the state of the filipino family
- From: rambo the fugitive bedol <bernardsongco@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:30:02 -0700
THE FILIPINO FAMILY IN AN AGE OF COMPLEXITY
Professor Randolf S. David's acceptance speech upon being conferred
the Doctor of Humanities degree, honoris causa by the Ateneo de Naga
University, March 24, 2007
One question that I am often asked is particularly not easy to
answer: What's happening to our country, and how do we begin to get
out of the rut in which we find ourselves?
This question is usually asked in a tone of vague uneasiness, of
somehow being caught in the eye of a storm, where nothing moves
despite the turbulence outside. Our fears, born of past encounters
with disaster, prod us to take action, to brace ourselves for the
worst, to hang on to our faith.
It is difficult to know what is happening to our country, or what we
should do, unless we can answer a prior question: Who are we who
belong to this country? This is a question of identity and of values ?
the very things that are rapidly changing in an age of complexity.
Like the rest of humanity, we Filipinos find ourselves having to
embrace the modern, whether we like it or not, in response to the
challenge of complexity and globality. In the process, we give up so
much of what is familiar to us. We lose our bearings, and in our
desperate attempt to navigate our way in an increasingly complex
environment, we draw strength from our inherited instincts and find
ourselves falling back on the most basic of our institutions ?the
family.
For, above anything else, we Filipinos belong to families. We may
change our citizenship, our religion, our occupation, and trade in the
language of our ancestors for something globally spoken. But we remain
first and foremost loyal members of our families. If there is one
stabilizing institution that has kept Philippine society more or less
coherent through its successive crises, it is the Filipino family.
It is this concern for the future of their families that drives
millions of our people to leave their loved ones and seek employment
in strange lands. Ironically, this trend is also what is dramatically
transforming the Filipino family, and, by extension, Philippine
society. Allow me to elaborate.
Modern communications and extensive travel in the last 30 years have
made it possible for today's Filipinos to experience a world that
previous generations, except those who lived and studied abroad, never
encountered. This global experience has allowed them, as it were, to
step out of the skin of their culture, and to view their own society
through the prism of another culture. Precisely for this reason, it is
easy to understand why the single most important development that has
shaped Philippine society over the last 30 years is the OFW*
phenomenon. But, of course, it is not the first time Filipinos have
left their country to live abroad.
In the 1880s, scores of Filipino students went to Europe to study. A
number of them, like Jose Rizal, were sent abroad by their parents to
keep them from getting into trouble with the Spanish government in
Manila . But most of these young Filipinos went abroad to obtain
professional training they could not get in Manila because higher
learning was reserved to the Spanish elite and members of the
clergy.>
What these Filipino expatriates acquired in their adopted countries
turned out to be more than just a university education. There, in
Europe, in a climate of freedom and tolerance, they imbibed the
Enlightenment values of liberalism and equality, of belief in reason
and scientific progress. They became the first Filipino moderns ?young
intellectuals who consciously thought of themselves as the
nervous system of a new nation being born. In this self-assigned role,
they became obsessed with showing the world that Filipinos were the
equal of any race.
When they returned to the Philippines, these Indios Bravos, as they
proudly called themselves, brought home not only new skills and new
knowledge, but an entire world-view that enabled them to see their
society from the standpoint of what it could be if it had the freedom
to decide its own destiny. It was natural that they would become the
leaders of the new nation, and the agents of a new way of life. Rizal
became the model of this first generation of modern Filipinos.
home. He was in a hurry to return home, where he felt he had a mission
From the start, Rizal decided that Europe would not be his permanent
to achieve. He had great ambitions for his people. He became a curious
observer of everything European and modern, and his encounter with
19th century Europe allowed him to frame his concept of what Filipinos
could be if they were given the same opportunity to develop
themselves. He envisioned a nation that was as progressive, as
disciplined, and as confident as Europe ?but one where the nurturing
gift of tenderness for which our people are famous would survive.
In the 1970s, roughly a century after the generation of
Rizal,Filipinos began to leave their motherland for destinations in
Europe, the Middle East, North America, and East Asia. They left not
just by the hundreds but by the tens of thousands. Unlike the
ilustradogeneration of the 19th century, these 20th century Filipinos
were not escaping political persecution; they were fleeing from
poverty and lack of opportunity. They went abroad not to study, for
indeed many of them were already highly educated, but to earn a living
and to start a new life. But like those first Filipino travelers of
the 1880s, they too remain loyal to the country -- regularly sending
money to their loved ones, and avidly watching the nation's journey
from turmoil to turmoil, as if they never left home. With modern
communication, they are able to witness the political and economic
storms that hit the country of their birth, applying to the nation's
politicians the same criteria of accountable> governance by which
Europeans measure their leaders. In more ways than they can imagine,
they have become influential agents of change in the nation they left
behind.
They download the electronic version of Manila's major dailies, and
watch the early evening news beamed across continents from our local
television networks. They comment on issues, publicize their views,
grumble about corruption and incompetence, and instruct their
relatives to reject unfit candidates during elections. They are often
more informed about events taking place in our country and certainly
in the rest of the world than the average middle class Filipino living
in the Philippines. Like Rizal, they tell their families at home what
life is like in modern societies governed by accountable leaders. They
form a view of what states in mature democracies are like, how
citizens behave when their freedoms are threatened, and what civil
liberties mean when people have the capacity to assert them. Their
prolonged separation from their families and culture gives them an
insight into their own personal needs and inner selves, which modern
culture allows them to recognize and> express.
The net effect of all this is that Filipinos living abroad have become
the most demanding constituency of the Filipino nation. They know how
the nation's economy has become very dependent on their remittances.
Like Rizal's generation of ?igr?, today's OFWs know their power, even
if they are still groping for effective ways to use it.
Overseas work has become the most powerful stimulant to the economic
life of our country. OFW remittances have funded the education of
millions of young people from poor families who would otherwise be
excluded from our society's obsolete structure of opportunity.
Consumption patterns throughout the country have changed overnight
because of the steady flow of remittances. Television sets, DVD
players, mobile phones, and personal computers have become ordinary
fixtures in many Filipino homes, serving as channels for new and
varied forms of information. Truly, the OFW phenomenon is
revolutionizing our way of life beyond our imagination. Its overall
impact, I believe, is to pull our political system toward greater
democracy, greater transparency in governance, and more accountability
in public life.
Our people are changing, but our leaders have remained the same.That
is the reason we have a crisis. The crisis is telling us that the old
is dying, and something new is being born. Undoubtedly, this
transition has been stretched too long, and is far from smooth. Yet,
we can read in the growing disaffection with traditional politicians
and political dynasties positive signs of new values and new
expectations at work.
Our politicians, rooted in the old ways of patronage and corruption,
are finding it increasingly difficult to win popular support in this
emerging society. As a result, they now have to spend more money to
get elected. In some places in the country today, political clans are
desperately agreeing to divide public offices among themselves instead
of running against each other. This development is anti-democratic,
and comes from the same instinct to retain power by the easy resort to
large-scale cheating during elections.
The transition is thus far from ideal. From a politics based on
patronage, the country is moving towards a politics based on mass
media charisma. This is not exactly how we imagine democracy to be.
But this too is a passing phenomenon. Things will be different as more
and more of our people become educated.
As in Rizal's time, mass education and the spread of literacy among
our people are bound to change the conduct of governance and the rules
of political competition. The change may not be visible at the level
of our national politics. But it is already being felt at the local
level, where a new breed of politicians who have won as mayors and as
governors are uprooting the old ways of patronage and
introducing innovative practices. They are re-inventing local
governance and re-establishing democratic practice on the ground. That
is the good news. There is however a side to the OFW phenomenon that
is disturbing.
At present, an estimated 8 million Filipinos live and work in about
192 countries. We are the third largest labor exporter in the world ?
after Mexico and India ?but our workers are dispersed in more
countries in the world and are found in more varied occupations
andprofessions. Altogether they send back to their families an
estimated US$12-15 billion every year.
We may say that the OFW is to the Philippines as oil is to Indonesia.
There is however a big difference between selling people and selling
oil. On the positive side, while Indonesia may run out of oil in the
next 25 years, the Philippines will never run out of people, since we
keep producing them at a rate faster than most other countries. The
downside is that a society that exports its own people on a scale that
our country does today undercuts its own way of life. At the rate we
are exporting our medical personnel, we will run out of health
professionals in just a few years. Two hundred hospitals all over the
country have already closed down because they have run out of nurses.
Another 600 are severely understaffed. Today it is the hospitals,
tomorrow it will be the schools, the government agencies, and the rest
of the corporate system. It is not to say that we are not adjusting to
the increased demand. Indeed we are. But at what cost?
Sending out people almost always means wrenching them away from their
loved ones. The effects of such separations on the psyche of children
and on the consciousness of the nation are hard to assess.But, more
important, sending out its young educated population means that the
Philippines is prevented from linking its own progress with the growth
of its people.
We are a resilient nation because we have strong families. We have
parents who literally give up their personal happiness so that their
children may live with hope. What is sad however is that when we offer
entire generations in sacrifice at the altar of overseas work so that
the nation may live, we are also giving up the very resource that
makes us strong. I believe there is something wrong and perverse in
making the export of people a major pillar of a nation's economic
policy.
Thank God, in general, our people thrive well abroad. They work hard,
are loyal and dependable, they value their jobs, and are much
appreciated. The foreign companies and institutions they serve
sometimes wonder how any country can foolishly dispense with the
services of such a gifted people. But that's precisely what makes us a
unique nation ?a hard-working people governed by unworthy leaders.
It is my belief that this bleak picture is changing, and that the
political crisis we are going through is nothing but a symptom that
the obsolete feudal social order is finally crumbling, and that a new,
brighter future is upon us. The transition has begun, it is
irreversible, but, as I said, it is far from painless. We have seen
how the Filipino family is bearing much of the cost.
I am aware that many of you here today may be among those who are
preparing to leave the country and build their lives abroad. My
remarks are not meant to dissuade you or to make you feel guilty. I
offer them only as a reminder that even as we all have personal dreams
to fulfill, and families to serve and secure, we also have a nation to
build. Whether we like it or not, our personal visions are intertwined
with what happens to our country. It is the only country we have. We
must take care of it, and learn to take pride in it. For no nation can
reform itself unless it takes pride in itself.
Thank you, and once more, good luck to all of you!
.
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