No Soul
By Antonio C. Abaya May 29, 2003 TAPATT Foundation Inc.
The recent publication by Anvil of the Philippine edition of Benedict Anderson?s ?Imagined Communities? occasioned a thoughtful piece by Columnist Raul Rodrigo in Today (May 20) and a personal reminiscence from Columnist Patricio Abinales in the Philippines Free Press (May 17).
I had previously heard of the book but never got around to reading it; I must do so now that it is available at a reader-friendly price. In the meantime, let me comment on Raul?s quote of what must be the essence of Anderson?s thesis: ?(The nation) is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.?
Raul is correct this ?deep, horizontal comradeship? has continued to elude us Filipinos. Writes Raul: ?Whatever national comradeship we feel is neither deep nor horizontal..?
Why this sense of nationhood has eluded us, and why whatever national comradeship we feel is neither deep nor horizontal, should concern thoughtful Filipinos because it is in the righting of this wrong, in the definition of our national soul, that we Filipinos can redeem and rediscover ourselves. And I do not mean becoming anti-American and anti-capitalist, which in essence is how Marxist-Leninist ideologues, who have transformed this country into a black hole forever lost and wandering aimlessly in time-space, continue to define that soul.
James Fallows wrote that we suffer from a ?damaged culture?. We have a weak sense of nationhood. Our circle of loyalty has a uniquely small radius, limited to family, clan, tribe, ethno-linguistic group, but rarely expanding to cover nation.
To some extent, this is true. Unlike the Japanese or the Koreans or the Chinese or the Indians, we are not heirs to a great and ancient civilization. When the Europeans first came to impose their culture, this archipelago was largely inhabited by animist tribes; only parts of Mindanao had been settled by Muslim colonists from what is now Indonesia..
Unlike the Indonesians, the Cambodians, the Burmese, we have no Borobodur, no Angkor Wat, no Pagan to remind us of a spectacularly rich heritage. The closest that we have in the way of monuments are our Catholic mission churches, some of truly remarkable architecture, but if they remind us of anything it is that we are an anomaly in this part of the world: that we are an outpost of a civilization that has no authentic roots in the indigenous soil.
But the absence of any outstanding monuments to a past civilization has not deterred the Malaysians or the Singaporeans from succeeding in defining their national souls. A task much more complex for them because they are ethnically, linguistically and religiously much more diverse than we are. And yet, look at them, seemingly united in building their nation and going from success to success, and then look at us, forever quarrelling with each other, with a weak sense of nationhood, and going nowhere fast
Judging by their success and our failure, I would say that the difference lies in the political culture and the political leadership.
First, our political culture is defined to a large extent by the political system and values inherited from the Americans: jealously liberal, nominally egalitarian and ideologically protective of the individual (and his family or tribe) rather than the national community.
Political liberalism has not been beneficial to the Philippines. It has allowed Marxist-Leninists to infiltrate and influence practically every sector of Philippine society: media, the clergy, academe, labor unions, student bodies, women?s groups, environmentalists, government employees, public school teachers, fisher-folk, urban poor, peasants, even Congress.
Since Marxist-Leninists will never be content unless and until a communist government is in power, the culture of unremitting protest against everything that smacks of capitalist profit-seeking (oil prices, bus fares, power and water rates, PPA, Bt corn, tuition etc) has been and will continue to be a permanent feature of our political life, magnifying a conflict when there is one, creating one when there is none, crippling the efforts of the government, any government, to arrive at consensus and unity, and all designed to create an environment conducive to their revolution.
(In Malaysia and Singapore [as well as South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand], by contrast, communists are pointedly and specifically excluded from their political life under pain of indefinite detention without trial, allowing their governments the stability and civil peace to concentrate on economic development.)
Nominal egalitarianism has helped trivialize our politics and idiotize our masa by opening the doors of public office to anyone with the least common denominators. It is simply inconceivable that a patently illiterate and ignorant person like Erap, or a mere TV news reader like Noli de Castro, can ever be elected prime minister of Malaysia or Singapore, where the idea of setting high standards for public office is not considered offensive to political correctness.
The American glorification of the individual, over and above the community, has created in the Philippines a political milieu where the emphasis is on the rights of individuals, rather than on their responsibilities to the community. Thus in the Philippines, everyone and his grandmother is a vociferous critic of government, but relatively few individuals bother to pay any income tax to allow that government to function.
In Malaysia and Singapore, it is the other way around: there is consensus that there are many circumstances where the good of the community must prevail over the rights of the individual. Thus the good of the greater number is considered more important than the right of individuals to espouse certain political advocacies considered inimical to the greater number.
In such a community-oriented society, it is easier for the political leaders to define the national soul and to nurture a ?deep, horizontal comradeship,? and to define the national soul, among the citizens, than in an individual-oriented one like that of the Philippines. American-style liberalism has stunted the growth of our sense of nationhood.
A further reason for our weak sense of nationhood is the distance in time from the Golden Age of our history ? the Propaganda Movement and Revolution of 1896 against Spain ? to the post-World War II and post-EDSA generations. We have no living memory of our most glorious days as a nation, and whatever we know of that period is mere book-learning, a blur in our collective memory that is soon and easily overwhelmed by the latest must-have fads of the consumer revolution.
Unlike the Vietnamese, who are acutely aware that millions of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters willingly sacrificed themselves for the sake of the motherland. Unlike the Chinese, who were led during their modernizing years by authentic veterans of the Long March. Unlike the Malaysians and the Singaporeans, whose sense of nationhood was forged during the struggle against, first the British, then against the Communists, in the 1950s and the 1960s.
But a major reason for our lack of national soul is the failure of our political leaders, both to articulate and define that soul, and to translate that concept, abstract and ephemeral as it necessarily must be, into concrete programs of governance that would have meaning even to the most humble citizen.
The recent publication by Anvil of the Philippine edition of Benedict Anderson?s ?Imagined Communities? occasioned a thoughtful piece by Columnist Raul Rodrigo in Today (May 20) and a personal reminiscence from Columnist Patricio Abinales in the Philippines Free Press (May 17).
I had previously heard of the book but never got around to reading it; I must do so now that it is available at a reader-friendly price. In the meantime, let me comment on Raul?s quote of what must be the essence of Anderson?s thesis: ?(The nation) is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.?
Raul is correct this ?deep, horizontal comradeship? has continued to elude us Filipinos. Writes Raul: ?Whatever national comradeship we feel is neither deep nor horizontal..?
Why this sense of nationhood has eluded us, and why whatever national comradeship we feel is neither deep nor horizontal, should concern thoughtful Filipinos because it is in the righting of this wrong, in the definition of our national soul, that we Filipinos can redeem and rediscover ourselves. And I do not mean becoming anti-American and anti-capitalist, which in essence is how Marxist-Leninist ideologues, who have transformed this country into a black hole forever lost and wandering aimlessly in time-space, continue to define that soul.
James Fallows wrote that we suffer from a ?damaged culture?. We have a weak sense of nationhood. Our circle of loyalty has a uniquely small radius, limited to family, clan, tribe, ethno-linguistic group, but rarely expanding to cover nation.
To some extent, this is true. Unlike the Japanese or the Koreans or the Chinese or the Indians, we are not heirs to a great and ancient civilization. When the Europeans first came to impose their culture, this archipelago was largely inhabited by animist tribes; only parts of Mindanao had been settled by Muslim colonists from what is now Indonesia..
Unlike the Indonesians, the Cambodians, the Burmese, we have no Borobodur, no Angkor Wat, no Pagan to remind us of a spectacularly rich heritage. The closest that we have in the way of monuments are our Catholic mission churches, some of truly remarkable architecture, but if they remind us of anything it is that we are an anomaly in this part of the world: that we are an outpost of a civilization that has no authentic roots in the indigenous soil.
But the absence of any outstanding monuments to a past civilization has not deterred the Malaysians or the Singaporeans from succeeding in defining their national souls. A task much more complex for them because they are ethnically, linguistically and religiously much more diverse than we are. And yet, look at them, seemingly united in building their nation and going from success to success, and then look at us, forever quarrelling with each other, with a weak sense of nationhood, and going nowhere fast
Judging by their success and our failure, I would say that the difference lies in the political culture and the political leadership.
First, our political culture is defined to a large extent by the political system and values inherited from the Americans: jealously liberal, nominally egalitarian and ideologically protective of the individual (and his family or tribe) rather than the national community.
Political liberalism has not been beneficial to the Philippines. It has allowed Marxist-Leninists to infiltrate and influence practically every sector of Philippine society: media, the clergy, academe, labor unions, student bodies, women?s groups, environmentalists, government employees, public school teachers, fisher-folk, urban poor, peasants, even Congress.
Since Marxist-Leninists will never be content unless and until a communist government is in power, the culture of unremitting protest against everything that smacks of capitalist profit-seeking (oil prices, bus fares, power and water rates, PPA, Bt corn, tuition etc) has been and will continue to be a permanent feature of our political life, magnifying a conflict when there is one, creating one when there is none, crippling the efforts of the government, any government, to arrive at consensus and unity, and all designed to create an environment conducive to their revolution.
(In Malaysia and Singapore [as well as South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand], by contrast, communists are pointedly and specifically excluded from their political life under pain of indefinite detention without trial, allowing their governments the stability and civil peace to concentrate on economic development.)
Nominal egalitarianism has helped trivialize our politics and idiotize our masa by opening the doors of public office to anyone with the least common denominators. It is simply inconceivable that a patently illiterate and ignorant person like Erap, or a mere TV news reader like Noli de Castro, can ever be elected prime minister of Malaysia or Singapore, where the idea of setting high standards for public office is not considered offensive to political correctness.
The American glorification of the individual, over and above the community, has created in the Philippines a political milieu where the emphasis is on the rights of individuals, rather than on their responsibilities to the community. Thus in the Philippines, everyone and his grandmother is a vociferous critic of government, but relatively few individuals bother to pay any income tax to allow that government to function.
In Malaysia and Singapore, it is the other way around: there is consensus that there are many circumstances where the good of the community must prevail over the rights of the individual. Thus the good of the greater number is considered more important than the right of individuals to espouse certain political advocacies considered inimical to the greater number.
In such a community-oriented society, it is easier for the political leaders to define the national soul and to nurture a ?deep, horizontal comradeship,? and to define the national soul, among the citizens, than in an individual-oriented one like that of the Philippines. American-style liberalism has stunted the growth of our sense of nationhood.
A further reason for our weak sense of nationhood is the distance in time from the Golden Age of our history ? the Propaganda Movement and Revolution of 1896 against Spain ? to the post-World War II and post-EDSA generations. We have no living memory of our most glorious days as a nation, and whatever we know of that period is mere book-learning, a blur in our collective memory that is soon and easily overwhelmed by the latest must-have fads of the consumer revolution.
Unlike the Vietnamese, who are acutely aware that millions of their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters willingly sacrificed themselves for the sake of the motherland. Unlike the Chinese, who were led during their modernizing years by authentic veterans of the Long March. Unlike the Malaysians and the Singaporeans, whose sense of nationhood was forged during the struggle against, first the British, then against the Communists, in the 1950s and the 1960s.
But a major reason for our lack of national soul is the failure of our political leaders, both to articulate and define that soul, and to translate that concept, abstract and ephemeral as it necessarily must be, into concrete programs of governance that would have meaning even to the most humble citizen.
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