Filipino Values:

Nature or Nurture
 ○ Extreme family-
○
Clannishness
Kamag-anak Inc. centeredness - an emphasis on filial
and kinship ties (family
ties)

○ This is very common on many cultures

on the world except on the West where
independence and individuality are
valued.
 ○ On Filipino culture; Clannishness
become a complicated center of
Clannishness patronage or PADRINO SYSTEM (one
gains favor, promotion, or political
appointment through family affiliation
as opposed to one's merit) and have
been also the fault of breeding a sort of
robbers (caused corruption and graft in
the government.)
 4

○ This sort of kinship being

pushed to “extreme levels” has
been institutionalized (it has
become part of the process)
since colonial times where a
new government replaces the
past regime and the new
powers need to run things with
their own resources.
○ Until now Filipinos have no
government system that they could
really own or be responsible since
past governments are established by
the colonizers or the government’s
concerns is not like the citizens
concern.

○ With these issues, the people turn

to their family/relatives that acts as
support if the government is
ineffective.
• However, family centeredness is not only the cause that
prevents from not just reaching one’s family but also the
community outside.
• Before the Spanish arrived to colonize, there are sultanates and
kingdoms with rajah or datu that have territories.
• This gives the notion that people don’t just lived on scattered
barangays or villages, but it has a political unit that could grow
and develop to own idea of a nation if colonization didn’t affect
it and influenced by 19th century ideas of nations.
• Because of colonialism, the aim for uniting these barangays
stopped at the family level. After that it was every family for his
own, or
in Filipino: the KANYA-KANYA MENTALITY
○ The so-called contradiction 7

between the filipino’s communal

orientation and a certain anarchic
individualism in the way she
relates to power and authority
may have much to do with
suppression of solidarity and its
confinement within the
immediate sakop.

○ Damayan remains a strong motif

in the culture in spite of attempts
to fragment it is readily seen in
moments of extreme national
crisis.
○ In all the challenges (natural disasters)
we face with an instincts similar to the
sense of damay or interconnectedness
afforded by the strength of our families
and the widespread or our
interrelationships.
○ Seen from its strength as a community
where one develops a sense of the
kapwa-tao or a shared sense of identity
and consciousness of the others.
○ The Filipino family has every potential to
expand beyond the boundaries of kinship
and enlarge the sense of one’s sakop to
the proportions of a nation.
 Political
Passivity:
Acquiescence
or
Marginalization
 The lack of cultural protest, lack of dissent
on injustice and absence of services and
uninterrupted access to utilities reflects a
system where things dysfunction and people
take help in the government is a bad sign
that needs to be addressed.
 A system that don’t work rather than having
a sense of submission lies on the tolerance of
a bad government
 11

Submission
○ Submission in the Filipino
sense is a coping mechanism
a way of operating in a
context where power is
unequal.
 12

“Lack ○ Insufficient appreciation of

of structured relations ascribed to
the filipino.
Reflecti ○ Our constant recourse to
venes” humor is seen as evidence of
superficiality (lack of
thoroughness, depth of
character, or serious thought)
○ Filipinos' irrepressible humor
has misjudhged as a lack of
high seriousness.
 13

Biro ○ It was overlook as a form of social

criticism in this culture:
“bato-bato sa langit....”
 Buying the
view from the
outside
 Assertions that the filipino lacks dscipline:
 A casual relaxed attitude towards time and space
manifests itself in lack of precision and
compulsiveness, in poor time management and in
procastination.
 We have an aversion for following strictly a set of
procedures and this results in lack of standardization
and quality control .
 We are impatient and unable to delay gratification or
reward, resulting in the use of shortcuts, in skirting the
rules ( the palusot syndrome) and in foolhardiness.
 We are guilty of ningas cogon….
 “Ang Pilipino, kapag
nandyan na, haharapin
na.”

There is a heroic
spontaneity with
which we meet
moments of crisis
which always serves
us in good stead.
 ○ The tendency to judge Filipino character based on
western cultural assumptions is also seen in the way
the issue of personalism is treated.
Personalism
○ Connected to the filipino’s sensitivity to
criticism.
○ Inability to objectify, to detach from personal
considerations an object inquiry which
happens to be part of oneself.
1.The filipino’s wholistic orientation
2.The capacity for feedback rooted in indigenous channels
like pahiwatig
○ Mercado in his Elements of Filipino Philosophy
- notes that we do not make a sharp distinction between
ourselves as subject and the external world as an object of
our inquiry.
• Immersed in the mood of environment, we participate rather thn
observe.
• This implies a dominantly affective mode of relating to reality, a
cognitive orientation that sees life in concrete wholes rather than
in abstract parts.
• Wholism lies on ‘personalism’ of filipino: to criticize a part is to
criticize the whole, thus a criticism of the quality of one’s job,
unless done in the security of personal intimacy, is likely to be
seen as criticism of one’s whole person.

• This is a possible reason why the culture has developed elaborate,

indirect ways of communicating the unpleasant while maintaining
maximum concern fr someone’s face or persona.
 21

○ Filipino is not incapable of a certain

kind of frankness (sa totoo lang…), so
long as it is within the context of
intimacy or pakikipaglagayang-loob,
and in a manner that respects the
subtle nuances of pahiwatig, a highly
suggestive, complex and often
wordless form of indigenous
communication.
 Conclusion
 The colonized sensibility has been unduly controlled by
the categories wit hich our self-image has been defined by
outsiders.
 There is a little appreciation of the impact, though colonial
experience, of alien ways of thinking and organizing
leading to incongruities ad behavioral deformities
collectively ascribed to what we now call “Filipino
Character”