The Jews have a participatory culture. The Philippines culture is a mix between subjects and parochial. Any admonition to become participative – is seen as “foreign”. So, if they wanna stay backward and irresponsible, eh di hayaan silang manigas. Tutulungan mo na ikaw pa ang masama.

There is NO NEW PHILIPPINES – nothing has changed.

All talk, no walk.

President Aquino asked for our Filipino community to help the Philippines not just by sending money remittances and balikbayan boxes to the Philippines but in a more politically sophisticated way:
“You can help by becoming a strong political force in your adopted country and using that force to influence your adopted country’s attitudes towards your mother country. Follow the lead of the Jewish-Americans who, despite being a small minority, form an indispensable pillar of a strong and independent Israel. Surely they are no stronger, no smarter, no more imaginative or dedicated than you are. They may be more organized, more politically oriented, more helpful to each other. And certainly they work hard at keeping America’s interest in Israel alive at all levels of society—in business, in education, in government, in the arts and sciences.
And so must you with respect to the Philippines. You must guard the image of the Filipino that the February Revolution burnished so brightly. You must guide those joining your ranks so that you enhance the image of Filipinos here. All impressions of you, American though you might be, will hark back to the Philippines.
Strive for political power in this country. Unite. Learn from the new Philippines how people, acting together, have made the difference at home. You too can make a difference here, for your own betterment and that of generations to come.”
Cory also asked us to educate ourselves and our youth about our history and our provenance, our heroes and our pride: “Be proud of your roots. Do not let your children or your grandchildren forget that they came from a land that produced Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini, and yes, Ninoy—men who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the best that this country or the world has produced.”
Not only men but many women too, like Cory Aquino, among the best that our country or the world has ever produced.

Food for thought.

I just came back to this post of yours.It got burried under the newer posts .
I read your response and your exchanges, I have learned more from them.

Joe

Over the past 10 years The Verde Group has conducted more than 100 customer dissatisfaction studies with 25,000 customers and recently compiled the results into a ground-breaking White Paper. Highlights of the White Paper include the fact that the typical North American company is at risk of losing a full 21 per cent of its customers due to dissatisfaction.

“If a business has more than 20 per cent of its revenue tied directly to the customer experience, that means tens of millions of dollars literally hang in the balance if merchants don’t take steps to improve customer service,” says Dr. Cheryl Flink, Senior Vice President, The Verde Group. “My role in the US will be to pinpoint the customer issues that cause this dissatisfaction and create strategies to halt the churn, build loyalty and increase profits. In fact, our Revenue@Risk research is so valuable that some companies now tie management compensation to its results.”

Revenue@Risk is The Verde Group’s proprietary baseline study that characterizes and measures the amount of revenue a company has at risk, and then identifies the highest payback initiatives that will reduce that risk.

Additional findings from The Verde Group White Paper include:

• 60 to 80 per cent of defecting customers categorize themselves as ‘satisfied’ on surveys conducted immediately before their departure;
• 59 per cent of customers experience at least one problem with a company’s products/services over a six to 12 month period;
• Customers who don’t experience problems are twice as loyal as those who do;
• Only 30 per cent of customers are completely satisfied with the resolution to their problems;
• More than 40 per cent of those who have a problem never tell the company about it; and
• On average, 70 per cent of customers defect due to service/quality problems that, if known, would have been relatively easy for the company to fix.

“These statistics usually come as a surprise to most senior executives because the conventional customer satisfaction metrics used by most organizations are poor predictors of customers’ future behavior,” says Ms. Courtney. “Companies usually conduct research that measures how much their customers love them but this doesn’t identify the problems that cause defection or tell the company which problems to fix and in what order.”

I suspect that the investor defection in the Philippines is higher than 70% but it is not being measured.

benign0 – Ha! The hyperbole and metaphors are intriguing. Of course, none of this is exclusive to the Philippines nor to Pinoys.

Absolutely, Nick. Never in my nine years of pushing the “getrealist” agenda did I assert that The Pinoy Condition was unique to Pinoys. ;-)

Lou Gehrig Disease for example is a label given to a medical condition. But the way Lou Gehrig Disease afflicts different individuals vary, and therefore their individual experiences in the way they are afflicted are unique to each case. Certainly they were all and each different from how Lou Gehrig himself suffered it.

The fact remains that we are afflicted with an instance of an over-arching condition (maybe we can call this over-arching — or underlying — condition “primitivism“, for example). While afflictions can be underpinned by an identifiable strain/class of virus, cancer cell, bacterium, or genetic condition, the symptoms and the way these pan out or propagate for a specific instance of said affliction can be unique to an individual patient because of variations in other parameters (e.g. race, environment, personal habits, upbringing, etc.) inherent in said patient the combinations of which are likely also to be unique to said afflictee.

You extend a helping hand to Pinoys and they bite off your entire arm.

You give them a machine to plow their fields, and they sell it piece-by-piece.

You distribute land for them to till, and they sell it to Henry Sy.

The solution to the Pinoy Condition is not to throw money at it. It’s like trying to install alloy wheels and low-profile tires on an onher-type jeep.

The more we try half-brained approaches, the tackier we get, to put it quite simply.

The solution is to re-wire the very DNA of our society as it is a society flawed at the molecular levels of its design.