The Philippine Paradox: A Gifted Nation That Struggles to Harness Its Own Power
By Karl Garcia
The Philippines is often described as a developing country held back by poverty, corruption, or colonial history. While these factors are real, they do not fully explain the country’s condition. Compared to many nations with fewer advantages, the Philippines is unusually gifted. It possesses a polyglot culture, strategic geography, a global diaspora, maritime heritage, and a highly adaptable population. These traits should naturally position the country as a regional hub of trade, diplomacy, culture, and maritime activity. Yet the Philippines often fails to fully convert these strengths into sustained national power.
This paradox is not simply about cultural quirks such as utang na loob or pakikisama, which are often blamed in popular discussions. The deeper issue is more structural and more difficult to confront: a persistent inability to organize, sustain, and execute long-term national goals. Over time, this failure to harness what is already good and beneficial slowly erodes potential. It creates the feeling that the nation is not collapsing dramatically, but weakening gradually, wasting opportunities that few countries ever receive.
A Polyglot Civilization with Natural Advantages
The Philippines is one of the most culturally hybrid societies in the world. Its civilization blends Austronesian roots, Malay trade traditions, Spanish colonial influence, American institutional structures, Chinese commercial networks, Islamic heritage in the south, and strong regional identities across the archipelago. This mixture produced a population that is unusually adaptable and multilingual.
Filipinos operate comfortably in English, Filipino, and multiple regional languages, while also interacting easily with Spanish vocabulary, Chinese dialect communities, and Middle Eastern cultures through overseas work. This flexibility allows Filipinos to integrate quickly into foreign environments and work across cultural boundaries, a rare advantage in an increasingly globalized world.
Historically, polyglot societies often became powerful trading or diplomatic states. Maritime republics like Venice, commercial hubs like Singapore, and trading nations like the Netherlands and United Kingdom used linguistic flexibility and cultural openness to build influence far beyond their size. The Philippines possesses similar traits, yet has not fully transformed them into strategic advantage.
Diaspora as Distributed National Power
More than ten million Filipinos live and work abroad. This diaspora spans every region of the world, from North America and Europe to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Overseas Filipinos dominate sectors such as maritime labor, nursing, caregiving, hospitality, engineering, and business process outsourcing. Remittances stabilize the economy, while Filipino professionals contribute to global industries.
In many countries, diaspora networks become instruments of national influence. Nations such as India, China, Israel, and Ireland actively coordinate their overseas communities to attract investment, transfer technology, and expand diplomatic reach. The Philippines has the numbers and the global presence to do the same, but coordination remains limited. Migration often functions as survival strategy rather than organized national projection.
Diaspora Diversity: Beyond Survival and Extended Families
It is important to note that not all overseas Filipinos migrate out of necessity or family obligations. While popular narratives often emphasize extended-family support or survival-driven migration, many Filipinos choose to work abroad for personal growth, professional development, or global exposure. Studies from the Philippine Statistics Authority and international labor organizations show that a significant portion of migrant professionals—particularly in healthcare, engineering, IT, and academia—prioritize skill-building, career advancement, or long-term savings rather than sending large remittances.
Recognizing this diversity is crucial. Policies and programs that assume all migrants are driven primarily by financial necessity risk overlooking the strategic potential of voluntary, high-skilled diaspora members. Creating pathways for return, remote contribution, or dual engagement with local institutions allows these Filipinos to contribute knowledge, innovation, and investment—even while abroad—turning the diaspora into an asset of national power rather than a simple economic dependency.
Key takeaway: Overseas Filipinos are not a monolithic group bound by obligation. Many are independent actors who can be strategically engaged to enhance national capability, strengthen knowledge networks, and boost the Philippines’ global influence.
Geography That Should Create Influence
The Philippines sits in one of the most strategic maritime regions on Earth. It lies between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, near major trade routes linking East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Important waterways such as the South China Sea, the Luzon Strait, and the Malacca Strait form part of the world’s busiest shipping corridors.
A maritime archipelago in this location should naturally develop strong naval capability, logistics industries, ship repair, maritime training, fisheries management, and regional diplomacy. Instead, the country often behaves as a peripheral state in a region where it should be central. Geography provides opportunity, but opportunity alone does not produce power without planning and discipline.
Adaptability as Soft Power
Filipino culture is highly adaptive. Traits such as hospitality, humor, linguistic flexibility, and social openness make Filipinos effective in international environments. These characteristics help explain why Filipinos succeed in global industries, from cruise ships and hospitals to aviation, information technology, and peacekeeping missions.
Soft power does not require military dominance. Countries such as South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Norway demonstrate that influence can come from culture, technology, finance, or maritime expertise. The Philippines has the human capital to follow similar paths, yet progress often remains uneven because strengths are not consistently aligned toward national strategy.
The Problem of Execution, Not Ability
The central weakness is not lack of intelligence, talent, or resources. It is the difficulty of sustaining long-term execution. Policies change with political cycles. Good ideas are launched with enthusiasm but lose momentum. Institutions struggle with continuity. Accountability is inconsistent, and reforms often stop halfway.
This pattern creates a cycle: plans are announced, partially implemented, then replaced before results appear. Over time, the country accumulates unfinished projects instead of lasting achievements. The result is stagnation without collapse, movement without transformation.
Countries that achieved rapid development often faced crises that forced discipline. After war or economic disaster, nations such as Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Vietnam adopted long-term strategies and maintained them across political changes. The Philippines, by contrast, has avoided total collapse but also avoided the urgency that produces deep reform. Stability without discipline can lead to permanent mediocrity.
The Danger of Slow Decline
National decline rarely happens suddenly. It occurs through gradual underinvestment, missed opportunities, and tolerance for inefficiency. Education weakens slowly, infrastructure lags behind neighbors, talent leaves for better opportunities, and institutions lose credibility. None of these failures alone is catastrophic, but together they reduce the country’s ability to compete.
This is why the problem feels like a slow loss rather than a dramatic crisis. The Philippines remains functional, democratic, and culturally vibrant, yet it does not fully use the advantages it already possesses. Potential becomes wasted capacity. Strength becomes habit without direction.
A Gifted Nation That Still Has Time
Despite these weaknesses, the Philippines is far from finished. The very traits that create frustration also show that the country still has unusual potential. It has a young population, global connections, open debate, active civil society, and a strategic location in a region that will remain economically vital for decades.
A polyglot, maritime, globally connected society has the ingredients for influence even without becoming a traditional superpower. If its strengths are organized with discipline and continuity, the Philippines could become a regional hub for maritime services, disaster response, education, logistics, culture, and diplomacy. The challenge is not discovering new advantages, but finally learning how to use the ones already present.
The Philippine paradox, therefore, is not that the nation is weak. It is that a nation so gifted has not yet fully decided to become strong.
I
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
I don’t buy into the elite-driven narrative of “resilience” because resilience connotes a “thoughtful, long-term adaptation to challenging circumstances,” emphasis on *thoughtful* and *long-term.*
Likewise, the much touted Filipino versatility with language, which in reality consists of knowing some popular phrases and an even shakier understanding of language, is probably not a denominator of a “polyglot society.” Polyglottery has the assumption of high undemanding, competence and practice of multiple languages; devoid of those indicators understanding multiple languages is just bilingualism, trilingualism, etc. etc. How many common English sayings in the Philippines are stock phrases stuck in the 1930s and 1950s removed from the original meaning? Or how many Spanish-derived expressions have a completely different meaning in the Philippines, sometimes diametrically opposed to the usage in other Spanish-speaking countries?
When I think of “Filipino resilience” or “Filipinos speak many languages,” I think of “survival.” Filipinos need to entreat to higher powers, whether temporal or spiritual, in order to have *hope to survive.* Filipinos need to learn bits of other languages, Philippine or foreign, in order to navigate through an *incohesive society.* Both are forms of surviving, not thriving, because the effort of leaders to create an environment that makes thriving possible is lacking. The nature of the Philippines system means Filipinos adapt to survive. Flexibility is not used to thrive but to survive in an incoherent system that may tout certain ideals but in practice often does the opposite in relation to personal or family power. Filipinos are given little choice, little opportunity.
Even abroad, let’s say in the highest concentration of Filipinos abroad, i.e. the OFWs in the Middle East, OFWs pick up tidbits of Arabic not as a tool of upward movement but as a tool of survival. Yes, one can use the story of many an immigrant family in the US, but in the US (and a lesser extent Canada and more recently Australia), it is possible to put down roots and while the first generation immigrant who migrated may be surviving, their children certainly would thrive in a new, un-Filipino system that allows room to grow. This is just not possible for OFWs, who can only hope to support their families while saving up just enough to build a decent retirement home back in their home province. They are surviving, not thriving.
I had a lot of thought lately in discussion with a group of Big Four friends about the successes of Overseas Filipinos and how such a group may eventually bring back new learnings to the mother country. Yes, I have written extensively about how a (non-OFW) Filipino abroad is finally able to “stretch his or her wings” and realize a fuller potential in a foreign society that has less social and economic constraining factors. But through my rumination I was surprised to come to the conclusion that while there are quite a few highly educated, highly skilled, and highly successful Overseas Filipinos in their chosen professions, there is only one country where one of Filipino-descent regularly become leaders in business, NGO, government bureaucracy, politics, military, and so on: the United States.
I further thought about how this “culture of possibility” may be brought to the Philippines and I concluded it may just not be possible at the moment. Not withstanding the lockhold of neo-datus, or as Francis called them “datu-trapos,” upon the Philippine system, it would certainly be a steep uphill climb even if the constraints are thrown off by a newly enlightened elite. But as other examples from Poland to the Baltics, from Romania’s successes compared to Hungary, from Singapore and Malaysia to Indonesia show, returning expatriates are the main vehicle for change. One can hope that eventually enough of the Filipino diaspora will come home in order to effectuate that change. The Philippines need not always strive for uniqueness and re-invention. It is okay to copy the best practices of those more successful, and when integrated into one’s culture, makes the “new” way of thinking become truly unique.
Joe’s point was fluency in 3 or more Filipiko Language. Tagalog, Ilocano, Kapangpangan Cebuano
Maybe because of 20th century migration and some domestic helpers know more than their principals.
The almost is not good enough theme is still no reason to pout, when you pout you doubt.
I do not subscribe to this view, because I think it is overplayed and has had little meaningful effect towards the Philippines developing. In my view it is another touted “empty win,” that is common in Philippine elite self-congratulatory backslapping but ultimately wasn’t all that useful. We may decide to agree to disagree on this point.
Deep inside I agree, as CV pointed out because some of my articles and comments is against pwede na.
It seems to me that most Filipinos tend to be of two types: those who self-flagellate about constant “we suck, it’s useless,” and those who are hypersensitive to any criticism constructive or not as “anti-Pinoy.” Both bad in my opinion.
As I have pointed out many times, people of Filipino descent do quite well in other countries, especially the US. So what Filipinos back home are dealing with is really quite possibly the “Philippine System” as it exists presently back to well before the Spanish came. So the question really, in my mind, is “how to change the system” by collecting and injecting ideas from countries where Filipinos can thrive and experience their fullest potential. That does not necessarily mean that Filipinos need to “become Americans” or “become Chinese,” it just means that it is really okay to borrow the best ideas and best practices elsewhere and make those “Filipino-flavored” to challenge the existing decrepit paradigm. I have heard some “educated” Filipinos who are really mindless nationalists complain that adopting “foreign ideas” would no longer make the Philippines “Filipino.” Well I give you lechon which is originally not a Filipino food, pancit, bihon, humba, batchoy, and so many other foods that while not originally Filipino have been made “fully Filipino.”
Oh, there have been phases were I was in the mood that everything sucks, and for example when I wrote an article about how disjointed the text-derived slang used a lot online by Filipinos seemed, Karl was a bit defensive and commented something like just because we use that kind of lingo doesn’t mean all are jejemons. So yes, I guess we have to try to maintain sensible middle ground.
The Filipino Story does not believe that haha.
well, with even a lot of those who want to be thought leaders glorifying poverty (except the likes of Heydarian, interestingly) and a false idea of the ancient Philippines as utopia (or alternatively as “The Kingdom” or “Ophir”, whatever) while glorifying OFWs and sometimes even criticizing those who migrated as “greedy” for money, I wonder how that can happen. OK, my mood is better than an hour ago but I still am pessimistic.
So I dug into the Filipino Story channel and was unsurprised that the owner of the channel is a Fil-Am who hated his Filipino-ness (common up until the 2000s) and had a transformation when he visited the Philippines with family, becoming what I joke as among friends as a “Super-Pinoy.” We have a lot of those types here in California and other places with Fil-Ams. They are the types who put big Philippine flags on their cars (or even vinyl wrap their cars with Philippine “tribal” motifs). A local half-Thai and most of the rest Italian-German ex was actually like this, even though I’m more French than she is Tagalog. It’s not healthy to hate one’s mother culture, but is it really that healthy to revolve one’s entire identity around being a “Super-Pinoy?” My best friend in high school (whose family took me to the Philippines for the first time) who had little reason to hate being Filipino due to having two wealthy doctor parents, hated his Filipino-ness and identified for a long time as a Vietnamese due to his Vietnamese-ish sounding surname (which turned out to be of Apulian origin as in Italy), yet is now a Super-Pinoy. As for the director, he seems to have done a lot of nationalistic-flavored films. The young-sounding narrator seems to have had her start doing clickbait vlogger reaction videos titled something like “Mexican-American Mom moved to tears after choosing to live in the Philippines!” All three are Fil-Ams, and do not live in the Philippines. All remind me of the “AZN” phase Southeast Asian immigrant kids went through in the 1990s through early 2000s, and some never grew out of it. I hope Filipinos can learn to just love themselves, warts and all, which would be a much stronger starting point to move forward.
I guess I can be annoyed at Heydarian sometimes (most times) but he’s probably one of the few decent Filipino *public* thinkers of the current time. Sometimes I think Heydarian is too eager to adopt new ideas he learned without deep invested thought, which is the main annoyance for me, but I suppose a charitable thing I can say is “at least he is trying.”
Re
Abstractions, kwentuhan
That is what we are doing
Prescriptions of absteactrion, what makes us any different?
The Philippines’ development difficulties are best understood not as the result of a single flaw but as the long interaction of culture, institutions, incentives, and historical continuity that together form the present Philippine system. Public debate often swings between excessive self-criticism and defensive nationalism, yet both extremes obscure the deeper reality that behavior adapts to environment: when rules are inconsistent, loyalty outweighs competence; when effort is uncertainly rewarded, initiative weakens; and when authority remains personal rather than institutional, reforms struggle to last. Language flexibility, strong storytelling traditions, and social adaptability show creativity, but education systems that emphasize memorization over analysis limit the accumulation of knowledge, while fragmented elite competition and short political cycles make long-term policy continuity difficult. Comparisons with neighboring countries suggest that culture alone does not determine outcomes; development tends to occur when incentives, institutions, and elite interests align long enough to build capability in infrastructure, education, industry, and governance. Change therefore cannot rely on moral appeals or sudden transformation, but on gradual adjustments that make productive behavior more rewarding than unproductive behavior, strengthen rules so they are applied predictably, allow experimentation in education and administration, maintain stable national priorities across administrations, and build economic and technical capacity over decades. Cultural attitudes can evolve when systems change, just as systems become stronger when people see that effort leads to results, and progress becomes possible not through a single reform or leader, but through many small, consistent improvements that accumulate over time.
The late Dr. Vicente Rafael’s book “Motherless Tongues” is partly about exactly the kind of lost in translation use of language in the Philippines, including the fluidity of Metro Manila slang that he himself observed in his youth, so the account ends in the 1970s slang I was at the tail end of. Hehe the teleserye Maria Clara at Ibarra has a Gen Z isekaid into the Noli, and her with Taglish and the ilustrados with their Hispanized Tagalog trying to communicate is hilarious.
But could this be the core of many Philippine issues including reading comprehension, which probably fails starting with COMPREHENSION itself. If concepts are barely rooted in reality or have roots easily washed away, how can generations pass on learning as a society? I sometimes feel we here are useless, because if ever the 0.1% who might be able to get what we are discussing manage to talk to the rest, what if they just answer “e di wow” or stuff like that?
Forms of communication such as language are not static and are ever evolving. So with that framing borrowing from non-native languages or creating new words such as in the case of creole languages or what English itself experienced during its evolution is not inherently bad. Slang on the other hand is an expression of current culture, specifically the subculture of an in-group, and as such may not survive in the long term to become a core part of language evolution.
Well perhaps the core issue with (reading) comprehension is that comprehension does not literally mean “understanding something,” but rather means being able to move beyond literal recognition into being able into interpretation, synthesizing like and unlike concepts, and inferring meaning from what is observed with the senses; in other words comprehension requires the ability to understand abstraction. Abstraction is the ability to organize and manipulate ideas mentally. A compounding problem is abstraction requires both being able to understand the intangible things, but necessitates being able to connect new abstract thinking with known background knowledge. I don’t think Filipinos have some kind of mental defect here, as I’ve pointed out how Filipinos often excel when they are unconstrained by the “Philippine System.” Filipinos loved to tell “kwento” so imagination is intact and so is the ability for abstraction as long as it has to deal with kwentohan.
In general I agree with Dr. Vicente Rafael’s premise, except the part where his diagnosis of colonialism as the causation of the present condition. I find it hard to believe the Philippines to be an entirely unique case in a hermitically sealed system prior to “colonialization” when Indonesians, Malaysians, Chams, and the Pacific Islanders of Oceania and Polynesia exhibit much of the same traits. The “colonialism discourse” is a relatively new strain of thinking during the Cold War and tends to muddy things so I prefer to stay away from it. In any case many of the pre-Spanish “biyani” were likely or were definitely “colonizers” themselves, being Malay foreigners who ruled over the locals.
As to how the ability of abstraction and comprehension may be raised, if I were in DepEd as an advisor I would propose to create a parallel school system that implements the ideas I discussed above using modern pedagogical technique with the aim of merging the legacy school system into the new system eventually. Such a new school system should not be limited to social or economic background; rather the limiting for capacity should be for students with potential. As more “new-type” teachers are trained the goal would be to expand the new school system and fold the old system in. Well that would be a heavy lift I suppose, but doing total system reform on the existing educational system will probably be an even larger lift.
actually shared stories can indeed be seen as the oldest form of abstraction of lessons societies learned, whether it was in epics or in stories from religions.
I also sometimes lapse into storyteller analogies when I notice that my key- or end-users don’t get my geekspeak.
UP Elementary School, now UP Integrated school, was that kind of school in theory, it was directly connected to the UP College of Education.
But if I am not mistaken it was there that we had the music teacher who wanted us to just memorize names of native musical instruments with no further details.
There were great teachers with very modern methods as well beside the usual types, especially one who had come back from training in.. the United States..
Correct me if I’m wrong here but I had thought the UP Integrated School had started off as the University High School, not elementary.
A point of interest of mine in the evolution of Philippine education is that post-1901 (establishment of the Normal School, now Normal University) Philippine education started off on an American model (with UP), but over time the Spanish habits came back. It seems to me that universities having integral or affiliated senior high schools is a going back to the Spanish “bachillerato” system. The various tracks of Philippine high schools presently are also quite similar to the Spanish “selectivad,” or choosing of a specialist branch of study for university. Additionally tacking on an affiliated junior high school and in some cases elementary may be a form of exclusivity, rather than one of inclusion. Ironically, exclusivity is not how the Spanish education system works either in the modern era as that system had undergone expansionary reforms.
Over time with weak institutions that are unable to reinforce weak social cohesion, we may see different groups sorting themselves out into more exclusive groupings — creating a cultural balkanization. I see many elements of this exclusion in the Philippines, from urban and socmed subcultures to social circles centered around membership to certain groups and institutions, and then there is “everyone else” who exist under what I’ve referred to as modern day datus, LGU heads who more often than not are literal descendants of the original datu of that area. Groups of Exclusion build walls, physical or otherwise, to protect their own interests, much as I imagine old Maynila having rudimentary walls to protect the 250-or-so elite inhabitants within. These Groups of Exclusion exist all over the Philippines, being “mini-city states” unto themselves, coming “out of their walls” to “trade,” “raid,” and perform “diplomacy” with those of other “mini-city states.” Centuries may have passed but not much has changed fundamentally. Not sure if my line of thinking makes sense here, but that’s my sense of things.
Irineo had elementary at UPIS and HS at Philippine Science.
But you said started as so Irineo.may want to answer.
Could not wait.
UP High School (1916): The original high school was established in Manila as a laboratory for the UP College of Education.
UP Elementary School (1936): The elementary unit was founded two decades later.
UP Preparatory School (1954): Another high school unit was added later in the 1950s.
Inquirer.net
Inquirer.net
+2
There are some who encouraged me in the past to apply as a Jeopardy contestant but I admit I am a bit spotlight shy unless I have no other choice.
If it is rigged as rumored and if you were hand picked to win, you will be trained back stage, if you reach day 2. So stage fright spotlight fright solved.
Oh no, I don’t have a problem with stage fright. I did participate in oratory and debate club since junior high school until graduating university after all. I just prefer to stand outside of the spotlight unless my presence is necessary.
Not sure about Jeopardy being rigged, but the prizes aren’t really that high to begin with. I’m just a trivia nerd and like to consume information.
Humility is not shyness be proud to be humble.
The merger into UPIS was when I was in Grade 5 or Grade 6, so around 1976/1977.
Thanks
UPIS is the merger of UP Elementary (just behind UP College of Education before) and UP High that was and is as UPIS now at Katipunan Road.
Yes, old habits die hard in the Philippines, people often go with the flow with new bosses but back to old routines once they are gone.
The PNP under PNoy and just after PNoy are another example of that for me.
I long hesitated to go to Spain as I had in my head cliches of them (from Filipino education) as being stuffy and arrogant, but I did give it a try after discovering Portugal as a pretty cool place and was seriously surprised at how modern Spain really is.
My Spanish language teacher at the Instituto Cervantes being of the Movida (democratization after Franco) generation also helped me overcome those cliches.
Yes, often even UP and Ateneo circles are pretty separate – own experience.
In the group chat with Karl and Gian, I once wrote that we three come from different “castles” in the Philippines. Karl from Camp Aguinaldo “castle”, I of course from UP Diliman “castle”, Gian from INC “castle” especially as he mentioned in a comment here once that he lives in a compound with mainly INC. Even the different companies owned by the “oligarchs” are castles, and loyalty to the lords is important in a way – BPO is very modern compared to them.
UP has professorial dynasties and I could have been part of one if I had wanted to. But once one has breathed the air of modern Europe where castle walls are either just ornament or were broken down into boulevards that go around the old town, it simply felt too confined and self-referential.
It is for instance interesting that UP has its own police as there was a deal with Enrile during Martial Law IIRC that the actual PC should not enter UP. Nearly legendary is the shooting that erupted at the INC Temple on Commonwealth Avenue when the PC tried to force themselves in when Martial Law was declared and the INC guards fought back. As my mother was Ateneo faculty, our family enjoyed the swimming pool there every Sunday – it was much cleaner than the UP pool.
My advantage on X when I was still there was that I had instant access to significant PH social circles with my name alone, people who otherwise and maybe even in real life if I returned would not have given me the time of day. Things are simply like that over there.
In a movie by Brillante Mendoza that plays in UP Balara, I noticed a sign and was not surprised that the Daza family still “rule” the barangay. The mansion of chef cook Nora Daza started just where UP Diliman ended but interestingly her family has IIRC held the UP Balara barangay captainship for half a century.
re Spain, when I went to Barcelona (some will say that is not really Spain that is Catalunya, but OK, I was in Madrid later) my observation was that the Guardia Civil were far from the nasty cliche of Filipino school textbooks. It was summer and they were more on ogling young women than anything else.
On Majorca I experienced the Guardia Civil as doing excellent work of clearing the beach of people when dusk came as it was an ecologically protected zone, no camping allowed so they firmly but politely asked the youngsters to leave, as my hotel was near that beach I observed that regularly.
Not that the Guardia Civil were any kind of nice guys in the Franco era. But I wonder why the Philippines has such a hard time changing from old habits. Or is it the mindset that if you have to correct what you did before, you are admitting that you used to be “bobo”, or something similar?
I haven’t had a look into Spanish-language records of that period about Guardia Civil, so I don’t have much insight here. I will say though that aside from overt nationalist indoctrination within the Philippine education system, I have noticed other areas where certain very outspoken nationalist Filipinos push their own agendas. For example I once got into a Wikipedia edit war with a Filipino who kept insisting on changing *one* word in Wiki articles: from American “colonial” administration to American “occupation forces.” He kept doing that until he got banned as an editor. None of his Wiki additions were helpful in bringing about a more full understanding of those particular articles. He was simply obsessed over singular things.
So everything I’ve read (in English) about the Guardia Civil makes that organization 100% bad guys while making out Filipinos to always be the good guys. Okay so the Guardia Civil undoubtedly were harsh, and some gendarme units may have been oppressive in some instances due to the decentralized nature of the Spanish Empire and the Spanish administration of the Philippines, but a lot of how Filipinos tend to view things is black or white. There must always be a hero and there must always be a villain. What was it the late Bella Flores’ (the “Queen of Kontrabidas”) famous quip? “Walang bida kung walang kontrabida!” (“There is no hero without a villain!”). I suspect that some of the nasty cliches had to do with the flattening of Rizal’s characters, ultimately misunderstanding and propagating misunderstanding. Filipinos are quite good at understanding the nuances of verbal and non-verbal cues, like the many things eyebrows, lips and scrunched noses can mean depending on context and shape. There is a lacking in the area of reading nuance in the written form however… Stock characters are much easier to understand because stock characters are predictable and are missing deeper meaning.
On the hardness of changing in the Philippines. Well, actually many things changed. Filipinos are more free (in general) to speak out openly than in the past, or at least share with close associates. I wrote about how Japanese society changed by essentially making every commoner a petty lord, i.e. spreading the samurai code across Japanese society. Mostly this change in Japanese society takes the form of respect rituals which are ingrained deeply within post-WWII Japanese society. What if this sort of change also happened in the Philippines, but was in the form of opening up (or at least having the illusion of opening up) the possibility for any Filipino to become a maharlika and maybe even a datu? From what we do know about how one would become and maintain their position as a maharlika or datu, some understanding may be gleaned there on why it is so hard to change the mindset of refusing to admit fault by any means necessary until completely cornered.
Joe’s classic about face and power explains the mindset especially of datus and maharlikas pretty well.
it also jibes with what my father once said that “in the West, words express freedom, in the Philippines they are weapons”:
It is a mindset of Clout (capitals intentional) not Craft and Competence.
Sure the ancient Philippines had its carpenters (and the carpenter we hired at UP, a wiry man, made furniture of the same quality as the furniture from Bali sold for top Euro in Europe of the nineties and noughties, same ancient tradition), its weavers (the CNA series about empires also notes weaving traditions of Sri Vijaya) and even its gunsmiths (though the gunsmiths that cast the lantakas of Raja Soliman’s Manila apparently didn’t do too well casting bigger Spanish cannons later, so the craft that had spread due to the fall of Majapahit was probably still in its infancy) – even as they liked jewelry from China, Vietnam and Thailand (Laura Lee Junker, Raiding, Trading and Feasting) and warriors from Tondo or Manila often had imported Japanese katana as per William Henry Scott.
Countries that have deep culture of Craft and Competence like Japan for instance didn’t respect only warriors or warlords even in the Tokugawa period. The question is, how can the Philippines evolve into a culture of Craft and Competence and lessen the prevailing culture of Clout?
Thanks for digging that out, Irineo. I’m impressed with the amount of time I put into some articles. That one was dicey because I don’t really enjoy pissing people off. So I had to explain the explanations. LOL
I suppose the difference is that in Japan artisans have always been held to high regard, especially if the artisan was skilled. Items of Japanese craftsmanship are carefully cared for and passed down from generation to generation, sometimes for hundreds, even a thousand years. In pre-Spanish Philippines the “panday” was somewhere below the maharlika, but more often than not pandays were “alipin” — alipin namamahay (freemen) if they were fortunate, “alipin sagigilid” (war slaves, debt slaves, bound serfs) for the most part. What the pandays produced were used for trade and gifting by those higher than them.
With this understanding of the probable, one can draw a through line to the reasons why what the artisan created was valuable, but the artisans themselves not so much. How many houses have I seen built with money sent home by an OFW where “karpintero” (carpenter) were swapped out along the building process, sometimes once, twice, thrice, or more times? So many. The result is that the optimistically-completed house is ends up being a disjointed structure.
Well, one way an alipin could rise in social standing out of his class (first by buying his freedom to become a freeman) is by acts of bravery. Can present behaviors of many DEs like “maoy” (Visayan for “acting out”), being stylistically flamboyant as the often babaeros are, or generally being OA be seen as “acts of bravery” that raise one’s status? There should be a serious sociological study in this area, because I think there are many interesting threads to follow here.
No one wants to be just a worker, even if one must be a worker at the moment for personal and family survival, because a worker is a servant serving others. But if everyone strives to become a boss, and the boss might have gotten into their position by “demonstrating strength” rather than showing actual strength, the society would become aspirationally quite top-heavy indeed. A lot of times Philippines thinking revolves around the small world of the AB(C). The world of the DE is completely different. I think that while most Filipino politicians who necessarily need to “know the people” innately understand how supporters who are mostly in DE think, educated professionals and thinkers who are socially cloistered misunderstand a lot of things about their own country.
But that’s true of the human condition when intellectual knowledge builds barriers rather than understanding. Or more perhaps that understandings exist but there is no way to inject them into the self dealing political domain of democracy. Do liberal academicians in the US understand MAGAs and what motivates them? The studies are rolling in, I suspect, but only personal experience changes a MAGA’s views, not intellectual argument.
Oh don’t get me started on American academia, which has been beaten into submission by far-leftists and their fellow travelers. Around the time I entered university (right after 9/11) I was still a dyed-in-the-wool movement conservative and was quite put off by the rabid fanaticism of leftist thought at Berkeley that shamed whoever didn’t agree *exactly,* even if someone agreed 99.99%, had endless purity tests that were impossible to pass, and were willing to shut down any respectful discussion if it did not align with their beliefs. Sadly since that time things have only gotten worse. It is impossible to express oneself as a small-c conservative on most American campuses. When people are mocked rather than reasoned with, it only gives them more reason to radicalize. Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with that because I have at times a sharp tongue. In any case I moved way left after I graduated.
American liberals generally do not understand MAGAs because liberals tend to be law-abiding and rule-followers, and much of the last 10 years of MAGA has been efforts to try to convince MAGAs with reason, which is not possible because MAGA is a cult. How some Americans (some 33-34% prior to Trump 2.0) fell into MAGA is another complicated basket and is different for every MAGA, but the non-religious fundamentalist ones usually become MAGA due to being constantly shamed and belittled by the elites among the liberals and progressives, somewhat like the American version of calling someone “bobotante.” The other portion of Trump voters voted for various reasons, all contradictory to the reasons of other fractions of the non-core, usually having to deal with anti-communism, falling for Trump’s various lies, or purely kitchen table reasons where they believed Trump to be better able to get money into their pockets through cheaper prices or increased wages.
The non-core Trump voters already woke up a few months into Trump 2.0. The last set of polls I read were along the lines of core-MAGAs dropping off to 27%, then even 23% and still dropping. Even cultists wake up when they burn their hands on the stove, and in Trump 1.0 enough “adults in the room” were present where the damage was not that bad, at least compared to 2.0.
I think the only way out of this American Nightmare is a coalition of Democrats which includes former Republicans who are against Trump. I do not agree with the so-called “progressives” who do not seem to share the ideals of progressivism (i.e. creating progress) and would rather “throw bombs” like Makabayan does in the Philippines. Besides, both sides have crazies who will not accept 99.99% agreement, demand submission to 100% of their view, and subject would-be allies with constant theoretical purity tests (they call these “acknowledgements” and was another thing American White so-called “progressives” stole and mangled from non-White movements similar to “DEI,” “CRT,” “Woke” and so on). A politics of feeling good about one’s ideology rather than a politics to improve the good is just insane to me, and it’s now a problem on both the American far-left and far-right which is why they tend to agree more and more (Horseshoe Theory). Good thing though is all signs point to this new Democratic coalition winning big this November and when that happens Trump’s presidency will effectively end when all non-essential funding is cut.
Yes, MAGA seems to be a marketing vision gone horribly wrong and buyers are jumping ship. I read yesterday Dems are just two votes short of impeachment. If that doesn’t occur, I hope elections are fair and orderly. Trump won’t go easily.
Yes, MAGA seems to be a marketing vision gone horribly wrong and buyers are jumping ship. I read yesterday Dems are just two votes short of impeachment. If that doesn’t occur, I hope elections are fair and orderly. Trump won’t go easily.
Guys a top intel man Joe Kent just resigned any thoughts?
In the case of Noem, she was not defensible, but this guy except for being seen with a white supremacist, I think Trump can’t ignore his resignation.
It won’t change much but is a signal that erosion is real. It will only matter when House Republicans who want to have a political career recognize Trump is not the future.
Many thanks Joe.
Joe Kent is part of “America First” which I explained in the comment posted a few seconds ago. That faction of MAGA is in open civil warfare with the other MAGA factions, and increasingly with Trump directly. These guys are neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, whatever you want to call them.
Many thanks for low down Joey.
Not all Trump voters are MAGA. MAGA itself is a coalition of incongruent goals made up of 10 main factions:
1.) Nationalist-Populists: Led by Steve Bannon and others AKA “America First.” Against “deep state,” and advocating for drastic changes to government institutions to redirect state funding towards the “White working class.”
2.) The “New Right”: Intellectuals and young activists like Ben Shapiro who view politics as downstream from culture and want to solidify conservative ideas through policy and cultural change.
3.) Anti-Woke Conservatives: Heavy focus on social issues and cultural battles (“culture wars”). A lot of followers of this faction are former GenX Democrats (Obama voters) who were driven out by extreme purity testing and shaming from the far-left who were allowed into the Democratic coalition.
4.) Libertarian-Populists: Former Tea Party. Led by Rand Paul, Thomas Massie). Frequently pushes against Trump on wars, government spending and fiscal deficits.
5.) “Make America Healthy Again”: AKA MAHA. Led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They want to dismantle health bureaucracy, promote vaccine skepticism, and demand food safety. Natural evolution of the Ralph Nader-type voter.
6.) Christian Nationalists: Main belief system is “Seven Mountains Mandate,” “Christian Dominionism,” with many leaders from New Apostolic Reformation sect. Probably the most dedicated and “smartest” of the factions, but also the smallest faction. Many faction members like Russ Vought are sprinkled throughout current government to dismantle the established intelligence and federal bureaucracy.
7.) Greedy Billionaires: Billionaires who were liberal-coded and switched to MAGA due to pure greed and in pursuit of tax breaks and government subsidies. Most of the billionaires Trump supporters fit here.
8.) Techbros and AI Evangelists: A small clique of about a dozen CEOs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Sam Altman, Alex Karp and more recently Mark Zuckerberg who follow an insane “tech prophet” by the name of Curtis Yarvin. Main core are South African-origin “PayPal Mafia” who carry some form of watered down Nazi views. They want to replace all human labor with robots and AI, drain the Earth of resources, then escape into space to build their tech utopia on Mars and the Moon (yes, really). They believe themselves to be an evolved and godlike “homo deus” who are destined to rule over primitive Homo sapiens (the rest of humanity).
9.) Conspiracists: These people believe in all manner of conspiracy theories, from aliens, inter-dimensional beings, angels, demons, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, flat earth, that the Moon landing was faked by Walt Disney, “ZOG” (“Zionist Occupational Government”) and so on. Positively insane, and grew during early Internet, supercharged by Covid Lockdowns.
10.) Core/ MAGA Loyalists: Largest group of supporters whose primary alignment is with Donald Trump the individual and are drawn to personality-driven politics. Cultists.
A MAGA might affiliate with more than one faction, even factions that hold opposing goals and viewpoints.
Currently there is a MAGA Civil War between America First, the New Right, Anti-Woke, Tea Party remnants, MAHA and Christian Nationalists. It is ugly. They are attacking each other viciously every single day on X, on podcasts and in person and it is largely unreported outside of people that follow it.
The MAGA Loyalists used to be around 33-34% of US population but has dropped drastically to some polls saying it is around 23% now. Turns out “owning the libs” doesn’t put food on the table. If you have time there is a great group I support with donations called “Leaving MAGA” with very compelling testimonies by MAGAs who left, why they joined and why they left. I think effort must be made to help deprogram former cultists who figured things out on their own and are in a state of confusion. These people once back in the realm of reason are probably going to be more reliable voters than the fabled progressive Bernie Sanders always harps about who wants all the good policies yet never bothered to register and vote. All due respect to Sanders, who I largely agree with, but he is totally wrong about which group of voters need to be targeted.
That’s a great profile of the MAGA movement. You should send it to the New York Times and ask if they want it structured as an article. Or start your own You Tube channel ala Heather Cox Richardson. This is great material.
I wouldn’t be able to read my own article if published there as I unsubscribed in disgust from the NYT, among other papers, after over 25 years for what they did to Biden and Harris. An old flame I met on a “visit” through Columbia back in the day who is now bylined regularly in that publication asked me “why?” I said “journalists are more interested in ‘Inside the Beltway’ gossip than following the actual story.” She was quite defensive and angry. I stand my ground in that regard.
I listen to Heather Cox Richardson to have some calm and a reminder of reason. She summarizes a lot of what I already follow independently though. Being formerly on the right and almost having gone to Claremont (the incubator of the present American right) on full Young America’s Foundation (now Young Americans for Freedom) scholarship rather than Berkeley, I have a bit of insight into MAGA’s thinking, because it could’ve been me if I had stayed in that movement. Those organizations and university may not be “well known” by “normies,” but are very well-monied and influential in the American conservative world. Most men as they age drift right. I moved drastically left, became a progressive, and am much more happy for having done so.
Yes, I hear you. You make the grounding of the various factions clear. I’d not known that. It makes the task of opposing MAGA look somehow more defined. Attack the foundations, take down the movement.
I think the best plan of attack is to approach with kindness and introduce doubt into MAGAs, though Trump is doing plenty of that on his own. Lecturing and finger wagging only drives someone who recently departed on their own a high-control group back into the arms of those groups, and has been well studied by cult experts. Unfortunately too many American liberals have adopted some habits of the far-left and engage in this demand for perpetual apology. It takes time for people who made bad decisions to come back around, and them recognizing their mistakes is a good enough start for me. Like this gentleman:
I met a bunch of ex-MAGAs at No Kings 1 last year, who were generally embraced by No Kings protesters. I was abroad in Germany for No Kings 2 so the expat crowd in Berlin were basically all liberals. I expect to meet a lot more ex-MAGAs at the upcoming No Kings 3 on March 28th.
But one thing’s for sure, MAGA is cracking. If Trump could win fair and square, he wouldn’t be demanding the election to be stolen with the shenanigans like what occurred in the Texas primaries 2 weeks ago where MAGA-controlled election boards changed at the last moment and without proper notice the ability to vote at any precinct to force voting only in the voter’s home precinct. I expect ICE to be deployed at voting locations in November. I also don’t find people screaming about fascism online (Trump is fascist but the US is not a fascist country, which allows those people to still scream) to be all that helpful. For example keeping one’s head cool allows one to come to simple logical conclusions such as: there are 117,000 polling places across the US, and 20,000 ICE agents, which would only allow capacity to place 5 agents at each location. ICE couldn’t even subdue a Minneapolis-St. Paul, a midsized Midwestern metropolitan area. ICE couldn’t subdue Chicago and Los Angeles. I’d expect any handful of ICE agents placed would be run out by hundreds, thousands of angry citizens from each polling place. Logic and reason that allows for calm thinking is how we will defeat MAGA.
On Spain being much different from the times of “Castile,” it just illustrates how the former empire was able to change due to many of its own internal traumas yet the Philippines largely did not. I have a theory on that based on what I observe in DEs I’m always around when I visit, connected to the fact that leaders are a reflection of the people. When one can expect a helping hand, one does not have much incentive to work through hardship in order to evolve and improve. That goes for the poorest Filipinos at a smaller level, to the general thinking of Philippine governments across the decades which may preach “Filipino First” and national autarky to voters but in practice goes around the world as mendicants, which they won’t admit to of course. Well who is more to blame? The leadership class clearly, but the leadership class also rises up from the populace below. It is said that hardship is the best teacher, and if a helping hand doesn’t come eventually humans figure it out and stop waiting around for help and do it themselves.
It may be a worthwhile subject of study for sociologists specializing in the Philippines to compare pre-colonial society with the society of the present, and how the “Islands of Exclusion” that build their own enclaves could be seen as a modern expression of more prosperous barangays of the past that were able to build fortifications. Also how modern politicians and bureaucrats “raid” the coffers like how ancient barangays would raid neighbors then distribute some of the loot to gain and maintain followers. I understand some might view this position as pushing superiority or something like that, but it’s really not. People, or at least leaders, need to understand the current condition in order to chart a way out of it.
“I further thought about how this “culture of possibility” may be brought to the Philippines and I concluded it may just not be possible at the moment.” – Nguyen
I agree.
Culture of impossibility
Pulling from Prof. Stefan Dercon’s work “Gambling on Development” for ideas:
Premise — The “Development Bargain”
Prof. Dercon argues that the answer to why some elite-captured developing countries prosper is not due to any set of policies, but due to a “development bargain” suited for that country’s social and cultural framework. In a development bargain a subset of elites decide to shift away from protecting their own positions of power to gambling on a growth-based future.
The How — What Makes a Development Bargain Work
In order for a development bargain to work, it must contain three features:
1.) The politics of the bargain favoring development are real and credible. Vague official statements and flowery pronouncements of “grand policy” do not work.
2.) State capacity (even if it only exists in a weak condition) is used to achieve the goals of the bargain while avoiding over-extending current state capacity. When state capacity expands, the new capacity is utilized to speed up progress towards the goals of the bargain.
3.) Perhaps the most important feature is that the state possesses the political and technical ability to learn from mistakes and correct course. Throwing away previous plans and making completely new plans is starting over again, and often is a waste of time.
The Enablers — Role of Elites in the Development Bargain
Prof. Dercon writes of how elites exist to gather glory towards themselves. Countries that encounter elite-capture often also have systems arrayed around enabling elite rent-seeking; the lowest form of effort for elite short-term wealth maximization, and thus elite glory. Elite-capture can happen in countries with democratic, but weak, institutions; it is not necessary to have an undemocratic system for elite-capture to exist. The Middle Income Trap is a situation where after an illusory period of increased economic prosperity from such policies and practice, countries run into a development dead end.
When elites decide to gamble on development, the elites who comprise of political leaders and technocrats decide collectively that they are elites have more to gain in economically developing the country than profiteering from destructive rent-seeking. Though President PNoy Aquino’s presidency preceded Prof. Dercon’s book, I believe that PNoy was attempting to gather a subset of Philippines elites towards such a described development bargain that ultimately failed when opposing elites under Digong subsequently pushed back towards the old status quo of rent-seeking.
Many thanks
Prof. Dercon studied Indonesia’s development successes extensively for his book (while using the Philippines as an example of nearby elite-capture). Rather than watching countries much more advanced, having either envy of the “out of reach” or self-flagellating on “we suck,” it might be more useful to consider the example of Indonesia as it is a similar Austronesian country that has major historical ties to the Philippines.
Suharto’s Development Bargain
Indonesian elites led by Suharto struck a development bargain in the 1970s. This Indonesian development bargain resulted in sustained growth and massive poverty reduction, while at the same time allowed opportunities for elites to earn large amounts of illicit profits through corrupt dealings. The contemporary of Imelda Marcos, Siti Hartinah (“Madam Tien Suharto”) was widely known as “Madam Ten Percent” for her open corruption in demanding that she receive a cut from large state contracts she was involved in negotiating.
Prof. Dercon’s point is a development bargain does not need to be clean or corruption-free in order to be developmentally positive. This aligns with my and Francis’ view, and is diametrically opposed to the moral and execution perfection demanded on-face in the Philippines (despite in practice doing the opposite). The Suharto development bargain tolerated a generous degree of elite enrichment as part of the deal provided the growth-oriented elements of the bargain were enough to lift millions of Indonesians out of poverty. Certainly elites who “took too much” were prosecuted as examples under the Suharto regime.
Imperfect Bargains are Better than No Bargain At All
Prof. Dercon uses the Indonesia example to illustrate that development bargains are rarely perfect, as it is carried out by a subset of elites who came from a profiteering and rent-seeking paradigm to begin with. It takes time to shift cultural expectations, and imperfect bargains are better than no bargain at all. PNoy’s reforms were not perfect by any measure, but PNoy may have not had enough elite buy-in in order to carry out the development bargain in a Philippines system filled with obstinate elites used to the old ways of easy rent-seeking.
Suharto’s Economic Liberalization
As a result of the Suharto development bargain Indonesia went from the very bottom range to an above-average score (65th) as of the 2024 publication of the Economic Freedom Index while the Philippines stagnated (88th) out of 176 global economies. Even a one-party, ostensibly communist, state of Vietnam ranks 59th, even higher than Indonesia. In any case Indonesia implemented one of the most dramatic economic liberalization trajectories in Prof. Dercon’s findings.
Takeaways from the Indonesia Case
Indonesian elites continue commitment to a growth-oriented future even as large instances of public corruption and self-serving still exist in Indonesia today. The decisive variable is the sustained commitment by growth-seeking elites towards an orientation of national growth rather than the previous paradigm of rent-seeking elites. It seems to me that this crucial variable is largely absent in the Philippines system, which is quite resistant to change outside of superficial accoutrement collection that gives an *appearance* of a developed country or as Francis and I joke about, practicing “cargo cultism.” Without injecting new variables into a system, the system is at risk of stagnation.
TY for this