One debacle to the next: Why are we like this?

Our 6^th place finish in the recently concluded 28^th Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) in Singapore provides us, Filipinos, another painful opportunity to engage in the national pastime of self-flagellation and bitter recrimination.

With a population of 100 million, we could barely cough up 29 gold medals while Singapore, 5.5 million, had 83 golds, Malaysia 30 million, 60 golds, Thailand, 65 million, 92 golds, Vietnam 92 million, 73 golds.

But our finish this time is not far off from our 7^th place finish (also 29 golds) in 2013, our 6^th place in 2011, 5^th in 2009, etc., etc. The truth is that we have been consistently in the bottom half of almost all SEAGs. This proves that the systems responsible for these miserable results have been in place even before this administration and, unless a meteor collides with the earth and wipes out all humanity, these deeply established systems will continue to show the same results well into the future.

SEAG Year	1979	1983	1989	1995	2005*	2007	2009	2011	2013
Gold medals	24	49	26	33	113	41	38	36	29
Standing	4/7	2/8	5/9	3/9	1/11	7/10	5/10	6/10	7/10

Our SEAG performance is an index of how things are run here at home. It’s not only this SEAG, but all SEAGs. And it’s not only in sports but also in education, defense and security, environment, the economy, crime, traffic, Internet speed – you name it, we plumb the depths. We are punch drunk and reeling from one debacle to the next.  

We love to claim that during the 1950s we were second only to Japan. But by the 1960s, we had already fallen behind Singapore and Malaysia. By 2010 the story was very much different.

Per Capita GDP on PPP, 1950 and 2010, in US$^[1]

	1950	2010	X Increase
Japan	1,873	35,300	X19
Philippines	1,293	4,100	X3
South Korea	876	30,600	X35
Taiwan	922	36,600	X40
Thailand	848	9,000	X11
Indonesia	874	4,500	X5

What the hell is wrong with us?

Most theories attempting to explain our predicament focus on our culture and values – the software of society. Culture and values are the result of geography and historical experience.

This article proposes that we behave this way because we are hard-wired by our fragmented geography and divisive colonial experience. As a people we are cynical and suspicious of any central authority. We have always hated our former Presidents. Our loyalty is limited to our family, our clan, maybe our tribes – and the rest can go to hell. Ours is a Hobbesian society of every man for himself against everyone else, or at least, each clan or tribe against all others.

Ellen Churchill Semple, a prominent American scholar in the 1920’s declared that “man is the product of the surface of the earth.” Jared Diamond claims that geographic endowment determines why certain civilizations arose in some areas and not in others. Jose Rizal identified our tropical climate in trying to explain the “indolence of Filipinos.”

This deterministic approach is frowned upon by many scholars because it renders man helpless when confronted by his environment; outcomes are pre-determined.

Unique challenge

But man does have free will, and he has made great strides in modifying his environment. He has even gone to the moon and back. Nevertheless, man’s choices are limited by the physical universe. For example, he cannot violate the law of gravity. So, no matter how much we labor, we cannot fuse our 7,107 islands into one contiguous territory where a highly centralized, monolithic and omnipotent government might work best.

Nations with fragmented geography face a unique challenge in state formation.

We have one of the most fragmented territories in the world with 19 major islands. Compounding this challenge are the 120 to 175 different languages that our people speak. Caught in the same predicament are Indonesia, also poor, with 11 major islands, the Maldives and the Federated States of Micronesia with around 600 islands. Japan, with 5 major islands, can also fall within this category although, as a credit to Japanese culture and tradition, that country is certainly centralized and consolidated.

Our dilemma is that the political structure we have been pursuing appears to be misaligned with our geography and our culture.  

Our geographic and ethno-linguistic fragmentation poses a serious obstacle to the formation of a very important building block of prosperous societies – social capital.  

Social capital is the degree of trust and reciprocity shared among members of a community or society. Affluent societies have high levels of social capital while those with low social capital are inevitably impoverished. 

During the pre-WW2 years in Britain, the Labour government refused to fund an activity that would contribute to the development of the Supermarine Spitfire, the fighter plane that would eventually win the Battle of Britain. A thrice married former chorus girl named Fanny Lucy Radmall (later Lady Lucy Houston) bankrolled the activity, writing a check for £100,000.00 and declaring that “Every true Briton would rather sell his last shirt than admit that England could not afford to defend herself.” Some call it patriotism, but it is also social capital. Lucy Radmall was reciprocating to society what it had given her.

Here, in Manila, try crossing any street, even within a pedestrian lane, and discover, at great personal risk, the true meaning of low social capital.

The rich in this country use their money to accumulate more wealth. The rich in societies with high social capital spend to make a better world.

National stupidity?

When the Spaniards arrived they found several autonomous and self-sufficient proto-sultanates or kingdoms already in existence in these islands. None was pre-eminent over the others and there was vibrant interaction between kingdoms. One is tempted to contemplate what polity would have emerged without foreign intervention. Consolidation was a Western introduction, first by the Spaniards and later on continued by the Americans.

The total number of Spaniards in the Philippines never even approached 1% of the native population but by adopting a divide-and-rule policy this tiny cadre held sway over the ignorant and superstitious natives. Education was selective and very limited. The Spanish language was taught only to the co-opted few who were most likely already the local datu or headman.

The native tribes could not communicate directly among themselves. This was a barrier enhanced by the colonizers. Our sociologists can tabulate how one tribe refers with derision to the others. To deal with the continuing series of revolts that erupted, native troops were levied from one province to pacify another. This widened and deepened the enmity between tribes.

In this manner revolt against central authority became a constant thread in our history, if not against the hated frailles, then against the fascist pigs in Malacañang.

Albert Einstein is credited with the famous quote about stupidity – doing the same thing over and over again but each time expecting different results. Whatever it was we were trying to put together since 1946 has not worked.

Ours must be a national stupidity. Our human condition has not developed as much as those of our neighbors. Many of our people continue to be poor semi-savages living in the most abject conditions.

Despite the 1987 Constitution allocating the biggest slice of the budget to education, we continue to elect – and re-elect – the most unqualified scoundrels to high office. Our neighbors who once admired us now look on us with pity and disdain. Their citizens enjoy a better quality of life.

Millions of our countrymen have departed or are about to depart to seek their fortunes elsewhere as OFWs. The social cost of this diaspora is yet to be accounted for. OFW remittance keeps our economy alive. And the taipans build one mall after the other to siphon off these funds in order to build more malls to siphon off more….so that our current culture can be summed by two letters – “SM.”

We return to the core argument of this article. If we are hard-wired to behave as we do because of our geography and historical experience, what does the future hold for us? Are we hopeless as a nation?

Certainly not, because man always has choices. And that is the choice we have to make – we, who want to look at ourselves as the thinking segment of this society: to continue doing things as we have in the past and end up once again in the bottom half of the next SEAG, or to do something else. – Rappler.com