benign0's blog

New Year toast to the contributors and commentors of Get Real Philippines!

2011-12-31T10:39:00.003+11:00

I'd like to take the time to extend my thanks to the men and women who set apart the Get Real Philippines Network and communities from the rest of the noise of the Philippine National "Debate".

I find that a lot of the really great commentary I’ve seen are from people who have an “outsider’s” perspective. This does not mean, however, that good commentary comes mainly from foreigners or people who reside outside the Philippines. A large number of commenters and contributors here are native Filipinos and residents but somehow still manage to cognitively step back and regard the picture like an outsider — which is remarkable because that (moving from an insiders’ to an outsiders’ perspective) requires a leap of imagination and intuition not normally found in the average Filipino.

To the people who not only seek to lend their thinking and voices to uplifting the national debate, but aspire to do so by applying imagination, originality, and rigour in their thinking, salud! Have a safe and happy New Year!

[NB: This post was inspired by and parts of it lifted from a comment I made on Get Real Post today.]

Kudos to Kanin Club restaurant!

2011-10-10T00:29:00.003+11:00

I'm not a food writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I just have to do a hats-off to this resto Kanin Club. I had the pleasure of having lunch at their Westgate Mall, Alabang branch one weekend and it was by far the best meal I had during my short stay in Manila.

If I recall right, I had a green mango salad (I forget what it is called), some sort of grilled talong (eggplant) thing-a-ma-bob, some tinola (chicken soup), and what looked like a deep-fried tilapia that had been pulled apart into a flower-like sculpture. The turon (deep-fried banana, I think it is) topped by a scoop of mango ice cream was great too.

Just makes me wonder how Filipino food can be packaged so well within the country yet fail to make waves overseas the way Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian and, of course, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese do.

There's a challenge for us.

English vs Tagalog - Manuel Buencamino comes out a chump telling James Soriano off

2011-09-08T15:12:00.004+10:00

As usual, ProPinoy.net resident Mr Important is trying to be cute in his latest blurb where he presumes to tell current hero of the Illustrado class, James Soriano a thing or two. Too bad that thing -- even two of it -- falls short on sense. Nice try, Mr Manuel Buencamino. But do think again.

English is just another means of communication.

That is true -- among a people who have strong traditions of scientific, technological, and commercial achievement. Thus among successful societies, it does not matter whether you speak English, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Swedish, or Singlish. These languages -- and the people who speak them -- are peers among themselves.

But when we add Tagalog into that mix, then it does matter. Because between speaking in Tagalog and speaking in English, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Swedish, or Singlish, clearly the Tagalog speaker will be at a disadvantage -- because Tagalog is incomplete. There is no Tagalog word for efficiency, for example.

Perhaps among German, Japanese, and Chinese speakers, English speakers will be mere peers. But among people who speak Tagalog -- or Cebuano, or Ilocano, or Tausog -- English speakers will always be special, because all things being equal, English speakers will always have first shot at that high-paying white collar job in Makati, will have first shot at that promotion, will have first shot at that junket to Silicon Valley, and will have first shot at that statuesque fair-skinned colegiala sipping a a latte while tapping on her iPhone in Starbucks.

A Hermes handbag will not get you into the salons of the old rich, but then who wants to?

Bottom line is, becoming proficient in the English language will vastly improve most ordinary Filipino schmoes' ability to compete with those privileged enough to have been born to old money. That means that the old Atenistas (sige na nga, and La Sallistas na rin) will, for the first time in the history of this sad nation be given a run for their money by an entire generation of English speakers graduating from that hypothetical Philippine public education system that had finally chucked the old "national language" into the rubbish bin and focused its meagre resources instead to the language of winners.

Indeed, Buencamino inadvertently highlighted the very point I've been making for much of my online career -- that English is a language of privilege and opporunity monopolised by the Philippine elite.

That Buencamino would assume that Soriano's goal is to bandy around his English speaking skills like a Hermes bag-toting socialite wannabe reflects the classic typically-Pinoy underclass mentality. You can't really teach minds infested with underclass mentalities to get the sort of points Soriano makes.

In the Philippines, "we do not print textbooks in our native language."

Absolutely right, Mr Buencamino. So imprisoning the Philippine masses in a language (or whatever local dialects we remain fixated to) that utterly and consistently fails to attract scholarly authors is like double whammying an already wretched majority chunk of our collective intelligence.

With every sentence you bang out of your keyboard, you merely highlight the overall futility of those who continue to prop up a language (or dialects) more associated with underprivilege than with the "pride" in "country" that we imagine it to embody.

We all acquired the belief that "Pilipino" is "inferior" and that it is the "language" of our streets by ourselves, Mr Buencamino

Indeed, it does not take an expert to work out that the poor sods who can't string even a two-word English sentence together to save their mother's life are less likely to work their way out of a mail room than their Arrrneo-accented counterparts in the office.

And, yes...

Unlike Hong Kong people, Filipinos cannot afford to hire college-educated maids who can speak anything other than a domestic language or dialect.

That is because we are a society with an entire way of life built on the back of cheap labour. Every spare hour we have to nurse our lattes to room temperature in the local Starbucks, for example, is made available to us by a poor probinsyana ironing our faux designer clothes in a mosquito-infested corner of our village houses. The trouble with cheap is that we get cheap. And we get cheap, because we deprive an entire sector of our society -- those unfortunate enough to be subject to a public education system that has to allocate precious resources to delivering instruction and material in a no-results language -- the chance to compete by arming them with full access to a language that levels the playing field.

And I can't agree with Mr Buencamino more when he says that...

To speak English and to be learned is not the same thing.

Of course. There is no causal relationship between learnedness and English proficiency. The causal relationship lies between English proficiency and opportunity. English opens doors for its best speakers to a world of achievement in science, technology, and commerce that trades in knowledge overwhelmingly articulated in English. That said, I'll be the first to point out that even among English speakers, there are very very few truly insightful minds among them. But the reality is that even stupid English speakers are more likely to get ahead than smart Tagalog speakers. You need not look further than Philippine politics and our entertainment industry to appreciate the Truth in that.

Women should be allowed to take their place among the boys of the Roman Catholic Church

2011-08-20T22:24:00.003+10:00

In my own personal experience, I have for often observed and compared households and families, mainly around relative degrees of religiosity between husband and wife. Based on my small sample size and my armchair evaluation, I find that in instances where, between husband and wife in a household, it is the man who is more religious, the family as a whole tends to be more stressed or suffer from strained relationships amongst its family members than in households where the husband is less religious compared to the wife.

I've always had this unsubstantiated feeling that there is something profoundly not natural or out of whack about men being overly religious. Then my thoughts extend to instances of atrocities committed throughout history by the zealously religious, and it hit me: Perhaps men have a stronger inclination to pervert religious practice compared to women. Could it be that a fundamental problem with big modern organised religions today has to do with how men overwhelmingly dominate their officiation?

Something that we take for granted in a society such as ours that aspires to join the ranks of the modern world -- one where gender equality is upheld -- is how in our midst is a major institution that continues a medieval tradition of excluding women from key positions within its hierarchy. Indeed, that bastion of Roman Catholicism, the Vatican, described a 2008 move by the Anglican Church to allow women to be ordained bishops as "a step backwards"...

The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity said it had learnt of the Church of England's decision "with regret", and warned that it would have "consequences for future dialogue, which until now has been very fruitful".

"This decision is a breach with the apostolic tradition maintained by all Churches from the first millennium, and for that reason it is a further obstacle for reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England."

That a practice or tradition dates back "from the first millenium" makes said practice necessarily right is typical of the sort of arguments that Church leaders continue to be quite comfy with.

Perhaps allowing women to take their place among the men in the Church hierarchy could present a positive step towards turning the Church into a more humanist institution -- one that behaves less like a warlike boys club and a bit more like an institution that represents the interests of those among us who need that representation the most.

A social experiment to be performed on the commentor known as 'GabbyD'

2011-07-28T10:51:00.003+10:00

Most people in the small subset of the Philippine blogosphere that I have come to know best in the last several years are familiar with a commentor who goes by the name "GabbyD". The following is a little social experiment I proposed to him in reply to the most recent of his typically non-added-value commentary.

Hey I've got an idea, GabbyD. How about we run an online experiment that goes like this:

(1) I put all comments of yours subsequent to this in the Spam queue.

(2) You go off and get up on your soapbox elsewhere (say, somebody else's blog) and announce to the world how the Admins of GR Post don't practice "free speech" here.

(3) We both sit back for the next couple of weeks (or years) and see if:

(3.a) anyone out there actually cares about what you have to say about our Admin practices here; and,
(3.b) anyone of the regular commentors here in GR Post actually miss your presence and clamor for a reinstatement of your comments.

I think the above little experiment will be good for a few laughs.

What do you think?

======
Some small print for you to take note of before you reply:

- "Yes" or "No" will be acceptable responses to the above proposal
- A "Yes" answer will put the above proposed experiment in effect immediately (the period over which it will be effective will be revealed after said experiment takes effect).
- A "No" answer will, effective immediately, subject any further comments you will make to criteria that will be applied in a decision to retain or mark your comments as Spam once in effect. This criteria is applicable only to YOU and subject to arbitrary modification by GR Post admins based entirely on our whim.
- Any other response to this comment (beyond the recommended Yes or No) will be interpreted as a "Yes" (and the proposed experiment subsequently put into effect).

Your move. :D

Abangan ang susunod na kabanata...

A fine specimen of an apologist ranting on behalf of Noynoy Aquino's 2011 SONA

2011-07-27T20:14:00.007+10:00

Poor Manuel Buencamino. The title of his latest article on ProPinoy.net alone already sufficiently describes the sort of attitude that apologists of Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III tend to take. In "A clear message. Period", Buencamino makes his appeal to the public on how they should regard Noynoy's recently concluded State of the Nation Address (SONA) delivered to joint sessions of Congress -- the message is clear, basta it is! End of conversation, right gramps?

More important is the underlying character about the typical Filipino mindset that the following excerpt from Buencamino's article reveals. Referring to critics' generally consistent observations that the SONA lacked vision, Buencamino's apology reads thus:

It’s easy to deliver a SONA with a vision that comes with a blueprint. The world does not lack policy wonks. And President Aquino could have hired a whole school of them to come up with a speech that would give wonks an orgasm. But titillating wonks is not what he set out to do. He was more interested in talking directly to the nation. So he spoke to them in the national language, about things they care about.

Indeed, Filipinos being Filipinos do not care for the future nor embrace it. This has long been evident, even to Jose Rizal himself. This nest of atrophied foresight that is Philippine society is a perfect audience to the highlighting of spilt milk fiesta that is the SONA and the drivel of apologists such as Buencamino.

Interestingly enough, Buencamino included in his article, some links to the SONA "Technical Report" then proceeds to use these to "challenge" his challenged readership:

Now, to those still unable to comprehend what the SONA was all about, I suggest they read the president’s budget message and comb through his budget. It’s the roadmap. I hope they can read maps.

Perhaps to Buencamino's consternation, someone did rise up to that challenge, no less than consultant Ben Kritz who, for his part had come up with a succinct but comprehensive analysis of that "Technical Report" in his piece The Second SONA of Noynoy Aquino: Highlights from the Technical Report which was published before Buencamino's lame SONA apology came out on ProPinoy.net.

To Kritz's comment...

Yeah, it’s a road that leads straight over a cliff, if the enormous increase in the zero-results CCT program (which I hear is riddled with corruption, e.g. employed people on eligible lists, etc.) is any indication. That’s not a program. That’s not a plan. That’s a band-aid solution, and not even a good one at that.

...this is all Buencamino had to say:

Benigno,

Get Real! Pa Ben Kritz-Ben Kritz ka pa diyan. I smell rotten tilapia!

Classy.

One thing's for sure, being accused of being an alter-ego of the esteemed Ben Kritz is something I'll take as a compliment.

There is of course a bigger lesson to be learned in the way Noynoy Aquino apologists such as Manuel Buencamino conduct themselves. It is a lesson that Aquino is slowly learning as he continues to warm the vastly diminished seat he sits on in Malacañang -- that sometimes it is the people who surround you who will ultimately be your undoing.

By the way, Mr Buencamino, here is a comment of mine that remains under moderation on ProPinoy.net as of this writing:

Hey MB, I’ll take you’re [sic] speculating that I am Ben Kritz as a compliment. But do keep on guessing. That’s what two-bit bloggers like you do best.

The about-face of Bagong Alayansang Makabayan (BAYAN)

2011-06-05T23:09:00.006+10:00

Ok, help me figure this out. Militant commie group Bagong Alayansang Makabayan (translated "New Nationalist Alliance" - BAYAN for short) is a top preacher of the doctrine of America as source of all the world's evils. So what's up with this placard?

And since when did "solidarity" with the "jobless of America" coming from anyone in the Philippines for that matter make any sort of sense?

What separates the men from the boys: When people with something critical to say remain silent

2011-05-27T23:36:00.006+10:00

Every now and then I get news about the who's-who (and some who think they are a who who's a who) of various message forums and online groups "grumbling" about the success of GRP, its network of bloggers, and its community of critical no-nonsense thinkers who've gravitated around its cutting-edge insight, and the profile we've so far built on the Net. And then I check out the comment threads of Get Real Post and wonder...

If there are so many of these yahoos who supposedly beg to differ to the ideas we put on the table to be subject to public scrutiny, the question to ask is: Where are the comments that aim to challenge these views?

Being surrounded by people who agree with me all the time is starting to get boring.

But then I recall the way Filipinos tend to apply a passive-aggressive approach to dealing with most in-your-face challenges and I realise, that this is all really not very surprising. It's one thing to grumble amongst one another. But what separates the men from the boys is:

(1) the ability to clearly articulate the specific points around which they beg to differ;

(2) the courage to express this view in territory outside of their comfort zone; and,

(3) the stability and presence of mind to remain consistent in the way they apply their thinking faculties in the course of the ensuing discussion.

Of course, these are Filipinos we are dealing with -- a people who time and again have demonstrated a consistent inability to think their way out of a paper bag. So I suppose it is a bit of a pointless exercise to expect much in the way of any sort of sporting challenge coming from rabble who spend their days in online love-ins amongst other like-minded folk baking their inbred ideas.

Tough luck! You guys know where to find Get Real Post. Simply click here.

GetRealPhilippines.com audience base: most highly-educated among Filipino collective blogs!

2011-05-26T10:38:00.009+10:00

After just three months online newly-equipped with its collective blog, Get Real Post, it is interesting how GetRealPhilippines.com now holds third place in world traffic rankings among the top six known (to me) Filipino collective blogs focused on politics and social issues. This is according to Alexa.com data.

Here are the rankings as of the 26th May 2011:

(1) DefinitelyFilipino.com (139,256)
(2) AntiPinoy.com (236,007)
(3) GetRealPhilippines.com (465,564)
(4) BlogWatch.tv (477,853)
(5) FilipinoFreethinkers.org (638,635)
(6) ProPinoy.net (662,685)

As the sun sets on some older past-use-by-date blogs, GetRealPhilippines.com shines through like the true Asian Tiger that the Philippines could have been!

* * *

More interesting even is the audience profile of each...

GetRealPhilippines.com
Based on internet averages, getrealphilippines.com is visited more frequently by males who are in the age range 35-44 and are graduate school educated.

AntiPinoy.com
Based on internet averages, antipinoy.com is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range 35-44, have no children, are college educated and browse this site from home.

ProPinoy.net
Compared with the overall internet population, this site's users are disproportionately female, and they are disproportionately low-income college graduates between the ages of 35 and 55 who browse from home

DefinitelyFilipino.com
Based on internet averages, definitelyfilipino.com is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range 45-54, have children, are college educated and browse this site from home.

FilipinoFreethinkers.org
Based on internet averages, filipinofreethinkers.org is visited more frequently by users who are in the age range 35-44, are college educated and browse this site from home.

BlogWatch.tv
Based on internet averages, blogwatch.tv is visited more frequently by females who are in the age range 35-44, have children, are college educated and browse this site from home.

Quite revealing indeed.

* * *

GetRealPhilippines.com, its blogging arm Get Real Post, and its broader network of Certified GetRealist Bloggers™ towers above all as the Philippines' most insightful, informative, and original trove of human knowledge and ideas. Don't miss out! Sign up to our main subscription channels:

Guaranteed: You'll be in brilliant company!

Bandwagon Commentators, Critical Commentators and the Philippine National 'debate'

2011-05-20T12:00:00.004+10:00

In the Philippine National "Debate", I've observed two general types of participants which I've classified under two labels -- (1) bandwagon commentators and (2) critical commentators. Perhaps it might be a worthwhile exercise to classify noted participants in the Philippine National "debate" into these two labeled buckets. Labeling after all is a natural inclination of the human mind, and perhaps when we use a cognitive device that the average person can relate to, we can get a better understanding of what separates the men from the boys in the world of "debate."

Bandwagon Commentators (BC's) are easily spotted. They make liberal use of the buzzwords and jargon of the day, quote lots of words ending in "ism", label people using words ending in "ist", and make repetitive use of slogans and taglines.

The discourse of true Critical Commentators (CC's), on the other hand, is marked by a complete aversion to jargon and textbook-ese. They are able to explain the most complex concepts using everyday words. In fact they are so comfortable with this rare skill that they exhibit unparalleled patience, consistency, and level-headedness when explaining their thoughts even to the uninformed (at least those who have a genuine interest in enlightening or educating themselves). Indeed, people like Stephen Hawking, Douglas Hofstadter and the late Carl Sagan who possessed vast intellects and whose breadth of knowledge and insight extends far beyond the grasp of at least 99 percent of humanity made names for themselves explaining stuff to ordinary people.

And that is what separates the men (the CC's) from the little boys (the BC's). There is smart (merely knowing) and there is really smart (knowing and being able to disseminate this knowledge). The biggest scholastic tragedy -- and waste of education expenditure -- is most evident in highly-educated people whose minds lie imprisoned by their own education.

Manuel Buencamino and other Noynoy Aquino apologists on the loose!

2011-05-04T11:17:00.006+10:00

Seems like self-described political expert Manuel Buencamino focused on the form rather than the substance of what "Senator" Juan Miguel Zubiri had to say about President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's non-performance over the last nine months of his presidency. Quoting Zubiri, thus...

Last Easter, the man occupying the Senate seat won by Koko Pimentel, expressed disappointment with President Aquino.
“The President is a friend, but he has no clear vision for our country. He has no 2020 agenda. FVR had a Philippines 2000, while P-Noy has none, not even for 2015… I support his anti-corruption, but after that what? What else is new?” said “Senator” Juan Miguel Zubiri.

... Buencamino then proceeded to debunk the myth of former President Fidel Ramos's "Philippines 2000" dismissing it as a mere "slogan".

Then he goes off on a grinding itemisation of various "initiatives" that Noynoy is supposedly involved in as well as a debunking of some of Zubiri's "advice", including:

* * *

(1) Noynoy's "fight against corruption"

President Aquino’s anti-corruption campaign is not only about going after plunderers, election cheats, and human rights violators from the previous administration. It is also about eradicating the climate of impunity where vermin thrived and prospered. It is about bringing back a sense of shame, propriety, and delicadeza.

(2) Zubiri's "unsolicited advice on oil price increases"

going full blast on bio-fuels production in a country with very limited space to plant and an exploding population that needs to be fed is not very sensible. It would make more sense to revive the slogan made famous during martial law, “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, bisikleta ang kailangan.”

(3) Zubiri's "proposal to eliminate the VAT on oil"

Subsidies always sound good. However, the revenue gap created by the loss of 12 percent in oil VAT, a very substantial amount, must be covered. There is no going around it. The question then is should the government impose new taxes or introduce cuts in the budget or do a combination of both in order to “pay” for the 12 percent fuel subsidy?

* * *

All makes for a good old-fashioned Pinoy style case of expert grandstanding. But then synthesise all that and what have you got? One citation of a cliché inititative that every President and his dog sloganeered about during their campaign and two counter-arguments against Zubiri's "suggestions".

But as to the whole original point of "Senator" Zubiri's musings; that is,

The mystery of the postulated existence of Noynoy's vision for the Philippines

Seems like even Buencamino is left scratching his pointed head when it comes to that question.

Perhaps we should ask Mr Buencamino or perhaps everyone out there who continue to renew their bizarre membership in the Cult of Noynoy Apologism the same question again at some future date.

A chat with Ayn Rand fan and objectivism advocate Froilan Vincent

2011-04-24T02:56:00.005+10:00

I had a nice chat with Ayn Rand online fan Froilan Vincent on the blog post "An advice to a dimwit" [sic] which he authored on his Randroid site Vincenton Post. Unfortunately much of the record of this revealing chat had been deleted from public eyes by Mr Vincent. Forunately I discovered that simply clicking on the "Back" button on my browser brought up cached pages of the site with the original text still on the comment submission form of the site. I thought I'd share these gems for those who are up for a bit of a laugh.

Here is the comment I submitted that started it all:

By the way, check out my latest masterpiece: "The ultimate Easter reflection question: Why would the ‘Son of God’ die for us?"

Excerpt:
For that matter, are there absolutes, to begin with? To postulate absolutes even using the majesty of our known science and mathematics still makes said postulated absolute, itself, a mere notion framed by the very human constructs (albeit possessing far more rigour than our natural intuition) in our science and mathematics.

Read the full article here!

Oks ba? You don't know me that well. Yet. Ask around. You'll most likely find out who I am -- and how I invented trolling ten years ago. :p

One of my fans even dedicated a whole blogspot site to me. Check it out right here. And you know what the even bigger gag is? I've even been an Ayn Rand fan myself once -- that is until I realised that most of her followers were brain-dead wannabes like you. Kinda ruined it for me. I guess I have people like you to thank for that.

Ironic, isn't it? Then again, irony tends to fly over the heads of people such as yourself. :D

But then the above comment (which I did give a bit of effort to typing out, dang!) disappeared from the moderation queue. The text that follows (in italics) are all my words typed into Vincent Post's comment box and submitted as comments. They appeared for a while and were all eventually deleted.

* * *

Tsk tsk. Deleted my under moderation comment, did you? What's the matter, can't handle a humble ex-troll like me? As I said earlier. I invented trolling ten years ago. Indeed, you can check out my proud track record on PinoyExchange right here.

I always knew there was something about the old days I kinda missed when I suddenly found myself being regarded in the Pinoy blogosphere as a "respectable" blogger. And I gotta admit, dude, you bring out the good ol' days of happy-go-lucky trolling. Best part of it is that because you are a relative nobody in Da Pinoy blogosphere, it's just you and me here, kid. Perhaps you, me, and the handful of losers who come to read your drivel every now and then.

Then again, too bad you are into deleting comments that kinda don't jive with your stunted world view. You're missing half your life not engaging in a brilliant guy like me. Too bad. :D

Here's Vincent Post explaining his actions in his usual insightful form:

@ Dimwit benign0:

I deleted your comments. Now that’s absolute. They’re gone. That’s also my absolute right because my right is not limited by anything whatsoever- and this blogsite is my private property… Let’s see if you can send the thought-control and anti-free speech police to arrest me. Can you? Why? Because I never violated any of your crappy right! Do you understand that concept? You can howl all you can. You can even leap to your death and the result would be ABSOLUTE: dead or alive! ;-) [permalink]

No problemo. I really don't have any interest in having my comments retained here. After all, who's gonna read them? Oh yeah, just you, and the handful of losers who visit your site to read your drivel. But to me, that['s] all that matters. I really want you to get to know me a bit better. An ex-Randroid talking to a current Randroid. O di ba? You should write a blog about our little exchange someday. It'll be your best shot at a hit which your blog seems to be starved for. Imagine wannabe nobody Vincent Post being given the time of day by A-List Blogger benign0. That should get a bit of you flagging ego a bit of a boost.

Hey wait. since you deleted my pervious comment, I forgot to remind you of my most recent and, as usual, brilliant piece on GR Post.

Check it out here:

http://getrealphilippines.com/blog/2011/04/the-ultimate-easter-reflection-question-why-would-the-son-of-god-die-for-us/

Oh yeah, and I know now why my comment was put under moderation. It's because I included more than one hyperlink in the comment. I guess that simply means I will have to spread out the other stuff I feel like telling you across several comments. Here i will include this gem of a link:

http://benign0.blogspot.com/

It is a blogspot site put up by one of the ex-moderators of one of the forums I used to hang out in back in the good ol' days when I was a nasty little troll. Kinda flattering, I must admit. But then that kinda left the "bengin0" name beyond my reach as far as blogspot is concerned. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

So maybe think twice about deleting my comments. Or at least save them in a Notepad file (you're a PC user, right? I'll bet you're even one of those losers who still use Internet Explorer) before you delete them. It'll be great material for your next article which I look forward to read.

Tsk tsk [after yet another comment deleted]. Is there such a thing as an overheated "delete" button? You're certainly in the mood to overwork that poor Wordpress functionality. I'll tell you what, it's a bit late already so I might give you and your "Delete" button a bit of a break. You disappoint me though. After all that pathetic effort getting everyone to come visit your site, a rockstar of Da Pinoy blogosphere comes visiting and the best you can do is delete his comments. Tsk tsk. Where's that good ol' Pinoy hospitality. Gen Y nga naman talaga. Talk about generation-wide attention deficit disorder.

* * *

A bit of fun for the night and a journey to a not-so-distant but definitely a nostalgic past for me. A fleeting opportunity to re-visit my roots.

A demonstration of the Filipino's Heritage of Smallness at work

2011-04-21T22:13:00.013+10:00

Quibbling on terminology. The hallmark of small minds. It's like how the Law and its letter attempts to articulate a society's ethical framework. In the process of doing that, it creates an entire industry of professionals who are schooled for years to know the Law to the letter. The question however is this:

Does knowing the letter of the Law necessarily make one a proponent of its spirit?

Consider then that the average Filipino politician -- yes, the very Filipinos that Filipinos love to hate -- is a lawyer. Indeed, the most hated politician in Philippine history, and the one most Filipinos blame for what the Philippines had become -- the late former President Ferdinand Marcos -- is himself a top graduate of the prestigious University of the Philippines Law School. He is, as such, a man who knows the Law far better than most Filipinos. Yet can it be said that Marcos takes to heart the spirit of this Law he knows so well?

Over at the AP Crowd (a Facebook group populated by people who see themselves as proponents of the "Anti-Pinoy" spirit), an article shared from the Get Real Post, Ilda's seminal "Do Filipinos know how to use their freedom of speech?", true to the form of most Get Real Philippines material makes waves -- to the tune of 277 comments as of this writing. The "debate" however, revolves around a quibbling over terminology.

Trouble is, to reach a conceptual understanding and appreciation for deeper meaning, one needs to transcend words. It is much the same way that the Law itself can be made as a tool for delivering justice -- or injustice -- by simply limiting a "debate" to an evaluaion of the Law's letter. That is in fact what a lawyer is trained to be nowadays -- someone whose cleverness is channeled towards finding creative means to subvert and pervert the letter of the Law to suit his or her clients' agendas; or in the case of lawyer-politicians his or her party's (or in most cases in the Philippines, personal) political objectives.

Not surprising then that in a society ruled by lawyers (people who make a living focusing on its letter, specifically) -- and not just lawyers but Filipino lawyers -- justice and other nice things that would normally constitute the whole point of the Law -- remain paralysed and dysfunctional. Indeed, people who cannot get past words and the literal are the ones that tend to have minds imprisoned by dogma and flawed systems of thinking.

So in a typical legal battle (or a battle that focus on letters rather than concepts and ideas), the whole point that would have been highlighted by bigger minds becomes lost in a morass of noise swirling around pathetic quibbles over terminology.

But then such is the case in a society that is populated by people who harbour small minds between their ears. They deserved to be ruled by lawyers and not by the Law and its true spirit (much the same way as religion rather than spirituality rules in most backward primitivist societies).

"In Japan there are very few lawyers and the codes are mostly unwritten, but they are binding, nonetheless."
- Greg Sheridan, Asian Values Western Dreams

And that difference is what sets apart truly great societies -- and truly great people -- from the merely average and, worse, the chronically mediocre.

Freedom of speech is a 'right': Says WHO exactly?

2011-04-21T10:08:00.005+10:00

A notion that needs to be challenged: that "freedom of speech" is a "right"? Where exactly did that notion come from? That's up there with the notion that everyone has the "right" to pursue "happiness". Is it now? Is everyone entitled to be "happy"? Both of those notions are enshrined in Western philosophy. But just because they are such does not make them absolutes in the natural scheme of things. Both of these are human constructs and it just so happens that we live in societies that have woven these notions into the very fabric of their thinking.

No doubt to be "free" and "happy" are nice things to have. But to see them as "rights" is an artificial notion ingrained in our heads by generations of ambient messages -- the victory of the "allies" in World War II, the Cold War, wars against "terror" and stuff like that. All noble ideals of course. But artificial constructs just the same. By saying these are absolutes, people frame their thinking using a very small subset of humanity's vast range of philosophies (in the process progressively imprisoning themsleves into ever convoluted dogmatic frameworks). Western philosophy just happens to be the philosophy we live by. But that does not necessarily mean it is the only one.

So let us all think carefully before we make any assertions about any "absolutes". Doing so is the height of intellectual hubris and the mark of wannabe "philosophers" who have swallowed other people's thinking right off the shelf hook line and sinker.

[This post is based on a comment made in the article "Do Filipinos know how to use their freedom of speech?" published on Get Real Post.]

It seemed like a good idea at the time

2011-04-11T20:51:00.004+10:00

Famous last words: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." How many times have we heard those words? We recall harbouring ideas and notions in our minds and expressing these in words that go on to sound ridiculous in hindsight. Tragic that for many of us, wisdom usually comes when it is most useless -- when it is too late.

Fueled by powerful emotions -- pride, self importance, misplaced senses of entitlement, feelings of invincibility, bloated estimations of self-worth -- we launch into tirades, fly into rages, surrender to sudden impulses, and go for broke. We then imagine that out of such a frenzy of "action" we will be greeted by a chorus of applause and accolades from an imagined throng of watching admirers.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately the aftermath of such sweet surrenders reveals something else in most cases: reality. The reality of our smallness, our averageness, our inconsequentiality, and our replaceabilty relative to what we made ourselves out to be in surrendering to our hubris.

While it is true that an ability to reflect on events past is a virtue, I believe what sets apart the truly insightful is the ability to reflect upon future consequences of one's present actions. Perhaps some may be gifted with such an ability and enjoy the benefit of going through life guided by theory and first principles alone, while others are doomed to learn primarily from experience and be motivated by memories of past experiences that stung them. Unfortunately learning from experience is premised on surviving said experience from which one derives that hard lesson. Not too many people are that lucky.

How easy it is for people to lose touch with reality

2011-04-04T17:06:00.007+10:00

Do we really experience reality? Think about it. Where does our personal concept of reality really exist? We think that we are in touch with our surroundings through our senses. That is of course true -- up to a point. Without minds that have been honed by years of experience turning nerve and neural signals (generated by our thought processes and our five senses whenever these capture external stimuli; i.e., light, vibration, texture, etc.) into mental constructs, there would be no experience as we, well, experience it now. Indeed, our minds piece together mental models of the world based on how it interprets data, and we "experience" those models as proxies of the real world.

In actual fact, the real first-hand world is an alien one. The "real world" that lies just outside our senses is a chaotic jumble of electromagnetic radiation, physical oscillations, and chemical processes. Our eyes take in only a narrow band of the ambient radiation, the part of it we call "visible light"; our ears collect vibrations within the range of 20,000 Hz to 20 Hz, what we call the "audible range". And as far as touching and tasting goes, well, we are pretty much aware of what we can and cannot (or rather should and should not) touch and taste.

Our "world" as we experience it is no more than a construct of our minds. The world is out there, of course. But we experience it through our mind's simulations which are based on a very tiny subset of the total range of signals that blanket this world. Anyone who's experienced vivid dreams knows only too well how exceedingly easy it is for us to lose touch of what is real. Our mind can quite easily make us believe what it wants us to believe -- and indeed it does, both during and after our waking hours.

Scary, isn't it?

It is precisely this scariness that makes a whole genre of movies that includes such seminal hits as Total Recall, The Matrix, and Inception resonate across cultures. These films in their different brilliant styles remind us of how precariously tethered our minds are to "reality".

Perhaps it is because our brains are such finely-tuned instruments of self-delusion that we find keeping ourselves in touch with reality such a conscious effort. Often we spend an entire lifetime constructing a belief system around ourselves then progressively cocoon ourselves within its comfy confines. Perhaps we so pride ourselves in how carefully-crafted these belief systems are that our internal conversations get less and less anchored on external input and more and more looped into what these beliefs tell us from the inside.

Consider that for most of the history of modern humans, people deferred to beliefs as the fixed given and their own observations as the variable. If one's belief is that there are elves and fairies, then one is most likely inclined to "see" (or perceive) elves and fairies in their surroundings every now and then. Such people see "miracles" where there is only an explainable natural process and "answered prayers" where there is only a statistically probable (or at least possible) event.

The dawn of the scientific method which occurred relatively recently (after tens of thousands of years of the earlier) reversed all that. With the advent of science came the relegation of beliefs (now known as theories and hypotheses) to being the variables of the thinking equation and the results of observation and experimentation as the constants. For many of the most educated among us today, theories stand as sound for as long as the empirical evidence supports it -- a way of thinking that is largely alien to the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived.

Application of the scientific method need not be confined to laboratories or the halls of technical and scientific institutes. The Method can be applied even to one's personal life by routinely asking one's self:

Am I applying sound beliefs when regarding my world, my actions, and my relationships with other people?

Perhaps the day we more consciously start applying a bit of empiricism in the way we conduct our personal affairs is the day we become a truly enlightened and insightful people. Perhaps it is time that we test for soundness the beliefs that we live by.

The opportunities we miss as a result of a failure to imagine

2011-04-01T23:24:00.005+11:00

There are many artifacts, ideas, and beliefs in our lives that hang on to us with emotional hooks. Often these hooks remain securely fastened to our psyche even as the sense of their continued presence in our lives begins to wane. Recall how you would unhook a clothes hanger from your closet rack. The act of unhooking something requires one to first work against gravity to clear the hook from the object you want to move it away from. Some of us fail or wait an entire lifetime before that small, but perhaps uncomfortable step is taken. Others are lucky enough (or have the presence of mind) to recognise every opportunity to unhook themselves from old baggage as soon as these present themselves.

Travel light and shed unnecessary baggage along the way.

Every piece of dead weight baggage shed represents an embarkation on a new phase of our personal journeys with a renewed vigor fueled by a new-found lightness of being. Even outlook and perspective are inclined to change in a snap as soon as we are able to view the world undistracted by the effort of carrying around stuff we had recently discarded. We then wonder why we had not let go sooner and moved on faster. Things always seem clearer in retrospect.

The most tangible benefit comes in the form of a more robust appreciation of your true value in a way that is suddenly independent of this baggage you once thought was an essential component of your value proposition to society. To be able to find value in one's self and add value to others (or in a more general sense) without the overhead of unnecessary complication levied by all sorts of stuff is liberating to say the least.

It's as easy as focusing more on imagining the future.

What happens next after the initial heave to clear a hook from an object it is hanging from?

Perhaps we instead fixate upon the effort of that initial heave we need to take. That fixation is often caused by a failure to imagine the bigger world we are free to explore once unhooked.

Get Real Post: The official blog of Get Real Philippines is online!

2011-03-23T06:32:00.007+11:00

Get Real Post is now online! This is the forum where issues will be discussed from well-considered perspectives. Check it out right here, or logon with the following URL:

GetRealPhilippines.com/Blog

The site is a Wordpress installation within the GetRealPhilippines.com domain and currently makes use of the Magazine Basic theme with a bit of customisation applied to the CSS code.

I've since re-named this blog (the one you are reading now) "benign0's blog" and I will continue to write here about stuff that comes to my mind every now and then. Happy reading and let's welcome Get Real Post to the GRP Network!

Filipinos cannot progress if they cannot follow even simple guidelines

2011-03-20T17:06:00.007+11:00

A noted blog commentator once made an assertion that the Philippines will never be a great nation unless Filipinos learn to live by the principle of the "rule of law". Indeed, some people even insist that none of the calls by certain sectors of Philippine society for a system change like a shift from a Presidential to a Parliamentary system or even constitutional amendments will work to uplift the status of the nation because Filipinos simply cannot follow the "rule of law."

It is quite certain that the success of any nation depends on the character of the head of state and the character of the people in general. A strong leader will put the interest of the nation first before anything else. A strong leader supported by strong institutions can work towards achieving social and economic stability for the people.

However, a weak leader in a country like the Philippines, which has weak institutions will tend to succumb to the world-renowned Filipino "padrino" system -- a system that trumps any other system in place. Worse, such a leader will mask his weakness or understanding of the law by acting like he is above the law.

A weak leader, whether he is leading a country or a small community tends to let praises or expressions of adoration from the public get to his head. Because he is easily impressed by such accolades, he also tends to become arrogant and will see criticism of him as a mere non-constructive annoyance. Such a leader will not work towards unity and harmony in Philippine society. Unfortunately, weak systems tend to harbor weak leaders.

What is with Filipinos and following the rule of law?

There is very little evidence that Filipinos are capable of living by the "rule of law". The society is quite extraordinary in the sense that simple rules and regulations whether on the road or in the work place are for the most part ignored. This is because each individual has this baseless sense of being more important than everybody else. It is why you see people cutting you off on highway lanes on the road or pushing their way in lines ahead of the rest in a queue. In other words, Filipinos in general tend to put their own interest first before other people.

As a blogger, I quite often come across commentators who cannot even follow simple commenting guidelines. There are some participants in the blogosphere who constantly violate the guidelines by consistently writing obscenities and foul language on forums just to give the impression that they are above the guidelines. The funny thing is, being moderated does not even stop them from misbehaving. They even cry foul for being moderated instead of conforming to the guidelines.

This brings us to another world-renowned Filipino mentality -- the "victim" mentality. Filipinos are good at playing the "victim card" because they are very sensitive and emotional people. They play the victim card in front of the public to get as much attention as possible. Filipinos always try to get around following any rules and regulations or even simple guidelines by appealing to emotion.

Filipino victim mentality was quite evident in the case of a group of nurses in the US who reportedly filed a discrimination complaint when their employer called their attention for speaking too much in their native Tagalog at work. Victim mentality was also quite evident in the way the Philippine government tried to intervene and stop the execution of three drug mules that were sentenced to death in China for violating their anti-drug rule. Likewise, victim mentality is definitely evident in the way the incumbent President, Noynoy Aquino (PNoy) cries foul whenever he is criticized for decisions that were obviously not thought through very well.

It is quite interesting to note that some Filipinos would rather act like idiots than follow the rules. They always want to find an easy way out of a situation. They want to make uncomplicated things complicated. This brings us to another world-renowned Filipino trait: "lack of discipline."

Filipinos in general are incapable of any form of discipline because they focus more on form rather than substance. In short, they want to stand out. They lack the discipline to engage in discussions in a civilized way and lack the discipline to not turn a public forum into a circus. This is why issues do not get resolved. This is a consistent observation -- from every Senate inquiry being broadcast to the Filipino public down to the most benign discussions in the blogosphere, Filipinos love honking their horns.

Worse, Filipinos in general feel a strong sense of entitlement to relax or "chill-out" even when there is still so much to do to move the country forward. Instead of discussing solutions seriously and in detail during their spare time, Filipinos would rather spend it fooling around -- never mind that societies from great nations like China, Japan and South Korea have historically shown that being more serious and devoting more of their time to solving problems yields better results in the long term.

From the top guys and gals sitting behind desks at the Presidential office down to the tricycle driver down the road, everyone just wants to have "fun" in the Philippines first before tackling the problems of the land in a more serious manner. You can be forgiven for thinking that one hit wonder Wang Chung probably wrote the song "Everybody have fun tonight" for Filipinos. It can absolutely boggle the mind to wonder why Filipinos cannot limit switching to party mode when they are at an actual party.

As discussed in my previous article, Filipinos are proud of being a happy-go-lucky society and make it a point to show the rest of the world that they are coping with smiling faces despite the dire circumstances they face. This mentality shows that Filipinos are satisfied with mediocrity and find striving for excellence too daunting. A few remaining Filipinos who want to engage in a more serious discussions are even labeled "kill-joy" or "librarians." Aside from their penchant for bullying when others don't engage in "pakikisama," Filipinos indeed, have a tendency to discriminate against more sober ways of tackling solutions.

Unfortunately, a 90 year old study by psychologist Dr Leslie Martin and his colleagues in California suggested that "too much of a sense that everything will be fine can be dangerous because it can lead one to be careless about things that are important to long life." Likewise, the study also showed that those who are always optimistic take more gambles with their health. They were more likely to drink, smoke and eat badly, which is a typical characteristic of a Filipino. While prudent and persistent individuals are more cautious with their health and overall wellbeing – characteristics that are less likely to be found in Filipinos.

Filipinos have so much to learn from the Japanese. Despite the devastation that the people of Japan experienced due to the magnitude 8.9 earthquake that hit country and the killer tsunami that followed immediately after, people around the world admired the stoicism and orderly reaction of the Japanese. People in most societies would have found themselves wailing in misery and chaos after such destruction.

Maia Szalavitz in an article she wrote for TIME magazine aptly described how it works for the Japanese – they follow the belief that "others are at least on par with the self, if not more important." Here's an excerpt:

"In restaurants, you never pour your own sake, you have to notice whose glass is empty and you serve them. It's these little rituals [that have prepared them for this crisis] so that even if you have one bowl of rice, you share it with a stranger.

The wonderful thing about the Japanese is that they are presenting an example of the pro-social power of the group. The group as a whole is saying explicitly or implicitly, this is what we do: no looting, no horn honking even if you're in a 12 mile traffic jam, no complaining. [CNN's] Anderson Cooper said he'd never seen such calm in the face of such adversity."

Not that Filipinos need copy what the Japanese do to a tee, but the most interesting thing to note about societies like Japan is that nobody has the desire to grandstand. Individuals do not want to show that they are more important than everybody else. This is in stark contrast to people in societies like the Philippines where people in general want to be the "star." And this is the reason why some Filipinos think that they are above the "law" or above even just simple "guidelines."

Discipline should be inculcated at an early age. If people are not taught how to follow rules and regulations when they are still young, they will be shocked to realize once they enter the "adult" world that they will have a hard time coping with life if they keep deviating from the rules that put order in society. Which is what is happening to most Filipinos now.

A scenario where Filipinos can aspire to world domination

2011-03-19T18:44:00.007+11:00

Our minds are wired by millions of years of evolution to react to vermin with very primal -- often reflexive -- responses. Not only do we recoil in horror at the sight of decomposing biological matter our other senses are exquisitely attuned to detecting evidence of vermin infestation -- the smell of rotting flesh elicits the gagging sensation, bitter tastes repel us, touching something slimy or squishy disgusts us. All of the chemical agents that oppress our senses are the products of decomposition caused by vermin (of both the microbial and multi-celled varieties).

Vermin outnumber humans in the millions to one. They infest every nook and cranny of every form and aspect of human habitation. Some of them are essential to our survival -- they aid digestion and decompose our toxic waste products into forms that can be recycled by natural processes. Others pose immediate threats to us. They carry disease and transmit them to us. Many feed on and, in so doing, degrade our food. Still others ruin what we build simply by making their homes within them. As such we are not only repelled or offended by evidence of their work, we also directly find their existence disturbing if not objectionable.

Whether their contribution to human interests is a plus or minus, vermin have one thing in common. They are alien to us. In short, nature has ingrained in our psyche a deep instinct to find discomfort in both direct and indirect evidence of alien habitation within our personal spaces.

In this way, I contextualise what was initially something vaguely disturbing about the following snippet coming from Roberto de Ocampo's recent article on the Inquirer.net, "The Chosen People"...

Great masses of Filipinos cover the entire park of Central Hong Kong and the famed Spanish steps in Rome every Sunday.

Perhaps, Filipinos are indeed the "Chosen People" as de Ocampo asserts. Our ability to multiply at rates far beyond replacement levels, makes us collectively immune to practically anything that nature might throw at us.

Our fragility as a species has supposedly come to light in the aftermath of a raft of recent disasters -- the earthquakes and floods that devastated Christchurch in New Zealand, large swaths of coastal and inland towns and cities in Queensland, Australia, and most recently Japan. Less tangible but even more far reaching are the impacts to entire ways of life by financial collapses, and the catastrophes (both immediate and drawn-out) caused by our ever-growing demand for energy-dense fuels like petroleum and radioactive minerals. But this "fragility" is in the context of the large-scale structures of civilisation advanced societies had built -- complex supply chains, vast economic interdependencies, and intricate works of engineering are all designed under the premise of acceptable risk. The combination of factors that contributed to the failure of the cooling systems in the nuclear facilities currently in peril in Japan was deemed a highly unlikely scenario at a time these systems were designed. Financial systems operate under the dubious premise of limitless "growth" deemed "likely" by "economists".

Filipinos on the other hand lack any such systems and any such structures at the scale found in advanced societies like Japan. Tens of thousands of Filipino lives are needlessly lost and millions wasted in impoverishment every year because of a lack of these advanced structures of civilisation. Yet, as de Ocampo observes, the prospect of Filipinos engulfing the planet with our sheer numbers is not such a farfetched scenario. From a purely Darwinian perspective, we can be considered to be a successful strain of humans in the same way that a relatively mindless mass of microbes can bring an elephant to its grave.

Observes de Ocampo further...

The 2011 fertility rate estimate for Spain is 1.47, Italy 1.39, UK 1.91, France 1.96 and Germany 1.41, to name a select few. The average fertility rate of all Western Europe is about 1.5. In short, these nations are either on are perilously close to what population experts call an irreversible demographic decline. To put it more starkly, for example, by 2020 (or just nine years from now) more than half of all births in a country like, say, the Netherlands (1.66 fertility rate) will be of non-European Dutch origin. Furthermore, with the birth rate dropping below replacement, the population of such countries ages and the problems facing an aging population are numerous and startling enough to deserve a separate treatise.

Humans will persist. Perhaps not in the form Western-set standards of civilised living currently describe. But we as a species will probably be around for a long time, maybe even in a post-technological world. Such will be a world where Filipinos will have a legitimate claim to world domination.

Nuclear energy: too hot to handle for "macho" Filipinos

2011-03-17T11:19:00.009+11:00

In the aftermath of the 11th March super-earthquake that devastated Japan and caused a health and environmental crisis after damaged nuclear reactors started releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere, the Philippines remains mired in a too-little-too-late soul searching along two key areas: (1) its capability to respond in the event of a similar-sized disaster hitting its main population centres, and (2) the future of its nuclear energy program.

When one considers how Filipinos failed to learn anything from a wealth of lessons coming from past natural and man-made disasters that have hit the Philippines over the last 50 years it becomes a safe bet that Filipinos will not follow through on any (if any) outcome coming from the first soul-searching exercise. As for the second, there seems to be no evidence of any serious effort to find alternative sources of energy beyond importing more oil from a bunch of unstable Arab kingdoms. With any further will to even explore development of nuclear energy in the Philippines all but crushed, Filipinos are most likely to defer back to their renowned cultural comfort zones bahala na ("come what may") and pwede na yan ("that'll do").

And yet, despite Filipinos' strong tradition of complacency, low-thinking-applied reaction is the order of the day amongst a substance-starved population. The Inquirer editor calls it a "history of overreaction"...

In the same way that the first Persian Gulf war in 1991 led anxious Filipinos, thousands of miles away from any possible danger, to empty grocery shelves, anxious Filipinos have been passing improbable rumors about radiation from Japan reaching Philippine shores. Only this time, the misinformation multiplied at the speed of SMS.

Some text messages contained suggested remedies to use in case of radiation, such as the popular Betadine. Some purported to quote news organizations, such as the BBC. Some even pinpointed the time the first wave of radiation would arrive: 4 p.m.

Of course, this is not surprising for a supposedly 21st Century society living in a world of unprecedented access to information that has a renowned track record of deferring their sensibilities to superstition, religious dogma, the uninformed edicts of pastors and clerics, grandstanding politicians, street mobs, and "social media" chatter.

Columnist Randy David in a particularly brilliant burst of insight (just incrementally beyond his usual brilliant form) hits the nail on the head as far as pinpointing the stark difference in demeanor between substance-deficited societies like the Philippines and all-around wealthy ones like Japan:

Japan, a big user and producer of nuclear plants, became a leader in the industry—an amazing achievement for a nation that had been traumatized by the destructive application of nuclear power in wartime.

In short, a nation that had been history's first and so far only targetted victim of a premeditated nuclear bombardment simply went on to develop a vast nuclear energy generation capability regardless.

That puts a bit of context behind the laughable sight of Filipinos running around squealing and shrieking over rumours of radioactive apocalypse. Japan's ability to look to the future with unmatched lucidity even as it faces the challenge of coming to terms with the immense tragedy of today is a bright beacon of courage and grace shining upon all of humanity. Certainly it is a grace that puts Filipinos' utter lack of grace in perspective. But I prefer to defer yet again to Mr David's words to highlight this point...

Risk-taking is a feature of modern societies. Traditional societies, in contrast, tend to be too intimidated by life’s many dangers—i.e., to losses due to external forces—as to be inclined to forgo many opportunities. In our case, this conservative attitude seemed to be changing, albeit slowly. But, after Fukushima, one doubts very much if Filipinos would be willing to even listen to former Rep. Mark Cojuangco passionately argue the case for the activation of the mothballed [Bataan Nuclear Power Plant].

Filipinos, in all ironies, are renowned for their noisy and colourful bravado. Everything from the Philippine National "Debate" down to idle alcohol-fuelled discussion in beer houses is dominated by lots of banter about imagined conquests, self-described virility, and loud use of big words -- perhaps to mask an inner flaccidity, profound insecurity over a vast wasteland where results should have been, and a penchant for shrieky national panic attacks -- all evidence of a hopelessly virulent adolescent mind that defies all national efforts to outgrow it.

Contrast this with Japan where clean lines, sober stoicism, and quiet achievement define the national character.

Population and disaster preparedness: still part of the poverty equation

2011-03-16T14:58:00.005+11:00

Recall in the whole debate on over-population in the Philippines and how we've established the logical link between population increase and poverty through our simple, robust, and scalable definition of poverty: "a habitual entering into commitments that one is inherently unable to honour". The spectre of the scale of death and destruction that could slug the Philippines in the event of a strong earthquake occuring near or within Metro Manila demonstrates how even more impoverished we are than conventional measures indicated.

Whereas we always think of ourselves as an intractably poor nation because of our lack of ability to educate and employ our own people, we are now are starting to come to terms with our lack of ability to secure our people's safety against disaster as well.

We can only sit back and watch helplessly as we multiply like cockroaches and occupy every nook and cranny offered by our decrepit capital city -- even parts of it that represent the proverbial sand lot that the proverbial fool builds his house upon. Considering this is a biblical parable, the implications of this foolhardiness are potentially biblical in proportion. Catastrophic disasters like earthquakes and cyclones notwithstanding, Filipinos clinging to and scratching out an existence along Manila's flood plains, riverbanks, breakwaters, inside its cemeteries, under its bridges, along the walls of its esteros (storm water canals), beside its train tracks, and within sprawling tinderbox shantytowns that carpet vast tracts of land within Manila are by themselves disasters in the making; perhaps call our lot the slow-release disaster.

The ballooning in numbers of a people who are inherently unable to support their own numbers is itself a slowly-unfolding disaster.

Thus, this sudden focus on earthquake preparedness we are seeing being bandied around in Media and in the halls of Congress is no more than a quaint attempt to assure one another that Filipinos do possess some semblance of token foresight at best. But a people who famously allowed a shipping company that figured in the worst peace time maritime disaster in world history to continue operating for two subsequent decades and go on to be party to several more "accidents" that killed thousands more over those subsequent 20 years can't be taken seriously. We may as well start saying our prayers for those thirty-odd thousand poor sods who are likely to die in the event of an earthquake measuring even just seven on the Richter scale hitting Manila (the one that hit Japan measured 8.9).

The two words "prepared Filipino" form an oxymoron. There simply is no such thing. There may be talk, but the substance just isn't there.

Ironically this reality about Filipinos could form a good foundation for the arguments of those who believe that we should not make any attempt to reduce population growth. Other societies -- where life is regarded as precious enough -- leave no stone unturned in their efforts to prepare for and mitigate disaster. Filipinos, in contrast, need to reproduce in vast numbers to compensate for their lack of capacity and will to prepare for and mitigate whatever tragedy the future might bring upon -- whether in the form of a single fell swoop or in the form of a slow drawn-out degeneration of quality of life and dignity.

Doom and gloom - the best of times for religious enterprise!

2011-03-15T10:39:00.004+11:00

Now is a great time to start a business! As evident in the raft of information "products" being churned out by that well of reliable factoids, Philippine Mainstream Media, doom and gloom sells like lechon manok in an ignorant medieval society such as the Philippines. The earthquakes that recently struck Japan and New Zealand, the prospect of a "big one" striking the Philippines itself, the spectre of radioactive clouds descending upon most of East Asia, civil war in the Arab world displacing thousands of henceforth unemployable Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs), "super moons" unleashing super storms and even more natural disasters over the face of the planet, even alien species threatening to overrun the archipelago -- the possibilities and opportunities are infinite!

The Philippine Government itself is caught up in a bit of its own soul-searching as it -- for that matter, we -- come to terms with the stark reality that Manila is staring with glazed eyes at a monumental disaster waiting to happen. It's like the feeling a schoolboy gets having come to school with homework undone. You just know you're gonna get it bad.

Sen. Loren Legarda said that the Senate should look into the state of earthquake preparedness of Metro Manila, and the actions taken to reduce the earthquake risk.

Such a review, she said, was critical in view of the 2004 Metro Manila Earthquake Impact Reduction Study (MMIERS) which said that a big inland 7.2-magnitude earthquake could happen anytime in the metropolis as an offshoot of the movement of the West Valley Fault.

[...]

The study provided a glimpse of the devastation wrought by such a powerful quake: 169,000 homes destroyed, and 340,000 other homes damaged; collapse of seven bridges, and the resulting deaths of 34,000 people, and injuries to 114,000 others, she said.

The ensuing fires would result in an additional 18,000 fatalities, while power and telephone lines would be interrupted, Legarda added.

Desperation is creeping up upon Pinoy sensibilities. Hollow-headed text messages carrying wrong information being forwarded around by the equally hollow-headed morons who receive them are symptoms of a society starved for something to latch on to.

So yes folks, where there is a need -- a desperate one, no less -- that can be satisfied with very primal emotional hooks, there abounds lucrative business opportunities. And what better way to take full advantage of ignorance, fear, and rampant misinformation than to set up a religious enterprise.

Religion as a business makes perfect sense. Profits are non-taxable, and revenues are almost entirely realised in cold cash. There are no government regulatory bodies that scrutinise the impact on public wellbeing of "services" delivered by religious institutions. The industry, in short, is entirely unregulated. As such, religious enterprises pretty much have free rein to "develop" all sorts of mind-altering "products" -- entire philosophical and dogmatic frameworks can be cooked up and disseminated via a network of profitable information channels: books, magazines, television, and radio; and marketed through mind-imprisoning rituals, seminars, and "assemblies" -- through schools even!

Best of all, the Philippine market for religious products is vast. 100 million ill-educated, misinformed, misguided and superstitious folk is a customer base for a religious enterprise that simply cannot be ignored. And with the current market leader -- the multinational corporation to end all multinational corporations, the mighty Roman Catholic Church -- currently suffering a credibility and relevance crisis, the industry is ripe for the entry of fresh competition!

Japan after the earthquake: no need for our prayers

2011-03-13T18:23:00.007+11:00

I keep reading about people encouraging one another to "pray" for Japan in this time of great tragedy after a massive earthquake and accompanying tsunami devastated its coastline and killed hundreds of her people. I'm not quite sure Japan needs our prayers. Japan is regarded as the country in the highest state of constant preparedness for earthquakes. As such, the disastrous earthquake that struck Japan is a tragedy, but one that is not tragic in the sense of it being a preventable loss of life.

To me, the stoicism and quiet grace with which the Japanese greeted the unimaginable destruction and loss of life, mobilised its forces to assess and respond, and reached out to the global community to receive assistance speaks volumes of the magnificence of Japanese society. Japan's prayers are different from our prayers. Being a predominantly Shinto and Buddhist society, Japanese prayers generally express a profound respect for nature and an acute mindfulness for one's surroundings. Emphasis is on a life led in harmony with nature and recognition that one is but a part in a vast ecosystem.

In contrast, Catholics see nature as subject to man, and man subject to the "mysterious" whims of their wrathful and all-controlling God. As such, a Catholic's prayers put emphasis on their subjection to the will of God (to explain adversity) and their being showered with his graces (to explain good times). For Catholic Filipinos, prayer is surrender, while for the Japanese, prayer is expressed as reverence for a system of which one is a part. A Catholic's prayer is about deliverance from the physical world, while that of the average Japanese is about embrace of the physical world.

Thus, the Japanese have already said their prayers for those who lost their lives and were severely impact by the earthquake. But unlike ours that are uttered after the fact of a tragedy, the Japanese people pray before the fact. The vast and carefully thought-out measures they had put in place to anticipate and mitigate the risk of a disaster such as the one we are seeing today, is Japan's prayer for its dead and suffering today. Such a sort of prayer, in my opinion, is far superior to the Catholic's prayer. Being done before the fact, it frees minds to focus on acting with clarity of purpose when adversity strikes, rather than imprisoning minds with questions about and surrender to a god's "purpose" as the case would be for after the fact prayers.

While the loss of life in Japan in the aftermath of this year's monster earthquake is staggering, it cannot be said to be one that resulted from any form of reckless neglect. Because the Japanese had done all it can in life to respect the living it has little need for prayers -- only a focus on action and learning and the tangible support coming from nations that are, themselves, possessing of characters consistent with an ethic underpinned by respect for human dignity.

Perhaps Filipinos should instead reserve their "prayers" for their compatriots who remain victims of a long tradition of a lack of inclination to anticipate, prepare for, and mitigate against what the physical world can often unexpectedly spring upon the living.

Google Philippines' Top 20 most influential Filipino women

2011-03-10T16:30:00.007+11:00

I recently got a load of Google's list of most "influential" Filipinas (Filipino women) for 2010. The list is utterly dominated by performers along with a handful of notable exceptions: Senator Miriam Santiago (no. 10), Doris Dumlao (journalist, no. 12), Monique Lhullier (designer, no. 17), and Korina Sanchez (journalist, no. 19). These 20 ladies supposedly "grabbed the greatest online mindshare in 2010". So presumably, they reflect the substance of the Filipino collective mind.

Here they are:

1. Shalani Soledad (TV Host & City Councilor of Valenzuela)
2. Kris Aquino (TV-host actress)
3. Ruffa Gutierrez (Former beauty queen and TV-host actress)
4. Maria Venus Raj (Beauty Queen and TV-Host)
5. Charice Pempengco (International Singer)
6. Angel Locsin (Actress)
7. Sarah Geronimo (Singer-Actress)
8. Regine Velasquez (Singer-Actress)
9. Heart Evangelista (Actress)
10. Miriam Defensor-Santiago (Senator)
11. Lea Salonga (Award-winning international Filipino singer)
12. Doris Dumlao (Philippine Daily Inquirer journalist)
13. Kristine Hermosa (Actress)
14. Toni Gonzaga (Singer-Actress)
15. Sharon Cuneta (Singer-Actress)
16. Mariel Rodriguez (TV-host actress)
17. Monique Lhuillier (Designer)
18. Bea Alonzo (Actress)
19. Korina Sanchez (Broadcast Journalist)
20. Nora Aunor (Dramatic Actress)

Quite revealing, this list. Topping it are an ex-presidential squeeze who now co-hosts top Philippine brain opiate Willing Willie (a television "variety show", to say the most), a presidential sister known mainly for her ditziness and bad taste in men, and an aging sexpot who grandstands about her indignation over "scandalous" behaviour that apparently offends her "conservative" nature.

What exactly have these performers done? What groundbreaking insights have they added to the collective intellect and cultural capital of Philippine society that enhances the value of our colective equity as a people? What, therefore, is the nature of their "influence" over the Filipino mind?

That well of truth Wikipedia defines "mind share" as "the development of consumer awareness or popularity" and is "one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion". So these ladies apparently represent some kind of marketing triumph either (1) for the marketers of the products they endorse, or (2) the agents and managers who earn commissions from their lucrative gigs.

Considering that "achievement", they can be considered to have done well for themselves, as they've done an excellent job of making a bundle of money not only for themselves, but for the middlemen and downstream industries and entities that bring out their buckets whenever these celebrities drum up some cash. And, yes, this cash is the tangible outcome of this influence they wield -- which highlights the tragedy of what it means to be a mere consumer. To be a mere consumer is to be on the wrong side of society's equation.

This tragedy is particularly poignant in the Philippines as evident in those who constitute its most influential personalities -- people who for the most part are not known for output that can even be remotely considered to be globally competitive. Indeed, it is their being down-to-earth and "reachable" (the Tagalog translation of the latter word being a Filipino euphemism for mediocrity) that made most of these personalities local stars. Fitting for a people renowned for constituting a nation of star-struck ignoramuses, as one noted modern-day Filipino philosopher observed...

You are a nation of star-struck ignoramuses. You are easily awed by your movie stars who are usually nothing but uneducated, aquiline-nosed and light-skinned ******** picked up from some gutter somewhere. I have seen what these artistas illusionadas can get away with. They just flash their capped-tooth smiles and policemen let them get away with traffic violations; they bat their false eyelashes and customs officers impose no duty on their suspicious balikbayan boxes.

Worst of all, with the Filipino movie industry taking a nosedive, hordes of actors and show personalities went into politics. It is, as they say, the next best "racket"-there is more money to be made in the politicking business than in show business! (And what is this I hear that in the coming elections, more are jumping into the arena? Mag-hara-kiri na kayo!) How can you expect these comedians and actors, who only know how to take directions from their directors, to direct your nation? For them,politics will just be an "act". No big surprise here, for they are mere actors with no original scripts to speak, no original visions to share. So what can you expect but a government that is a comedy of errors. Serves you and your star- struck nation right!

[...]

For those artistas who honestly believe that they can make a positive difference in the Filipino masses' life, they must first study law, business and public administration, and immerse themselves in the life and passion of Mother Teresa. Politics is not an art for dilettante artistas to dabble in. It is called "Political Science," hello?!

The above was written more than ten years ago -- way back in 2000. Its timelessness is the sort of property that earns it the distinction of being a true piece of real insight.