursue.
Another thing that we will have to work on together is to agree on a Common Narrow Aim. I think we could all agree that what we all want for our country is peace, prosperity and progress. But we could only jumpstart this rally if we agree on the method we have to use. This will also mean letting go of many presumptions, biases and selfish impulses so that the majority can benefit.
Lastly, we need to have a Genuine Reconciliation with each other, especially with all the indigenous tribes and various ethnicities all through out the archipelago. It is only through sincere actions to enrich our impoverished could we rebuild a nation full of integrity and regain the trust in society.
