Savagery

by Robert Go

Okay, so I just had my first Long Test a while ago in my Hi165 class entitled Rizal and the Emergence of the Philippine Nation. Since a lot of the concepts and topics that I studied for are still fresh in my mind, I thought that it would be best to use these tidbits and actually attempt to relate it to Marcel’s piece. I realize it might be a bit boring talking about these pre-colonial native Filipinos, but please bear with me. Who knows maybe you could actually learn a thing or two?

Did you know that the indigenous society during pre-colonial Philippines possessed an extremely flexible social structure quite unlike the rigid Indian caste system. The flexibility and high degree of social mobility was caused by the fact that people were more important than land. In the past, indigenous society experienced low population density which meant that there weren’t enough people to cultivate the surrounding land; the lack of labor force made land irrelevant. As a result, the power of the tribal leaders (datus) lied in the number of followers they possessed. However, since there was a high demand for followers, the people had to ability to choose which datu they would follow. They would often times choose to align themselves with the ‘better’ datu who not only had more alliances or military conquests but also one who could provide his followers with more protection, feasts and even gifts. With this, they could shift allegiances at any moment based on their assessment of the datu.

The very fact that pre-colonial Filipinos would shift their commitment to someone else based on who could provide them with the most benefits shows the lack of loyalty and the high priority set on self-interest during that period thus giving us a glimpse of how broken our world really was and even is. Marcel talks about how this world is broken because of our narcissism. We are filled in a world full of I’s and me’s, in a world where people have become reduced to abstract individuals. Our brokenness stems from how we only see people as investments; we immediately look for what that a certain individual can provide us or how can they be useful to us. Their specific functions then overshadow the other aspects of their humanity that we fail to see. Consequently, this detachment and lost sense of community affects how we interact with people today just like how the pre-colonial social structure used to operate.

Another fun fact: when Magellan and the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines, they were able to persuade a local datu named Raja Humabon to pledge allegiance them. However, once Magellan was defeated in the Battle of Mactan, Raja Humabon invited all the remaining Spaniards to a feast where they slaughtered all the Spaniards. A very ruthless yet practical action since they could no longer benefit from the Spaniards. The natives saw no reason to align themselves anymore with the foreigners since their lost portrayed them as weak and useless to them. It may be an extremely brutal act on the part of the natives, but can we really say that we are less barbaric? In modern context, we may have actually done something similar where we just get rid of people who are no longer of use to us as a result of our broken priorities.


At the end of last Thursday’s class, a question was given to all of us: how do we respond to this brokenness? Unfortunately, I have no answer to this question since I believe that to finally fix and create an unbroken world is too ideal. It may sound a bit pessimistic, but I believe it is just truly impossible. The structure in which we are live in calls for the survival of the fittest. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there where one’s own self-interest prevails over all and this has continued on for the longest of the times. The world wasn’t broken just when Gabriel Marcel wrote this piece 50 or so years ago, but it was already broken even during pre-colonial times. This world forever was, is and will be broken, but it’s just how we choose to live in this broken world that could set us apart from the savages.