IN FOCUS: BEYOND THE DOÑA VICTORINA SYNDROME

Posted on February 25, 2015

PROF. FELIPE M. DE LEON, JR.

From a cultural perspective, eight major factors seem to contribute to our lack of national unity and
to Philippine under-development in general. These are, in increasing order of seriousness and
importance:

● First: External interference in Philippine social, economic, political, cultural and

religious life, ​especially from fundamentalist governments like that of the United States, which
like to impose their will on economically and militarily weaker countries, or Islamic movements
that would convert Filipino Muslims into Pakistani, Afghan or Arabic look-alikes.

● Second: Faulty development models​, mainly from the West and basically do not apply to the
Philippine situation.

All models of development are essentially cultural. They reflect a culture’s perception of the
problems faced by the society, and they incorporate solutions to those problems based on that
perception, and developed from the ​cultural resources of the society itself​, in order to address
the specific situation in the particular society. Although culture and development are inextricably
linked, it is culture that plays the crucial role because it “is the sum total of original solutions that a
group of human beings invent to adapt to their natural and social environment.” (Mervyn Claxton,
“Culture and Development Revisited”) Culture is a society’s life support system.

That is why external models and techniques cannot be successfully transferred without
adaptation. Throughout history, and across all cultures, a people’s culture has always been linked
to its development. That link was broken in recent times, especially in African and other developing
countries, because of the near universal application of the Western model of development, and
because of the internalization of Western technology.

The general developmental effect of the failure to identify and isolate the non-assimilable
cultural aspects of the Western development model is evident throughout most of the developing
world, especially in Africa. African agriculture, for example, which is the most important economic
activity in the region, engaging as it does 70 per cent of the population, is in crisis. FAO estimates
that some 40 million people in the region are vulnerable to hunger.

One main cause of this crisis is the inappropriate application of Western agricultural techniques
resulting in considerable environmental degradation. The introduction of monoculture, which is
suitable for temperate conditions but highly damaging in tropical conditions, leaves the soil without
cover for long periods, allowing the heavy tropical rains to cause splash erosion and the soils to
harden under the tropical sun, thus causing laterization. African traditional, mixed cropping
systems, which kept the soil under constant crop cover, have now been recognized as being more
effective and more environmentally safe than temperate monocultural practices. But irreparable
damage has already been done to the agricultural potential of Africa.

Tropical conditions favor a more rapid reproduction and proliferation of insect pests which attack
cultivated plants than is the case in temperate countries. Crop rotation, practised in traditional
tropical agriculture, helped control such pests because pests specific to particular plants were given
less opportunity to multiply, in contrast to the planting of a single crop year after year as in
monoculture. The practice of monoculture facilitated the build-up of insect pest populations which
are responsible for the loss of up to forty percent of crops in tropical agriculture.

We need not look far for examples of inappropriate development. Fr. Brendan Lovett
discovered that prior to their being subjected to the market system, the indigenous peoples of
Southern Philippines and Mindanao had access to about 109 different food stuffs. Their food
throughout the year had a richness associated with life in the tropical forest and a subsistence
economy. But the moment they became part of the modern market system, their diet deteriorated
to a mere 30 to 35 varieties of food stuffs. (Brendan Lovett, A Dragon Not for the Killing). The
richness of their way of life suffered when they were forced to participate in a market system which
made them market dependent, which they never were. They are no longer masters over their own
destiny.

● Third: Inappropriate management​, management that is not culturally-rooted and dysfunctional

in a Filipino context. Imported management theories will not work.

Without an astute grasp of Filipino psychology and character, any manager, administrator or
government official will have a difficult time answering the following questions.

What brings out the good, the best in the Filipino? How do you inspire or what inspires
Filipinos towards positive, productive or constructive behavior/social action?

How do you get Filipinos to cooperate and work together harmoniously, happily, efficiently and
effectively?
What are we most productive/creative at/in? What is the nature of the Filipino cultural genius (both
local and nationally shared)?
How do you bring out honesty, sincerity, and loyalty?
How do you resolve conflicts?
How do you criticize one’s work or raise standards of excellence without arousing ill will and
resentment?
How do you inculcate or promote discipline and dedication to one’s task? (The feeling of being
taken advantage of; being exploited, abused; being treated unfairly, unjustly, or being demeaned,
insulted —​pinagsasamantalahan, minamaltrato, ginugulangan, nilalamangan, iniinsulto o
binabastos​ – is especially abhorrent to the Filipino, it being a serious affront to one’s dignity as an
ultimately sacred being.)

● Fourth: Mismatch of Filipino core culture and social institutions​, which are mainly imported
from the West

Cultural identity is a ​sine qua non​ for ​becoming active​ in the world​. Cultural identity is the
fundamental source of social empowerment​. Rob a people of their identity and they become
passive, lost, indolent, uncreative and unproductive, prone to depression and substance abuse,
and plagued by a pervasive feeling of malaise and powerlessness.

​“In order to involve people as active participants, development

must be consistent with their fundamental socio-cultural
traits,​ ​world view and values, and cultural principles.
Only then can the enthusiasm and creative potential of the
people be mobilized.”​ (1990 Report, South Commission)

A culture-sensitive process of development will be able to draw on the large reserves of

creativity and traditional knowledge and skills that are to be found throughout the developing world.
Such enrichment will give development firmer roots in the society and make it easier to sustain
development.
Such a process demands that social, political and economic institutions match a people’s core
culture, which is the essential reservoir of indigenous knowledge, creativity, skills and practices. But
in the Philippines, the highly relational, participatory, and holistic character of our culture is very
much at odds with the highly impersonal, legalistic, bureaucratic, specialistic, and fragmented
nature of our social systems and structures patterned after the West.

Take the case of democracy. Based on American individualist ethos, it fragments society into
separate individuals and regards as sacred every person’s right to vote as a separate individual.
But in our culture where togetherness or communal consensus is highly valued, groups tend to vote
as one. How then can we expect the American system of democracy to work in the Philippines?

The mismatch of our core culture and the many alien social institutions in our midst effectively
suppresses and weakens our cultural roots and successfully imposes an alien culture on the
Filipinos, tending to reduce us into a passive, docile mass subservient to the power wielders of the
alien culture. We lose our ​originality, native intelligence and skills, treasure troves of
knowledge, accumulated wisdom, and creativity​. We lose our collective will and vision of life.
We become disunited, self-serving, indulgent and short-sighted.

This is why the first objective of a colonizing power is to erase the cultural memory of the
conquered people, to induce a collective amnesia about their past and supplant it with the culture of
the colonizers. In this lie the roots of Filipino derivativeness and inferiority complex vis-a-vis the
West.
​

● Fifth: Lack of cultural awareness and education, ​lack of knowledge about the Filipino
cultural genius and, thus, inability to harness it as a resource for nation building

Furthermore, since our educational system is highly Westernized, it follows that as one
ascends the academic ladder, the more Westernized and alienated from his cultural roots the
Filipino becomes. That is why the more specialized A Filipino’s education is, the more likely he or
she will find his means of livelihood away from his community, perhaps in Manila or some other
country. An Ifugao child who receives only a high school education is more likely to remain in his
community than another who finishes college. And the reason for this is not just because the latter
has greater work opportunities, but because his education is not culturally rooted in his community,
especially if it is a rural, indigenous village.

Our educational system remains colonial rather than culturally appropriate. Many of our schools
do not produce people who are highly resourceful, creative and adaptable to a fast changing and
extremely complex contemporary world. They encourage dependency, a job-seeking,
employability mentality rather than originality of thought, entrepreneurial qualities and self-reliance
on native skills, knowledge and strengths.

Our colonial experience seems to have conditioned us to seek rather than create work
opportunities, to adapt rather than to innovate, and to conform rather than to lead. The captive
Filipino mind, having been alienated from its creative roots, ​cannot generate economic
opportunities within its native setting ​because of this alienation. The needs and values it serves
are external to itself. We borrow alien thought and value systems and forms of expression and
produce mainly derivatives and clones, superficiality and mediocrity? We forget that we can only
be truly productive using our own thought processes.
The Power of Indigenous Thought

Harnessing our own minds, understandings, definitions, categories and concepts is certainly to
have confidence, power and control over our own lives. Economic power naturally follows from
this. For instance, if we worship alien ideas of beauty, whose art works, music, fashion models and
beauty products do we glorify and spend for?

If we do not see the virtues of our systems of traditional healing and medicine, how much do we
spend for imported drugs, medical technology and expertise? (Dr. Juan Flavier once reported
during a Senate hearing that within the first five years of a serious health care program harnessing
the resources of Philippine traditional healing and medicine, we could save as much as fifteen
billion pesos in medical expenses). In the Philippines, the expertise of a psychiatrist schooled in
Freudian thought has often been found to be ineffective for treating culture-specific mental
disturbances that a local babaylan could cure in a matter of minutes. But we do not bother to
investigate and document the basis for the babaylan’s effectiveness, so that the tradition she
represents languishes and is often forgotten. ​The erosion of the vernacular medical knowledge
means depriving people of cheap and well-tested methods of medical treatment and the
implementation of new ones that most people cannot afford.

This reliance on our own traditions does not mean, however, that we become blind to new and
perhaps better ideas from other cultures, but our traditions should remain as the foundation
because they are in consonance with our psyche and our needs, containing wisdom tested through
time. Likewise, ancient Chinese acupuncture, successfully blended with Western
medicine, has been receiving a lot of worldwide recognition and scientific validation in recent
times, earning for the Chinese not only prestige but a lot of income.

● Sixth: Monstrous divide between the elite and common people​. The alienation of the elite
from the culture of our people makes them feel no sense of responsibility to the people.

The colonial powers inevitably encouraged and supported the emergence of an elite class
with whom it could easily collaborate. A serious consequence of this is cultural fragmentation. In
the Philippines, this created the ​Monstrous Cultural Divide ​(Ang Dambuhalang Hati)​ between
the Western-educated ruling elite and the more or less culturally indigenous majority. Without a
shared sense of identity there is no common action. A culturally fragmented and atomized mass is
the worst conceivable source material for the development process. We have a soft state because
of self-serving elite intervention and manipulation. As a result, the culture of the bureaucracy is
more attuned to the needs and values of the elite than to that of the vast majority of Filipinos.

We have so much to learn from other countries when it comes to unity, especially setting aside
our differences in times of crisis, “If there’s anything I envy abt. the Chinese, it’s their focus and
ability to pull together as a people” (Belinda Cunanan, from “Political Tidbits”, PDI Nov. 10, 2001)

Shared Identity as the Basis of Development

Development is a cooperative venture requiring communication and deep understanding

between people. All participants must have access to a common code of meaning or else the
whole project will simply repeat the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. (Friberg and Hettne, The
Greening of the World: Towards a Non-Determionistic Model of Global Process).

If development is envisaged as the result of voluntary cooperation and autonomous choices

by ordinary men and women there is no way of escaping a cultural definition of the social unit of
development. It is difficult for people to cooperate with each other politically when they are divided
socially and culturally. Communities with a shared culture are much more basic units of
development, because they allow for the forging of a genuine consensus among their
members. ​Social cohesion can only be obtained where people share a framework of social
reasoning. It requires a common universe of discourse.

The need to strengthen national consciousness and unity, however, should not be used as an
excuse to weaken local cultures. The state should rather allow local communities to define and
govern themselves and to develop separately while at the same time to see themselves as part of a
larger developing entity.

Seventh: Low self-esteem bordering on self-contempt: This is what I call the “Dona
Victorina” Syndrome, based on the name of a pathetic caricature of the colonized psyche in
the 19th century novel “Noli Me Tangere” of Dr. Jose Rizal. Dona Victorina despises her
race so much that she has to marry a white man, a Spaniard who is a scoundrel, just to raise
her social stature. Instead of proudly wearing her brown skin and assert its rich dignity and
beauty, she tries to hide it under a thick paste of white powder – just like what many
Filipinos essentially still do today. This persisting Filipino social malady may be defined as:

● Doubt in the Filipino capacity for achievement

● Perverse delight among Filipinos to constantly belittle themselves
● Serious lack of respect or contempt for each other
● Instead of harnessing our culture as a vast resource of knowledge and wisdom for sustainable
development, we squander it by wallowing in a negative self-image that is tantamount to a
self-fulfilling prophecy.

The underdevelopment of Philippine society is fundamentally rooted in this ​chronic loss of

Filipino self-esteem​ due to centuries of colonization and miseducation:
​Doubt in the Filipino capacity for achievement​, especially among the elites, causes blind
dependence on foreign goods, concepts, techniques, approaches, and expertise (incurring a
considerable drain on our economy). We perceive our limitations rather than possibilities, impeding
our ability to rise up to great challenges and surmount difficulties. Instead, we lower our standards
so much that we are simply satisfied with good enough (“puwede na yan!”).

A ​perverse delight among Filipinos to constantly belittle themselves​ not only among each
other (“Ang mga Pinoy talaga….”) but worse, even in the presence of foreigners or through the
media, damages Filipino and international expectations of Filipino ability. Particularly unfortunate is
the tendency of media to insult our leaders instead of offering constructive criticism. The loss of
economic, political and social opportunities that this negativism brings about is incalculable.

A ​serious​ ​lack​ ​of​ ​respect or contempt​ ​for​ ​each​ ​other​ that almost bordering on hostility
causes Filipinos to pull each other down, to get ahead at the expense of the other (especially in
our driving behavior or tendency to put down a fellow Filipino just to ingratiate oneself to somebody,
especially a foreigner), and makes Filipinos highly abusive and exploitative of each other. This
makes many Filipinos bad managers of Filipinos, with notable exceptions. The Filipino elites,
especially, usually in connivance with foreign interests, simply take advantage of their own people
(e.g. paying foreign consultants inordinately higher than would be paid to a local consultant,
non-remittance of SSS or GSIS collections by agency heads).

Filipinos are perhaps the ​worst self-bashers​ in the world. We are blind to our own capacities
and idealize those of others, especially Westerners. If something is poorly made it must be
Filipino. If it is well made it must be foreign. If it is a negative trait, it must be Filipino. If it is a
positive trait, it must be non-Filipino. Even negative qualities that are universal human failings are
claimed by Filipinos as ​distinctly Filipino​, e.g. crab mentality, graft and corruption, greed, lack of
discipline, etc.
 But what could be more corrupt, hypocritical and immoral than some foreign banking systems
that guard in great secrecy the hidden wealth of tax cheats (for example, tax avoidance in
Switzerland is not considered a criminal offense making its banks a magnet for tax evaders), the
deceitful behavior of the American government when it pretended to be helping Aguinaldo win the
war against Spain but in reality was secretly negotiating with the Spanish government for the
purchase of the Philippines, or its imposition of military dictatorship and curtailment of freedoms
during their colonial rule purportedly to teach us the meaning of democracy and freedom?

We can never erect a viable nation upon the notoriously self-deprecating and false concepts of
ourselves that we habitually entertain in our minds. For there is a definite correlation between pride
in one’s cultural identity and level of achievement.

● Eighth: Lack of pride in being Filipino results in lack of commitment to the nation​ and,
consequently, a low level of achievement or even mediocrity, the “pwede na ‘yan” mentality. For
the anthropologist Dr. F. Landa Jocano, ​pride, commitment ​and​ excellence​ are inseparable.

There have been many instances when Filipinos would even deny their nationality, passing
themselves of as Hawaiian, Malay or Indonesian because of a feeling of shame or embarrassment
about being Filipino. How could we ever unify as a people with such a negative attitude, a strong
repelling force that cannot but fragment the nation?

In contrast, Koreans are very proud of themselves. They always prefer their own products.
Despite the Korean war, which flooded the countryside with American goods, the Koreans bought
Korean goods whenever these were available because it seemed so natural for them to do so.

Social Self-Images as Self-Fulfilling: The Need to Develop a Strong Shared Vision

Instead of harnessing our culture as vast resource of knowledge and wisdom for sustainable
development, we squander it by ​wallowing instead in a negative self-image that is tantamount
to a self-fulfilling prophecy​.

“A people’s image of themselves tends to become a reality” (Kenneth Boulding, The Image). If in
our minds we think we will be defeated, we have already lost. If people fear the imminent collapse
of a bank, they all run to the bank to withdraw their deposits and really cause the bank to collapse.
If wealthy Filipinos or public officials lose faith in their own economy and stash away their savings
in foreign banks or put all their investments in other countries, their loss of faith is likely to be
validated. Widespread expectation of an impending rise in the prices of goods drives people into
panic buying and actually cause a drastic increase in prices or an artificial shortage of goods.

It is the image a people create of themselves that is the psycho-cultural basis of their strengths
and weaknesses, triumphs and failures. If we think we are an inferior people, we will tend to lower
our standards and be satisfied with good enough. Negative self-images, whether individual or
collective, can cause untold social, political and economic damage.

We have to begin celebrating our genius as a people and not continue to wallow neurotically in
our defeats. According to astute social commentators, Filipinos tend to celebrate their defeats – like
the Fall of Bataan and the Death of Rizal – whereas other peoples celebrate only their triumphs.
Abraham Lincoln was also assassinated but nowhere do we find his body being depicted as he was
falling down. Instead, we find him at the Lincoln Memorial seated with dignity, majestically
presiding over the destiny of his nation!
 The positive utilization of Filipino cultural strengths for effective governance and management,
higher productivity, and promotion of social wellbeing is conspicuously absent in our institutions,
whether public or private.

If are to become one nation, we have to begin deconstructing the very negative self-images we
have imbibed through centuries of colonial misrule and miseducation, especially among the elite
who are the power wielders and thus have the greatest responsibility to serve and be one with the
people.

A foundation of this transformation is​ education through cultural awareness: a workable,

effective program of education that can make Filipinos more responsive and sensitive to
Filipino dignity, needs, values, and cultural potentials and assets.

I​ f social self-images are self-fulfilling, we have nothing to lose by discovering and

constructing the most exalted and inspiring images of ourselves​.

​ he key to Filipino social transformation is rooted in Filipino social psychology​, in

T
discovering, understanding and harnessing the strengths of our most profound values as a people.
What is the deepest source of the well-known positive qualities of the Filipinos? All over the world,
we are recognized and appreciated by those whose lives we have touched as a ​highly relational,
participatory and creative people. We are especially admired for our strong nurturing and
caring orientation.​ Can we construct a most noble and inspiring Filipino social self-image derived
from the ultimate psychological source of these Filipino qualities?

The possibility is great and the psychological axiom that seems to have the richest potential as
the ultimate basis of this construct is the concept of ​kapwa​.

Tapping the Filipino genius

In Philippine culture, there is an underlying belief in the psychic unity of humanity. Individual
existence is only apparent and relative. For we all exist within a cosmic matrix of being at the
deepest center of which is a creative living principle or energic process. All human beings – and to
a lesser degree even animals, plants and minerals — share this innermost sacred core. This is
the ​kalooban​ from whence all individual human psyches emanate. Every one of us is ultimately
grounded in this common core of being. The other person is also yourself. ​Ang ​kapwa​ ay sarili
din.

A paradox arises. In every person is a divine essence ​that seeks fulfillment in imaginative,
creative endeavors​. At the same time, the interdependence implied by a shared matrix of
being ​seeks affirmation in a celebration of togetherness.

A synthesis of these twin motivations produces a culture that is highly creative not in the
generation of mechano-technological inventions, objective, scientific concepts or commercial
products but in interpersonal relations and communication. In this culture, there exists a
“symphonic” wealth of techniques for connecting to people, so that loneliness, alienation, ennui,
depression, and emotional repression hardly exist. Togetherness is happiness. A sharing, nurturing
orientation ensures emotional and mental well-being.

If there is no concept of the “other” in the other person, if the “other” (​kapwa​) is also yourself,
then Filipinos will necessarily tend towards trust and harmony. This makes Filipinos a highly
relational and essentially non-confrontational people, as monumentally demonstrated in the
peaceful, original “EDSA Revolution” (“If there is no ‘other’ there is no war” – Milojevic).
 But the primordial restlessness of the creative living principle in each individual also craves for
tangible expression, resulting in a highly participatory tendency in Philippine society. In this
society, there is essentially no notion of audience or spectator. Everybody is a participant with an
irresistible passion for creative spontaneity in everything one does, including, of all things,
governance and social planning. The apparent chaos that emerges becomes a paramount
challenge to the leadership – who needs to be strong, brilliant and decisive and yet, caring, trusting
and compassionate – to be able to steer society towards an ordered and disciplined but creative
and productive existence as well.

The Filipino ‘scientific’ genius, in other words, is in the fullest and deepest exploration of the
social possibility, the myriad ways of connecting with and achieving harmony with others. Philippine
culture is highly inventive of new social structures, experimenting with all kinds of social roles,
identities, interactions and relationships with others. Interpersonal intelligence and the capacity for
personal services is most highly developed. At its most profound, it is a celebration of the mystical
unity of humanity through an intimate union with the one creative living principle at the innermost
core of our shared being.

​This is an affirmation of the essential joy and meaningful-ness of existence.

Certain propositions may be derived from the above assumptions:

I. The world is a non-finite, multi-leveled and multi-dimensional whole where everything

interconnects with everything else and exists in a timeless present.​ Thus, Filipinos are highly
relational. They feel connected to the world, God and nature, but most of all to people.

● Filipinos will be most happy, efficient and effective being together – when they eat, sleep,
work, travel, pray, create, or celebrate. We have a very minimal sense of privacy.
● Filipinos are open and trusting
● Filipinos achieve maturity through social integration
● Filipinos are masters of interpersonal skills
● Filipinos are adept in pakikiramdam and non-verbal communication
● Filipinos, because of their genius in interpersonal

communication and a nurturing, caring attitude, excel in the

service professions and industry

● Filipinos effectively bring people together by endowing an activity, presentation or product

with as many different possible meanings, functions and qualities (note multisignificance in
food, trad. medicine, art, use of space, etc.)

II. The world is a bipolar yet unitary, energic, creative living process.​ Hence, Filipinos have a
holistic, creative and participatory nature.

● From a Filipino perspective, matter and spirit are an integrated whole. The dichotomy of
objective and subjective is a fallacy. Matter is not divorced from mind and spirit. There is a
continuity of consciousness from the elements of nature, to plants, animals and humans. To
believe that matter is cut off from spirit is to desacralize nature and sanction plunder of the
environment.
● The Western stress on objective truth leads to alienation from human feeling or soul, a
sense of isolation and depression, meaninglessness and despair, manipulative attitude, an
overly technological approach to life, aggression and violence (Thus, the most industrialized
societies often have the highest rate of mental illness and suicide)
 ● A holistic orientation endows Filipinos with a calm, relaxed disposition; a superior sense of
rhythm; an innately poetic, musical temperament.
● Filipinos are essentially unitive, harmonious, non-confrontational
● Filipino notion of time is mythical, nonlinear, celebrative – the convergence of past and
future into an eternal present, where everything occurs all at once, thus our tendency to do
many things at a time and our genius for celebration (celebrative time is a synchronicity of
many time levels)
● Filipinos excel in bipolar logic. An intuitive logic vastly superior to the either/or of mechanistic
cultures is Filipino (or Taoist) bipolarity. In bipolar logic, it is axiomatic that if a thing is true or
valid, then its opposite must also be true and valid.
● The belief in the unity of matter and spirit promotes a healthy, life-affirming attitude towards
both the visible and invisible worlds, making the traditional Filipino devoid of malice towards
the human body and sexuality
● Filipinos are highly participatory. We demand collective, equal participation in the creative
process, decision-making and self-determination. In Filipino society, everybody is a
participant/performer. Nobody is a mere spectator/audience.
● The deepest social aspirations of the Filipino are freedom, justice and dignity. Monopoly,
dictatorship and the curtailment of choices is anathema. ​Development to the Filipino
would be the proliferation of options or multiplication of choices.
● The optimal condition for productivity or creativity among Filipinos is providing a wide range
of materials, forms, techniques, ideas and possibilities to allow for and promote a broader
collective and democratic participation.
● Because of a holistic attitude, Filipinos prefer mediation to confrontation. Bridging
differences or conflict resolution are most easily achieved through consensus and other
subtle techniques like pakiusap, pahiwatig, pakikibagay, pakikisama, pakikipagpalagayang
loob, pakikisangkot, and pakiisa.
● Extemporaneous or on-the-spot creativity comes naturally to the Filipino who has the finest
artistic yet improvisatory traditions such as ​duplo, balagtasan, balitaw, tultul, kulintang,
kuntao a ​ nd​ okir.​ Creative spontaneity is highly valued.

III. The world is permeated by a sentient, conscious, psychic, spiritual intelligence that
underlies all of manifestation and emanates from an innermost sacred core​ (implicit in the
concept of ​kapwa,​ which suggests a divine inner core, ​ubod ng kalooban,​ from which all
individual human psyches emanate). Together with the Filipinos’ highly relational, holistic and
participatory creativity, this image of the world promotes among us deep sensitivity,
expressiveness, intuition, strong psychic abilities, and a great capacity for the celebration of life.

● The basic perceptual mode, and thus the memory mode, of the Filipinos is feeling, a holistic,
keen and penetrating way of knowing akin to intuition. Feeling knows at once while intellect
can only move step by step.
● Pakikiramdam​, knowing through feeling or participatory sensitivity makes the Filipino
especially compassionate, affective, malambing, gentle and kind.
● Filipinos love to feel, literally touching their way through life. Rich textural qualities,
biomorphic shapes, tasty foods, lush sounds and social clustering make life exceedingly
warm and intimate
● Filipino sensitivity in the tradition of the ​babaylan,​ endows the Filipinos with a magical,
healing touch. Our traditional rituals are a way of connecting to the divine or sacred. Through
touch people get healed. A “magical” transference of vital energy occurs in many levels,
physical and metaphysical
To sum up, we shall cull from the above discussion a few of the gems of the Filipinos
genius that can be easily harnessed for social well -being, productivity and development of
the Filipino nation. These are the following:

● Highly relational
1. Most active in the exploration of meaning in relationships as seen in our prolific
affixation system, said to be the richest in the world
1. Promotion of togetherness through activities, practices, and creations characterized
by multiple functions, values and qualities
1. A highly caring, nurturing orientation
1. Strong family values
1. Genius in interpersonal skills
1. Excellence in service industries
1. Highest in religiosity
1. Superior in mental health
1. The phenomenon of EDSA and other manifestations of our genius in designing social
institutions
● Highly participatory, consensus-builders
● Preference for human scale in social organization, including size of political constituency
(governance with a face)
● Giving everybody an active role. Decision-making is a collective activity
● There is no separation of participant/performer/creator and observer/audience/spectator
● The assumption that all of humanity are rooted in a common core of being (loob), a
creative, living and divine goodness
● A contagious joie-de-vivre and optimistic attitude, a great capacity for happiness
● A highly adaptable, versatile, flexible, creative and expressive people
● Gifted psychic healers and medical practitioners
● Passion for freedom, justice, dignity ​(kalayaan, katarungan, karangalan)
● The notion of life as an integrated whole
● The absolute equality of man and woman, at least theoretically if not in actual practice
● Non-sexist languages
● Knowledge-oriented, strong educational orientation

This extensive recital of Filipino potentials will remain just that, possibilities, if not translated into
practical guidelines or precepts for the conduct of our social lives, especially for sustainable
development and nation-building. Hardly any government official in our vast bureaucracy, for
instance, governs or manages his constituency with wisdom and foresight simply because of
cultural ignorance.

But knowing intimately the way our people think, feel and perceive the world will always make for
effective governance. ​The best kind of governance is culturally-rooted governance​. Filipinos
are a highly trusting people. Trust, cooperation, goodwill and harmony, which are all manifestations
of ​kapwa​, always bring out the best in us. The opposite, distrust and any system built upon it, such
as bureaucracy; the American form of democracy that thrive in competition, argumentation and
debate; anything legalistic, impersonal, official, formal, and highly technical in impact and structure
are all anathema to the majority of Filipinos, and can only bring out the worst in us. In our cultural
context, resort to legalities is taken to mean concealing lies, dishonesty and bad faith. Is it any
wonder that oftentimes, with so many lawyers in the government, our society seems to be in a rut?
This is not to denigrate the law profession but to simply point out the ineffectiveness of a legal
approach to governance in our culture.
 We may remember that the peaceful, original EDSA “revolution” baffled observers everywhere
because it occurred outside of the known parameters of any formal political and legal framework
but capitalized on the outpouring of faith, trust and goodwill made possible by the ​tulay​ principle or
tradition of mediation in our culture.

Most, if not all, of our Western-derived social institutions based on the idea of the “other” person,
and who, therefore in principle, cannot be trusted, are dysfunctional in Philippine society. The
sooner they are replaced with ​kapwa-​ based institutions, those that can inspire the Filipinos to
become active participants in the development process, the faster we can get out of the conditions
of underdevelopment and social stagnation.

But for this to happen, we must first have leaders who understand deeply the Filipino psyche,
and can thus inspire us towards excellence. For is this not what leadership is all about?

Source: ​https://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/in-focus/beyond-the-dona-victorina-syndrome/