EDITORIAL – Why do Filipinos act on hindsight, not on foresight?

Just as in the aftermath of any calamity, bright ideas spawned on hindsight become the fare at every discussion table, whether in executive sessions, corporate boardrooms, or in simple family dinner banter.

Along with the cold hard facts enumerated in death toll statistics and property damage estimates, there is one other ubiquitous item on any calamity casualty list, and that is good old foresight.

In this country where almost every official act is born as a reaction, foresight never seems to have any chance of blossoming into mature policy whose fruits would have translated into the kind of practical and meaningful benefits that the citizenry needs.

Instead, whatever foresight may have been discovered in brilliant inspiration often gets waylaid by lack of political will and lacklustre implementation, the ningas cogon mentality, or so some jaded observers would say.

And so we keep reacting, because we never dared to crack our spine by standing to see if the horizon beckons with achievable feats. In our stooped condition, all we see is the endless ritual of one foot going forward, only to be overtaken by the other foot moving on in its turn.

Look at us here in Cebu. Shaken by the unfortunate disaster in Southern Leyte, we are agog at the possibility of a similar disaster closer to home. Officials imbued with feelings of consequence are rushing to find fault with faults, offering quick-fix solutions.

Those who never recognized, much less understood, cracks in the earth if one leapt out at their faces, are suddenly finding fissures of every conceivable size and shape literally leaping out of the woodwork.

Alarm bells are ringing. This school here, that house there. Everything is in danger. All have got to go or be uprooted. The finger of authority points, and having pointed, points in all directions, and neither all your piety nor wit will call it back to stay put and rest.

It is as if everything is as quick as a flick of a switch. Look, try standing on that bridge going to Beverly Hills and look down on the river. There is no water there now, nor has there been in a long time. What you see instead are houses, dozens upon dozens of them.

Those houses have been there for as long as the water stopped flowing. Maybe it is for this reason that nobody ever felt threatened. But someday the water that seeks its own level will remember an old forgotten byway. On future hindsight we see the usual fingers getting real busy.