The soul of traffic

You can tell a lot about a country from its road traffic, and the profile presented by Manila traffic is not exactly flattering to Filipinos. Today I was waiting for a taxi. It was lunchtime and vehicular traffic was heavier than usual. The holiday rush has truly begun, although from what I’ve seen people aren’t exactly rushing to clear store shelves of merchandise. I suspect the crowds are rushing because they’re expected to rush, because that is what one does when December sets in.

I was standing on the side of the road when a woman started waving at a passenger bus that was in the middle lane. As the street was congested, and there was not enough room for the bus to maneuver, the bus simply stopped in the middle of the street. The woman ran towards the bus and climbed aboard as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if stopping to pick up passengers in the middle of the freaking street were legal, as if they were not inconveniencing every motorist following the bus and courting a vehicular pile-up. There were no traffic aides or policemen in the vicinity to reprimand the idiot driver.  Multiply this incident hundreds, maybe thousands of times in the course of a single day, and we begin to understand why Metro Manila traffic is so horrible.

Apparently most drivers of public transportation are paid by the “boundary” system — the more passengers they take, the bigger income.

Bleeding hearts would argue that it’s not the drivers’ fault but the system’s; they’re just trying to make a living. By the same logic, it’s not the criminals’ fault that they cheat, steal, maim, and kill; they’re only trying to make a dishonest living. Poverty is the culprit, evil, evil Poverty. Conveniently, Poverty cannot be arrested and hauled off to prison, and anyway it’s all our fault that Poverty exists because we don’t share with the unfortunate blah blah blah.

Will someone please get a grip. Yes, poverty is rooted in the system, the rich and powerful have not done enough to address it, and the people in charge of combatting poverty are preoccupied with alleviating their own, imaginary poverty (and they do this with great energy and enthusiasm). Poverty is a mitigating circumstance, but not an all-purpose excuse. There are millions of Filipinos who are struggling to survive, who live within the law and do not invoke poverty as an alibi.

I fear that poverty, the daily grind for survival, has spawned a mindset in which anything is justified in the cause of making a buck.

“Pasensya na, kailangan kong kumita.” Money, being so hard to come by (except for a few), is so desirable that its pursuit overrides every principle, virtue, value, or thought in people’s heads. It’s not the most important thing in the world, but the only thing worth pursuing.

It seems it no longer matters where the money comes from, how it was acquired, or whether it comes with a body count. All that matters is the money.

Sure we like money. Money makes things possible. It buys all sorts of wonderful stuff, but it cannot be the center of your universe. Your life cannot revolve around having it. It cannot fill up an empty soul.

That’s easy for you to say, some will argue. You don’t have money. And there’s no point in arguing with them, because they’ve already closed their minds to the possibility that there’s more to human existence than this endless grubbing.

Now we see the consequence of the low priority given to Culture in our society. Governments always say they can’t allot money for cultural programs because there are more pressing concerns, such as alleviating poverty. So now we have poverty, and no culture. Culture is a concept alien to many of us. Without culture and the arts to help us understand who, what, and why we are, and how to live; without the consolations of art, music, theater, literature, dance and film, all we have is the never-ending pursuit of money. Without competition, money has become the single standard for measuring a person’s worth.

If she has no money, she’s nothing. We have all been demeaned.

So what, some will insist, when I’m rich I can buy all the culture I want. I’m sorry, I cannot help you.

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