Two things must be demanded of Filipinos who probe the continuing existence of a national community in this country. First, they will have to be absolutely honest as regards whatever truths their willful inquiry yields. Second, they will have to be intellectually adept in never mistaking the exception – however seductive and psychologically comforting it may be – for the rule or the norm. Without being fortified by honesty and intelligence, such probers will be vulnerable to avoiding ugly realities and, when evasion becomes impossible, to romanticizing, cosmeticizing and thus falsifying whatever disorients. A surfeit already exists of inquiries into contemporary Filipino nationalism that suffer these infirmities. One does not serve this country well by yet another analysis that those in tourism might be forgiven for touting, given the current hard times and the country’s persistent need for hard foreign currency.
The available hard evidence makes it difficult to believe that most Filipinos assign more than ritual existence to their "nation". Beyond their formal institutions – be they political, economic, social, intellectual or religious – little that has intrinsic national value appears to exist. Democracy and participative governance, the market economy and free enterprise, the family and integral unity, the various churches and religious faith, education and productive functionality – all these are no more than hollow forms of the substantive realities and dynamic forces they truly represent in other countries.
In viable nations, these institutions and processes all conspire to bring a people together. They integrate a people rather than divide them. They enable the citizenry to image their community effectively and more easily as governments do govern, economies produce, families integrate, religions bind and educational systems orient, train and liberate the citizenry and specially its younger generations.
In contrast, among peoples who have ignorantly aborted their nation, irresponsibly failed to nurture and develop it , or criminally participated in bringing about its death, the same institutions and processes are corrupted and denationalization systematically takes place. Even as formally a whole panoply of institutional forms exists and an impressive array of processes obtains, the people’s objective conditions bespeak increasing anarchy, political fecklessness, economic dislocation, social disintegration and, at the level of individuals, much psychological disorientation.
Widespread, deepening poverty, much criminality and pervasive social unrest normally attend the increasing debility of an unfortunate nation. At its wake, such a nation suffers constitutional, legal and political breakdowns. The people increasingly hold the inept authorities and the laws in contempt, property and other human rights are cavalierly ignored, social systems are readily disrupted and neither the conduct of traffic nor garbage disposal and collection may be expected to work well. Corruption no longer becomes the exclusive preserve of the strong and influential; it becomes just as well the domain of the weak and the hoi polloi, the ordinary people who pick up corruption as a way of life.
No community can be imagined to exist for long among conditions that most Filipinos now encounter in this country. A sense of nationalism realistically is unsustainable among a people perennially buffeted by feckless leaderships, criminal violence, brutalizing poverty and demoralizing hopelessness. While a few hardy and unusually patriotic souls will keep faith with their imagined community, most people will eventually have their sense of community irreversibly break down. Heroic mindsets are ever the exceptions, pragmatic types after all are the rule. In the long run, a nation is sustained not so much by the heroism and sacrifice of a few as by its pragmatic utility for most of those within it. Heroes and martyrs must always be appreciated but a nation that is constantly in need of them cannot long survive.
Filipinos seriously assessing their nation now are forced to think the unthinkable. Confronted by the clear possibility of a dying nation, the genetic impulse towards flight or fight takes over so many of them. Quite a few have already taken to flight, either as permanent migrants or transient contract workers. Many more are considering flight, for reasons that include providing their children a kindlier place to be nurtured in.
There are those who have chosen to fight whatever ails their imagined community. In government as well as in other sectors of Philippine society, numerous people are learning to organize and to actively work together in making the authorities accountable and the general public more intelligent and responsible in what makes for a stronger community. Participative democracy that helps both leaders and followers gain more maturity in nation-building is slowly gaining ground even as the historic reality of oligarchic governance continues to kill the nation.
For those who choose to fight, even their nation’s death will not deter them from continuing the missionary work. Resurrection necessarily involves working a miracle and there is no greater miracle than a determined people infusing life back into their murdered nation. Having suffered enough, Filipinos can resurrect even a dead nation as they combine greater knowledge about the wherefores of their national history with more effective organizational work politically forcing their authorities towards responsible governance.
Shared suffering, intelligent education and purposive action - these are the most powerful elements Filipinos will have to rely on in their resurrection work. With these, Filipinos can anticipate making the phoenix their most appropriate symbol for a nation that death only makes better.