@ Filipino culture:

failures WISH while winners ACT and HOPE. Hope has that preceding condition of action. That is what, according to the saying, separates wishing from hoping.

I used to admonish people who call themselves “business analysts” working on IT and/or transformation projects in various companies I work for to come up with proper requirements analysis documents rather than mere wish list documents. The earlier incorporates a proper vetting and synthesis of input from various business stakeholders, while the latter is a mere transcript of stuff mentioned by participants in brainstorming sessions.

Not surprising therefore that many IT implementation budgets get blown — because the requirements were gathered but not properly analysed.

Same thing with Philippine society. Pinoys are pretty clear on what they want. But as to turning those wants into a coherent vision framework, identifying realistic goals based on said framework, and then developing a plan to achieve these, we are hopeless.

@ BenK
The temptation to “legislate” manners is always there as Lee Kuan Yew met success in that field to some extent. But I think it is because of (a) LKY’s almost unchallenged role as “social architect” of that time and (b) the small size of Singapore that enabled him to:

(1) virtually re-engineer the very social fabric of Singapore;

(2) Develop a new code of conduct that enforced cultural strengths and replaced non-productive aspects of it; and finally,

(3) Developed the legislation to enforce the new cultural regime.

Works well with one cook in the kitchen. But in a country like ours where there are hundreds of cooks (and crooks), we need to get creative in our approach. The parallels with Singapore end where their dabbling in ‘grand design’ begins. Ours needs to take a more grassroots and guerrilla-style approach to driving change. I think the key lies in Filipinos’ beholdenness to celebrity and spectacle.

The 2010 to 2016 administration will have to either

(A) draft celebrities into service to lead or serve as resources for a broad and aggressive drive to change the society; or,

(B) set aside a significant chunk of the national budget to get into showbiz — by directly producing or providing to the private sector incentives (such as tax breaks) for the production of entertainment (channeled thru cinema and television) that carries a consistent message (engineered centrally, say, by a team or agency within the Department of Education).

The same administration can then bolster the above two by pushing legislation that enforces behaviour in a way that complements the messages delivered and behavioural cues imparted in the above initiatives.

Some of the legislation may be straightforward, such as ones related to:

- primacy of English as a medium of instruction

- incentives to improve savings rates and measures to force savings

But then what I consider to be the essentials are real head-scratchers; how for example do we:

- strengthen critical and lateral thinking faculties of the population (or the future generations);

- improve Filipinos’ sense of aesthetics (at the very least so that we get out of the habit of trashing our surroundings, at best to get us in the habit of routinely beautifying it); or,

- imbue a Total Quality (do it right the first time, see things through to completion, etc.) ethic?

The devil is in the implementation and most certainly in its detail!

There’s a well-worn joke among African-Americans in the US about how failures WISH while winners ACT and HOPE. Hope has that preceding condition of action. That is what, according to the saying, separates wishing from hoping. Unfortunately, wishing is part of a “magical” mentality that is rooted in Filipino culture. The latest example of this magical thinking is the NoyNoy phenomenon–thinking that his parents’ ‘achievements’ (huh?) and character (yeah, okay) magically transfers over to him simply because they share DNA. This magical thinking isn’t that far removed from that laughable logic that produced the anti-Camelot that is the Erap regime–he plays a good guy protecting the poor on the big screen therefore this transfers to his role as president or legislator. I am not sure if the people bandying the “Cory Magic” term are even aware of this. Regardless, “magic” surely fits the mentality.

To me, the only way to characterise these aspects of the Philippine personality is to call it simple immaturity. The salacious way they approach scandals, their callous lack of regard for anyone’s comfort but their own, the way they bow unquestioningly to authority — it’s as if I live in a nation of 5-year olds. Really, what is so different between being a “resource person” and a “tattle-tale”?

One of the responses I made to Uncle Pinoy was that I don’t believe that a government can or ought to legislate “manners”, and I’m convinced of it, but another comment he made got me thinking. Filipinos in the US don’t litter, or callously violate traffic laws, or urinate all over the place, he says, because of the fear of getting caught; but here they revert to old habits, because there is no enforcement. That’s plausible, but if that’s all there is to it, then why do I — or any other foreigner — not engage in the bad behaviour once here? After all, we are free of the threat that keeps us in check, are we not?

The reason, of course, is that our laws against those things are not a reaction to the public ethos, but an expression of it. Which has grim implications for the Philippines: if it is necessary to structure the laws and the functions of government to enforce a public ethos of rational decency, it will take an entire generation or more before ‘good behaviour’ — everything from not throwing trash on the ground to having a respect for the due process of the legal system — will even begin to be ingrained in society. The Philippines, it seems, may not be simply behind in development in the capital sense, but in even being civilised human beings. Very sad.