Our "Damaged Culture"
The Case For A National Unity Government
Blas F. Ople - 31 August 1988
There are some Filipino writers who took offense when the theory of a "damaged culture" advanced by American journalist to explain the unrealized potentials of the Filipinos, gained quick currency in the intellectual circles in this country. After all, Jose Rizal much more deeply analyzed and documented this "damaged culture" in his novels the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The journalist, James Fallows of Atlantic Monthly, however, undoubtedly updated those earlier insights and made them contemporary with "Smokey Mountain" in Tondo. He was the first newspaperman, local or foreign, to study this phenomenon as a cultutral issue and parlayed it into a morbid attraction for tourists eager to explore the seamy side of Filipino society. (Whoever thought of putting Smoky Mountain on the tourist itinerary must be celebrating a streak of sado-masochiam in the national psyche).
The distinctive attribute of our damaged culture, Fallows wrote, was stubborn incapacity to identify with the public interest so that everyone looks out only for himself or his own kin. The result is a dichotomy between the individual and his society, a glaring absence of the sense of community. He found that absence remarkable even by Southeast Asia standards.
The ubiquitous garbage in the metropolitan region, matched by the exponential growth of urban slums, has not created any sense of crisis, as it would elsewhere, perhaps because the leading families nestled in their self-contained enclaves can look out for themselves. The water crisis is for the masses: the rich have their own individual, customized clean wells. There are few public parks. The rich can afford their own private gardens. Why is it that most Filipinos have not been able to expand their loyalty to family and clan to the wider interests of community and nation? Why the notable absence of public spirit? Why has Rizal Park, hitherto a symbol of the nation's capacity for public cleanliness and discipline, now deteriorated into another showcase of civic incompetence and indifference to the common good?
Certainly democracy is not to blame for these shortcomings. Neither hopeless deadlocks, failures of discipline, nor anarchy in the civic realm are the inevitable consequences of choosing the democratic option. Democracy is not synonymous with public apathy. Properly summoned and led, it can generate the leadership and discipline to overcome its own weaknesses or surmount any crises. But whereas the concentrated powers in an authoritarian society can compel obedience, the centrifugal forces of democracy stand in greater need of leadership so that the vast, dynamic and often unruly energies that thrive on pluralism or free choice can be effectively harnessed for the common good.
Today, almost in direct proportion to the sense of drift that pervades government, leadership has become a nagging issue - and some say a disturbing one - in our country.
This is the text as originally published in the magazine.
Copyright 1987 Atlantic Monthly Company
The Atlantic Monthly: November, 1987
Blas F. Ople - 31 August 1988
There are some Filipino writers who took offense when the theory of a "damaged culture" advanced by American journalist to explain the unrealized potentials of the Filipinos, gained quick currency in the intellectual circles in this country. After all, Jose Rizal much more deeply analyzed and documented this "damaged culture" in his novels the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The journalist, James Fallows of Atlantic Monthly, however, undoubtedly updated those earlier insights and made them contemporary with "Smokey Mountain" in Tondo. He was the first newspaperman, local or foreign, to study this phenomenon as a cultutral issue and parlayed it into a morbid attraction for tourists eager to explore the seamy side of Filipino society. (Whoever thought of putting Smoky Mountain on the tourist itinerary must be celebrating a streak of sado-masochiam in the national psyche).
The distinctive attribute of our damaged culture, Fallows wrote, was stubborn incapacity to identify with the public interest so that everyone looks out only for himself or his own kin. The result is a dichotomy between the individual and his society, a glaring absence of the sense of community. He found that absence remarkable even by Southeast Asia standards.
The ubiquitous garbage in the metropolitan region, matched by the exponential growth of urban slums, has not created any sense of crisis, as it would elsewhere, perhaps because the leading families nestled in their self-contained enclaves can look out for themselves. The water crisis is for the masses: the rich have their own individual, customized clean wells. There are few public parks. The rich can afford their own private gardens. Why is it that most Filipinos have not been able to expand their loyalty to family and clan to the wider interests of community and nation? Why the notable absence of public spirit? Why has Rizal Park, hitherto a symbol of the nation's capacity for public cleanliness and discipline, now deteriorated into another showcase of civic incompetence and indifference to the common good?
Certainly democracy is not to blame for these shortcomings. Neither hopeless deadlocks, failures of discipline, nor anarchy in the civic realm are the inevitable consequences of choosing the democratic option. Democracy is not synonymous with public apathy. Properly summoned and led, it can generate the leadership and discipline to overcome its own weaknesses or surmount any crises. But whereas the concentrated powers in an authoritarian society can compel obedience, the centrifugal forces of democracy stand in greater need of leadership so that the vast, dynamic and often unruly energies that thrive on pluralism or free choice can be effectively harnessed for the common good.
Today, almost in direct proportion to the sense of drift that pervades government, leadership has become a nagging issue - and some say a disturbing one - in our country.
This is the text as originally published in the magazine.
Copyright 1987 Atlantic Monthly Company
The Atlantic Monthly: November, 1987
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