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.
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