EDITORIAL – A dangerous tilting of the balance

In the latest Social Weather Stations survey, over half or 57 percent of all Filipino families now consider themselves poor. Yet the statistics are not as frightening as their implications.

For we do not really need the SWS to tell us that the majority of Filipinos are poor. We already know that from personal experience. What the survey really does for us is merely validate our knowledge with figures.

Yet, it is when the figures come and stare us in the face that our minds race beyond what we already know to what we can manage to divine of the future. So statistically reinforced, we begin to think of situations and proportions.

If the number of Filipino families who now consider themselves to be poor is now beyond half the total, what that tells us is that the middle class has considerably thinned out. And that should be alarming.

In any society, there is always a constant struggle among classes, although this struggle is oftentimes muted by the degree to which a given society has assimilated conducts of behavior commensurate to its level of maturation and sophistication.

In societies that have not kept apace with the march to modernization and development, conducts of behavior are often shaky, modified more in appearance than by actual assimilation. In other words, what could lurk beneath surface behavior can be very explosive and dangerous.

The Philippines, as a whole, has not reached that level of maturation and sophistication. It is still struggling to develop. The struggle, however, is lopsided. As the SWS survey will show, even the opportunity to struggle for development is not available for all.

Figures may vary according to region, but the lowest according to the survey is Mindanao where the threshold of poverty is P5,000 a month for a family of six. By any computation, that amount is purely for sustenance. It is hand-to-mouth money. Development? Forget it.

The highest threshold is P10,000. For a family of six, in these times, that is still essentially food money. Still no development there. The chance to uplift human dignity is zilch. Nada. Kaput.

In other words, the beast of creation lurks just beneath our surface character and could break out at the slightest provocation in the absence of any temperance that comes with growth and development.

Beasts of creation move along a well-defined pack mentality. The hordes of the poor always lust at the abundance and comfort of the rich but are held back by the moderating force of the middle class. Disrupt the balance and there will eventually be chaos.