A Talk with a Nearby Foreigner

by Charles Uy

A few days ago, I was at the dorm lobby with my girlfriend when we were suddenly approached by a Chinese foreign exchange student. This student was undergoing his graduate studies in journalism and it was second visit to the Philippines and Ateneo. He began by asking us some mundane questions about the dorm and when it was built and what was it for. Eventually the topics turned to the Philippines in general. Language, culture and how it all related to the Chinese. I tried my best to give him a history of the Chinese in the Philippines from what I learned from my History classes and in turn, he gave me some history and perspective on the Chinese and how they viewed the Philippines.

It was strange hearing how their values were so different from ours, that somehow the prevailing Chinese stereotype in the Philippines holds true. The way the exchange student talked about how intensely pragmatic the Chinese are, and how highly they value the idea of high income equals secure future. Stranger still was how, talking about the Philippines with him made me realize that our country isn’t very simple at all. Sure, a person can be aware of the thousands of islands that exist, the multitude of languages that are present, the different cultures that exist but it never really hit me that all this was in the Philippines. In a way, I took it for granted that the Philippines was this insane melting pot of culture that historically has been really mixed and confusing and remains so to this day.

What did I take away from the long talk with the foreign exchange student? That we often take things for granted. In this case, country and history. Many times in our discussion, travel was mentioned and how that it would be an eye opener and a mind widener, but when I think of that kind of travel, I think out of the country. Places in Europe and Africa and the rest of Asia were the destinations in mind, not the places in the Philippines.  I believe that there exists a lot of untapped knowledge and perspective around the Philippines. Differing cultures mean differing values and each culture would give a different perspective on our own, similar to how religions giver perspective to other religions.

In a way, this made me realize that there exists a lot if wisdom from sources local to us, but maybe we just haven’t been looking at it, or taking it seriously. The Philippines has a rich history within it and I believe we are taking it for granted too often. Many people in the Philippines’ past still have much to teach us.


How does this relate to philosophy? I guess I could say it all comes back to awareness and the broken world, maybe on a more literal broken world level. We still have a large disconnection with other cultures, even though with today’s technology that shouldn’t be much of an issue. We continue to be absorbed by our own problems locally that maybe we fail to see the wisdom that other countries can provide to help with our situation.

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.