Culture and History sturdier working class. (We always think of the German, for ‘example, as a big, stout man; and this solidity is largely the result of potatoes, though German beer also helped.) Three, more and more people were released from farm work and became available for factory labor. Four, industrial progress ‘meant more income for the masses, better homes and schools and increasing political power. Five, the rising standard of living in turn produced an art, a literature, a science and a technology that have made European culture supreme in the modern world. It can be argued therefore that the image today of the European as a highly civilized, cultured and progressive individual can be traced back, partly at least, to the coming of the potato. But now let us bring in a counterargument. Let us imagine, say, a German chauvinist who is rabidly anti- potato. For him, the potato is not a boon but a bane. For him, the potato is something that should never have been allowed to change Europe because it is so foreign and exotic, For him, the potato is to German culture what the apple was to Adam and Eve, because, by eating of the potato, the German, the European, lost something of his original nature, with the result that European culture today is a deviation from a pristine original: the true European is the European before the introduction of the potato. But how restore that uncorrupted original? Our imaginary German chauvinist demands the abolition of the potato. At once, of course, we see the flaw in his proposal. Abolishing the potato will not restore European man to his prepotato condition. Why not? Because from the potato have come such developments as industrialization, Culture and History democratization, modernization and so forth. And these developments have so radically altered European man that he would still remain what he has become even if he stopped eating potatoes altogether. In other words, potatoes are the culture and history that ‘cannot be cancelled in a desire to recover a former innocence. From potatoes let us move on to an ingredient you need when. you eat potatoes — and that's salt. Yes, table salt. One time I had dinner with some friends of mine: a family T admire for their nationalism, although they rather tend to make a display of it. At this dinner, the display consisted of using a stone at the table: a roundish grey stone about the size of a pelota. This stone — it was actually a piece of rock salt — was passed around instead of salt, because, said my hosts, that was how the ancient Filipinos salted their food. You pressed the stone on your rice and fish, you rubbed it against your meat, you broth, for the desired saltiness. ee tather have ordinary table salt. In this tradition versus modernity, I was all for ‘because that stone which, in the name of nation militancy, I was supposed to use instead of saCulture and History reminded me of those stones which in the old days you saw in provincial bathrooms — you know, the panghilod ng tag. And I certainly wasn’t going to put such a stone into anything I was going to eat! Still, I was charmed by the sentiment behind the display, the nationalist nostalgia. What bothered me were the implications behind the sentiment. In effect, my hosts were saying: “Look how truly Filipino we are. Instead of using a saltcellar, which is foreign, we use a salt stone, which is native.” The implication there is that the more we return to what is native and the more we abolish what is foreign, the more truly Filipino we become. This may be true — but what I couldn't help noticing then was the inconsistency. Why pick on the poor saltcellar? On the table were fork and spoon, which are not native; and beef and cabbage, which are also not originally Philippine; and I knew that the food had been dressed in the method called sauté, or guisd, which is not native, and cooked in a sartén or a caserola or a fugon, which are all also foreign. By retaining these while abolishing the saltcellar, you are practically saying that the saltcellar is a bigger hindrance to being truly Filipino than, say, cabbages or caserolas, Anyway, can you blame me if I came away from that dinner with the impression that the saltcellar is a bigger danger to Philippine nationalism than even the U.S. bases? Of course I know what question was supposedly being answered at that dinner table with the abolition of the saltcellar: the question of identity. Identity, I would say, is like the river in philosophy. You remember the saying: “You can never step into the same river twice.” The river has changed even as you step Culture and History into it. Nevertheless, the Pasig remains the Pasig, though from one moment to the next it’s no longer the same river. This is the dynamic view of identity. I'm afraid we have a different view of identity: different becauise we tend to regard culture and even history as static happenings — and that term is appropriate though it sounds _ so self-contradictory. Just to make it clearer, Vl borrow Amang Rodriguez’s definition of politics and say that we Filipinos tend to believe that culture is simple addition, history is mere addition. We ourselves are, or were, a fixed original identity to which certain things — alien cultures, alien histories — have been added, layer upon layer. Therefore, if culture is tradition, identity is subtraction. All we have to do is remove all those imposed layers and we shall end up with the true basic Filipino identity. That is the static view of identity. But culture is not simple addition. Culture is not which you can add anything and it will still remain a stew. _ Rather is culture like those laboratory experiments in original mixture becomes completely transformed into something different, When history added the saltcellar, and fork and beef and cabbage, and the guisado, to our culture identity of the Filipino was so completely tran there can be no going back to a pristine r abolished the saltcellar, the fork and and history are the flowing waters | step into the same river of identity religion and politics and art and lit a view of culture. The saltcellar is