Poverty is a simple issue. Really.
October 15th, 2008 by benign0Having grown up in a land of in-your-face poverty, my take on the disease is a bit less politically-correct. And being at heart part of a society where living unsustainably and beyond one’s means has always been a national way of life, I find I have less capacity for dishing out cliched platitudes on the subject that today’s “poverty” theme on Blog Action Day seems to want us to cough up.
We aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web.
But of course we will.
Unlike mlq3, I feel no obligation to be apologetic to the poor. Make no mistake, I’ve come to this state of mind after years of battling a mindset deeply-ingrained by decades of guilt-ravaged Catholic upbringing — that thinking and (que horror!) expressing such sentiments will incur His wrath and a descent upon me by a legion of His angels to carry me onto the ragged shoes of the least of His flock that I may learn to appreciate the extent of His love and mercy.
No thanks. Life’s too short and precious to be weighed down by a culturally-induced anxiety like that.
I’d rather live by the spirit of a far more straightforward outlook beautifully illustrated in this photo:
Poverty in the Philippines is a simple issue to me as it comes down to this simple textual equation:
We locked ourselves into commitments beyond any inherent ability in us to honour them.
It’s a self-evident formula that is applicable across four inescapable parameters around which our utter failure to prosper as a society can be quantified in black-and-white in a balanced scorecard:
:) Population
:) Consumption
:( Production
:( Capital
The first two, population and consumption, are relevant to the first part of the sentence, and the latter two are relevant to the second part. We laughed our way through the first two, and muddled along the latter two.
Result: POVERTY on a grand national scale.
It’s simple, really.
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October 15, 2008 at 10:20 am
Compassion fatigue. Just like Benj on the other thread.
October 15, 2008 at 10:40 am
Yep compassion fatigue. I’m surprised you didn’t pertain it as some “stupid middle class condition”, cvj :P
October 15, 2008 at 10:43 am
‘Fatigue’ is an interesting word choice. It implies that we’ve been compassionate before but have grown tired of it. Maybe we have been. In words, but not in deeds. In which case, what’s to be fatigued about?
October 15, 2008 at 11:04 am
Jon, i actually meant compassion fatigue on the part of the Middle Class. It’s not ’stupid’. It’s human nature that, at some point, you start resenting the object of your compassion. In addition, maybe the Jesuits fucked with Benign0’s mind too much, bombarding it with more guilt-trip than he can handle, hence the backlash on his part.
October 15, 2008 at 11:17 am
Maybe what you call “compassion fatigue” goes with the territory of being immersed in directly helping those who are more in need of material comfort than we are. And that what matters most is how to get out of the rut and still continuing helping them — with sincere intentions guiding us.
October 15, 2008 at 11:29 am
That’s what I was getting at, sunny. How many of us actually do something such that we get fatigued? We’ve abdicated even our compassion to the State. “We pay taxes. Let the State take care of the poor.” To ba fair, that’s not an unreasonable position to take. The government confiscates taxes from the middle class saying, ‘Let us handle this compassion thing for you.’
October 15, 2008 at 11:48 am
Poverty is simple. Really?
Liberty, Rule of Law and Opportunities are the pre-requisite for developments. It is very complicated benigno with factors such as corruption, political instability and incompetent government. Every single individual in this earth can be a problem or a solution. How many are solutions and how many are problematics. Which area of our society enjoys to be the problem? I don’t think it’s my fellow pinoys. I believe in people.
October 15, 2008 at 11:51 am
there’s a monster out there :)
October 15, 2008 at 5:44 pm
“Compassion”?
Nakakain ba yan? :D
October 15, 2008 at 7:06 pm
OK… maybe i’m taking the polar opposite side again, but yes, compassion can be eaten. compassion feeds the street child who sells stuff to eat something. compassion feeds old people who knock on car doors for food. to be honest, i can’t blame them for being poor. yes, there are victims and pa-victims, but do we allow this injustice to go on just because we THINK it’s their fault?
i’m not rich, i’m no saint and i’m not the most religious man out there, but i think my spare change can make a difference in someone’s life. the moment i give up on compassion and the virtue of justice, life ain’t worth living anymore. the disadvantaged still ought to be helped by those with an advantage in life no matter how marginal.
October 15, 2008 at 9:14 pm
a down syndrome baby does not lock itself to the commitment of living a short, “useless” life anymore than benigno has committed himself to go through life being benigno. such is the mystery (and simplicity) of human existence.
October 16, 2008 at 3:27 am
On that note, consider a downs syndrome person (DSP).
It’s not a DSP’s fault that he is mentally hadicapped. And I’ve seen DSP’s gainfully employed who WORK HARD.
But the reality is that they are indeed locked into being DSPs and the reality is that no matter how hard they work, they will lead rather limited lives. There is no evil in that nor shame in that. The reality is their limitation and how it affects their financial fortunes over their lifespan.
It all depends on the person behind the fortune and the dignity by which the life of said person is led.
- ;)
October 16, 2008 at 6:00 am
benigno, commitment presupposes free choice. the “limitations” of a down syndrome baby is not a matter of option. your being benigno was pre-ordained, albeit modified by your freedom to choose.
October 16, 2008 at 6:37 am
Bencard, being of a mind that is unable to make a living beyond subsistence is not an outcome of free choice either. But the reality of the OUTCOME of being dealt such a hand is REAL — a lifetime of poverty.
However, here’s the thing:
Whereas a DSP cannot modify the genetic code that resulted in his disability, a society CAN.
Culture is the DNA of society.
Our culture pre-disposes us to a destiny of pathetic poverty on a grand national scale.
BUT culture can be changed.
The sooner we embrace what is REAL, the sooner the solution becomes SIMPLE.
And yes;
It is simple.
Really.
October 16, 2008 at 6:56 am
smoke, thanks for the interest in my piece. I have a response to it that can be summarised in two words:
Filipino Chinese.
- ;)
October 16, 2008 at 8:30 am
Benign0 (at 6:56 am), as i was discussing with Jon in the comments section of Cocoy’s post, the Tsinoy Taipans are lackluster compared to their counterparts in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mainland China and other neighboring countries. By and large, they are stuck in real-estate, trade and services and have failed to build our local manufacturing base which we need in order to industrialize.
October 16, 2008 at 8:53 am
cvj, if you read the article carefully, the comparison is relative to Indo-Malay Pinoys.
But then this little snippet of yours is very interesting:
Which implies that you do look to that minority as the messiah that will deliver us from our grand national chronic poverty.
Interesting indeed.
October 16, 2008 at 9:13 am
That’s not proper benchmarking. For purposes of looking for things to improve, we have to benchmark within the same category (aka like for like), e.g. the business/industrial sector in the Philippines compared with the business/industrial sector in the other countries.
By not doing that, you failed to see that the Tsinoys are also being held back by the same combination of factors that are holding back the rest of us Filipinos. (BTW, the categorization ‘Indo-Malay’ is obsolete from the standpoint of genetics.)
No, it implies that i don’t want the Tsinoys to remain underachievers compared to their counterparts in neighboring countries. Let’s help them apply their capital & entrepreneurial skills to developing local production capabilities which is the key to economic development.
October 16, 2008 at 11:16 am
cvj, my baseline is the Philippine environment upon which we are comparing the collective achievements of the Tsinoys vs the collective achievements of the Indo-Malay Pinoys.
The all things being equal part is Philippine setting.
The comparison is between the Tsinoys and the Indo-Malays both living and working within that setting.
If you wanna go international, then the set you should be comparing should be Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Those three countries are comparable in the following ways:
:D They are pre-dominantly of Indo-Malay ethnic stock; and,
:D Have an ethnic Chinese minority that control a chunk of the value of the economy.
This chunk they control is disproportionately large relative to the proportion of their numbers to the size of their respective host countries’ populations.
October 16, 2008 at 11:19 am
Poverty can simply be explained as one’s man’s misfortune and the other man’s gain.
October 16, 2008 at 11:20 am
having said the phrase above, it explains why Filipinos are mostly poor—their wealth have been exploited by the Chinese and the foreigners. Period.
One solution is get rid of them and get what they got from us.
October 16, 2008 at 11:37 am
Famine, war, poverty are constants of history.
October 16, 2008 at 11:42 am
Pat,
Exploited? Who exploited who? The Chinese emigrated to the Filipinos with nothing in their pockets, and many of them started out as manual laborers, with the exception of a few. A couple of them rose the ranks, created businesses (and jobs), and got rich just doing their thing.
Granted that there are Chinese Filipinos who did exploit their employees, sweeping generalizations about “getting rid of them” because they “exploited Filipinos” is utterly unfair.
Gawd, my ancestors (the brothers Mariano and Jacinto Limjap, the latter being my namesake) even funded the Philippine Revolution!
Source
So please, do be careful about your sweeping statements.
October 16, 2008 at 11:53 am
Benigno,
“Compassion”?
Nakakain ba yan?
Let’s talk about it in management or business perspective why I believe in people. To be successful in business and management, you will need people- manpower to grow. You need to treat these people that every single of them will contribute and majority will become an asset instead of liabilities. It is your job to keep them motivated. If I have to apply this concept to Philippine politics, poverty is a liability. Who’s responsible for that? Why is there more liabilities than assets in our country. Look at it from the management standpoint from top to bottom. People representing the government who are supposed to be the solutions but instead enjoy being the problem are not capable of turning our people into a consistent motivated work force. The role models are liabilities already. They just don’t know any better. They have no compassion. No purpose driven life.
Compassion is something that everyone should experience in life. One cannot miss it. It’s the right thing to do.
October 16, 2008 at 11:58 am
Methinks Patricio was being sarcastic, yes?
October 16, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Your family is an exception Jon. I know many Chinoys who got their wealth through legitimate sweat and tears. And, during the Revolution, the Chinese immigrants are the ones who defended the fort. In fact, if you read the history of the Chinese who lived here, they are the fiercest fighters and compatriots of my ancestor, Andres Bonifacio.
I have many Chinoy friends and sincerely, they are not the people whom I describe here, no. In fact, I, myself, have Chinese blood.
And yes, generalizations are frown upon by people, including me. Yet, sometimes, for the sake of brevity, one forgets it.
Moving forward, I believe that a serious reconstruction should be in order.
October 16, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Your baseline is unable to uncover the fact that Tsinoys have likewise underachieved. If you were aware of this, then the next logical question unasked, i.e. ‘what makes both Tsinoys and non-Tsinoys underachieve in the Philippine setting’?.
Patricio, i have to agree with Jon (at 11:42 am). The Tsinoys who have emigrated here are as Filipino as the Tagalogs, Kapampangans, Maguindanaos and other ethnic groups. We all came from somewhere. The concept ‘Filipino’ is big enough to accommodate all groups. Let’s not turn this into another excuse for ethnic cleansing as it only benefits those in Power.
October 16, 2008 at 12:10 pm
benigno is racist… hehehe
October 16, 2008 at 12:18 pm
That’s good, cvj, you’ve actually now moved forward on this.
The baseline I use does highlight the stark achievement gap between Tsinoys and all the rest within the Philippines.
Outside of that scope over the rest of the region both Tsinoys and Pinoy Indo-Malays have collectively underachieved relative to the same sets in Malaysia (maybe not relative to Indonesia, though).
That simply now highlights the collective basketcasedness of the Philippines in general (across the whole Pinoy population, whether Tsinoy, Indo-Malay, Tausug, whatever) relative to the region (and by most measures, The World!).
All roads lead to “getrealism“, dude. :D
October 16, 2008 at 12:32 pm
That Filipinos (whether Tsinoys or not) have underachieved is a trite observation (not to mention a sweeping generalization). Only a management consultant-type person can hail this as some sort of revelation.
The problem with getrealism is that it attributes to cultural stereotypes what can better be explained by our Society’s highly unequal socio-economic class configuration and the impoverished economic policies that have sustained such a structure.
October 16, 2008 at 1:20 pm
But then we can also argue that this inequality in our “class configuration” and our tolerance for (or more importantly some ethnic groups’ inability to get around) “impoverished economic policies” are manifestations of the culture of dysfunction that I have so brilliantly built a Web brand around. And it is this culture of dysfunction, underachievement, and mediocrity that goes on to sustain and propagate those “structures” you speak of.
They don’t call winners, winners for nothin’, dude.
Winners actually win things and losers lose things (otherwise there wouldn’t really be much point in having those two concepts now, would it?). And, guess what: the biggest losers are actually those who lose and had nothing to lose by being a loser in the first place.
Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Which came first then, the “cultural stereotypes” or the dysfunction?
October 16, 2008 at 1:56 pm
smoke, thanks again for your second expression of interest in my article.
I just wanted to focus my response to this excerpt from your post:
As you say, the Chinese have been “doing business longer than Filipinos have had the freedom to even call themselves a nation”.
To me this simply means that merchantilism — having over centuries developed to highly finely-tuned degree among the Chinese — can then be considered to be a property, attribute or characteristic of Chinese culture.
You also observe rightly so that Filipinos “have been denied” (hmmm… that brings to light another vein of discussion which I might not get into for now) “a strong sense of identity – allowing the phenom of self-containment” which you pre-attribute to the Chinese as well.
Well then, I can argue that it follows from what you say above that a weak sense of identity and a lack of self containment is a property, attribute, and characteristic of Pinoy culture.
Therefore, it is still all about culture regardless of the timescales around which certain attributes, properties, and/or characteristics of the cultures that are subjects of our discussion developed — or in the case of our lot, failed to develop.
You take a snapshot at a point in time and compare Pinoys and the Chinese. How long it took to become proficient in the business of business becomes irrelevant. What remains is how much or how little of the attributes, properties, and/or characteristics in a culture that presumably lead to prosperity are present — or absent — in a society when said snapshot is regarded.
October 16, 2008 at 4:11 pm
A weak sense of identity can be considered a strong trait too.
Said characteristic is what the global employers describe as our “edge”, our OFW’s penchant to adapt and be easily acclimatized to any culture/climate/job/torture thrown to them.
To forever be global employees, maybe this is the Pinoys’ lot in life?
October 16, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Seems to me that you’re so invested in your ‘web brand’ that you try to force fit all your analysis to fit your ‘culture of dysfunction’ thesis.
(And it’s ‘mercantilism’, not ‘merchantilism’)
October 16, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Thanks for the spelling lesson, cvj. I feel like a better person already.
What makes you think I “force fit” my analysis to fit my “culture of dysfunction thesis”?
There’s nothing forced about it. The connection comes as naturally as adolescent sexuality. As I said earlier, all roads lead — as naturally as the sun rises everyday, I might add — to “getrealism” as you yourself have found simply by exchanging comments with Yours Truly. :D
October 16, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Benign0, at least it’s very easy to summarize your world view:
‘Getrealism’ = hammer
‘Culture of dysfunction’ = nail
With the above, now i can see why everything looks simple to you.
October 16, 2008 at 7:38 pm
That’s because things are indeed simple, dude.
Considering that there are so many out there who’ve made a career out of making simple things complicated and (this is where the punchline comes in…) yielded no results, well now, I think you will have to agree that seeing the underlying simplicity in most things is where the REAL frontier lies.
October 16, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Yeah, i suppose that would be the simple-minded interpretation.
October 18, 2008 at 1:39 am
benigno @ 6:37 am, thanks for affirming that being a “DPS” or benigno is not a matter of choice.
btw, change culture? try changing the culture of 80 million filipinos and i bet you’ll find it won’t be “simple, really”.
October 18, 2008 at 2:35 am
benigno’s interpretation is based on generalized macro and micro… it’s not the solution nor a fact but merely a foundation. hilig kasi si benigno nang framework. A fact must be supported to make it simple, really :)
Population and Consumption:
“One factor is Environmental degradation: The negative impacts of environmental degradation are disproportionately felt by the poor. The poor often rely on natural resources to meet their basic needs through agricultural production and gathering resources essential for household maintenance, such as water, firewood, and wild plants for consumption and medicine. Thus, the depletion and contamination of water sources directly threaten the livelihoods of those who depend on them.
Production and Capital:
One factor is Centralization of Power. Political power is disproportionately centralized. Instead of having a network of political representatives distributed equally throughout society, in centralized systems of governance one major party, politician, or region is responsible for decision-making throughout the country. This often causes development problems. For example, in these situations politicians make decisions about places that they are unfamiliar with, lacking sufficient knowledge about the context to design effective and appropriate policies and programs that will affect the overall production and influx of capital. “
October 18, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Bencard, when I say something is simple I refer to its nature as a concept.
Don’t equate simplicity with the nature of the effort to implement said solution.
For most people for example, observing simple traffic rules is a simple solution because respecting rules is innate to modern cultures. However in primitive cultures such as ours, it is made out to be a complex issue with staggeringly complex implementation considerations. Why? Because in societies such as ours, the degeneracy in culture that needs to be surmounted in order implement otherwise simple solutions is staggeringly, well, insurmountable.
October 18, 2008 at 7:13 pm
The hell,I tried to tamper with benign0’s framework and I ended up the only one who attempted to do so,Oh I forgot about The Cat with her what was that; trees,branches and leaves??
On another note,this is about respecting rules and lack of an identity.
One mentioned that maybe our lack of an identity maybe a good thing,for the global pinoy.
I have seen the commercials on how Filipinos follow traffic rules when abroad,on how they are so disciplined.
On the extreme,there are ofws on death row.
But where do you draw the line to separate the primitive and a modern society? the most modern of societies can be chaotic,for all we know.
The only difference is the so called organized chaos or whatchamacollit.
October 27, 2008 at 6:10 am
Unfortunately, it’s not a simple as Benigno sees it because it’s possible that population may become stable or go down when consumption through affluence goes up. Another problem is that consumption may go up when production and capital go up.
December 18, 2008 at 9:53 am
(Copy Paste lang)
Maaaring simple lang ang issue ng financial crisis para sa isang nagtratrabaho sa isang bangko kagaya mo Benigno, at gayon din sa mga taong nasa upper B classes pataas, pero para sa Broad C pababa ang simpleng tinatawag ninyong financial crisis ay hindi simpleng paghahagilap ng paghanap ng makakain para sa kanilang pamilya. Oo nakahanap si Madam Arroyo ng 1 Billion investment noong isang araw sa Qatar, gayon din ang 500 pesos na ipinamumudmod niya sa mga mahihirap. Pero nasagot na ba ng pamahalaan hindi lang sa bansang ito kundi sa ibang bansa na kung paano sasagutin ang issue ng kahirapan partikular na ang problema ng financial crisis na sinasabi ninyo?
Marahil hindi ninyo ito nakikita, lalo na sa mga taong nagsasabing simple lang ang nangyayari ngayon dahil sa tatlong bagay:
1. Hindi ninyo nararanasan ang hirap na dinadanas ng mga kababayan natin.
2. Alam ninyong may problemang ganito ngunit nagbabalat kayong ayaw ninyong harapin ang issue na ito bugkos sinasabi ninyong easy lang ang problemang ito.
3. O sadyang bulag lang ang iilan sa atin dahil kuntento na ang iba sa atin sa posisyon nila kaya sinasabi nilang OK LANG at WALANG PROBLEMA.
GET REAL ika nga maging totoo tayo sa kung anong nangyayari kaya walang nangyayari sa lipunan puro takbo tayo at puro substitution ang pinapanukala natin hindi natin puntuhin ang sitwasyon at haraping may PROBLEMA nga at anong MAGAGAWA KO
December 18, 2008 at 10:22 am
poverty is not a simple issue. if it was, humankind would have wiped it off the face of the Earth decades ago.
Flow raises a good point:
(I apologize for responding in English to a comment written in Filipino.)
though i disagree that solving poverty is primarily and ONLY a government action, i understand where he is coming from. This is the same pain every Filipino feels every single day. They go through it because they don’t see any change around them. Our people only know negativity. And those at the top see them as cannon fodder and not as people.
While Capitalism has spurred the creation of wealth– going forward the Market has to change. The Market and Social Enterprise are not at cross purposes. The Market is a tool to bring about social enterprise because both celebrate hardwork, enterprise, ingenuity, responsibility and not excesses and not simply about the money.
Social Enterprise needs the Market to fuel itself and the Market needs social enterprise to be beyond money for money’s sake. It therefore becomes the responsibility of those who wield the Market to use it to better society. And I think that is one of many lessons this Financial Crisis is teaching us.