Filipinos: Amoebae in a Petri Dish

Some of my best thinking comes at three o'clock in the morning when my blog-writing begins. I think that is because Philippine culture is so much like a dream-world, filled with illogic and frustration, like running in slow motion. So I just morph from a dream to the reality and start writing. Usually the writing is attached to laughter, for the alternative is tears. And I think Kafka is essentially very funny, except for the tragedy part of it.

The other day, I imagined the Philippines as a bunch of amoebae in a petri dish, with all the hyperactive amoebae blobbing this way and that but unable to find a way out of the petri dish, which itself is made of some unbreakable polymer that cages the creatures in the stew of their own making.

It is this lack of a way out that is the distinctive aspect of this culture. Not the jeepneys or fiestas or murders or pollution or corruption.

It is the failure to correct society's flaws. The failures to correct the way Filipinos damage Filipinos.

The Philippines is a huge mass of moving inertia, breaking all of Newton's and Einstein's thinking about mass, velocity, time and space.

Filipinos in their conglomerate social state lack a forward vision translated into a plan translated into progressive action. I dunno if it is too much work or what. I see it in my wife's brother. Essentially smart, essentially inert, with no idea about such things as responsibility or working hard. He'd rather just hang out at the basketball court, and, alas, his new “pals” have introduced him to the tuba klatch. Career is not a relevant term around the tuba table.

That, to me, is Philippine society in a micro-micro state. No concept of progress or personal ambition. Just subsist.

What you have here is a bad case of moving inertia and I have zero idea what to do about it.

Until a Filipino sets up sail, the boat goes nowhere.

Amoebic ye rise, amoebic ye flail.

Philippine Cannibals

My site is flagged as general reading, so I will pop in this disclaimer. If you can't handle blunt trauma factoids or statistical projection, stop reading.

This piece is in honor of the Nashman, who sees reality better than most of us and isn't afraid to point out, in a simple sentence or two, that the king is naked. The queen ain't dressed so well, either.

In the United States, almost everyone knows of the Donner Expedition that got trapped in a snowstorm atop the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. You drive over Donner Pass and shudder. This is where it happened, where hungry people, trapped in snow ate each other to survive. There is a little memorial sign there, but no bones are left. I looked around.

People who have no other source of food will do what they have to do. It is not nice by modern standards. Pragmatic is a little understated, but I don't have a better word for it.

I figure Filipinos will turn cannibalistic in 2063. Only five things can stop it:

1. Massive disease or a humongous natural disaster will wipe out most of the population. Maybe a volcano will pop up on Roxas Boulevard, solving the problem with the VFA at the same time.

2. China will nuke Manila over the Spratleys.

3. The masses will engage in a chaotic slaughter of one other, a self-determined, riotous, vicious culling of the herd, probably over a blown national election. There is no need to buy any more guns; we have plenty.

4. Birth control will be introduced, no matter what those becloaked wise men of the Catholic Church say. The longer the delay, the more likely it is that abortion will be included as an acceptable alternative to eating each other.

5. The Philippines will conquer Australia and relocate its swarming, antlike masses there, causing Benign0 to run shrieking to the outback for one giant leap off Alice Rock.

I got to this point statistically, not by any exercise in religious faith or moral turpitude (don't worry, I don't know what that word means, either, but it popped out of my head and the spell check didn't flag it). It is simply a mathematical calculation, the point at which the Philippines reaches the astounding figure of trying to support 2,000 people from each arable square kilometer of land.

Today I peg that figure to be about 600 people, and we know rice is already in short supply. We are buying it from Viet Nam, fer crissake, that Asian heartland of agribusiness might. And the mountains are already cleared and planted so there is no where to go to plant more. Outside Manila, houses are mowing down the rice land like so many mushrooms erupting across the fetid swamp. So I figure the cork will pop out of the champagne bottle at precisely 2,000 mouths per sq km in June 2063.

Cheers, and pass the Cebuanos please! Or the priests, even better. Most of them are plump.

That 2,000 mark allows some room for wealth-generation and food imports to build, and for mechanization and farming methods to generate more crops per acre.

Alas, rising seas are likely to work the other way, subtracting arable land. But we don't need to be too precise here. What's a decade either way? When the ketchup runs out we can just use salt. The way many families eat their rice today.

What is the foundation of my calculation? Well, the population is doubling every 25 years and the volcanoes aren't spewing enough lava to add any more space. Each woman, on average, is hatching 3.27 new babies, relentlessly creating small mouths that become big appetites. And not enough people are dying.

So there you go.

Sorry to break the news.

Sharpen those knives and replace those broken molars.

I am inclined to ask - begging your pardon for being so curious - where is it best to place one's faith?

God's church or man's reason?

The Church, I might note, is the place that makes up neat little stories about giants and parting seas and snakes that give out apples and really really old men who live in whale bellies. Or one sect even swaps virgins for the murder of innocents, even neater. Another opposes birthing education and condoms. These guys look forward to the end of the world because it justifies their preachings, that we are all sinners with no redeeming character at all. You leaning that direction, are you? You going that way for your logic and the future of the Philippines?

God save us and pass the horseradish please.

When Thinkin' Be a'Stinkin'

Western and Filipino minds come at things differently. It is often hard to find harmony. Let me start in a non-confrontational mode and just ramble a bit. I will eventually get to the distinction and welcome you correcting me if I err in my observations.

Back story: I formerly worked for a large bank in California owned by the Japanese. My job was planning and special projects, those “one off” projects like buying or selling businesses, introducing new products, small-scale acquisitions, and the like. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out fairly complex financial and business decisions alongside the Japanese. It was a fascinating joining of two opposite thinking styles.

Americans are judgmental, willing to take substantial risk if the likely gains are seen as reasonable, and they accept that some decisions will fail. The Japanese don't like risk at all, will study a problem until there is no risk left, and cannot accept failure at all. One mistake can end a worker's career. There is a reason executives at Toyota hid quality defects in their automobiles. They wanted to avoid the shame game. Toyota management and workers, and even Japanese citizens, are going through excruciating embarrassment right now. And it translates into anger at the US for putting Toyota's failings on the front page.

The victim in such a circumstance becomes the guilty party. The Japanese cry “Japan bashing” for all the attention their stalwart car brand gets as hundreds of Americans are busy getting killed in Japanese-made cars. I find a similar echo in the way a good many Filipinos cry “racist” when an outsider pens a harsh judgment of their culture or society. I am not a sociologist or psychiatrist, but I suspect an element of shame comes into that picture, too, maybe for the ever-present corruption, poverty and shenanigans going on. Most Filipinos are good people. And those wise ass foreigners should just shut their yaps and stop pointing out these embarrassing defects.

Western decision making is, for the most part, logical and efficient. You gather reasonable information, digest it, make a decision, and move on. In its best style, examination of issues is non-personal and coldly analytical, as if Ayn Rand were at the desk. Occasionally best style is tainted by greed and ambition, but most people and businesses generally deal straight. They also recognize the way to success is by taking care of customers. They are honorable to customers.

Filipino logic is different. It has a different take on honor, which is basically to defend the home. Not take care of others.

My wife knows that I don't like to deal with Filipinos on anything that requires getting something done. There is a disconnect. I even hate to bring it up here because my observations are likely to be taken as arrogant at best and racist at worst. But it is a fact, a reality, so I'll lay it out anyway. Maybe you can help me understand it better. I figured Japanese thinking out, but have yet to grasp Filipino thinking.

The disconnect is very hard to describe. First of all, our primary languages differ, so if I am involved, the language must be English. Sorry, my fault. I have not learned the local dialect, Visayan, beyond the 200 words I say generally out of context and with accents strewn wrongly. Unfortunately, those 200 words don't help much when I am arguing with a surveyor about how to calculate the area of a parallelogram (story for a different telling). So I am embarrassed when I don't understand what is being said. “Winner” sounds like “wiener” and I wonder why we are talking about hot dogs. And my counterpart is embarrassed because his brain goes into shut-down mode when I use words that flow naturally from my brain, like “circumspect” or “engaging”.

But that is not the whole story. There is a gap in logic, and it is a struggle to explain it. The Filipino mind gets from A to Z by going, not through the other letters of the alphabet, but by re-routing the literal expressway through Manny Villar's property, back by way of Mindanao, to the moon, past Q for fun, pausing for the fiesta and all the food to be eaten there, and then, finally, arrives at Z a few weeks or months down the pike. Maybe my mind is linear and the Filipino mind is diversionary. I won't say it is illogical, although to my linear mind, outcomes seem weird.

The diversionary method of thinking is exemplified in spades by the task of getting title to a piece of property. My wife is acquiring property for our home. What takes 3 weeks in the US, where title insurance companies, real estate agents and government offices all recognize it is their duty to provide prompt service less they harm the transaction and the parties undertaking it, has taken 7 months so far and is projected to take another 3 to 6 months as the survey work is routed to Manila for approval. Well, that is short of the moon, so I suppose I should be thankful. The process wasn't helped any when a key approving official was yanked out of his office on charges of corruption. So far, some 20 people have had to sign off on this simple transaction.

Do they care whether or not the citizen is harmed by the delay? Not one whit. It is an uncaring regal attitude that drives my efficiency-trained brain nutso.

On a broader level, the Philippine Constitution, shaped by western thought, is quite reasonable, but it somehow gets transposed into a whole lot of corruption and favoritism. Crisp and clear notions like serving the public, independence of the judiciary or separation of church and state wend their way, also, to the moon and back, visiting Auntie Cory's grave for a while, head north through Pampanga for a bag of cash, then settle into the lake that inhabits Pinatubo's crater, sinking slowly to the bottom of that pit of sulfuric acid, never to be heard from again. The powerful push their power and government offices charge off to concoct a zillion wrong-way regulations that people must struggle meeitng, but it allows government to levy lots of fees so there is plenty of largess for the large pockets of friends, family and favorites.

Thinking ahead seems, for Filipinos, to be a struggle. It is a reactive society. There is no comprehensive plan to deal with global warming even though it is the the most vulnerable nation on the planet, being smack in the middle of typhoon alley, having tons of coastline about to be invaded by rising seas, and with each of its 7,000 islands having its own set of impacts from micro-climate changes. Furthermore, those in power seem not to care what all those babies being hatched will do to resources in 20 years when they are all eating adult portions. The fact that there is not enough rice now seems of little significance, for a life is precious, even if it lives a miserable existence and ends way before it should because there are so many ways to get sick in a polluted society, and there are no doctors in town. And COMELEC tries to do a three-year automation project in nine months and becomes mainly a master of rationalization for every delay and breakdown. Soon we will bear witness to the world's greatest “Hail Mary” election.

So all my boy scout training and the attached motto “be prepared” becomes largely irrelevant here, or, if I advocate it, becomes arrogant to the Filipino who resists my looking ahead because it seems like I am telling him how to do things better. Thus, I become one arrogant bastard for thinking ahead. Many would prefer that I be a complacent, unproductive ineffectual, which I am actually quite good at, having been retired for some years.

The odd twist is that so many here are complacent, unproductive ineffectuals, but they aren't retired . . . they are usually someone's uncle or cousin or classmate jamming up an important job with a well-fed derrieres. The swagger of authority is put forward to represent competence, but it is not competence at all. It is applied arrogance. It is rampant mediocrity. It is limitless disdain for those who have no favors to offer.

The drive of ambition and skill in the Philippines has been swapped away for a trade of favors. This makes no sense to the Western mind, driven to be productive and fair, but it is consistent with the way things are thought out here. Honor is defined differently. You take care of your pals, your family. You do a micro-trade of very real person-to-person favors rather than build a productive society as a superior way to take care of everybody. The societal solution is too nebulous, too vague. A favor is real.

SOS, Baby! SOS!

Going factual. Enough of my bluster about Philippine culture and ways. Let me deal with something tangible, provoked by the following premise:

The Philippines is the most vulnerable nation in the world to the impacts of global warming.

Vulnerability to global warming has five aspects:

1. Rising seas

2. Changing micro-climates

3. More intense storms

4. Resources

5. Readiness

Rising seas

Based on the CIA Factbook, the Philippines has the fifth largest coastline of any country in the world. Among the 10 countries with more than 15,000 kilometers of coastline to defend, it has the highest ratio of coastline to area. The Philippines has only 298,139 square kilometers of land and a whopping 36,289 kilometers of coastline to defend. Among those nations with large coastlines, the Philippines is by far the most vulnerable. The ratio of coastline to area is an astounding 122 meters of coast for each square kilometer of land. Norway and Japan are far behind at about 80.

That rich and greedy commercial monster to the east, the United States, must defend a mere 2 meters of coast for each square kilometer of land.

The Philippines has a population of 93 million and about 60% of that population, or just short of 60 million, lives in coastal cities and towns. Manila, with 20 million residents, is extraordinarily vulnerable. Nowhere on the planet are so many people so vulnerable.

Changing micro-climates

With 7,107 islands, the Philippines has 7,107 problems to solve in terms of sufficient food and water to sustain the population. People tend to live each day as if these resources will never change, but each island is a micro-environment that will change. Meteorologists have looked at some of the larger islands such as Mindanao and project that the western part is likely to grow more arid and the eastern part wetter. Great. What about the 7,106 other islands?

Policy seems to be “every island for itself”.

Indonesia has an even bigger problem. The country has so many islands at around 18,000 that some appear and disappear with the tides, and the nation can't even name or identify or count them all precisely. So the Philippines probably ranks a mere second place in terms of headaches dealing with micro-climate impacts.

More intense storms

The Philippines is smack in the middle of Typhoon Alley. It is not on the perimeter as are its Asian peers, where typhoons slam in and fade as they migrate inland. No, they come at the Philippines from both the east and west, and sometimes the north or south, and the islands are too small to apply the brakes. Last year, you could look both east and west and see a typhoon hovering a day away. One cranky storm spiraled about northern Luzon for a week.

Manila last year got hit with four typhoons in six weeks, capped by Ondoy. No other major urban center in the world faces that relentless threat.

It takes no statistics to see the Number 1 vulnerability of the Philippines. It only takes a map. And reflection on what happened in 2009.

Resources

The Philippines in 2009 ranked 47^th in the world in terms of GDP at $US 158.7 billion. Among the 10 nations with over 15,000 kilometers of coastline, the Philippines ranked seventh with only sparsely populated New Zealand and Greenland being less well endowed. (Snicker) Indonesia had GDP of $US 514.9 billion, over three times what the Philippines generates yearly.

The Philippines is dead last in terms of scope of problem cast against available resources to solve it.

Readiness

The Philippines has several initiatives underway, but the overall approach would have to be considered haphazard. The national government made a commitment to limiting greenhouse gasses and in early 2010 formed a climate change committee charged with organizing a response to global warming. A group of private business leaders is addressing Manila's vulnerabilities, out of self-interest. No report has been issued as of yet. Mindanao has a few small-scale initiatives going on, mainly focused on water supplies to areas that are threatened now

Of course, bearing on readiness is the loud voice of those who say global warming is nothing but a natural cycle, that those promoting it are interested in profit. “What me worry?” Of course, the anti's are betting the planet on this position, and you will never get an oppositionist to state what happens if they are wrong.

I wonder if there is another country that is LESS prepared. Hard to imagine.

Conclusion

Is the Philippines the most vulnerable nation? Indonesia would argue otherwise. With a bigger population of 235 million spread across 17,805 islands, and highly vulnerable to storms from either the Pacific or Indian Oceans, Indonesia is challenged for sure. The Maldives would argue. That nation gets the “terminal solution”, erased from the planet at a sea level rise of 10 meters. But they can probably round up enough boats to relocate the 350,000 citizens.

Very clearly, the Philippines is extraordinarily vulnerable. It has a huge coastline to defend and a huge population vulnerable to rising seas. Resources are very thin and readiness is weak and unorganized.

To the logical and linear Western mind, what SHOULD happen is very clear and very simple. Organize and fund a concerted program to defend the Philippines. Not study it. Defend.

If planning is done early, the cost is spread over many years and the Philippine budget can deal with it. Handle it on a COMELEC basis, cramming too much into too little time, or an ONDOY basis, after the fact . . . and global warming is a potential nation-killer, throwing the Philippines into chaos, destruction and endless poverty.

Yours for Boy Scout thinking, “be prepared”. Yours for forward thinking, not backward. Yours for a NASA approach to global warming, linking private and government efforts, and scientific and applied engineering efforts, aimed at defending the nation.

Yours for facts, once in a while.

Joltin' Joe

The Filipino and the Unfettered Thought

Let me provide a little background then get to the point, unkind though you may believe it to be.

My young son thinks books are toys. He has more fun with them than anything but a soccer ball. If he had his way, he wouldn't eat or sleep or do anything but kick a ball around the grass. But get him indoors and he would rather have a book in his hands than anything else.

Oddly, his favorite book when he was just a baby was his mother's Good Housekeeping guide on raising kids. He enjoyed the pictures that his dad brought to life in comic book fashion. “It's 'Dinosaur Boy'! Roaaarrrrrrrrr (hands above head in tyrannosaurus attack mode). Run for the rocks! Aieeeee!”.

So books are active for him as they are for his father. Ha, his mother mostly watches television and groans at the antics of the two whacko males planted on Dad's special chair playing with books. She never had books as a kid, her fishing-family being too poor to buy them. But she picked up on the importance when she saw the baby pointing at the animals and babbling. She immediately went out and bought huge posters with the alphabet and numbers and animals and shapes and colors on them and converted our apartment to Sesame Street East. Come to think of it, at 6'4”, I do rather look and walk like Big Bird.

The problem with books, though, is they bend your mind. An avid reader knows no bounds and will read anything that is reasonably well written. So walls come crashing down. Walls of propriety. Walls of superstition. Walls of ignorance. In books, you can end up looking through the eyes of an assassin or a Roman General or a lunatic Don Quixote peering at windmills or a microbiologist finding new cures for a plant disease threatening the wine crop.

“What does this have to do with Filipinos?” you might be wondering.

The truth is hard. I censor myself because I think most Filipinos cannot deal with unfettered thought.

“Wha? You are a little esoteric for me here, Joe. What do you mean by 'unfettered thought'?”

Well, I subscribe to the wisdom of Humpty Dumpty (refer to earlier blog), that a word means precisely what I say it means, nothing more, nothing less. I define “unfettered thought” as follows:

The unfettered thought is a concept that is outside the scope of existing comprehension, and to grasp it, we have to change inside.

“Huh? Change inside? I get the idea of coming across a concept that is new to me. But what do you mean by 'change inside'?”

To change inside is to adjust one's own thoughts or emotions, rather than deny that new concept or expect it to change.

“Please give me an example.”

Sure. Jonathan Swift, who penned Gulliver's Travels, wrote satire. His most biting piece “A Modest Proposal” suggested that Ireland, which was very poor at the time, adopt a policy of eating babies to control over-birthing. He outlined in explicit terms the rational implementation and advantages of this policy. It is a shocking work, now as it was then. The Philippines also has a birthing issue, and I am inclined to cite Swift, but can't. I don't feel the audience can handle it.

I feel readers, rather than striving to understand what Swift was saying, would rant against both Swift and good ol' Joe for bringing him to the Philippines. Rather than see Swift's point – that to correct poverty you have to do something about over-birthing - they would rather bring down the writer. Chase him out. Chastize him for being insensitive to Filipino values. Shoot him, maybe. But never, never ever simply grasp the point and change inside. Never focus the anger on over-birthing.

“Why do you feel that way, Joe? Maybe you underestimate us?”

Maybe, but you'd have to prove it to me rather than ask me to sacrifice my reputation to your lynch-mob mentality the way that Chinese satirist Tsau, or whatever his name is, got strung up for his “nation of servants” remark.

When I see the super-patriots throw a hissy fit over the way Martin Nevera interpreted the national anthem, I know there is not a lot of openness to unfettered thought here. It was a beautiful rendition; I was proud to reside in the Philippines. But was not a march so he was forced to apologize when he got back to Manila. The outraged would have jailed the artist.

It was a song, for chrissake.

Convention here is fairly conservative. Women generally don't wear miniskirts and sexy wear. Only geeky Americans with hairy white knobby legs or really unrestrained youth wear shorts at the mall.

Skins are onion, tender. Values are rigid. Pride is defensive.

Benign0 is seen as an offensive dolt rather than being respected as a master of argument, perspective and word smithing. Get outside the bounds of conservative thought here and you don't generate disagreement, you generate anger and a lynch mob mentality that seems to lurk just beneath the surface everywhere. One can easily choose to agree or disagree with what Benign0 says and move on. At least one can appreciate how well he combats opposing views. He's slick. He's consistent. But here, people cry “racist”, launch lawsuits and rant about his insulting demeanor. People try to change the writer rather than change themselves.

The notion of not reading him seems not to exist. The notion of understanding what he is saying and doing something about it seems not to exist.

I enjoy swimming, and can even swim upriver in an easy current. But it is not recommended that one try to swim against the flow of white-water rapids. There are rocks under the churning water.

You Say Noynoy's Crazy?

I don't know how certain inter-personal characteristics became so prevalent in the Philippines. You have the tribal history, the Spanish history, the American colonial history, the democratic fits and starts. You have superstitions and faiths and families that bicker yet are bound to one another like an upside down man's shoe to a cross-bar, sealed with a healthy dollop of super-glue.

On one hand, the ethereal Filipino can communicate simply with a nod or a pucker of the lips or a few words of Tagalog missing all the prepositions and gerunds and refineries of the overdone English language. The ethereal Filipino goes to Catholic Church to pray but worships a lot on the side with amulets and mystic herbal medicines and witch doctors, for he knows all is spiritual and he will do his best to stay on the good side of those unknown forces, wherever and whoever the hell they may be. The ethereal Filipino has a level of patience that Western man cannot replicate, an everyday Buddha meditating on a bamboo mat, allowing all the surrounding dysfunction to settle into place as naturally as seawater sliding across the beach.

On the other hand, the obtuse Filipino has absolutely no idea of what is going on around him. There will be 30 people in the ATM line behind him and he will be picking at his dentures with a toothpick studying his receipt to see if he can do another transaction or twenty. He works in a store or government offices and cares little about the atmosphere he sets for others, snarling at his country-mates as if they were Huns charging the gate. Mighty bond is an unsympathetic attitude of mind, no penetration here; all the sledge hammers in the world won't chink that unfeeling armor. Well, until the next soapy opera or babbling mama on Wowowee, then the tears flow freely.

Western man is obsessed with ambition, the drive to succeed, to climb, to acquire. The Filipino has no such albatross around his neck, merely going from here to there dealing with the schtick that emerges to greet him like a bus coming 'round the bend. Climb on, step aside, whatever. Who cares? What's important is a snack in the afternoon, preferably after a snooze. Then crank up the music and let's dance. The louder, the better.

A nation that eschews a knife at the dinner table, opting for the cutting power of a spoon, is certainly peace-loving. Never mind that half the population goes around with a two-foot machete in its belt and the other half has a huge gun in the closet. But they are merely for hacking weeds or firing indiscriminately into the air on Christmas. The bullets here never come down; the gods keep them, little lead sacrifices. The Philippines celebrates every date known to have something happen on it sometime in history. Fiesta is everyone's middle name. Easter lasts a week and Christmas two, shutting down banks and schools and government offices. The legislature is closed half the time for holiday and no one shows up the other half the time because they are interfacing with their constituents. Which means they are attending all the fiestas in the Province where they are cheered like heros for slapping Farm to Market concrete across the rice paddies so the water buffalo don't have to walk in the . . . ummm, water.

Now my well-ordered Western mind did battle with this for about two years, then I started to cave. I started not to care about the rules for this or that. I drove on either side of the double yellow line, ran over a dog and kept going, peed at the side of a road, tossed my baby's used diapers into the bushes, and switched from beer to tuba. Instead of bitching about the Barangay Hall's super-loud sound system, I started grooving to the music, went out into the streets, chatted with the neighbors, and enjoyed the energy. I didn't worry about the ATM being shut down, because everybody here always owes someone something and pays when they can. I became a casual debtor like the rest of the crowd. I burned my trash like everyone else, sending those resins and carcinogens skyward in hopes that the cloud will dull global warming and keep the sea in check. Logic like that is important around here, and I have become expert at it.

I have stopped doing to-do lists or checking my investment portfolio. I've dropped my blood pressure medication in favor of some root-based concoction that tastes a lot like sweaty feet; it has no medical certification whatsoever, but “they” swear by it. “They” is mostly the really old women who hover around the dirty kitchen keeping a fire going with two little sticks of wood. I was a boy scout and went through army survival training, and I can't do that. “They” also told me about the white lady inhabiting the roots of the big trees on my place in Mindanao, and I stopped going out at night.

Seems to me none of us have the standing to question another's mental condition around here.

Joe

AP and FV: Two Uglies in Bar

The Philippine blogger world had a split a few weeks ago, a spat, a testimony of testosterone and whatever it is that makes woman spitting mad. Several mainstream FilipinoVoices (“FV”) bloggers got ticked off that their comments were being moderated and so they set off to dwell at the Anti-Pinoy (“AP”) site, where the only moderation is done by the computer to replace swear word letters with asterisks. Indeed, I had fun playing with AP's computer. I'd type cocktail, a perfectly fine word, and it would show up on the site as c***tail. Or I would type siht instead of its correct spelling, but people would read it correctly, for context is king, and that's the way our brains work.

These are the games humans play. Vulcans we are not. Mature we are not. We are kids in a world of adult responsibility. What's a war but a bunch of kids fighting viciously over who peed in the sandbox? You get angry, you stop thinking rationally. I personally aspire to stay reasonable, but fail often.

I'm on a diversionary path here, and will get back to FV and AP in a moment.

I like bars. I never go with the guys, but by myself or, in past lives, with a gorgeous Czech veterinarian who liked beer a lot, or a Jewish bass guitar playing babe in New York who palled around with Bob Dylan, Peter Yarrow, Taj Mahal and other old school rockers and bluesmen. She had lots of music stories to tell, most that would last about as long as a bottle of expensive Cabernet before we headed back to her place up on 95th. Bars are the soul of man, I think. Generally dark but filled with laughter and an occasional fist fight.

Characters lurk in bars. The Shanana Bar on Melrose in Hollywood had this 6-foot amazon bartendress, a lesbian wild woman who would start downing her own string of shooters starting around midnight, forthwith becoming the conductor of a drunken orchestra that was all sound and little meaning. A live band jammed under a red spotlight in the corner of the little room, pounding out rock like four epileptics caught in rhythmic seizure. The dance floor was the size of grandpa's dining room table, blonde parquet like that on most dance floors, and four or five couples ground out simulated musical sex there. The rest of the patrons were pasted on chairs or sofas or bar stools trying to outshout the band whilst being entertaining to their neighbors or dates. Glasses and bottles clinked sharply, percussion to the dark wild and woolly scene.

I'd sometimes sit smiling mindlessly into my Coors, or flirt with the c***tail waitress, or grunt a few inanities to whoever was slouched next to me. Most people slouch at bars, a function of the stools being wobbly and the hard liquor being piped in one ounce at a time lubricating the backbone. I'd try to imagine what people did in their day jobs, and, of course, rate the girls, 1 to 10.

That brings me back to the Anti-Pinoy and FilipinoVoices community blog sites.

Let me be precise here as to what I think about FV and AP, so I don't have some idiot representing me incorrectly, as was recently done on BenK's site. I miss the AP bloggers who used to inhabit FV. They are some of the best minds on the internet, even if they do obsess a little too much for my liking on the flaws of current Filipino society. That's why I grind away for constructive acts.

Whereas others see Benign0 as insulting, I see him as brilliant, at debate, at imaginatively bent perspectives, and at coining original phrases. BongV is a master of information brought to bear on issues, UPn grad a maestro of common sense, BenK a pro at cutting through the crap and getting to the root of things in clear expression; and others bring consistently valuable perspectives to the table. Then there is JetHernandez and his ilk, the censors of AP. I object to personal insult because it is so easy to do and so difficult to counter. And such a waste of energy and time when there are important and difficult issues to sort out. The view is you have to be able to “macho up” and deal with it.

No, I don't. I choose a higher standard of exchange. So AP doesn't moderate me away, it drives me away. Same result, a voice that could be engaged in AP is silenced. AP's unfettered style silences a lot of people. So the AP incessant plaint of “censorship” that rings out, aimed largely at FV's moderation policy, rings strikingly hollow.

Now FV on paper provides a higher standard, seeking to moderate out the mudslinging. But the operators do a really stinko job of handling the administration, delaying pertinent comments for moderation, moderating people who have contributed enough good stuff that they have earned unmoderated status no matter what they say, and not responding at all to submissions or e-mail inquiries. Plus, it is a slippery slope when you start editing submissions; there is no definable line of propriety. But the site has a broader mix of perspective than AP, which tends to be like people liking each other. FV has liberals, conservatives, people of all political and professional persuasions . . . but it is also a bit of a stale society without the spice of the AP writers.

AP would have a good site if there were some way to teach the mudlingers to grow up; that, I fear, is futile. FV would have a good site if they administered it better; that is my hope, as yet unfulfilled. But that is why I write there instead of on AP – the hope for an honorable dialogue.

The split into two blogging clans is unfortunate. Unity is everything when it comes to creating a sharp dialogue on issues and a force for a progressive Philippines that people respect. I fear that aware bloggers and media people must look at both AP and FV and shake their heads, lo oy. Two uglies in a bar.

This useless exercise in blather is necessitated by an anonymous mudslinger misrepresenting my views. It is okay to call me an arrogant wiseass, as he did. I can relate to that. But it is not okay to misrepresent me as being anti-AP on FV. THAT is not true. The truth is as above. Too bad I have to waste time explaining it. Slant and slander, a sign of our times . . .

Humpty Dumpty Filipino

Now if you enjoy the imagery of artistic doublespeak, you'll find literature rich with game-playing and fun-poking. Jonathan Swift was a master at biting the pompously powerful, especially attorneys, and even got England's Queen Anne riled up at his wit, which she found lacking in decorum. Well, you know how those queens are, rather snooty and pinched about the corset.

Humpty Dumpty is another icon of royal fun-poke. He emerges every few hundred years as a new icon of puzzlement. I asked my wife if she knew the Humpty Dumpty rhyme and she said, in her profound way . . . “Huh?” I guess such tales, used relentlessly to instill wisdom in American kids, never got fully downloaded to the Philippines. Aesop and Mother Goose weep, I'm sure.

Let me provide some background on this woebegotten Egg before kicking it to the Philippines for lessons learned. I prefer the 1810 version of the rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sate on a wall,

Humpti Dumpti had a great fall;

Threescore men and threescore more,

Cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before.

The original idea was a punful play on words. Humpty Dumpty in the 1600's was a mix of brandy and ale sure to knock you or any egg off the wall. It was also slang for a short clumsy person. You see them here and there falling off walls or occasionally serving as president or king. The humor was in figuring the rhyme could be read both ways.

The Brits assigned the egg image to King Richard III who fell from power and couldn't manage his way back. It was also assigned to tools of war like modern cannons or grappling devices that would not stay up on the wall once blasted by the enemy.

Lewis Carroll in “Through the Looking Glass” imaginatively postured the Egg as a master of words. Humpty Dumpty coined the oft repeated wisdom used by bloggers to erase their tracks after a particularly bad rendition. He exclaimed to Alice who had questioned one of his definitions:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."

One should always use scorn whilst backpeddling away from blog statements that went awry.

I think Philippine government service is one royal Humpty Dumpty. The Egg has fallen off the public service wall and cracked up. All the logic or hopeful prayers of the good people of the Philippines can't put it back together again.

The Philippines is more a realm than a democracy for sure. Those in power seem to run it for personal gain rather than public benefit. And the Chief Filipino seems, from the days of Aguinaldo, to tend toward ostentation. I fear this infatuation with self-wealth runs all the way down to the local township, judging from all the ladies white of skin and large of demeanor who ride 'neath umbrellas upon the floats in the Gingoog City fiesta day parade. They certainly have the queenly wave down pat, nose slightly upward of tilt, Mona Lisa smile slightly liquored up and hand lazily fanning some moth out of the way.

That's not the way the Los Angeles Lakers do it when they ride their victory truck down Figueroa Street. They point and smile broadly and shout and high-five people and look happy and thankful as they pass by all the fans who pay their salaries. Those rich jocks get it, people with a high school education or a year or two of college. Yet the Ivy League graduates hereabouts seem not to appreciate just exactly WHO it is that is funding their glorious ride.

Democratic government is supposed to be of and for the people, broadly, not just of and for the people with money and power. So I herein nominate Humpty Dumpty as official icon of the Philippine realm, and offer a suggestion that he be taken up to Pinatubo and boiled in hot sulphur water until his innards get some stiffness. By stiffness, I mean courage, brains, compassion, logic. And a big heaping helping of, yes . . . honor.

If I look at the main purpose of Government hereabouts, it seems to be to raise money. Every agency is a taxing agency. They don't provide good service, for sure, for when you walk in the door you are invariably met with a snarl, not a smile. You always feel that you have imposed upon their royal time.

Customs feels no responsibility for building the Philippines as a trading force competitive to Singapore or Hong Kong, or even Malaysia. The only Asian country in the rear view mirror is Myanmar, for crimminy sakes, and that asylum in North Korea. Philippine Customs taxes books, loads people up with paper and assesses them fees for filling it out, and does all it can to suppress both exports and imports. I had DHL send me my monthly mail from the US last week. I got four letters of value precisely zero, but Customs levied a P548 charge for opening the package and looking at the four envelopes therein. That is two days worth of labor for a day-worker out here in the province. Labor that will not get hired because I spent it on Customs. So Customs beautifies its tax collections and damns the jobs. Furthermore, the tax incents me not to get my mail as often. Assuming I am not alone, in a few months we can expect DHL will quit the Philippines and fire several hundred people and delivery service to the hinterlands will get even more provincial.

You see, the problem is, the P548 tax is not correlated to the value of any service government provides or I create. It is correlated to the fact that the global economy sagged, the Philippine government was generous on its election year hand-outs, and now all the taxing agencies are being whipped by the Lords to get caught up. No matter the cost. Government departments are simply taxing agencies, raising pieces of gold for the Realm. Why does the story of Robin Hood log into my brain about now?

Taxation unrelated to value is punitive and destructive. It is theft.

Anyway, Customs gives you a perfect Humpty Dumpty approach to government. Off the wall. Cracked. Like taxing books, a dark ages practice if ever there were one.

Other agencies are no different. Immigration is really a hoot. They are gold diggers extraordinaire because they get to deal with all the rich people from overseas. Immigration taxes them everywhichway, which is why the aforesaid rich people decide it is better to live in Costa Rica than this monetary sink hole. The jobs, of course, go to Costa Rica.

And it is with clear intent the international airport terminal fees are about 10 times what the domestic fees are, though the terminals probably cost about the same to build and maintain. Mabuhay and open your wallet, sucker. On your exit, they don't search your purse for explosives. They look for any pesos other agencies might have missed whilst you were visiting. Wow, Philippines.

Now I don't want to sound like I am just a bitchy complaining foreigner, for I know you citizens get your collars stiffened up about that.

But I heartily suggest that you remind any snarling, surly local government office workers for whom they actually work.

Give those who are surly and inefficient a hard boiled egg. Make it the new symbol of the realm, a message from the people, that we know, we understand, that government service is supposed to be PUBLIC service. And when it is NOT, you're off the wall and you've earned your Humpty Dumpty egg.

Maybe we can run a Humpty Dumpty award contest, like the Oscars.

“The Humpty for Painfully Poor Prior Planning for 2009 goes to . . . Mr. G. Teodoro for losing the rubber boats meant to rescue victims of Typhoon Ondoy!”

Yes . . . yes, when my blog is better known, I'll sponsor the contest . . . that's good, really good . . .

I'm sure you can come up with a few nominations yourself . . .

Mooning the VFA

Perspective is important, yes? If one is in a closet, it is difficult to see the house.

I heartily resist being put in closets or boxes or buckets or any container built, carried, borrowed, stolen or otherwise used by other people. I suppose it is a function of claustrophobia, mine occasioned by the US Army forcing me to squeeze through some dark and stinky barrels deep under ground under some misguided thought that this was training me rather than turning me into a blithering psycho, but that is a story for a different telling. Short form out-take: I hate being told how to see things. I want to wander around and check things out from all angles.

With regard to the VFA, I rather see people as falling into several buckets. So you and I don't have to view it from within any bucket ourselves, I suggest we take a seat and view the matter from a better, more removed perspective. As the VFA pertains to two countries on opposite sides of the planet, I'd suggest we relax up on the moon and peer down to see what we can see.

First of all, we would observe that the US and Philippines are still in bed after all these years. The US raped the Philippines in 1898 and 1899, tied it to the bed post for half a century, then set it loose with chains about the ankles and a tattoo of Uncle Sam on its butt. Now, like a well beaten wife holding desperately to some warped sense that “he loves me”, the Philippines keeps going back for more abuse.

At some point, an outside observer would say, yes, the husband is a jerk, but he is not the only player here. The needy abused wife who keeps going back for more is responsible for what happens to her.

Hold on to that line of thought for a moment.

Our moonshot also lets us see that the VFA is really a very small document. It does not say anything about the SUBSTANCE of what the US and Philippines do together. There is no recitation of numbers of troops, or how many Filipinos get accepted into West Point, or who pays how much to whom, or whether or not the US can base drone aircraft in the Philippines. The VFA just gives the US assurance that, okay, you are sending your people to the Philippines, where some will risk their lives in dangerous territory; they don't need visas and the Philippines will give soldiers the right to US detention (so that they don't get strung up by a mob of Filipinos if a wayward soldier should happen to rape a Filipina). Now, after having acted largely like a rape mob over Nicole, the Philippines wants to make sure it can get its hands on the culprit, whether guilty or innocent, in the future.

So our rape victim, deep down psychologically, way after the fact, wants to cut the wanker off the rapist.

The US, on the other hand, having seen the Philippine justice system at work, is likely to say “no way will your judicial wimps, bending to the will of the rioting mobs, lay their hands on our soldiers”.

From our moon seats, we can see that what actually occurred between Nicole and her date was that two smallish and irresponsible people got drunk together and did irresponsible things, and it is not worth a second of our thinking time.

How did it get so blown out of proportion?

Well, we can see the buckets down there on earth. In one are those star-struck Filipinos who relate to Nicole as a sister of Kris Aquino, who,after all, is a part of their extended TV family, so they are outraged that a pious sister of theirs was abused by a dirty-minded criminal American, an aspiring slave-owner if ever there were one. In another bucket is a bunch of American drill sergeants who have themselves been out in the bars of Subic and Angeles City and dinged a Filipina or two, willingly or not, and figure their comrade in camouflage has been railroaded by a whore and other lying, untrustworthy Filipinos. In a third bucket is a batch of media owners who figure they can get their circulation and profits up by milking this juicy contrived story for about three years. In a fourth bucket are people standing around in a daze saying, holy guano, Batman, this thing certainly is not the most important thing going on in the Philippines, given that Typhoon Ondoy is sure to ram its way down typhoon alley soon and Typhoon Corruption is raping EVERYBODY every day.

Okay, okay, okay. I see that I have gotten worked up and risen from my moon rock. I shall sit back down now. Whew. Relax, Joe. Have a San Mig . . .

Another perspective our outer-word vision gives us is insight into contract law. Now few contracts have exactly the same terms for both sides because contracts usually are an instrument that documents the exchange of different values that are judged equal. I'll sell you this house if you give me P 3 million. I'll build this expressway and run it through the Villar plantation if you pay me P200 billion. I'll be your call center if you pay costs plus 25%, and we will speak only English.

What does the VFA exchange? It provides the administrative foundation that allows the US to provide its soldiers to the Philippines to fight a mutual scourge, terrorists, and also have a legal framework in place in case, oh, China invades the Spratleys and the US has to come balance things out. Lacking that, the US has no legal basis for helping defend the Philippines and could only come immediately as an illegal “occupying force”. At least that's how those who disagreed with a US presence would phrase it. What does the US get? Well, it doesn't have to go through all the red tape of visas or turn its troops over to a mob if they behave badly. And it can easily defend its strategic western outpost in Asia, the Philippines.

Looking past the administrative document, let us simplify our negotiation on the terms of the VFA. Let's assume both sides have come to terms on all points except two. The Philippines wants wayward US soldiers held in Philippine jails pending trial. The US wants to stop giving three Philippine military cadets valuable and costly slots at West Point Military Academy.

As the lead negotiator for the Philippines, what do you do? Do you give up the right to train three of your best military people at the best military school in the world so that a suspected rapist can be housed in a Philippine jail instead of at the Embassy?

You tell me.

My own belief is that we live in a world of distortion, and the media circus is affecting the reasonability of negotiations. The matter has gotten outside the scope of the real exchange of values and into the reality show world of slant and slander. It will be difficult to put a contract together that changes the real underlying values just so people in the Philippines can feel vindicated about a war fought over a century ago. It is hard to negotiate a contract on ABS-CBN.

My guess is you can kiss the VFA goodbye. Not because the Philippines wants it to go away, but because the US will not sacrifice its value-principles for the sake of Philippine media play or legislative grandstanding. The wisest move would be for the Philippines to take the matter off the public table and into the arena of secrecy for the security of the country. Then negotiate for value received.

A stupid American soldier, Nicole and media distortions should not decide how two countries relate, considering both countries want essentially the same thing.

Okay, back to our earthly ways for now . . .

The Race Card

Well, a certain PhD in Manila suggests I am a peculiar kind of American, evidently not appreciating my take on race and countries that seek some kind of nationalistic purity. So I’ll elaborate.

It seems to me nationalism is important to: (1) live harmoniously according to commonly accepted rules, (2) gather enough resources to better oppose aggressor states, (3) huddle together for warmth and comfort, or (4) organize an economy that can compete fairly for prosperity. These are moral, military, security and economic needs and have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin or where one was born.

I’m not really sure why so many Filipinos believe it is somehow important to stay fundamentally Filipino. The morality is screwed up by widespread law-bending and corruption, the country can barely feed the ever-birthing hordes, the place is pretty warm already, and the economy can’t spit into the wind for distance. What are they trying to preserve? The hills have been cleared and are washing into the seas, the reefs have been dynamited to gravel, and the fish have been stripped so all that is left are those spiked little creatures that you should avoid stepping on lest you have to hop quickly to get a friend to pee on your foot.

Now, on the other side of the big pond, the US, after its internally hard fought epiphany of the 1960’s, leads the world in setting race aside in favor of competency. The smarter you prove to be in an applied way, where smarts has value to the government or businesses, no matter where you are from or what you look like, or even how many legs you have, you have a shot at becoming a citizen. The best of the best rack up the Nobel and other prizes like so many elk heads on the rustic cabin wall.

It seems to me that countries that consign themselves to a closet of culturally closed nationalistic prerogatives relegate themselves to: (1) energy wasted defending against imagined foreign ghosts, rather like Chicken Little’s friends running about shouting “the sky is falling”, and (2) non-competitive economic development, as high-skill competition requires getting the best available brains, wealth, technology and productive moxie, no matter where they are from. Not to mention, (3) culturally closed societies risk being really boring, and (4) stand as remnants of outdated thinking of man as a small animal.

Racial stereotypes are born of fear and misunderstanding and invariably lead to unfairness and punitive behavior. The sooner the whole world cross-breeds itself into a fine yellowish brown tone, the better off we will be. Likewise, the sooner Filipinas toss their whitening creams into the garbage and take pride in the way they look, brown and beautiful, the sooner they can stop dealing with one another on some kind of starstruck superficial level and get to relating about things that matter.

The sooner the country is thrown open to people who know how to compete fairly, serve well, invest smart, and manage with an eye to the future, the sooner the country will stop being led by a bunch of outdated fogies (trapos I believe they are called) with pesos for brains and illogic for a vision statement. Who gives a rat's patootie what y’all look like or what history you trudged through to get here? It is more important to get some food on peoples’ tables and get all those rickety homes off the muddy river banks.

Sorry. Just the way my brain circles on this matter. I’m confident most of you can deal with it. Or tell me how my thinking is wrong, even better . . .