Not giving up

It has been an interesting week for this veteran of many (but always related) causes. I have witnessed or participated in several discussions with friends and advocates about festering concerns, especially the most solution-resistant of them like corruption and poverty. For the many senior citizens I conversed with, there was this deep sense of frustration and helplessness. However, to my surprise, there remained the spirit of not wanting to simply give up.

In one chat group where young people far outnumbered senior citizens, I felt invigorated by their determined energy – and an uncompromising ethical posture. After the campaign and elections of May 2022, I had thought that most who fought for authenticity, transparency, and integrity would have given up to their idealistic standards.

I found them in pain after what they considered a disaster of an election but nowhere near their breaking point. In them, I recalled my own more youthful aspirations and how I saw them smashed along the way. And when I ask myself in my most solemn moments if I have surrendered, the answer always is a firm no.

Apparently embedded in the human DNA is a powerful impulse to hold on to life. By and large, that impulse is enough to propel humanity to live and survive all sorts of conditions and circumstances. Many may live in resignation and submission to what they do not like, but totally giving up on life as in committing suicide thankfully remains a small percentage (well below 2% globally).

The Philippines is a mixed bag of good and bad news. That is reality except to the deliberately deaf and blind. Whether more bad news or good news depends mostly on one’s partisanship, not one’s objectivity.

I have seen many ambush interviews with people on the ground, literally in the streets where the majority ordinary (and poor) Filipinos are. They all say life is hard, prices of essentials like food and utilities keep rising while income stays stagnant. Yet, approval ratings of those in charge of government remain high. Most Filipinos cannot connect the difficulty of life and the accountability of public officials. Until that difficulty becomes unbearable.

Because I have seen this dysfunctional pattern, I know collective change will come very slowly. I would assume that the present administration has learned old lessons and more recent ones. As a result, its leaders may remember how an old dictatorship stood firm until abuse or power and government bankruptcy ate up its political capital. And how the previous administration kept a high popularity and approval rating but borrowed 7 trillion pesos to keep everything in check.

I will then assume that governance by subsidy will continue throughout the next five years. There will be no financial windfall unless our land and seas will erupt with oil and gas fields. From the people’s efforts, or the government’s programs, there are no visions that inspire Filipinos to take many extra miles and sacrifices to build a strong foundation from productivity and self-sufficiency. But I do see the persistent clamoring for more government assistance, direct and indirect, while government continues its deficit spending.

Yet, it is the development of a self-sufficient and producer-oriented perspective that is the only solid foundation of a nation. Mendicancy may be necessary for the massive poverty we have and the urgency for food and survival, but a pathway out of mendicancy has to be front and center in the priorities of government. I see none. We rally to no one, to nothing, not even a national slogan that sets a clear direction.

We are at a precarious stage. Our population is touted to be among the youngest in the coming decades, and that fact alone is a serious advantage when most developed countries struggle with an aging population. However, our very young population of elementary students who will be the drivers of the economy and the whole country cannot read and understand instructions. Each year that passes without the learning poverty being reversed will guarantee a non-competitive population for the next fifty years.

But, as usual, the Philippines will produce Filipinos who will compete with the world’s richest, the world’s smartest, the world’s most innovative and creative – but almost all coming from the upper, already self-sufficient 0% of the population. Which means the internal gap between the few rich and the many poor will widen all the more. And no amount of K-to-12 or K-to-10 + 2 configurations or returning the school year to June to March will reverse the tragic trajectory.

Even assuming relative political stability throughout, there is a point when prosperity cannot be driven by borrowing, only by domestic production. At the end of borrowing without growing in productivity, or raising more of the poor out of poverty, is simple bankruptcy. That was an old painful lesson that we should avoid at all costs because it will end with revolution as before.

Or when corruption in government is not firmly confronted with an effective resistance from leaders and the general population, the ending will be the same as an old lesson. Disinformation and authoritarianism will work only for a short while but actually feed more resentment. Trolls can’t stop the reality of hunger and disenchantment because our bodies and emotions are not indefinitely flexible.

I continue to believe that the welfare of the whole, the common good, must not be shoved aside by whatever frustrations and disillusionment come our way – or are already there. The heart of patriots must see beyond political personalities, or the greed of those who exploit the weak. Love of country is love of our people, love of our land and seas, love of the future of our young and coming generations.

Let us take inspiration from those we know, from fellow Filipinos who display integrity and industriousness if we cannot find this from government or politicians. Let us enable them, cheer them on, follow them by doing what they do. And believe that life is stranger than it seems.