1. Weirdoes in a Weird Land
Who are we? Good question, because there are no straight answers. But if we believe that a clinical examination of ourselves is necessary to get the best answer, then we need a SWOT analysis of the Filipino. This self-accounting is expected to lead us to the truth, not self-congratulatory self-delusions. Let's get started.
What are Filipinos? Well, we're a weird people living in a weird land. That's pretty much apparent from the get-go. Geographically and biologically, we are a land of giants and dwarves: smallest volcano, smallest primate, biggest fish, etc. We're also a major diversity hotspot. Culturally, the contrasts and diversity are equally bizarre: We're a Babel of tongues, a confusion of genes.
Here's some more: We're the only predominantly Christian nation in Asia. Its most democratic nation. Its freest press. An "anomaly" even in the literary scene.
This question then begs to be asked: How could a speck of Asian dust hold not just miniature life but also immensities and diversities? Weird, right?
But we never intended to come up with such incredible coincidences. No, we don't put up a good show here. The Engineer of the universe must have bestowed it upon us: "Thou art meant to be weird."
The irony is, we aren't as aware, as concerned, or as proud as we should be for the distinction. In fact, we're too embarrassed for being "differently interesting."
2. People of Paradox
We Flips are people of "seeming contradictions."
Note how our cuisine is not as particular with the presentation, but more about the taste. We're after what's essential, not superficial. When it comes to personal physical appearances, however, it's amazing how we're totally vain. We are an image-driven, status-conscious society.
We are supposed to be open-minded to a fault. This makes us such notorious copycats. But that also means we have a predilection for eclectic designs, cosmopolitan choices. We don't frown upon inter-racial marriages. We even readily embraced the religion of our conquerors – but that's by choice.
Puzzlingly, this openness would give us a ferocious hatred of empty spaces (horror vacui). We couldn't possibly suffer from claustrophobia, ever. We're in love with borloloy.
Yet beneath the sheen of Pacific Islander gaudiness and ostentation, don't we betray something dark? What's the point of our love affair with plural word forms, raucous fiestas, and baroque extraneousness? Is it because we've always been lustful for life, or is it because we've always felt deprived?
Whatever it is, everything has to be crammed inside our soul, including whatever Zen minimalism we may have absorbed through Japanese osmosis. This has prompted Conrado de Quiros to pronounce, "We are nothing and everything," in answer to the question, "What is a Filipino?" Krip Yuson is less sure, though: "Are we a palimpsest or a tabula rasa?," he wonders.
Thanks to our colonial history, perhaps, we seem to be at home with tight situations and dire straits. In the middle of coups and economic collapses, we choose to kibitz and grin before the camera. This fatalism may indicate not just a strong faith, but also a certain level of humility and honesty. We don't have a traditional fixation for being the 'mostest' or the 'winningest,' unless we're being self-deprecating. What we have, according to Nick Joaquin, is an appalling "heritage of smallness."
But aren't we fond of playing pretend just the same? Aren't we masters not merely of pretentiousness, but of pretensions? Aren't we widely known for being onion-skinned and non-confrontational while we are brutishly frank behind others' back just the same?
We haven't contributed a single invention that's probably more earth-shaking than the yo-yo. But we have supplied the world with a prodigious number of maids, whose services, if terminated simultaneously would, as humorist Jessica Zafra theorizes, trigger a global crisis. Someone less jocose and more positive-thinking has countered, "It's because we are busy with revolutions, writing Asia's first constitution, building Asia's first republic, allowing women's suffrage for the first time in Asia, etc., etc., that's why."
What can we possibly say at this point, but that we're truly a paradox? The litany can go on and on, a list that can only drive us into the conceit that someone somewhere has written us down as being chosen. "Lo, we are the chosen people of Asia," some would say now and then. When you think about it, didn't we indeed entitle our national anthem "Lupang Hinirang"? Isn't Juan dela Cruz, our national nickname, the John of the Cross of Carmelite mysticism?
Indeed, in keeping with that theme, we currently have our own version of the Exodus and the Diaspora. Like the Jews say, being a 'chosen people' comes with a high price. It makes perfect sense then that we are tagged as the Asian Jews.
But if we have been chosen, it mustn't be because we're special, but because we're a deeply flawed, inconsistent people. At worst, we're simply illogical, but, at best, we might well be - you guessed it - paradoxical.
3. What We Are Not
It's kind of perverse to seek validation from other people's failures, but truth can come out from most unlikely places. Consider the following:
We don't have a legacy of war atrocities that we deny to our last dying breath, promising to forever embarrass our kinds. We don't gang-rape prepubescent girls and call them comfort food. We don't have imperialist dreams hanging over the whole of Asia.
Our nation hasn't been divided by any arbitrary parallel line, wall, iron curtain, or sea of conflicting ideologies – and we're not endlessly arguing over whose side is legitimate.
We didn't invent such buzzwords as concentration camp, gulag, gas chamber, genocide. Instead of turning each other into kebab, our ethnic groups tend to swap DNAs.
We may be status-conscious, but we never devolved into a virulent caste system, the kind that condemns certain unfortunate folks as 'untouchable.' We didn't have to deal with the shame of apartheid.
We never institutionalized decapitation as punishment. Many of us want the death penalty abolished.
We don't murder people just because they're Chinese or Buddhist or Muslim. Not a single would-be saint has been known to have been martyred here because it's just not our style. Our government does not sponsor terrorism. We don't have a state religion as official policy.
We don't have a gene pool with the mind-boggling diversity of a cornfield. We have complemented our looks with lots of outside strains and we're not complaining about the improvement.
We can chew bubble gum to our heart's content and not be jailed or rattan-caned for it. We can criticize our public officials and, normally, we don't get behind bars for it.
Our diet is relatively healthy and not too spicy as to bring armpits to boiling point and test people's patience and endurance.
Normally, we do not separate the sexes in public spaces. Men and/or women can openly look at women and/or men in admiration. We don't subject our women to genital mutilation, force them into garbs that render them invisible, like Harry Potter's magic cloak, as though they're offensive as sin.
We may be materialistic, but our social network is not so heartless and dehumanizing as to drive our elderly to nursing homes. We may be fearful of authority and tend to avoid confrontation, but it also means we're respectful.
We don't have to suffer snowstorms, twisters, sandstorms, and the freezing cold of winter, nor search for an oasis in the middle of the desert. We need not import water or desalinize the Pacific just to quench our thirst. Tropical weather makes us sweat a lot, too, so we bathe a lot and smell good even as we detoxify.
We are far less parochial. We're truly multicultural: there's a successful fusion of cultures in our way of life, and not merely a group of different cultures trying so hard to live in peaceful coexistence - or is it maximum tolerance.
Our national identity may be sketchy at best or confused at worst, yet it remains uniquely, inimitably Filipino. Our colonial mentality is tempered by our penchant to 'Filipinize' the foreign, thus we end up conquering our own colonizers, preserving whatever is left of our flimsy indigenous side.
We can laugh at anything, especially at our own personal tragedies. Foreign surveys have repeatedly shown that we are happier than most people in Asia, though we're a lot poorer. We have a far lower suicide rate.
In 1986, we kicked off a series of 'people-power' revolutions around the world, and we don't care if we're recognized or not. And it was not a freak show, but one that's consistent with our history of inciting pocket rebellions.
The Philippines, for all its flaws, and there are far too many, does not have to hide such glistening skeletons in its closet. If at all, what we Filipinos have are watered-down versions. Yet despite everything, we never thought ourselves to be superior. In fact, we feel so inferior that we have to make such a long litany of insecurities like this. But this tragic sense of inferiority may yet prove to be our own salvation.
(Draft version of an article published in Fudge magazine, Jul. 2007)
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