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
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