Put a caption for this picture.

As a number of massively-promoted anti-Gloria street rallies in recent months pathetically failed to make international headline news, it took the following snippets to keep the Philippines on the map:

1. an over-reaction to an out-of-context quote from a popular TV soap,
2. a YouTube video of surgeons making fun of their hapless patient (mlq3 provides a good cross-section of blog chatter on the subject here); and,
3. a Philippine-based (where else?) healthcare scam that defrauded the U.S. Government of millions.

On Item # 3, today’s edition of the INQ7.net editorialised:

But the damage this unconscionable scam does to the reputation of our medical community—even if it were proven that Filipino medical personnel involved were merely accomplices, not masterminds, in an elaborate scheme—will be more lasting than a stray and frivolous comment about the quality of Philippine medical schools in “Desperate Housewives.”

What in the span of two to three decades has become the crowning glory of Pinoy achievement – exporting warm bodies to foreign lands – is now being undermined by the inherent ability of Filipinos to squander home-grown capital. The export of raw human capital is the 21st Century frontier of our imagination-challenged society, just as the export of raw timber was our pre-occupation and lifeblood over the previous century.

Raw export of elite Filipino workers already contributes to the continuous denuding of our society’s professional landscape. The real tragedy is that an emerging source of local employment and development — medical tourism — is being nipped in the bud. In Australia alone, many documentary features on disastrous Aussie medical tourist expeditions to the Philippines have been aired on TV and written about in news journals. A single conclusion unites these exposes: Cheap medical care in the Philippines is not worth the risk!.

If it took 100 years to obliterate 90% of the Philippine Islands’ forest cover, how much of the 21st Century will it take to reduce our society to a human cesspool, its workforce rendered impotent by decades of substandard education, absentee parenting, intellectual bankruptcy, and dubious ethical bearings?

Needless to say, we Filipinos have a long track record of perverting otherwise brilliant concepts. Ideas, traditions, and artefacts that have once been seen as key features of Pinoy society — the jeepney, People Power, democracy, etc. — are now no more than pathetic museum pieces to remind us of the immense wasteland our culture has become.

Having laid waste to our store of non-human resources, we are now ravenously spending the principal of our human resource rather than living off interest income.

Like our forests before this, there is no re-planting strategy in sight.

This GNP accounts for Military engagement in our far flung villages to fight our brothers and sisters of different faith, and jails to house rarely the drug lords but more the drug addicts, and not just petty criminals but juvenile delinquents who share the same fate as those rapists and murderers. It does not overlook the prison our airports, and malls seem to have become, with their often failing attempt at security.

This Gross National Product counts the destruction of our forests, our mountains, our corals, our seas and measures the lost of our nation’s natural beauty long before our people can fully appreciate them.

This statistic valued in that attempt at stealing power through the taking of a five star hotel as hostage, and abuse of power and excessive force to quell such mindless rebellion. It counts the missing, who voice their opinion, but are silenced for their difference and the dead because of election violence all in the name of keeping a firm grip on Power.

Our Gross National Product include telenovelas, “news” and television programs and blogs that glorify gossip, and the excesses of the social elite in order to spread the gospel of schadenfreude that we may feel better about ourselves. Yet it does not allow for the health of neither our citizens nor our children, or an education that encourages our People to learn, to be creative, to be able synthesize various disciplines and their joys into something new, something unique, something constructive, something that raises the dignity in us all.

This pursuit of material wealth does not include the beauty of our poetry, the depth of our music, the strength of our marriages and the enduring force that is the Filipino family. This GNP does not imbue intelligence in our public discourse nor raise the integrity of our public officials. Neither does Gross National Product measure the deafness of our middle-class and theologians to the fundamental gospel that incapacity is the greater evil gripping our nation, more than our outrage about the true nature of our public officials. Nor does it measure the blindness of our leadership to see beyond their petty concerns and see what our people truly need.

This statistic does not by any standard tell us how mute and hopeless and incapacitated the poor really are.

Gross National Product can not fully quantify the perseverance and level of sacrifice of the Filipino diaspora. It can never weigh the joys of our children at simple play, at simple pleasure. It does not measure our wit, our laugh, our people’s beautiful smile, nor the depth of our religious devotion and The Filipino’s courage that is God’s gift to our people.

Our Gross National Product measures everything in short except that which make life worth while. And it can tell us everything about Our Nation except why we ought to be proud of being Filipino.

This post was inspired and heavily influenced by Robert F. Kennedy challenges Gross Domestic Product hat tip to @nicknich3 for the Kennedy video.

I cry because the concept of values is either dead or dying.

Back then, everything is black and white, now there is gray, with all its shades and hues.

Back then, everything is either good or evil, now it’s just because others are wily and you are just lame.

Back then, honor is everything, now it’s just a word that will not feed you and your family.

Back then, we trust our neighbors to keep watch of us. Now, we do not even trust our relatives.

Back then, we honor those who did good. Now we honor those who got ahead at the expense of the others.

Back then, brilliance means excellence in your own right. Now, you are brilliant if you achieve your goal, whatever the means you have done.

Back then, it is false to tell a lie. Now, it is a sin to tell a lie, as long as you are not caught. Heck, it is not a sin anymore even if you are caught lying.

Back then, we know the concept of what is truth. Now, we don’t even care what the truth is. We are content with all the lies that we hear and all the lies that we give. Anyone lies anyway.

Back then, we agree to disagree. Now, we agree to disagree with character assassination and ad hominem attacks as added bonuses. We shout with glee when we call our enemies jologs or stupid or bumbling fools.

Back then, we fight for others when their rights are trampled. Now, we don’t care, since it’s not our rights being trampled. Besides, they are a nuisance.

Back then, we respect the decision of the majority, even if that decision disagrees with yours. Now, screw them.

Back then, we hold our values as if they are gold. They were our guiding lights. Now, we see them as relative, of no value if we want to get ahead in the rat race.

If we lose the concept of true values, only then we will learn the folly that the values we hold dear now will not save us.

For if they can trample the rights of others, how long will you wait till they trample on your own rights?

I cry not because my rights are trampled. I cry because other’s rights are being trampled upon, and here we are, we don’t even care.

I cry because someone is being killed, and yet here we are, we don’t even care.

I cry because when someone cares, we call them communists or leftists.

I cry because those who call themselves freedom fighters harm the freedom of those they swore to protect.

I cry for all of these because we don’t care.

I cry because in the future, no one will care at all.

I cry because if these things happen to me, no one will care.

I cry because if these things happen to you, no one will care.

In high school, a night that I soon would never forget, a simple celebration in the backdrop of poverty. It was the first time, that I really knew the plight of the poor, as it hit close to home.

I remember that night when a cousin and I went out and decided to go to a local bar. We met a friend of my cousins, and the friend turned out to be a distant relative of ours as well.

He was a tricycle driver (not motorized), and he was at the bar after a long days work, but still waiting for a few customers as well. He was at a table by himself, drinking some beer and watching a few drunk individuals make a fool of themselves at the karaoke.

We were also watching the same drunk fools, when we noticed our relative (we’ll call him Pedro) and called him over to our table.

After a few drinks, Pedro decided to invite us to his house. We got into his tricycle, and he drove (peddled) us to his house.

I vividly remember, stopping by the corner of the street, Pedro parking his tricycle with a few other tricycles, all in a row, then he signaled us to come with him.

He guided us to this narrow alley, between a few poorly made houses. The kind of houses where there were some brick, bamboo, wood, and aluminum sidings.

As we moved past the houses, and came behind them, there in front of us, was the actual side of a mountain, and we started to walk a pathway of dirt and stones, uphill, no lights, and the voices of people to our sides who lived in that area…

We must’ve traveled a good 150 meters up this hill, through this dark trail, with some semblance of light, because every few meters or so, we would encounter a house with some candles lit up, and this is all that was lighting this area of town. And I couldn’t see even one house that had electricity.

It wasn’t a good trail either, every odd step or so, you’d encounter a few stones, but that was it. The trail was mostly dirt, and it was slippery too, because it had just rained a few days back.

I remember, not wanting to go, but my cousin told me that it would’ve been rude of us to decline the offer. But seeing that the time was around 11:30 pm in the evening, I really, and honestly did not want to go. It’s really kind of amazing how forthright a high school student can be, even when he doesn’t want to do something.

Anyway, getting back to the walk. We finally arrived at his house, and like every other house in that area, it didn’t have any electricity. He called out to his wife that he was home, and that he had brought some company for dinner — that was us. To my surprise, she was all smile, and excited too. He had told her to set up some plates.

Now, the place wasn’t big either. You could probably fit 4 or 5 single beds side by side and it would be about the same area. They had one daughter, she was around 3 years old.

Pedro bought some rice and some corned beef, and we celebrated… If I remember correctly, it was the Argentina brand of corned beef, because it was the more costly of the corned beefs that were selling at the time.

It was a simple meal, and yet I couldn’t get rid of the fact that this meal was a special celebration for this man and his family, catering to someone who was a so-called “Amerikano”, and I couldn’t eat happily, because it was the knowledge, that on any other day, they would probably be eating some dried fish, or some noodles, eggs… the food of the poor, I guess.

So, here we are, on the floor, they had no tables, and we were sharing two cans of corned beef, some eggs, and some rice. All five of us, sitting by candlelight. It was one of those self made candles. I used to make ‘em all the time too. You fill up an old Nescafe glass coffee container with some rock salt, then pour some oil into it, stick a Q-tip in the middle, with the cotton facing upwards. The Q-tip would be just above the oil.

As the candle was casting some light on the faces of my distant relatives that night, I saw happiness, a closeness that was heartwarming. The little girl hugging at the arms of her mother, and the mother feeding the girl with her own hands. It was a beautiful moment and a sad one at the same time. I couldn’t figure out why, every minute that I was there, my heart sank even deeper. Sorrow started to creep up, until it filled my body, as if it wanted to overflow.

It was one of the worst meals I’ve ever had, because it was a sad moment, a realization that the poor, is not some person in your neighborhood, sometimes, it can be someone in your family tree.

How I could have such a diversity of emotions all at the same time, was new to me.

Pedro was lucky because he had a livelihood, but what about those who aren’t so lucky, if you can even call this kind of life… lucky.

I’ve never been the same person since. Nor should anyone be the same person, when they finally come to the realization, that even though, there has been progress, it is still a signal for any of us, to push forward even greater.

I’m not telling anyone who winds up reading this that they should drop everything out of their daily lives. Because in order to spark change, and start working towards a brighter tomorrow, you must first work on yourself. The world does not need a leader that cannot help himself. But know this, that your goals as a Filipino, must always include the nation that brought you into this world.

And as my cousin and I walked down with Pedro, he offered to take us to the station where we would head home. I was actually full, but then again, I had been eating since we were in the bar. Pedro dropped us off at the station, and I offered Pedro some money for the hospitality, but he refused.

As we sat in the mini cab, waiting for it to fill up with passengers, we told Pedro to take it easy going home. He smiled and looked back at us… “I’m not going home yet, there’s still some passengers that I could probably find” (In our dialect)… No doubt, he probably needed some money to gain back all that he had spent that night…

The word “probably” kept replaying in my mind as we headed home — the cool breeze hitting my cheeks.

I hope he found some more passengers for that night, and that goes for every other night as well.

I never saw Pedro again. I haven’t gone back to the province in two years. But, Pedro stays in my prayers, his wife, and his daughter.

They are my inspiration, as I try to make a difference, when I write this.

Tears are finally rolling down, the memory of Pedro, is so vivid.