The Philippine Online Chronicles

“To be truly happy,” the fictional character Daniel Linderman said, “a man must live absolutely in the present. No thought of what’s gone before and no thought of what lies ahead.  But a life of meaning… a man is condemned to wallow in the past and obsess about the future.”  To be honest: our people’s reason for presidential preference disturbs me.

It is demoralizing to realize we could be wrong.   I have been asking myself, have our assumptions about the Filipino be so wrong?  Are we so far removed from the daily concerns of Ordinary Filipinos that we don’t understand what she needs?  Why are they choosing what they are choosing?

I’m pretty certain that the pundits will tell you all about the difference between Noynoy Aquino and Manny Villar’s numbers.  I leave you to them to discuss the relative constituencies of both camps. I leave you to them to discuss what it means for both sides of the fence.

Clearly the lines are drawn between the halves and the halves not. Clearly there is a philosophical difference between where the halves want to go, and where the halves not prefer not to be. I want to talk about the philosophical difference and that the correlation is that this is a battle for which philosophy wins out in the end. I want to talk about this great divide.

What do we know?  Villar’s numbers continued to climb amidst C5 at Tiaga.  He wins in the voter rich class E.  He wins in the working demographic of 25 to 44.  And those voters are telling us, that they don’t care about if their president is corrupt.

Feed us. That’s the only thing that matters.  We don’t’ care whether you steal.  We don’t care about your fight.  Just feed us.

On the other hand the camp of Mr. Aquino is telling us, “walang corrupt, walang mahirap.”  Translation: without corruption there will be no poor.

I talked about this with a friend on Facebook.  She reminded me of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.   To visualize it, think of the hierarchy of needs as a pyramid.  At the bottom are the basic things a man needs like food, water, breathing.  At the top of that pyramid is what he calls, “Self-actualization,” where things like morality, creativity, and problem solving come into play.

What I think this survey tells us is that right here, right now, more and more Filipinos are focusing on the material, the bodily needs, rather than the big picture.  This is evident in two things.  First, the fact that more people in the socio-economic class E chose “cares for the poor,” which is Villar’s call to arms.  Second, the age bracket of 25 to 44 is more likely to choose Villar than Mr. Aquino is likewise a signal that they are more concerned about making a living and making money than looking at the big picture.

This fact should alarm people more than being alarmed at the fact that competence and intelligence falls below everyone’s expectation.  This fact should alarm everyone that it doesn’t matter if the next president is a good guy. This explains why more and more people will turn a blind eye on what makes our society broken.  A bribe here, a bribe there, just to get the job done is the over riding concern for most Filipinos.

This focus on the present, on the dire needs of the flesh and not what the greater good is, should frighten us as a people.  It should scare moralists and the church. It should scare you.

It isn’t just a great divide between the halves and the halves not.  It is a great divide on what the Filipino, Maria Clara should stand for.  What her philosophy is.  How she sees herself in the world.

This troubling fact explains the great plague of corruption sweeping our country.  It explains why for some people, we find our country is miserable.  It explains why in many ways, we find our jails filled with children, rotting.  It explains why our courts of law are entangled with unsolved cases, often-frivolous ones.  It explains the state of our national life. It explains the shallowness of our society and the vindictiveness of our politics.

Feed us. That’s the only thing that matters.

This philosophy should give us pause.

It is a dark, dark road that leads only to irrelevance.  It leads to a future where our children will remain impoverish. It leads to a future where we will twist our norms.  Bad is good and good is bad.

I’m not saying choosing “not corrupt” is the absolute right thing to do. But it signals that we want to change our national life.  That we need to reshape what our future will be. We need to set things right.

We cannot afford a society driven by our bellies.  We cannot allow for our society to be so shortsighted.  We can no longer spare to have a nation that cannot hope to dream, to imagine, to yarn.

Should those who choose a President that is against corruption fail to address the inequalities that obviously persists and allow the status quo to exist; therein is the greater danger.

It is leadership that our people need.  It is vision and it is courage to face tomorrow that this survey shows.  We need imagination.  We need self-actualization.  We need that quality to guide our people out of poverty.  We need steel in deed and in words.  We cannot allow a philosophy so driven by hunger to win.  We need a nation that rises above the fire. We need leaders who search for meaning in life.  We search for leaders who condemn themselves to wallow in the past, and who obsess about our future.

Perhaps you think that the word, “leader” is simply confined to our presidential aspirants or our leaders in government.  This survey highlights that the upper socio-economic class is for someone who is against corruption.

It is to the higher socio-economic class that carries with it a responsibility.  Let us right our ship of state.

A few days ago, I was reading this piece by Rory Marinich on Apple and iPad, “This is why it’s worth learning about advertising”.  The salient point of the piece boils down to this: Apple’s not actually selling a computer.  They’re selling magic that can do anything you want.

If the current philosophy is about bellies first, what then should be its polar opposite? We’re not selling a country. We’re not selling an imaginary tomorrow.  We’re selling magic that can do anything you want.  Wouldn’t it be a great country where no one was dishonest?  Wouldn’t that be a country where no one was poor?

What I take away from this survey is this writing on the wall.  We cannot afford a poor nation.  Should it surprise me that this startling realization rocked my faith in what we ought to do as a nation?  Is it time therefore to create a life of meaning for Filipinos?

Should it surprise anyone the depth and the great the divide in our society?  My friend, she said something most important. “That you and I are even asking this question suggests that we’ve both never experience the hunger borne of real poverty, you know?”

What then is our raison d’être?

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images are from Pulse Asia.

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