Prescription for poverty - Part 2

This is the second part of an article written by an American, Barth Suretsky, about our culture, and his respect and love of the Philippines. I hope we find some enlightenment from observations made by a foreigner, albeit one who had his heart for Filipinos. Due to space constraints, the second part has been edited. Happy reading.

"Maybe it will sound simplistic, but… it is my unshakable belief that the fundamental thing wrong with this country is a lack of pride in being Filipino.

"Filipinos tend to worship, almost slavishly, everything foreign. If it comes from Italy or France , it has to be better than anything made here. If the idea is American or German, it has to be superior to anything that Filipinos can think up for themselves.

"Foreigners are looked up to and idolized. Foreigners can go anywhere without question. In my own personal experience, I remember attending recently an affair at a major museum here. I had forgotten to bring my invitation. But while Filipinos entering the museum were checked for invitations, I was simply waived through.

"This sort of thing happens so often here that it’s just accepted routine. All of these things – the illogical respect given to foreigners simply because they are not Filipinos, the distrust and even disrespect shown to any home-grown merchandise, the neglect of anything Philippine, the rudeness of taxi drivers, the ill-manners shown by many Filipinos – are all symptomatic of a lack of self-love, of respect for and love of the country in which they were born, and worst of all, a static mind-set in regard to finding ways to improve the situation.

Feeling downtrodden

"Most Filipinos, when confronted with evidence of governmental corruption, political chicanery, or gross exploitation on the part of the business community, simply shrug their shoulders, mutter ‘bahala na,’ and let it go at that.

"It is an oversimplification to say this, but it is not without a grain of truth to say that Filipinos feel downtrodden because they allow themselves to feel downtrodden. No pride.

"One of the most egregious examples of this lack of pride, this uncaring attitude to their own past or past culture, is the wretched state of surviving architectural landmarks in Manila and elsewhere. … These were beautiful edifices, mostly erected during, or just before, the Commonwealth period. … Unless something is done, these … masterpieces of pre-war Philippine architecture … will disintegrate.

"Are there historical reasons for this lack of national pride? We can say that until the arrival of the Spaniards, there was no sense of a unified archipelago constituted as one country. True.

"We can also say that the high cultures of other nations in the region seemed, unfortunately, to have bypassed the Philippines; there are no Angkors, no Ayuttayas, no Borobudurs. True.

"Centuries of contact with the high cultures of the Khmers and the Chinese had, except for the proliferation of Song dynasty pottery found throughout the archipelago, no noticeable effect. True.

"But all that aside, what was here? To begin with, the ancient rice terraces, now threatened with disintegration, incidentally, were an incredible feat of engineering for so-called ‘primitive’ people.

"The degree of artistry exhibited by the various tribes of the Cordillera of Luzon is testimony to a remarkable culture, second to none in the Southeast Asian region. As for Mindanao, at the other end of the archipelago, an equally high degree of artistry has been manifest for centuries in woodcarving, weaving and metalwork.

Lack of national pride

"However, the most shocking aspect of this lack of national pride, even identity, endemic in the average Filipino is the appalling ignorance of the history of the archipelago since unified by Spain and named Filipinas. The remarkable stories concerning the Galleon de Manila, the courageous repulsion of Dutch and British invaders from the 16th through the 18th centuries, even the origins of the Independence of the late 19th century, are hardly known by the average Filipino in any meaningful way.

"And thanks to 50 years of American brainwashing, it is few far between the number of Filipinos who really know – or even care – about the duplicity employed by the Americans and Spaniards to sell out and make meaningless the very independent state that (Emilio) Aguinaldo declared on June 12, 1898.

"A people without a sense of history is a people doomed to be unaware of their own identity. It is sad to say, but true, that the vast majority of Filipinos fall category. Without a sense of who you are, how can you possibly take any pride in who you are?

"These are not oversimplifications. On the contrary, these are the root problems of the Philippine inferiority complex referred to above. Until the Filipino takes pride in being Filipino these ills of the soul will never be cured.

"If what I have written here can help, even in the smallest way, to make the Filipino aware of just who he is, who he was, and who he can be, I will be one happy expat indeed!"

This article is undated, but definitely precedes the author’s death in 2001. Suretsky is known to be an American-Canadian who retired from his teaching job in New Jersey in 1998 to permanently take up residency in the Philippines.

Poker satellites in the south

Satellite/qualifying tournaments for the 3rd Philippine Poker Tour (PPT) Million-Peso Hold’em Championship will soon be conducted at major cities in Visayas and Mindanao . The first southern leg competition is scheduled at Casino Filipino Lahug in the province of Cebu on 19th May 2007. This will be followed by competitions at Bacolod and Davao.

PPT, the leading proponent of non-wager poker skills tournaments, is conducting these satellite/qualifying tournaments to give opportunities to local poker enthusiasts to participate in major tournaments where attractive prizes are at stake. Winners of satellite tournaments are awarded seats to the grand finals to be held on 7th and 8th July 2007. Each seat to the grand finals is worth P33,000 in tournament and registration fees.

Qualifying/satellite tournaments are ongoing in the following venues: San Mig Alabang Town Center every Wednesdays and Fridays; and at Elbow Room at MetroWalk in Pasig every Thursday.

Visit the official PPT website, www.PhilippinePokerTour.com for more details. Interested parties may also call the PPT secretariat (c/o Cindy) at 817-9092 or 812-0153.

Should you wish to share any insights, write me at Link Edge, 4th Floor, 156 Valero Street , Salcedo Village , 1227 Makati City. Or e-mail me at [email protected] or at [email protected]. For previous columns, you may visit my website at http://bizlinks.linkedge.biz.