Wanted: new discipline

I found images of litter-ridden Rizal Park at the Luneta in Manila on the day after Christmas rather disturbing, as I’m sure many others did. Photos posted online elicited comments mostly lamenting one thing: Filipinos’ utter lack of discipline.

One netizen remarked: “How can we expect people to follow the law when they can’t even practice the discipline to keep our surroundings clean?” Someone pointed to the possible lack of trash cans, but another said, “They did the same thing in Boracay after it was reopened. The trash can is already in front of their face but they still drop their trash on the ground.” Another one told of a foreigner’s bewilderment at how Filipinos care so much about their personal hygiene (taking a bath daily is seen as a positive and peculiar Filipino habit), and are neat and tidy in their homes—but behave so differently once they step outside.

I was led to recall observations made over three decades ago by James Fallows in his much-debated 1987 article “A Damaged Culture” in The Atlantic magazine. He wrote then: “I felt I had a glimpse into the failures of the Philippines when I saw prosperous-looking matrons buying cakes and donuts in a bakery, eating them in a department store, and dropping the box and wrappers around them as they shopped.” He further recounted: “In the first-class dining room aboard the steamer to Cebu, a Filipino at the table next to mine picked through his plate of fish. Whenever he found a piece he didn’t like, he pushed it off the edge of his plate, onto the floor.”

These embarrassing observations could well have been made today, a generation later—a sad reflection of the average Filipino’s seeming self-centeredness and lack of concern for the common good. It’s the same character flaw that makes them jump the queue nonchalantly, whether standing in line at, say, the airport departure lounge, or driving a car caught in traffic congestion; or leads impatient motorists to create an improper counterflow lane when traffic backs up, thereby worsening the congestion for everyone.

Someone suggested that we start with disposing of our own trash at fast-food joints like Jollibee, McDonald’s, KFC and others. Why, indeed, do diners in such places overseas routinely clear up their tables and dispose of their own trash in the provided bins, while here at home, we leave them all behind for someone to clean up after us? Some may rationalize that we need to create employment where there are not enough jobs to go around. Others call it the “Metro Manila Aide” mindset: Why clean up at all when others have been hired to do it for us?

I remember how, in my first visit to Singapore in the late 1970s, I was impressed at how clean the city was. As I expressed my admiration to my taxi driver, he explained to me that an army of street cleaners would come out at 4 a.m. to do their work, and be out of sight by the break of dawn. It occurred to me how our ubiquitous red and yellow-outfitted Metro Manila Aides were leading everyone else to think nothing about dropping litter on the streets and sidewalks. Someone, after all, was always there to clean up after them. Apart from stiff fines enforced by the Singapore government (which we could well copy), I imagine that the average person there would instinctively hesitate to tarnish their immaculately clean surroundings with litter, as unlike in Manila, there’s no one in sight who will clean up their mess.

Others commented that we need our schools to educate our children to keep our surroundings clean. One told of how his kids’ school in Bacolod City asks them to bring eco bags for their daily trash and bring the trash home for proper waste segregation. Marikina City won a Galing Pook Award years ago for a similar program. It will take a generation or more of re-education, yet another netizen wrote, for these bad habits to change. Unfortunately, Fallows’ article, widely cited as it was a full generation ago, failed to spur our schools and educators into action. Otherwise, we could have seen a clean Luneta the day after Christmas, and tomorrow as well.

Happy New Year! May it move us to rethink our bad habits, and resolve to change them for good.

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