Broker nation
Think of the many ways modernity has been entering our lives. Then consider that for each instance, there is most likely someone who pops up to help you navigate the challenges presented by the new innovation.
For travelers from all walks of life, it’s the moment after lining up for a long time, the immigration officer tells you that the eGovPH app is required for you to exit or arrive. For people with cars, it’s discovering that slowly but surely, pay parking attendants are being eliminated, requiring you to pay for parking at a machine; it’s the parallel discovery that fast-food chains are also systematically trying to eliminate as many humans from their payroll as possible, which is why you have to place your orders at an automated kiosk.
Sooner or later, of course, we will all get used to it. The classic case of this is the introduction and rapid adoption of the ATM: and to this, we can add our confidence in and dependence on apps like GCash and Grab, not to mention Lazada and Shopee. But it seems to me that when it comes to attempts to modernize our relationship with the authorities in particular, and institutions in general, instead of being temporary, the role of brokers becomes institutionalized.
Article continues after this advertisementBy brokers, I mean that person who is assigned to help you out with something that was meant to eliminate the need to interact with a person in the first place. The member of mall staff assigned to patiently hover around the pay parking machine, the McDonald’s crew who does the same thing to rescue frustrated and confused senior citizens at kiosks, even the janitors and security guards in many public and private establishments who weigh in, with varying levels of helpfulness and competence, to help people with apps and online/automated forms. All these people are brokers and the most extreme form of the broker, of course, is the fixer, who does it for a fee.
The broker is necessary because the systems meant to fix a problem will be broken in turn, if an interpreter-guide isn’t around to help. In a very human sense, this is the very definition of what Randy David has called our country’s (and society’s) “crisis of modernity,” which, as he once put it, is “marked by what Gramsci once called the dying of the old and the inability of the new to be born. The old habits of our culture are quickly vanishing, yet the ways of modern society have not fully taken root. In the interim, our people suffer from a surplus of dependence. They are subservient even when they no longer need to be. They slide into the easy habits of the powerless even when the tools of emancipation may already be at hand. They seek patronage even where it is not necessary.”
In another reflection, Randy David looked out at our political leadership, marked by an epidemic of increasingly unproductive but also increasingly entrenched political families, and pointed out, “The proliferation of political dynasties is itself only a symptom of a bigger malaise—the absence of any real political competition in our society. If you just treat the symptoms—for example, imposing term limits and banning political dynasties—the disease will likely manifest itself in other forms.” (see “The case against political dynasties,” Public Lives, 4/15/07)
Article continues after this advertisementIn both these cases, I’ve tried to explore these themes and pointed out how, politically, the dead-end nature of our post-Edsa political system, a Constitution impossible to amend, which means a system impossible to update, much less improve. This means we are all just treading water and that includes political families who have mutated into invading the party list or canceling out competition among themselves to divide up offices, reduce competition, and save increasingly escalating costs–while producing nothing more than ayuda, which is the strict cash-only transaction to which the public has reduced both leaders and the led since both can’t make any difference when it comes to the existing system.
Add to this three other basic factors: first, stunting and wasting in kids, which means up to two-thirds of young people are already physically and mentally limited in what they can achieve by the time they even start school, producing a permanent underclass who can never ever move up beyond menial tasks; an umbilical cord, economically speaking, created by remittances which frees all administrations from actual accountability for economic performance; and an educational system geared to near-term production of talent for export but little actual innovation, much less problem-solving, and you have a country and society that is collapse-proof, but also, takeoff-proof as well.
—————-
Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3