Isn’t it that one of the key teachings in Christendom is that one needs first to deny one’s self and acknowledge his sinful ways before he could take up the cross and follow Jesus Christ supposedly down the path to salvation?

Sometimes you need a re-boot, a clean slate, a return back home to the basics, a regard for your own backyard and the mess in it that we’ve become desensitised to in order for a fresh approach and a real solution to be implemented.

Interestingly enough, I was challenged by Nick to re-consider my assertion that the Philippines is a pigsty. I’ll re-visit it alright, by re-quoting what I said earlier…

Do we “love” our country? Then why do we continue turning it into a pigsty?

… and for the purposes of this particular article re-issue the challenge to all:

Anyone beg to differ?

By all accounts so far, save for Bert’s quaint clarification of the literal aspect of the matter here, nobody’s stepped up to come to rescue the dignity of the Mother Country in the wake of such an outrage. Pigsty, indeed. Tell us the Philippines is not such a thing with a straight face please.

And then there was silence.

So much for the task at hand of regarding where we are as a people through an uncoloured lens.

My reading here is that the best schooled and most be-credentialled of our lot would spend time and bandwidth whipping up a froth for the icing used to coat the proverbial cake rather than regard the cake itself. Interestingly, for example, we stumble across the eminent Dean Jorge Bocob’s take (finally, after a number of friendly nudges) on what makes one a “Filipino”:

You gotta bring them here and tell them all these good things you’ve been saying about THEIR race.

Your kids are just as Pinoy as the people you’ve been berating.

[...]

Coz they are Pinoy and you are Pinoy

For once, the Deano here makes it simple. For him it is about race. You need to have the right genes to be “Filipino”, right professor?

At first, I thought that I had another one of my epiphanies:

So that is why racism appeals to simpletons!

It reminds me of how some Aussies for their part believe that being white gives them exclusive claim to the label “Australian”.

But then in a rare burst of relevance, Mr. cvj pipes up with this beauty:

Based on genetic sampling of Filipinos, the combination is around 40% Y-DNA Haplogroup O1-M119 (the genetic marker of the ‘Austronesians’ which has replaced the obsolete ‘Malay’ label), 35% to 40% Y-DNA Haplogroup O3-M122 (the genetic marker most prevalent among Han-Chinese) and the remainder mixed including Haplogroup C3-M217 which is the genetic marker of the Mongols who are descended from the Australian Aborigines.

I’m thinking, yeah, whatever (an example of the expert froth I mentioned a while earlier). My real takeaway from cvj’s “input” is that a genetic basis for a political label is not simple. When you use genetics as a basis for attributing “Filipino”-ness (or whatever else-ness), you will need to cite a specific gene or set of genes that are clear determinants of those attributes. So until we discover some kind of a Pinoy gene, I doubt that “race” as a determinant for Pinoyness will ever be a sensible position to take, Dean.

So now, lest this blog be labelled “ad-hoministic” by Jon (strangely because of the mere citation of the illustrious names behind the concepts I explore here), I might now seque into the insight that may be gleaned from the latest pontifications of our resident “expert” minds that I collected from my previous piece.

It seems that if we allow ourselves to see FV as a microcosm of Filipino society, we will find and go as far as generalising that the most be-credentialled of our lot are the ones that disappoint the most. Whereas we look to these “experts” for thought leadership by virtue of their knowing better — presumably a distinction arising from their hard-earned education credentials — we find a disturbing lack of reflectiveness when it comes to the simple child-like questions. We instead get technical references when all we actually seek is a fundamental reference point.

And the reference point we seek can’t get any more fundamental than this:

What does “the Filipino” stand for?

Take an expert out of the comfort zone of the world of jargon and pompous verbosity that they’ve become so dazzlingly good at navigating and you get a fish out of water. It’s sad indeed. A sizeable chunk of the “Philippine debate” is all about evaluating the posturings and edicts of our politicians. All the while we seem to have lost sight of The Point in all this.

Where are we headed? In light of this question, I recall that MLQ3 himself makes the point here that…

[...] theres no such thing as an unstoppable trajectory [...]

I agree. But in order to stop a loser barreling down a trajectory to nowhere, you need to understand both the loser and the said trajectory. Which is why said trajectory and the loser coasting along its curve should be pointed out and highlighted ad infinitum until evidence of a change in said trajectory and loser can be found.

And so…

You want my kids to be really conscious about their Pinoy ancestry, Dean? I can do that. I can raise them so that they routinely go strutting around their school yard wearing our proud bandila on their sleeve. Easy. What I cannot help them with, however, is when someone ultimately takes notice and asks them:

So what if you are Filipino?

Indeed, there is something about embracing the traditions and approaches to thinking of a culture that failed to prosper that I consider quite insane.

And then there is silence.

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