Over at Barrio Siete, Mr. Reyna Elena frets over the frightening prospect of (at the time of writing) the coming tropical cyclone that is almost sure to wreak the usual havoc on our little group of volcanic islands.
Having lived in those islands myself for a big chunk of my life, I can attest to the routine devastation wrought by such otherwise routine weather disturbances. Cyclones and pounding monsoon rains year in and year out wreck homes, flood streets, sink ships, interrupt daily life, and kill people. It comes with the Southeast Asian territory.
Thinking in terms of casualty rates, one can argue that the Philippines ain’t doing that bad in terms of surviving natural calamities. That is, if we ignore the embarassing fact of our enormous population. Consider the statistic 0.9 dead per 100,000 people in a year due to tropical weather disturbances (on a bad year the car crash death rate in Australia is 0.5 people per 100,000).
That statistic doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
Guess again.
The fact is, it is a statistic that could describe the year 2008, when more than 800 passengers of the MV Princess of the Stars perished off Romblon island in that most recent of typically-Pinoy sea disasters…
Today’s INQ7 editorial reminds us of just how hopelessly inept we — an islands-dwelling people — are as seafarers. When one considers how a sizeable chunk of our economy is propped up by the remittances of our seamen, it could even be considered laughable if it weren’t for the astounding loss of life involved. The Number 8, considered to be a lucky number by some cultures has got Sulpicio carnage written all over it — 1988, 1998, and 2008 (the queen of all tragic Sulpicio vessels — the MV Doña Paz sank just weeks short of 1988). It is yet another irony lost in a society famous for its feeble grasp of irony.
Eight hundred wasted souls — each one a son, a daughter, a mother, a father, a friend — divided by 90 million Filipinos works out to the statistic “0.9 dead for every 100,000 people”.
Given our scandalous population growth rate (almost 2.5% per annum) and these death rates, natural disasters will hardly make a dent on the robustness of the Philipine Nation; that is if we consider our enormous numbers to be a “strength”. Fair enough, if we liken it to the futility of trying to win a war against an ant colony by stomping down every ant you spot in its vicinity. In the same way, the gods may get as angry as they want. But they cannot destroy the Philippines by hurling any kind of pestilence at us.
We will survive!
Mmmm… but of course we will, Moneypenny.
I’d like to highlight this particular passage from Nick Joaquin’s seminal piece “A Heritage of Smallness” …
Are we not confusing timidity for humility and making a virtue of what may be the worst of our vices?
Indeed, it is true. We are a resilient people in terms of being able to come out smiling after surviving grave disasters and in continuously living with poor infrastructure, decrepit facilities, no-results services, and medieval approaches to thinking and doing things.
But pursuing a claim to resilience in the manner above is not too different from a cockroach’s claim to the same virtue. As the glib assertion goes, in a nuclear war, the only urban form of life likely to survive will be a cockroach. You can argue then along those lines that the cockroach is a “resilient” life form.
Indeed, we can go as far as saying that if we lived like cavemen today, no amount of natural disasters or “financial crises” would bother us.
The fact is, advanced Western societies build advanced. sophisticated, and immensely complex ways of life at the risk of catastrophic collapse in the event of an unforeseen calamity. But isn’t that the same as willingly pursuing romance at the risk of catastophic pain?
Which would we rather be? A people who dreams big, ventures big, and possibly achieves big even at the risk of catastrophic failure? Or would we rather be comfy in our mediocrity and pygmy dreams and console ourselves with the promise of never having to risk failure?
[NB: The last five paragraphs credits itself to an inspired comment made in BarrioSiete.com]
Much as our established “revolutionaries” (note the oxymoronism there) may deny it, the “opposition” has become an embodiment of the Pygmy Dream. The Philippine “Opposition” has failed in the last several decades to offer an imaginative or visionary alternative to Filipinos. Instead all we continue to see is an n-th iteration of an approach to “reform”.
Reform of what to what exactly?
Precisely my point.
Our track record for degrading otherwise innovative thinking is extensive.
Take the jeepney. They are small pwede-na-yan solutions that served a need at a point in time in the past. Trouble is, when the scale of the need changed, we did not bother to change the scale of the solution (at least not at the time when recognising the need to change it was optimal).
The Philippine “Opposition” is in a similar bind. It continues to use 1986 thinking to battle a 2009 issue.
Not surpising considering both The Jeepney and Pinoy-style “Opposition” are case studies derived from the same cultural framework.
This coming June (the typhoon season), make sure you move your furniture to higher ground. :D
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In a country though that has continously experienced past failures the best option of course is to immigrate.
Glad to see the emphasis on over population.
It struck me the other day that we, as supposedly intelligent thinkers, are, on the development line of evolution, just a short distance from cave men. Consider the abuses of one another we undertake, the wars, the guns and bombs, the insults, the greed and corruption, the absurdities rampant in the way we are governed and churched. It is humbling, for sure.
As for the jeepney, true, there are more modern forms of mass transport available. Slick air conditioned shuttle buses, for example, or trains. But the jeepney is right for NOW because of the shallowness of the Philippine economy. It is the only vehicle transportation companies can afford to buy or maintain in an economy where many millions get by on less than P10,000 a month, and fares reflect that poverty.
So it isn’t the jeepney that is behind the times. It is the people who manage the Philippine economy. The people who sit back and LET Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Viet Nam, Indonesia, and Malaysia move forward in the rich global trading yard while this nation of islands, with a better centrality of location and the most wonderful natural harbors in the world, sits stagnant.
Back to my cave now . . .
Joe
What Nick Joaquin talked about can be called “hiya.” It’s of the things said to be uniquely Filipino… but it’s actually a very big fault. Because of hiya, people find it hard to stand up and speak against what’s wrong. It makes me wonder whether this “value” was intentionally created and taught to keep the people quiet.
And our overpopulation… some people say it’s not a problem, but I agree with those who say it is. How can you complain that life is hard when you give birth to ten children without thinking? The Catholic church has been blamed for its teaching that all couples should give birth to as many children as they want (but did the church teach it this way?), but now I think culture contributes too. And this makes me want to praise the protestant couples who marry, don’t have children, but adopt a child left behind by one of those silly Catholic couples who follow their genital impulses.
The people who manage the Philippine economy… want to be rich and stay rich (like the western societies who build up their riches that risk catastrophic collapse), and don’t give a crap about the rest of us.
I think there is a need to inculcate assertiveness, instead of hammering people into conformity. As described in Wikipedia -
Assertiveness is a trait taught by many personal development experts and psychotherapists and the subject of many popular self-help books. It is linked to self-esteemand considered an important communication skill.
As a communication style and strategy, assertiveness is distinguished from aggression and passivity.
How people deal with personal boundaries; their own and those of other people, helps to distinguish between these three concepts.
Passive communicators do not defend their own personal boundaries and thus allow aggressive people to harm or otherwise unduly influence them. They are also typically not likely to risk trying to influence anyone else.
Aggressive people do not respect the personal boundaries of others and thus are liable to harm others while trying to influence them.
A person communicates assertively by not being afraid to speak his or her mind or trying to influence others, but doing so in a way that respects the personal boundaries of others. They are also willing to defend themselves against aggressive incursions.
The reason the cockroach is a survivor is: it eats everything.
We dont ask our fellow Filipinos to survive like cockroaches. Although some are already living like cockroaches.
The problem of the opposition is: they all want to become Presidents.
They have no visions, solutions, or programs offered as new, innovative and exciting. Its politics as usual. The IN versus the OUT.
TOO MANY CHIEFS, NO MORE INDIANS…as a wise Native American had
told me in their war against European settlers.
over population…as described from dictionaries…is a condition were an organism numbers exceeds the carrying capacity of its habitat. Philippines has 300,000 sq. kms or 90,000,000,000 sq.m. with a 90 million population and from the 90 million…there are 12million overseas Filipinos worldwide. Let say, 50 sq.m. per head…there will be 1,800,000,000 heads for 50 sq.m….so it is clear that Philippines is not over populated in terms of carrying capacity. But many people says we are over populated. Talking about the ratio of population to available sustainable resources (means of resources and distribution of resources)…malamang…over populated na tayo…shelter, food, clean air, clean water, jobs, and other resources to sustain a life <- these are the resources does not properly addressed by the sitting Government…kawawang Juan Tamad…gusto pa magpa-extend ng wan-tu-sa-wa… :)
I look at overpopulation at the most localized level… a family where the father is either low-paid or a bum, then he has five children. And yet the family may bear another child. And then, there are a lot of abandoned children. Thus, overpopulation… and no family planning.
Birth Control…pills or contraception, condoms, abortion, family planning, etc…these are not in the teachings of the Catholic Church, what are their basis, they have the Bible…how come the Church will support the bill for Birth Control…my being a Catholic…well I would say…SEX is the root of all births…sino ba ang sumulpot lang na parang kabute? ei…well SEX for me is an engagement… was a time of conversations unlike anything I ever had. Meshing two lives that had before been quite independent was an interesting, exciting, sometimes difficult process of discovery. One of the coolest things about it was getting an occasional hint that this woman I had chosen to marry was even deeper and wiser than I realized. When we were discussing children, contraceptives and family planning, My wife put the conversation in perspective with a simple statement. “I think that if you’re ready to get married, you should be ready to have children.” Maybe that should have been obvious to me, but it wasn’t. At least not at first. At the time when we were preparing for marriage, I had finished college. Since she was planning to quit her job and go to work in a hospital clinic , our decisions about having (or not having) children were … um … complicated. Because of this, I assumed that marriage and childbearing were two separate things. And that they needed to stay separate for a while. But the further we dug into the issue, the more I found my assumptions being challenged. I also had to acknowledge that they needed to be challenged in order to bring them in line with a biblical worldview. I want to share that thought process here, because I know that many college students wrestle (or soon will) with the same complications and assumptions I had. Since When are Children Convenient? The first big assumption I had to deal with was my belief that we could — and should — put off having children until it was more convenient to have them. Obviously, convenience means different things to different people: waiting until both partners have finished school; waiting until you’re financially stable (whatever that means); waiting until the wife is “established” in her career. Birth control, of course, is the major reason these options are available to us. And easy access to birth control often means we take our options for granted. We shouldn’t, because doing so can easily lead to a warped attitude toward both sexuality and children. What I mean is, we live in a culture that believes that men and women alike can have sex whenever, wherever and with whomever, as long as it’s consensual. This so-called freedom is possible because the combination of birth control and abortion supposedly allows us to avoid or get rid of any unwanted consequences. Among those consequences is pregnancy. So, for the single person at least, contraception provides for a lifestyle that is promiscuous and sees children as mistakes to be avoided. I’m not saying that using contraceptives makes you promiscuous, or that all contraceptive users devalue children or condone abortion. I’m just saying that birth control makes it easier to adopt these attitudes. Now, take this train of thought one stop further. If, pre-marriage, we are accustomed to viewing children as “mistakes,” how does this affect our attitude toward them after we are married? For some couples it’s a non-issue. They enter marriage with children in mind, and they view the beginning of the parenting season of life as something to look forward to. On the other hand, I know an increasing number of married couples who have their educational, recreational, financial and professional lives so carefully planned that children are still viewed as mistakes. Unless Junior shows up precisely on his parents’ schedule, he is an interruption to their lives. You simply cannot hold a thorough Christian worldview and view children in that light. The Bible makes clear that having, raising and disciplining children is to be a priority for most Christians. It also lets us know that we are not to hold so tightly to our own freedom and our own plans that we leave no room for God’s. Wisdom or Selfishness? I’m not saying that delaying or planning the timing of children is necessarily sinful. But we need to make a distinction between selfish delays and wise delays. And we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about which is which. A wise delay is one that plans for the future with children — and their highest good — in mind. I think it’s entirely possible for Christians, in good conscience, to put off childbearing while they fast-track through school, in order that one parent might earn enough to allow the other parent to stay home after children arrive. Conversely, selfishness creeps in when we continually raise the bar for what constitutes financial stability. If we’re really honest about our priorities, it’s hard to justify a luxury car or a time-share on the beach as achievements to be reached before having kids. A final thought on the delaying-children issue: no matter what our plans are, we need to discipline our minds so that if our preferred method of delaying the arrival of children fails (and they all do at times!), we are ready to welcome children in God’s timing, even if that’s not our timing.
nosibalasi,
Wonderful first-hand picture of the forces that come into play in deciding whether or not to have a child. I think your conclusions are correct. There is an element of responsibility that is very important in the decision. Just to go out and give birth because God views each life as precious (it is precious) does not mean go out and procreate like Benign0′s ants. I also liked your real-world view that children are not always convenient. In fact, they grow up to be very expensive and often highly contentious rascals. But they bring unmatched joy with them, so it balances nicely . . .
Nice write-up.
Joe
thanks joe.
NOSI,
Now you have another admirer other than me. :)
Cockroaches can survive the “nuke” because they live in highly-toxic crevices already. These habitat must have prepared them for the eventuality of the actual “nuke”. Pinoys living in the crevices of Payatas landfill and other dehumanizing places of existence which in RP’s context, are aplenty, are prepared for any catastrophe of epic proportions, natural or man-made.
We have been abused by our government officials and by natural calamities all year round that we can credit already our tenacity to endure these misfortunes as a by-product of our “crevice-culture mentality”, that no further demeaning treatment can subject us to further indignities because we live it 24 hours a day.
Our feigned protests against man-made abuses are no more than our reflex action of swatting a mosquito to stop the immediate itch in our skin but we stop at cleaning our surroundings to get rid of the mosquito habitat that should free us from their ceaseless intrusions. Typical of Pinoys’ knee-jerk reaction against a nefarious malady that requires intrusive intervention.
We have been too complacent and soon we will lose our sense of outrage, (that is if we have not lost that already) even at the most mendacious assault on our dignity as a human being.
Sometimes I feel that Pinoys are masochists and third rate pugilists who derive pleasure of being abused and relentlessly pummeled by his tormentors and totally stripped off of his dignity to hit back.
When I was myself abused, I hit back and I hit back hard and I was surprised to find out that Pinoys would look at me as “irreverent” of the institution that I should fawn and pander at. My attitude could be the reason why I can eat three square meals a day, talk about dignity and honor while most Pinoys are still tied up looking for food to put on their table and talk morsels about the mistress of this and that politicians.
JCC, I appreciate it when people put out original thought (heh, especially if I agree with it).
I think who get the irreverent stare or smack-back, when they advocate right over wrong, should wear it as a badge of honor. I’m glad you do.
I wish it didn’t require rage to motivate people to act . . . though it is better than not acting. I’d like to see good old dedication to principle, or even ambition for personal achievement . . .
Joe
Population is a function of two things: birth and death. You might have missed it but people are having longer lives and many are intent to live a hundred years.
Keep in mind too that nations that had successful population programs are now having intractable troubles that go with an aging population: shortage of young entrants into the labor force and retirement funds on the verge of bankruptcy. Singapore for all its wealth and prsperity is deathly worried of a fast dwindling population that their government has to offer all sorts of incentives for their young to get married and raise families.
I do not propose that we should breed like cockroaches but we should keep these in mind. What do we consider as healthy population growth rate ba?
Just wondering though. Why do rich people tend to have only few kids when they could indeed raise dozens more and why do poor people seem to beget kids like, well, cockroaches? Yet if we should restrict one or two kids to our poor, our more wealthy ones should raise dozens and hundreds more if we have to sustain a healthy population growth.
winning a war against an ant colony…
when you say those words benign0, believe me, I got suddendy something in my mind…diko nabanggit sayo na malikot at malisyoso ang utak ko lol (who cares to me anyway), double meaning yan para sakin and let me share you this in my own definition of the word—
na rheyna (you called himher before a dimwit,remember?) is winning againsts the ant colony (the bunch of so called intellectuals)? hahahah sabi ko naman seyo e, malisyosa ako…hahahaha!
Agree here Dawn… dont know if Benigns refers to the “ants” as the Filipino population and must be… the simple minded ones cannot grasp the metaphorical representation of the words… kaya we dont want to commence the comments… it gets through anyone to react in some ways, as the generalization always sips in his sentences.
Para bang “dudurugin ko kayo with the truth” and the truth hurts as he says. Most Pinoys would say “hahahaha” as we all knew this. I’m glad there is another malisyosa lurking around to confirm my suspicion… As I am a Suspetsusa with Begnignose that he is “not a Filipino”.
Isn’t there a Pag-asa weather station to let all Filipinos what’s coming in… halllo, the Philippine Islands are near da pacific ocean… we all knew dis… Should we say “Kindly move or shift the Philippines in an area with a nicer weather where there are no storms, please God?”. Aren’t their Family Planning clinics set up to help people – kind of the right agencies to intrude with people’s bedroom antics and plans to increase the Filipino population.
Must be the thought that Melbourne has a nice weather and some Australians are not that discriminating to anyone who looks so Asian… hello let everyone know or can I be that shallow that population is a problem and agree to what is written here.
But if your main topic is about the sinking boats owned by these scrupulous “richies” sa pinas, I say “get them fix first before getting the boats off any harbor to sail” in simple term “Maintenance” muna bago larga.
oh by the way, my bad— typo— just “in my own definition”,diko alam kung bat ko nasundan pa ng “of the word” esmyuski my bad inglisirs