As
I sat back watching the closing events of London 2012, and seeing John Lennon
singing “Imagine there’s no country…,” I couldn’t help but marvel at how much it
takes for countries to actually pull out events this big. China was a hard act
to follow, but in my humble opinion, London did an amazing job, with its
opening ceremonies having a rustic feel, which only GB can make work. Now, what
makes one country find all that is needed to put together such marvelous
efforts, while others can offer nothing but wretched nothings to their
citizens, who like the best minds in the Philippines, see nothing but
incitement to flee whenever they see anything orderly or beautiful on TV? Of
course, this does not apply to those people in the Philippines who find
themselves among the top 1%, who basically control all the wealth of the
country, and are often kind enough to throw out bits and pieces down to the
masses through slightly opened car windows that are promptly closed again. The
Philippines is not unique in finding itself in this position, with much of
Sub-Saharan Africa offering it great company. However, my ties are with the
Philippines, and I am nothing but sad when I consider that around the time of
the Second World War, the Philippines was THE BEST of what Asia had to offer in
terms of economics. It was not a perfect country by any stretch, but it’s the
same of any other “advanced” country anyone can mention today. What happened?
Corruption
– corruption – greed and more greed!
Greed
is not only a monster, but a virus which never knows when to stop consuming its
host, and as a result, ultimately consumes itself. Greed in the Philippines has
taken the country that produced some brilliant global minds (as evidenced by
the kababayans doing very well in practically every single country on the planet)
and pulled all but the barest required minimum of resources from public
schools, and as a result, has left behind people with IQs that would make an
Alabama or Mississippi cliché cousin-marrying toothless racist with 10 kids and
20 guns looking like Einstein. Last March, I was talking to a high school
teacher in the Philippines who has a sister in Paris, and was completely
astounded that this man, who has been a teacher for about 8 years, believes
that Paris is in France, yes, but that France is in Greece. Where does one even
begin with that?
Of
course it doesn’t mean a decent education does not exist in the Philippines. It
does, but if you’re not among the moneyed, capable of paying an arm and
possibly a leg to get your kid into a decent private school, you should be
looking for directions to ship your daughter off to Angeles City, Pasay, Cebu
or any of the other places set up to provide undereducated Pinays to foreign
men for cheap, shall we say, temporary relations.
Of
course if you happen to delve into this situation, then you should be prepared
to face the wrath of the Filipino thin skin. This is a society that is so
completely immature that any form of criticism (even when very constructive)
can – and does – land the critic in a place his parents wouldn’t generally
recommend. The US Ambassador to Manila recently tried to give some advice,
mentioning the fact that a significant proportion of single men going to the
country are there on sex vacations. Of course, among our kababayans, this is
common knowledge, and is virulently criticized. However, the reaction to the
Ambassador’s comments was swift - and generally bitter, and showed a very very
ugly side of the Filipino personality - that having to do with racism. The
Ambassador’s Black skin was made the main focus, rather than any arguments
being provided to refute his claims.
It
is no secret that racism is alive and well world-wide, but in the Philippines,
it seems to have become so well entrenched that the greedy businesses that benefit
from it are becoming completely oblivious to the fact that ultimately, they are
Filipino themselves, and that the lack of the mental development of the average
Filipino affects just about everyone. It wouldn't be far-fetched to equate the
Filipino elite with the Republican Party in the USA, which wants Obama to fail
so much that they are willing to kill American prosperity by hoarding all their
wealth, in the hopes that the economy will become so wretched that Americans
will see Obama as the cause of their misery. If Americans are too thick to buy
that argument, then the GOP has covered the bases by not only spending billions
on TV and other ads, but by actually buying a TV network (FOX) designed solely
to help people fight against their own interests.
I
see a parallel with the Philippines here...
In
business, one of the most effective tools in advertising is to make you feel
bad about yourself. That way, the good advertiser steps in and offers you just
what you need to change your miserable life. In the Philippines, that magic
potion is skin whitening. No-one has the slightest clue how much money the
companies, ranging from huge multinationals to local backyard endeavors, make
on skin whitening products. What is clear is that the companies spare little expense
in terms of advertising to the masses that by getting rid of their brown/black
skin, for 5 pesos a pouch lang, they will find happiness and forget that their
kids have no food to eat or that their miserable lives could indeed be better.
Of course that also happens in the form of very cheap cigarettes and alcoholic
drinks, but it is most pervasive in skin whitening.
OK,
I will put forward an extremely simplistic multi-pronged postulate: In the
country that is the Philippines, poverty is rampant, in fact, overwhelming. In
the midst of that poverty, the government, in response to its corporate bosses,
has made sure that all but the most remote barangays have electricity. The
government has made sure that TV is the cheapest form of entertainment among
the public, accessible to almost everyone. Now, with the platform in place, all
that is needed are the apps. Well, businesses have to think of something to
sell, and of course they have to first create a need. That need, as briefly
stated earlier, has been defined as white skin. They have hired a few
actresses, actors, TV stations, and produced programs whose role is
specifically to deride dark skin. In my opinion, this is not because the elite
themselves have anything against dark skin, but because that is how you create
a boogie man. You start as early as possible with cartoons, in which black is
represented as evil; brown, a little less so, and white as pure goodness. That
way, children take it in from a very young age that white is where it’s at.
Those same children are going to be the future consumers and buyers of those
skin whitening soaps and creams, completely unaware of what poisons they may be
applying to their skins, and as adults, too simple-minded and unintelligent to
know that God or Nature gave them their natural skin color to handle the
climate in the Philippines. You almost feel sorry for some of the (especially)
women you see walking about with faces as white as chalk and the rest of their
bodies their natural color. White skin looks amazing on white people, but looks
just plain disgusting on others. The advertisers have now even started to try
selling that crap to men, using people with half-White parents to try to
convince “ugly" natural skin Filipinos that all their problems could be
erased if they could bleach their skin with poisons. Happily, all the men I
have spoken to find that utterly idiotic.
Having
lived and worked with Pinoys who were born in the Philippines and then moved to
the US, Canada, and elsewhere in the developed world, I know there is hope yet.
People here are too busy with real life to waste the little time they have on visiting
the beach and hiding under ridiculous kubos to avoid getting dark. Like the
rest of the civilized world, they see Nita Negrita and that infamous racist FHM
cover from last year as constituting a huge disgrace for the Philippines. That
a country claiming to be modern and Christian can, in the year 2012, to be
completely insensitive and retrograde, and believe it’s OK to be worse than the
US South in the 1950s is absolutely shocking.
The
Philippines is a beautiful country. The Philippines is my country. My children
are Filipino. However, the Philippines needs to do A LOT to catch up with the
rest of even the underdeveloped world when it comes to human relations. I
understand that because of the uncontrolled population or whatever reason,
Filipinos don’t seem to place much value on their people, instead fawning like
little apes over anything or anyone White. However, for a country that will not
hesitate to allow its Catholicism to influence any and everything it does, its
people are way too quick to forget that their cherished Bible states that God
created man in His own image. That means humans are humans are
humans.
And
if I need to put down another human before I can feel important, then it means
I am very small and in fact, I am nobody. Sadly, there are too many nobodies in
the Philippines, starting from the TV executives all the way down to some on
the street.
Sources:
http://nitanegrita.blogspot.ca/
