Time and again, this view is validated — that it is the people who beg to differ to your views that inspire far more epiphanies than people who agree with you (that said, I am still eternally appreciative of the small handful of people who actually like me).

I’m referring to this gem of a comment Chuck (aka “cvj“) made last night:

Jon, i think Benign0 has to qualify the statement The Philippines is a meaningless concept…to Benign0 because it does have meaning to a whole lot of others. I think this is one of those issues that he has to work out on his own. I agree with Nick that the ‘Philippines’ (as is the ‘United States’ or ‘Japan’ or ‘Singapore’) is a complex concept so it cannot be further reduced into a formula. – chuck

My response to the above is this: Dude, instead of going around stomping your feet about how some people need to “qualify” their statements, why don’t you come up with a proposal of your own.

All you can come up with, for example, is this:

The Philippine Flag stands for everything our heroes fought for, all the good that i now see in our people, and the promise of what we Filipinos could become once we overcome the elitists and get our acts together. – chuck

Real quaint. But not quite the kind of insight that moves mountains.

And then you ask me to do the “qualifying”.

Real, classy, dude.

So here is my epiphany:

It’s no wonder we remain the sheep that we are today and have consistently failed to move up the food chain for centuries. We just rely on other people to do our thinking for us.

If some of us have got a beef against their imaginary friends the “Elitists”, then we need to show them we’ve got what it takes to replace them as society’s trendsetters. This can only be achieved by exhibiting the same cool factor they currently monopolise which enables them to keep the masses dancing the ocho-ocho to their goldmine record labels and Bandila and Wowowee franchises.

The reality is simple:

Elite is cool, populism (read: maka-masa crap) is uncool.

The challenge is to come up with the spin to turn the above equation around.

Che Guevarra’s iconic face emblazoned on T-shirts is an example of how populist sentiment was made cool using clever marketing.

The swastika turned the darkest of evils into a seductive brand that hypnotised a generation of German youngsters.

The power of symbols had, in their own times, turned two of humanity’s great evils — Nazism and Communism into GLOBAL BRANDS the same way Nokia and Starbucks are turning an entire generation of Pinoys into a bunch of vacuous fashionistas.

Mr. Chuck, do come up with something original for a change instead of those tired platitudes you’ve made a career out of dishing out.

Maybe this is what the mission of Filipino Voices should be:

(1) to come up with the symbol
(2) build the substance around it
(3) and market both the symbol and its substance to the Pinoy community

One thing that the Pinoy undisputably is is a consumer. We are world class at consuming but don’t have the production muscle to back it up (which is why we are progressively impoverishing ourselves). But guess what, consumerists are easily marketed to. And the tool of choice of marketers is the Brand.

Hard as it may be to encapsulate meaning, the fact remains that people would rather associate than comprehend. Thus the power of brands. People don’t wanna think? Simple solution. Don’t make them think. Package something up into something that appeals to their vacuous nature.

The old ways of selling change (using tired platitudes dished out by you-know-who types) simply don’t work. You need to manage the pitch using hard-nosed business sense. The same kind of sense that creates the power to divest people of their cash by merely flashing a coloured logo before their faces.

Which calls to light what I once wrote:

Great nations were not built on good intentions. They were built on business sense. Real change in Pinoy society will never be achieved through the “sacrifice” of altruistic “heroes”. True change will be driven by people who find no shame in expecting a buck for their trouble.

(I’m a fan of my own original insight rather than a mere quoter of other people’s)

The sooner we ditch the old sheepish approach of convincing Pinoys to drink Barako instead of Tall Lattes using appeals to emotion and instead get our shit together and compete head-on using wolf-like tactics, the sooner we kick our addiction to Mekong Delta rice and remittance cheques.

The alternative is Mike Hanopol’s timeless advise which some you-know-who’s may be a bit more comfortable with: Magtanim na lang tayo ng kamote — an increasingly viable solution to the food debacle already gripping the islands.

It’s simple, really.

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