“Problems are solved more easily when approached through good personal relations than through argumentation and debate or through impersonal memoranda.” (Jocano, 1997, p. 64) One of the questions that I kept hearing and asking when I was young was: if the Philippines is the biggest Catholic nation in Asia, then why are we also one of the most corrupt? And it was something that also left me stumped. But now, I am learning, how it is in fact due to a clash of traditions, and a clash of virtues. That the American democracy and bureaucracy that we have inherited and try to emulate prides itself in efficiency, objectivity, impersonal professionalism, and the like. The analogy is an efficient mechanistic one, and impersonal. Government offices should not be filled with persons like you and I, rather it should just be an office. There should be no personal touch. But our tribal and relational culture rebels against the superimposition of this impersonal system. We want to establish personal relationships everywhere, with the kapwa. Relationships are more important. And personal relationship instantly trumps the necessity for impersonal professionalism. If you happen to befriend someone in a government office, youre sure to have things go smoothly for you. Meron akong kakilala diyan... Kakilala, someone I know, someone who I have a relationship with. And because our relational mindset is too strong, it bursts at the seams of what we want to be an ideal, that is, American-style democracy. We are instead the government of bribes and gift-giving, of pakikisama and nepotism, of family and clan dynasties, of die-hard loyalists. Filipino culture rebels against the superimposition of an impersonal democracy, and it manifests itself also through our corruption. Remember that we did not undergo the centuries of transition that led the Western world to where they are now, it took them more than five hundred years, to have their Protestant reformation, their Copernican, Cartesian and French revolutions, their Enlightenment, their American constitution, etc. They had all this time to transform into individualists and scientific atomists. It was a process also of much war and bloodshed. Our history is different, we were tribal and medieval until the 1900s. We still carry the heavy traces of tribe and ancestral spirit, of kingdom of heaven and cross. Why does this world expect us to become Americans in an instant (and a century is an instant when it comes to the history of civilizations)? And come to think of it, why do we even want to be something we are not? But perhaps the solution is not to constantly make ourselves guilty for not living up to the American standard. But perhaps the idea is to capitalize and exploit our relational starting point, our tribal and familial mindset, and expand it as far as it can go. Perhaps it begins with a change of metaphors. Instead of thinking of democracy as an aggregate of individuals, what we really envision is a wide tribe and a family. Bayan must not be thought of in terms of an abstract nation but in terms of clan, blood relations and kinship. The old idea of Inang Bayan makes sense only in this light. That was what Katipunan was all about... kapatiran, taken in sincerity. As strange as it might sound, maybe our ideals of government should be re-conceived. No longer as objective and impartial in the Rawlsian sense, but parental and caring. Not elected to govern, and not so much even to serve, but to provide and to nurture. The government as sacrificial parent. The people as family and children. The bayan as one big blood clan. Maybe it begins with filling our ideals and our education with a completely different vocabulary, and a different set of images. I wonder.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 16:03:48 +0000
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