Imagining the feudal Philippines with an AI architecture
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
AI is not coming, it’s here, a satanic wind blown in from the east, giving the dumb intelligence, the confused order, and the profitable even more profits. Who needs college when AI can fake your resumé and help you fake skills. Just call me Doctor America who knows as much as a skilled professional who has plodded through books for decades. I can input the symptoms and lab results and zip out a diagnosis in one minute flat. I don’t recummend you do this and hereby relieve myself of any liability should you not listen.
Or maybe I’ll be an attorney who can study relevant case law in thirty seconds flat, and identify the best arguments and rebuttal arguments in another 30 seconds. Ok, maybe 45.
- If I were a cabinet secretary I’d for sure have my own AI staff prowling through data and giving me professional guidance.
- If I were a senator, my committee work would be stunningly on point.
- If I were President, GDP would increase at least two percentage points on the strength of my performance analytics and ability to read economic trends and hot buttons, what competitor nations are doing, and what trade markets demand.
- If I were a governor or mayor enriching myself off my position, I’d have my AI staff studying ways to be more productive, how to continue capturing votes, and how to squeeze more pesos from money passing through.
Do I think this will happen?
Are you kidding? Most agencies don’t have updated computers and software. They have clunkers. Politicians use their computers to follow social media. They can’t spell prompt much less write one.
Thieves and China, if there is any difference, have more skills.
From this chaos, only bad can emerge. Corruption and China, if there is a difference, will dominate over good governance initiatives because good governance people don’t even have the wherewithal to organize a coalition to win elections. How are they going to use AI data?
So we are going to get Sara, and China, to keep us in line.
I don’t need no stinkin’ AI to figure this out.
___________________________
Cover photo from Politiko article “China’s DeepSeek AI Can Poison Filipino Minds On West PH Sea – Defense Analyst“.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Stinkin’ AI. Do you think it is now here to stay Joeam? As I have said before, there is no feeling and emotion in it.
Oh, yes. Like the internet before it, it will totally dominate how we get information and work.
I keep seeing videos of AI agents talking to one another, usually starting off as a phone call then eventually the two AI agents recognize that they’re both AI agents so they switch to this computer gibberish talk to optimize whatever their tasks are. I gotta feeling this is what AI will end up doing it’ll just by-pass human drama get to the bottom of things and voila! optimization. though I still think they’ll make batteries out of all of us eventually. and we probably deserve it.
Sometimes we are totally in sync.
I think AI is already helping us via ncap, no contact apprehension policy, to make traffic flow smoother than before. traffic violation notice is automatically sent to offending recipients and if they wish to contest the notice, they sure can. there is cctv coverage and close up footage of their traffic infringement, plus pic of the license plate and who is behind the wheel. I think, this will cut down road rage too with traffic enforcers being forced off the road, and sometimes run over by irate motorists.
no need for traffic enforcers and offending party to make paki-arigluhan right on the site and cause traffic to build up and tempers to flare. in the end, traffic enforcers may no longer be needed. they would lose their jobs.
Yes, it will become mainstream in social activities. Actually, that traffic maintenance is a good counter to my pessimism. There is hope!
dont get complacent! you know how creative some filipinos are. already there are those making clones of plate numbers and fooling ncaps. so be careful where you park your car for there are people taking pic of plate numbers and printing them in 3D printers.
car owners are sometimes stunned to receive notice of traffic infringement when they have not been driving their cars and nowhere near the place where the infringement was committed. they were at work and could not be at two places! when they questioned the infringement and ask to see evidence, the plate number is correct, but the car is different. the owner’s car was a white suv, while the one that committed the infringement was a black suv. turns out the black suv’s plate number was a clone.
yes, fines for traffic infringements can be waived, but only under certain circumstances.
Crooks using AI! What a concept! AI wars, yessiree.
crooks are probly better at using AI than anyone. there are scams galore, scam hubs masquerading as bpos, deepfakes that imitate people and used in ads and promos, replacing real people and cost nearly nothing to create. though there have been legal pushbacks and fake sites closed. as well, vloggers that promote fake news, hatred and malcontent are sued, fined, and made accountable.
AI is part of our lives now, mainstreamed and here to stay like it or not.
what can people do about the unwanted foray of AI into their lives, switch the damn thing off! use the door knob instead of using remote to open your house, where others can log in and see to observe you. over reliance of gadgets makes people vulnerable to hacks.
Yes. I suspect those of us of the reading generation have more ways to stay grounded in humanity. I worry about the youngsters who have machines in their eyeballs for most of the day. It’s like they are already plugged into the matrix and devoid of perspective and compassion. But they can prove me wrong, for sure.
compared to the rest of the world, it is not so bad in philippines, yet. our youngsters maybe glued to their gadgets but not to the extent that they are developing eye problems like myopia or short nearsightedness. so, it is safe to say that our youngsters are limiting their screen time or have other things to do than staring at their screen, like maybe listening to music and being outdoors playing basketball, or run errands for thier parents, etc.
in countries like china and singapore, young kids who are brought up on gadgets have poor eyesight and already wearing glasses, too much screen time and rarely outdoors. they have not very good sight prognosis. baka, by the time they’re 50, they are probly legally blind.
I totally agree the Philippines is “normal” by modern standards, and a great place to live. And kids are normal, too.
I am a bit worried about school children and how AI might be traumatizing them. during exam, some kids in well off private schools have to answer questions using tablets and AI is monitoring them. if kids break off eye contact with the screen, and glance sideways, it is recorded and after the exam, teacher check the recording. kids are hard pressed to deny copying from their classmates coz they should always have their eyes on the screen on front of them all the while there is exam, not on their classmates, looking left or right and tilting their heads. doing so only serve to make teachers immediately suspicious and assumed kids are doing the wrong thing.
poor kids, they cannot readily defend themselves and cry when brought to the principal’s office.
Wow, that’s draconian, and the wrong approach. But kids will figure it out. They are smarter than we think.
sadly, not all schoolkids are the same. there are those who cannot figure things for themselves without help from adults. and it is often those very same adults that consigned kids to the scrapheap. mostly, only those super intelligent kids are nurtured, the rest are written off.
The Philippines has it right with a college track and a “trade” track leading directly to work or TESDA. The structure is there. It needs to be given resources for improved gear, lessons, and teaching. I think Secretary Angara is working on these elements. Small steps, eh??
could be a giant leap. small steps are for people like me. for the likes of sec angara, it would have to be a gargantuan step, striding behemoths. he cannot be coy, but take the lead and it would have to be awesome, else he gets buried in his own insecurity.
“else he gets bored in his own insecurity” Never before have I seen the character of a person so accurately and poetically sealed in one short phrase. Brilliant, k, positively brilliant.
Remember that prof who used AI, it turned out to be a common practice, that poor professor just got caught and made an example.
There is an academic paper about the use of AI in universities.
speaking of which
https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-023-00392-8
That one was AI in education, this one is for governance if Latin America can do it why can’t we?
https://link.springer.com/book/9783031876226
Two years ago, if anyone uses wikipedia for research you are doing lazy research, how times have changed. (Eye roll emoji)
Forehead smash.
Hope no one tells the government that the hardware and software requirements for AI is not that much a Celeron with Windows 98 will be good to go.
Good point. Very low investment, high return likely.
If they make use of old equipment, there would be another Senate investigation, they would think it would be like the Deped laptop acquisition.
Those were desktops very old model. With planned obsolescence abound with software and hardware you still can not use red tape as an excuse when buying equipment that goes obsolete in an instant.
Aside from software bloat over time that makes older machines feel slower, there is also an element of efficiency through consolidation. For example when I started out in IT, it was common to have a server dedicated to each “application.” Single core processors, with more demanding apps needing a dual processor server. Server farms with the attendant technicians physically managing the machines. Now at work I have less servers but with 96-128 processor cores per machine that can virtually consolidate 64-128 apps per server depending on compute needs. Overall there is less maintenance and substantial energy cost saving to run the consolidated server.
That killed DEC and forced HP to restrategize and scrap the Alpha Server
DEC died because it clung to proprietary technologies too long, while more open technologies passed it by (namely VAX instruction set and VMS operating system). By the time DEC created the RISC-based Alpha, it was too late as x86 enabled a boom in new software companies like Microsoft. These events were mostly driven by business needs in the late 1980s and early 1990s (think IBM PC). In turn the argument against x86 was that it was based on the “inferior” CISC instruction set.
The battle between CISC and RISC in the late 1980s and early 1990s eventually took an ironic turn. Today’s microprocessors are almost all RISC-based at the core, with on-core translation into CISC which makes 2025 PCs broadly compatible with the original Intel 8086.
Thanks glad with your reply.
Those “new software” became the new proprietary whales.
Microsoft the first Anti- trust example that remained just that an example.
Google failed to aquire yahoo so they acquired many small ones.
Too big to fail?
Kodak, Polaroid, Motorola
Only fuji Xerox stands because the office and schools are not paperless still.
In AI there will be many Deep seek types to come out beating giants like openAI.
Once that one off disposable culture will be replaced by circular and repair economy….
There would be no wars in Afghanistan with rare earth as the reason. There will be other reasons but not rare earth.
Yes exactly Karl
link evidence to claim.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/ai-language-model-runs-on-a-windows-98-system-with-pentium-ii-and-128mb-of-ram-open-source-ai-flagbearers-demonstrate-llama-2-llm-in-extreme-conditions
Filipino politicians of typical variety have no “kapal” and will etch their names on the back of public school desks, show up at public events with their campaign banners, or hang their portraits across buildings, often with full public funding using the monies they control in their official capacity. We can complain bitterly, roll our eyes in disdain, and say we are morally above all this behavior.
The reality is in today’s new media marketplace, sometimes tried and true methods still work best. Instead too often I see those who hope to gain power chase what’s “on trend.” It’s called on trend because what’s trendy is ephemeral and may change week by week, even by the day. Last month the “famous” crocodile Lalay became a symbol of Filipino dogged resistance, with many memes created and blasted across social media, until that resistance feeling dissipated. This week it has been the “hafen vella” meme that no one will understand in a month’s time.
I remember a period when conyo was confined to the more affluent Manila circles. Every new “conyo words” or “gay lingo” as some called it was excitedly repeated by “those in the know,” with those wrinkling their foreheads in perplexed expressions mocked as an outsider. Nowadays it feels like conyo has gone national via social media with the same impermanent effects. All the while serious politicians who may be laughed at slowly push their messages over time until it becomes etched onto eyeballs, ears, and minds, as if the back of the student’s desk.
After the election I thought about Isko Moreno’s campaign again. I’d readily admit that I didn’t expect Leni Robredo to go as far as she did due to the fact that quiet hard work is so often disregarded in the Philippines. But I didn’t expect Isko to implode so spectacularly when he had a very good grasp on the cultural consciousness. It turned out that being on trend means nothing in the end when the trend is out of style.
Those who want a better Philippines need to build coalitions of politicians and civic society. While those who propose good governance may not stoop to the level of trapos shamelessly unfurling their portrait banners everywhere, the lesson learned should be that the messaging war is constant and never ending.
Good summary of the lessons that ought to be learned. It appears from the last election that voters are starting to wake up. Maybe. Phase 2 is for elected officials to wake up.
“Filipino politicians of typical variety have no “kapal” and will etch their names on the back of public school desks, show up at public events with their campaign banners, or hang their portraits across buildings, often with full public funding using the monies they control in their official capacity.’ – Joey
Could you possibly mean “no hiya (shame)” instead of “no kapal” which is the opposite?
Wrote this on the go — dyslexia hit and inserted “no” which somewhat reversed the meaning. Not sure if “kapal” was used in this sense when you were still in the Philippines. Kapal is commonly used for at least 20 years or more rather than “walang hiya.” AFAIK both essentially have the same meaning.
https://www.tagalog.com/dictionary/kapal
Yes “kapal” was used back in my day, which would be the 70s. We shortened “kapal ng mukha” to “kapal muks” or simply “kapal.”
Joey it was jeprox time during CVs last years on PH. Urban dictionary rich era.
The early Internet with its expensive connectivity cost and slow data speeds naturally moved early users towards use as an extension of real-life conversation in text form. Some may recall having time to make a coffee while multimedia-rich webpages downloaded pictures line-by-line like the scan lines on a cathode ray tube.
Even though autofocus film cameras were already common by my time, one would still need to carefully consider each potential photo with finger hovering over the shutter button. Even after the expense of processing camera film, the resultant photo might be out of focus or out of frame.
The democratization of Internet connectivity coinciding with cheap digital cameras naturally stimulated humanity’s more narcissistic nature. I can only imagine ancient humans during the Bronze Age admiring their own reflections on polished metal or rudimentary glassware impregnated with impurities. Going back earlier, the tendency of the earliest humans to admire their own reflections on pools of still water created myths common across cultures like that of the Greek Narcissus, Indian Sakuntala, Chinese Shuimu.
Humans have always leaned towards self-indulgence and assigning importance to self, causing the rise of philosophies of service to others and morality systems that eventually evolved into organized religions. It seems that throughout history the biggest check upon self-indulgence was the criticism by one’s peers that forced a change in behavior or at the least regulated the offender to the margin of society.
Yet one human aspect that cannot be digitized by the Internet is human connection. Never before have so many people in the disparate places of the world been connected, yet ironically become more disconnected from others and themselves. Instead humans use the Internet for what they always have done — admire their own reflections and seek allies to reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. In a digital world flushed with actual information, too many people who only want to shout out their opinions have become know-nothing ultracrepidarians awaiting praise while disguised as humble would-be epistemophiliacs.
My AI output regarding Naisbitt and Toffler drives this point of human connection. The High Tech/ HighTouch prediction of Naisbitt
It was dismissed as missed the mark by the AI gods just recently, but I am crossing my fingers that this will stand as correct .
Even snipers do “finger hovering” even when they can hit their mark with their eyes closed.
I hope Angara stays in Deped.I love his curriculum revamp to include CHED and TESDA in the picture, before it was always a turf war even with the so called interagency ekek, but I digress.
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/10/26/2395424/deped-studying-policy-use-ai-schools
I second the motion.
know what funny? methink students who cheated at exam using AI, their answers summat sound mechanically the same, the layout, the text, the look and sometimes the length. it would have to be a very dumb teacher not to notice the difference.
anyhow, the tablets at school used for exam purposes already have built in AI. it can detect cheating students, mostly by the look of their faces. they lack the stress associated with exam, and often glancing at their classmates to see if they are also on the take. a human weakness that IA picked up.
but no, using tablets provided by the school solely for exam purposes severely limit students cheating. students have to leave their belongings behind when entering exam halls. though post exam, students can check their own personal tablets to review their answers.
deped sec angara should know all this. it would be in his best interest if he is fully immersed in how AI is deployed at schools, universities and colleges. and not leaving it to the hands of teachers and educators.
on topic though the setting is in US. We should take note.
The White House’s “MAHA Report: Making Our Children Healthy Again,” led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has come under scrutiny for containing numerous scientific inaccuracies and AI-generated citations. Experts have identified at least 37 repeated citations within the report’s 522 footnotes, some referencing nonexistent studies or incorrect authors. Markers like “oaicite” suggest the use of AI tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in generating these references. The report aims to address declining U.S. life expectancy, attributing it to factors like environmental toxins, poor nutrition, and excessive screen time. However, the reliance on unverified AI-generated content has raised concerns about its credibility. While minor corrections have been made, including fixing dead links and author attributions, critics argue that the report’s scientific integrity remains compromised. This situation underscores the importance of rigorous fact-checking, especially when utilizing AI tools in policymaking. As AI becomes more integrated into research and report generation, ensuring the accuracy and validity of information is paramount to maintain public trust and effective policy development.
Right, Karl. ChatGPT still hallucinates. And I thought it is better at a math-related question.
I prompted ChatGPT to give me the game-theoretic Payoff Matrix of a Game of Chicken real-world application. It gave me a wrong PM. It was for a game-theoretic Prisoner’s Dilemma. I know this because I have studied Game Theory.
So use AI tools but check. Especially if one is submitting an AI-generated item to a potential employer promising high salary.
I don’t know if the answer I got was not correct because the version of ChatGPT I was using is the free version, and thus spews out not only low quality but incorrect answer. Cheapskate me, hahaha.
NH!!! you’re still alive and kicking!
re AI hallucinations use Notebook LM, its free and all you need is a Gmail to log on. you feed it websites, pdfs, your own notes writings, and you can tell it to watch youtube videos and podcasts.
since the input is controlled, the output is more constrained but next to zero hallucinations. i’m sure it’ll do wonders with math if you input it that, NH!
https://notebooklm.google <<< (karl, loves it)
It is finally warm in Canada now.
He has defrosted.
Are you here in Pinas looking for a rainy weather, NH! Missed you sir!
Just somewhat OT by Ninotchka Rosca:
https://www.facebook.com/share/15XAHMtKbs/
“Once, I asked a remittance center clerk in NYC if he wasn’t disturbed by having to count so much money every day. He replied that he had to arrange the transfer of P40 million in cash from a Chinese national to a politician in exchange for a mining lease in the north.
My hypothesis is that China digs up and chows down all the minerals, trees, and whatever in the Philippines because it has decided we are not a viable nation.
We remain divided, with no singular vision of who we should be; we harm one another, especially the poor, and idolize those who do the harm; and we would sell the ground under the neighbor’s feet and under our own feet as well. We scam whoever we can scam.”
Just like in the time of de Goiti (under Legazpi) storming Maynila with the help of Lakandula and Cebuanos, or the many micro-polities whose mostly Bruneian-origin rulers all called themselves “rajah” warring with each other before that, same old same old. “What’s in it for me” is more important than “what’s for us,” and sometimes even stronger than “what’s left for the children?”
Divide et impera.
Fac et excusa.
Si fecisti, nega.
https://x.com/_enzolucas/status/1928787984167612850 This would be a more contemporary reference: “lingayen-lucena corridor after the 2028-2034 sara duterte presidency and the civil w—” shows a future Tagalog Republic
https://x.com/RichHeydarian/status/1928794688477110332 Heydarian answers not to forget the Ilocano Republic and someone answers
https://x.com/sirkuyabill/status/1929042492436988185 “Cordi and Ibanag areas would be their problem in that event.” Of course, this is all half-joking, but there is a serious component to all that.
No constitution in the world is perfect but perhaps one of the biggest mistakes is the principle of jus sanguinis to define a Filipino identity going back to the 1935 Constitution and further to the Revolution’s Manila based Tagalog factions that did not acknowledge other ethnic revolutionary groups. Despite decades of Philippines education of varying degrees trying to “Filipinize” the issue of identity, wherever I went outside of Manila there is a subtle resentment towards what they feel as Tagalog political hegemony. Perhaps jus soli would’ve been a better choice.
Interestingly the Philippines government itself provides many resources through embassies and consulates to help Filipinos enjoy both the benefits of being a “natural born Filipino” while acquiring citizenship in another country for economic reasons.
During the Alice Guo saga I recalled amusingly the “Is Grace Poe a natural born citizen?” debate. That was one of the more notable legal fights on electoral eligibility and disqualifications surrounding RA 9225 that crops up here and there. In their division, it seems Filipinos cannot even identify themselves at times while fake Filipinos run amok.
are you forgetting the fake jew? sara’s mader derest is fake jew, not jew jew, but american descent and not of jew extraction. though digong allegedly spread the rumor his wife is jew, make him inclusive to endear himself to many.
Ah yes, and calling himself Hitler watching over a holocaust of the EKJ victims, then needing to go to Israel on pilgrimage to clean up his own mess.
Filipino citizenship was first defined by the Americans when they took over the Philippines, this came out during the discussion on whether Fernando Poe was a Filipino citizen way back when he was a Presidential candidate.
It was ius solis, anyone who was a Spanish subject residing in the Philippines on a certain date in 1901 or 1902 AND WAS NOT a Spanish citizen was considered Filipino, this was also used for 1907 Philippine Assembly elections.
1935 made it ius sanguinis with an undertone of anti-Chinese in it. Chinese who came to the Philippines after that often had to wait until the mass naturalization by Marcos in 1975, who in return also forced Chinese schools to teach in English and give Tagalog lessons.
As for ethnic stuff, Aguinaldo might have added the 3 stars for Luzviminda to the 8 rays of the sun, which are 7 Tagalog provinces and Pampanga, to at least get the Visayans on board who had separate revolutions and stuff like the short-lived Cantonal Republic of Bohol.
The Third Republic did have Visayan Presidents like Roxas and Garcia as well as Ilocanos like Quirino and Marcos, with English as de facto official language and Tagalog only half-hearted, unlike how it was made more important in later years.
Germany BTW also had issues with the very centralistic nature of the nation since 1871, with Federalism in the West in 1949 giving regions more representation and a constitutional clause that Federal budget should have the goal of “equivalent living conditions” in the country, having learned the lesson of how people left the countryside, often to just land in urban slums, during the Weimar period. BTW, during the Imperial period from 1871-1918, people needed residence and work permits to move to towns, similar to what Russia had for long, and China still has.
P.S. the 1986 Constitution made Filipino citizenship ius sanguinis via both paternal and maternal lines, making two recent Miss Universes from the Philippines possible.
Please correct me if I’m wrong here Irineo, but aside from Baler and Cavite the most prominent Spanish fort that fell solely to local revolutionaries was in Zamboanga at Fort Pilar. I have my doubts whether the Manila revolutionaries would’ve taken Manila on their own. The entrenchment of Tagalog prominence over other Filipino ethnic groups being that Tagalogs are the majority in Manila which continued to be the center of administration is a vague but strong popular resentment in the minds of non-Tagalogs.
The fundamental lesson from the Enlightenment is the existence of universal truths as relates to all people, regardless of class, creed, or ethnicity. Of course in actuality when overlayed over European polities that had a long prior history of class, creed, and ethnicity the implementation was never perfect. In the US the original sin of the institution of chattel slavery also clashed with Enlightenment ideals and created political problems that exist to this day. I had always felt from my reading that the Ilustrados needed more time to form their ideas, and the Katipunan took quite a ethno-nationalistic view from the lessons of the Ilustrados.
No constitution is perfect but the various Philippine national projects seem eclectic and not fully formed from the start. I don’t think that eclecticism of clashing ideals and values would be a major problem in the end if a political effort was made to continually update and expand a “living constitution.” Instead we got successive republics, each attempting to do clean sheet constitutions that in turn still had the legacy problems. Of course even living constitutions can run into stagnancy, such as the problems in the US now which derived from the conservative reaction to the last major expansions of rights and liberty during the second progressive age of the New Deal to Great Society eras.
How I’d love to be a fly on the wall to understand why the Visayan presidents like Quezon, Roxas and Garcia pushed for Tagalog as the de jure national language (while as you noted, using English as the de facto language of government). Or why Marcos Sr., an Ilocano, increased the implementation of Tagalog as the national language.
I had conversations with some Cebuano GenXers who participated in EDSA or the local demonstrations connected to EDSA who had hoped for the 1987 Constitution to designate English as the sole national language, or at least as the de-prioritize the teaching of “Filipino” in schools. In the 2000s there was a lot of rage emanating from Cebu about the “suppression” of Cebuano in schools. Many seemed happy with the 2013 RA 10533 which emphasized Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education. Now there is a renewed resentment with the passing of the 2024 RA 12027 ending that policy to re-emphasize “Filipino.” Chinese schools I’ve observed in the Cebu area solve this problem by simply emphasizing English instead.
Quezon was Tagalog like the province eventually named after him and was behind the original national language legislation. The census of then did show Tagalog as the language of a plurality.
As for Philippine constitutions, they are de facto changed more to reconfigure power than to actually be a real definition of the body politic.
Marcos Ilocanized the military, so using more Tagalog might have been a concession to the old guard there, with some military families having a heritage dating back to Aguinaldo’s military.
Yes, Katipunan was more ethno-nationalistic especially in its initial phase.
In 1987 they lost a lot of time debating whether the national language should be Pilipino or Filipino, seriously, one more example of how Filipinos get mired in trivial and ego-based debate instead of trying to find long-term solutions to really important issues.
The class aspect of language in the Philippines and in general in the Malay world might be key to why difficulties exist.
If Korean has 7 different registers of speech from highly formal to casual, Javanese has four registers of speech, upper to upper class, lower to lower class, upper to lower and lower to upper.
Chavacano though a creole has “formal” and “familiar” speech, while old Tagalog has vestiges of higher and lower speech like nagdadalang-tao instead of buntis for pregnant, or pagtatalik instead of giving Mr. Tan the can.
So English in American colonial times had the connotation of not just being socially superior but also closer to the colonial power, just like it was for Spanish until 1898. Tagalog for many who didn’t like the old guard was being “from the people” even if one wasn’t.
Javanese BTW created a 5th speech register for modern media where you don’t know who you are addressing. Once again, the Indonesians have proven to be more pragmatic. Though they didn’t have the issue of FINDING a national language as their old trade lingua franca Bahasa still existed. It kind of hides de facto Javanese hegemony, with Sumatrans settling everywhere much like Visayans and the Batak having a role similar to Ilocanos in the Philippine military. EVERY Indonesian President was Javanese, even the one born outside Java.
In East Timor, the upper class uses Portuguese to distinguish themselves, I have read.
The European side of national language is of course based on the assumption that one nation needs one language. The USA has a de facto national language but no official one IIRC.
France since the Revolution imposed French from Paris on all, including the Gascons (d’Artagnans people) and the Mediterranean French, Edmond Dantes’s people, almost Italians actually. Spain pretended the other languages like Catalan, Gallego, similar to Portuguese, and Basque simply didn’t exist. Italy imposed Florentine on everybody via the school system, forcing Neapolitan into being spoken at home but not on the street nowadays. Venetian, which is more like Spanish, is folklore by now. The only holdovers are Sardinian and Sicilian.
Islands indeed make for different languages. How about Switzerland, which has 4 languages?
Switzerland was formed before the modern idea of nation existed. It is a federation that still calls itself a Confederacy. De facto German and French sides manage to tolerate each other. The Italian Ticino is isolated, while Graubünden has only a few Rhaetian Romance speakers. That language was made a Swiss national but not official language to show that Switzerland has one language that is its own, though even that isn’t true, there are mountain villages I Austria and Italy where such vestigial Latin dialects still persist among the old.
We could go on with how the present Hindu nationalism in India makes it hard for those who don’t speak Hindi as many more speak English. The gap between Northern and Southern Indians is MUCH wider than that between Tagalogs and Visayans. I would not be unhappy if the Philippines decided to use Bikolano as national language as it is between Tagalog and Waray somehow. But that of course won’t fly and it isn’t meant seriously anyhow.
At times I lean towards thinking the Philippines was only at its most cohesive when it was under American rule (and before that to a somewhat lesser degree, Spanish rule). I’ve had quite a few more lefty UP alumni angrily push back on me about that during the first decade I was visiting often, assuming if I’m not in 100% agreement with what they believe then I must de facto be an opponent.
My thought is based on historical echoes even before the Spanish conquest, when various major polities were under the strong influence of or the outright rule of successive Bruneian and Majapahit minor princes. There were areas with strong Arab or Tamil Indian influence as well — I read a genetic study that said that about 20% of the genetic admixture of Cebu-origin Cebuanos is of South Asian origin, despite pretty much every Cebuano I’ve met claiming Spanish ancestry in their family folklore. Of course with genetic studies we now know that the various Chavacano groups around the old Spanish forts, notably in Zamboanga City, are the ones with measurable Spanish blood while other Filipinos only have negligible percentage.
I once crammed my tall frame into a rickety old tricycle whose driver displayed his nameplate with the surname “Limson,” which the driver proudly explained to me without prompting that the name is “Chinese,” only to become more excited when I conversed with him about the history of his surname. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Lim is actually a rather common surname in Southern China, Vietnam and Korea. A similar story can be superimposed on so many family oral traditions in the Philippines, whether one clings to having a “superior” ancestor whether that be a European, Chinese, Japanese or Korean surname, while assigning less value to one’s own culture. I think that may be a major factor with what’s wrong.
Spanish rule formed the core of the Philippines, the lowland Christianized groups whose local elites were the principalia and whose emerging national elite were the 19th century ilustrados.
What America managed to do was to bring the “non-Christian tribes” as they called them into the fold and give all people a common language in school – English.
Only the principalia, ilustrados, and some who got primary education in the patchy public school system of the Spanish from 1863 onwards (Queen Isabel’s barely enforced decree to build schools in Las Filipinas) spoke Spanish before that.
Giving the rich Filipinos a chance to buy friar lands and be politicians (they already had started in 1895, the first elections on Philippine soil) who moved to Manila cemented elite rule.
Usually, they spoke English while the others spoke only their regional language. The Far Left of the Philippines and Filipino populist politicians thus instrumentalized Tagalog as it was the language of Manila. Most Luzonians also had contact with Manila anyhow.
As for a sense of inferiority as well as the attempts of some to pretend a glorious past, that is due to what is called essentialism, the idea that superiority or inferiority is intrinsic to a people. That can be racist or culturalist. Some Americans (of any race) have a superiority complex towards Latin Americans, for instance, actually a cultural inheritance from the English who superseded Spain. The British at least knew that their superiority was mostly a matter of bluff, as one of their more honest colonialists allegedly said.
I tend to favor a growth mindset that believes any culture can level up. Romans leveled up over Greeks even as a Roman who didn’t speak Greek was seen as a peasant for a while. Europeans leveled up even as only Latin speakers were seen as educated for a millenium. Americans, before Harvard became what it is were admiring towards those who studied in UK or Europe. PPop is corny at times but the mindset of “yes, we can also do what the Koreans do if we work on it, even if we don’t look as white and tall as them”, is a level up mindset I kinda admire.
Of course, I would admire a mindset that believes Filipinos can also learn to build world class motorcycles and eventually graduate to cars even more, but it seems Pinoys don’t bilib in themselves enough yet for that. I am clueless on how to get there, I must admit.
P.S. In the article below, I mentioned Voltes V. Now what that have to do with our discussions here. Well, the enemy there are invincible aliens, Boazanians.
Ned Armstrong, who builds Voltes V, is a hornless Boazanian outcast. His children are among the pilots of that magical machine. See the analogy to the sense of inferiority and the sense of seeing foreign mixture as adding superiority.
P.P.S. my half-joking AU story with a Raja Nguyen of Cebu in that article is my idea of how some Cebuanos might see Joey, also as Boazanian without horns as in good, meaning teaching the Earthlings how to build Voltes V. Also, re Cebuanos and South Asians, the best singer the girl group BINI has, Colet from Bohol, joked that she is “half-Bombay, half-Japanese, boom panis”. That and her KPop crushes like Exo Lay (Chinese) show the complexities Joey wrote about.
What I meant to say is that the Philippines was only united regionally and across the archipelago in the past when under foreign domination, as the suzerainty provided a form of unifying construct. It is a hard pill to swallow for many who are influenced by the post-Kapitunan and UP narratives which still perpetuate. But my other point which I strongly feel is that the past is not the be-all and end-all; rather acknowledging the past provides the start of a foundation to build something new. Often in the Philippines I feel there is a sense of being controlled by the supposed past instead of making a new construction towards the future with what is on hand in the present — this may be the result of not having many leaders who can provide the requisite vision of change that increases towards majority support.
To use the building world class motorcycles analogy, in order to get started one needs to begin either by re-inventing the technology needed or by building imported complete knockdown kits. Both ways provide the basic experience needed to improve skills to level up. Let’s not use the Indonesian automotive industry story which is still stuck on building CKDs, and let’s not even use the rapid rise of the Vietnamese automotive industry story’s actual manufacture of native designs which may be depressing to Filipinos who may have inexplicably looked down on Vietnam’s modern stumbles in a form of colonial thought diffused through Filipino subconscious colonial memory. Rather let’s use the South Korean automotive history story. Most Filipinos would be surprised to learn that the South Koreans got their start in the auto industry by building the South Korean equivalent of jeepneys, complete with jury rigging literal surplus junked WWII/Korean War Willys Jeeps, remanufactured Willys petrol motors, and an automotive body made from flattened junk steel oil barrels. At least Filipinos got to start with mostly lightly used American Jeeps. Within a decade in the early 1960s South Korea started manufacturing Japanese CKDs of the still crappy post-war Japanese cars. Still it took South Korea another 4 decades to establish itself as an originator of good car brands starting in the 2000s. I had a conversation 2 decades ago with my ex-fiancé’s father who owned a majority share of a medium-large South Korean company where he remarked that South Koreans are cognizant of and always felt grateful to American help rebuilding after the Korean Armistice. He also mentioned that he didn’t understand why the Philippines, which received much more American financial support in the past, could not stand up on her own. He had met PEFTOK soldiers as a small child and thought these Filipino soldiers came from a very rich country, compared to the war torn Koreas.
Regarding your AU story, there is one impossibility there hehe. Vietnam’s predecessor states (including Champa) was never successfully invaded by Han China, or even the Mongol Yuan. The 1,000 Year Domination by China was more of a cultural domination, which Vietnam successfully repelled (something similar happened to the ancient and medieval Korean states). The handful of times a general under the command of the Han successfully invaded, he somehow got “Vietnamized” as those generals were of Yue descent and recognized the oppression of his fellow Yue, the Vietnamese, thus switching sides.
Btw, the story of Prince Lý Long Tường would be more similar to your story. He was a Vietnamese prince who established the Lee/Yi/Rhee family in Goryeo and revamped the military training of the backwards Goryeo. That von Steuben-esque training allowing Goryeo to resist the Mongol Yuan invasion of Korea and ultimately unify the Korean Peninsula during the Korean Three Kingdoms period. During my time working in Korea, I happened upon the prince’s monument which is maintained to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lý_Long_Tường