Filipino values revisited

This week’s winner

MANILA, Philippines –  Percival Byron S. Bueser, 19, is a BS Nursing student at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, but a mathematician at heart (everyone knows that, including his nursing classmates), who has won numerous math contests in college and high school.

The penultimate treatise on the Filipino psychology, Understanding Filipino Values: A Management Approach by Tomas A. Andres, I reread again after a nine-year hiatus. The last time I read it was during Grade 5, when I serendipitously found the book inside a disarranged cabinet, severely wrinkled and dusty, but the pages were still buttressed together.

The first pages I glanced upon contained the four types of managers in the Filipino setting: (1) manager by Kayod, (2) manager by Libro, (3) manager by Lusot, and (4) manager by Suyod. I enjoyed the picturesque, glaring descriptions that imply the manner used in managing personnel; from there onwards, I enjoyed the whole book.

Perhaps it was the ripest time for me to see that book, because at that age our agile minds beheld visions of factories emitting smoke and company buildings that glimmered brighter than the sun, and we were curious about the definite functions of the “Boss” inside these marvelous establishments. Also, in the prepubescent period of grown-up clothes-consciousness for the first time, we desired to identify with shaved characters in flat-ironed coat-and-tie, with signpen lurking in pocket, leather trousers and obsessively polished shoes, the usual apparel of the “Manager” so-called.

While giving orders and handling personnel may be the ostensible task of the manager, the book showed how complicated situations could get when the Filipino is involved. The Filipino psyche is a hard shell to crack. One nagging instance involves the term “maybe,” an answer sometimes used in response to invitations, which normally means “I’m not sure.” For the Filipino it takes on a plethora of concealed meanings (“I might have other plans for the day”; “I’m not coming, but I wouldn’t want to disappoint you right now by that”; “I want to come but I’m not sure if you’re serious in your invitation”, and so on), the right one among which must be pinpointed according to situational context.

The Filipino prefers harmony (pakikasama; “smooth interpersonal relationship”) to logical coherence. Criticism of another, irrespective of how salutary in intent, is shirked off as much as possible. An aggrieved Filipino would have a go-between settle the quarrel for him, in a mild-mannered way, rather than settle it himself in raging haste with the other party.

Underlying all these is the Filipino’s love of family. Every value the Filipino holds must be placed in the context of family; indeed, family, according to Andres, “is an end in itself” and must not be “subordinated to other values.” Although variations occur, the roles of mother (the caring), the father (the provider) and the children remain intact. The listing in the book of the specific examples of customary roles of the family members, extended family, and the family in general I read zealously. It also contains methods and rules of courtship! It opened up a new frontier in my incubating mind; it made me embark on, for long stretches, how I would see myself as a father, with my then crush as a mother, with children, and how I would be proud to be equipped with knowledge of the values I was going to teach.

* * *

Nine years have elapsed. Erap ousted, Gloria gone, and Noynoy at the steering wheel. OFWs have returned and departed. Children have grown up. Lovers married and children born. What happened to our country, the superset that situated all of these?

Andres posed this question before, “Why can’t Filipinos convert individual excellence into national excellence? Why can’t Filipinos galvanize themselves into excellence on a national scale?”

To paraphrase in the hoarse whisper of the despairing, why is our country still in shambles? Whatever the title implies, the problem is too complicated to be merely logistical; it is also humanistic. Some of the answers raised included: a battered history infusing us with an inferiority complex; geographical differences; “Filipino time”; bahala na; ningas cogon; lakad (“fixer”) system; and so on.

The freshness of the book since I last read it remains pronounced to this day. The terms haven’t departed nor has the reality behind them. Discuss any one of these in a casual meet-up and you’ll likely hear the other say, invariably, to each one of these, “Ah, may ganyan rin sa amin e!”

A given Filipino value behaves like a magnet with both poles at one end. To wit, pakikisama may mean congeniality and mutual help; but it can also mean covering up of each other’s faults if only to preserve group integrity. Paggalang is a highly esteemed custom that typifies veneration for elderly kin and for those in the higher social strata, but a trait which is sometimes damaging to the exploratory impulse, the lack of which may lead to blind traditionalism and an indiscriminate refusal of innovation.

Our national life is riddled by contradictions. For instance, one statement that stood out in the book is: “Stealing is sometimes condoned to keep the family alive.”

Such statements populate the colloquial mentality. Why, in this portion of the planet, are there qualifications in classified ads when one could get a job through connections, thus bypassing merit? Why do students collaborate in cheating rather than in sharing facts? Why do lawyers here, who are supposed to elucidate the law, convolute it? Why do doctors become nurses? Why do we conduct fiestas in a poor country? Why do the rich get more education when the poor need it more? Why does “yes” mean “no” sometimes? Anyone who has known how to reason and who has lived here sufficiently long with a sentient consciousness could never resist compiling a compendium of “Why’s”!

The management approach presented applies not only to office work but also to management of the nation. The first sign of national maturity is that all of us acknowledge that we are stakeholders in all this  ready to take the role of accountable managers: whatever happens to us affects the nation; whatever happens to the nation affects us.

I reminisce the enlightening aura of the day when suddenly, the workings of the vast society around me seemed so revealingly precise, like the intricate gears of a watch. The book, for me at the time, is a storybook of the generic Filipino, archetypal, multifarious, looming. Now, aside from being an instrument for occasional meditation during cliquish “troubled times” (the “age of anxiety” to phrase iconographically) where we need a cogent philosophy more than ever, this book is also a guidebook for action, to know how to harness the strong spots of our Filipino-ness and excise the weak spots.

I think of the children who are going to benefit most from whatever bountiful marvels we can do with our goodness, but who are also going to pay dearly with us for our uncorrected mistakes.