How Much Is Your Clock Worth?

My wife and I are building a home for my wife's mother and her kids. It is on a large lot where we will soon build our own home. But Mama goes first, as she has never had a real home of her own. My wife has a soft spot in her heart about that. “What are your dreams?”, I asked, when we first met several years ago. “Have a real life” was answer number one. “Get a house for my mother” was number two. Kids were not in the top five, as I recall, but somehow we got the order of things mixed up, and Junior America moved up front. Come to think of it, he is a rather headstrong, pushy kid. That's what you get when you combine a Filipino and an American.

Mama has lived here and there over her middle-aged life, putting out close to the requisite number of kids, six at last count. When you are born deep in the heart of poverty, you find your home where you can, and the kids just come with having a husband. Two of the kids are responsible, three are not, and one is mentally retarded, going on age 13, with the intellectual and emotional framework of a three-year old. But her heart is huge, just huge.

But Mama is not the subject of this article. It's deep background.

I asked my wife to take charge of supervising the building of Mama's house. First of all, my wife is a sharp cookie and this is good for her personal development. Second, I have a hard time working with Filipinos because everything is reactive and loosey goosey with trimming of corners here and there. My disciplined mind goes nuts. So letting the little lady deal with things keeps my chronically high blood pressure in check. She is bearing up well in the squeeze between Filipino and American ways.

And then there are the people who seek to charge foreigners way above market. We dumped two builders who proposed a mark-up in the millions.

We have gone directly to the workers, hiring a mason for P350 a day and letting him introduce us to other workers for electricity, plumbing, and plan/permit work. He'll get a big bonus at the end if quality is good. So far, with foundations and framing in, the house is a solid bonework of cement and steel.

But that is not the subject of this article, either. It's background.

The subject is the value you put on time, and if you put a high value to it, how your priorities change.

The wife had a meeting scheduled with the electricians today. I was on the property where they were to meet, but my wife got there late, so when the electricians arrived, she wasn't there, and so they left. They moseyed into the barangay proper to enjoy the fiesta. I was irked because my wife had not set a time to meet. When the electricians wandered back later in the day, they met with my wife for about an hour on a deal that seemed to me should have been 10 minutes at most. More irk for the hard-driving American.

I told my wife, “Babe, you need to see your time as more valuable. Consider it worth P1,000 per hour. And figure the electricians time at the same rate.”

She listened to my point, but did not really subscribe to it. I get that a lot of that here, in one ear and out the other.

But if everyone's time were worth P1,000 per hour, you better believe precise appointments would be set and meetings would be short. Do you know how much income you have to produce in one hour to value your own time at P1,000 per hour?

This lack of time-value is typical of business and government practices in the Philippines. Doctors don't set appointments, government offices and hospitals make you wait forever for simple services, attorneys provide low-value notary services, and sales workers greet you with a snarl and generally are not excited about speedily getting you through the cash register to collect your money. And what is this bit about opening all the packages and testing the electronic goods, taking up excruciatingly long minutes of my own P10,000 per hour time?

People appear to see no connection between crisp, productive behavior and the well-being of the economy. The wealth of the nation and number of jobs is a sum of all the diligent, disciplined work of millions. But if that work is not diligent and disciplined, you get the Philippines.

If a doctor complained about the economy, my response would be, “Uh, okay, do you set appointments to value your client's time highly? If not, you are a part of the problem.”

Until there is a fire in the productive belly and a value to time, the Philippines will not be competitive globally.

You don't get there by relentlessly missing appointments or sloppy meetings or lousy customer service.

Now, I think poor work disciplines have nothing to do with inherent lack of capability, because I see in my wife capability untapped. In a different place, she would have made a better manager than me, and I was good. All she missed was opportunity. Poverty does not generate a lot of opportunity.

Therein lies the real point of this article.

If the Philippines is to become a dynamic, progressive state, it needs to figure out how to tap the capability that is here. How to open up opportunities. How to stoke ambition and aspiration. How to value time and use it productively.

That takes a plan. A tangible, specific plan with those ends directly in the aiming sight.

If I were Mr. Aquino, I'd appoint the best cabinet I could – based on skills, not family relationship or favor pay-back. And then I'd ask, what can your department do to release the potential for excellence that is here? You have six weeks to get me your seven best ideas, properly sized for implementation steps, expense and result.

A Nation of Old Farts

Okay, finally a topic you can give me credit for understanding. I live each day, an old fart. You cannot challenge my perspective or upbringing because I got upbrought this far and aim to be a crusty curmudgeon for a while longer. It is an honor we, the arthritic class, gain by surpassing some 95 percent of the youngsters who infest the planet with their overbearing lack of experience and know-how. Allow me to apply some skilled curmudgeoning here.

The ruling class of the Philippines is swarming with old farts who cement the power structure with ancient ways and means, stubbornly insisting that they are more important than the nation and refusing to move forward at any price. Humble is not a word these old guy's know. Ego is their game.

The old farts who anchor the Philippine establishment - mostly they are guys; generals, legislators, businessmen, mayors, priests and judges – seem always to be hunched over the podium orating. I don't know why they all hunch like that; maybe it's curvature of the spine that afflicts the aged. Their faces furl in a frown as if humor or compassion were venom of the soul. Call their wisdom into question and they arch into a bitter diatribe that is meant to destroy, nothing less; when they get back to their desks, they are likely to phone in a hit man.

Which is why journalism is such a risky business in the Philippines.

You see, what happens as you age is that the synapses in the brain that connect logic with perception calcify. This physiological phenomenon is known as caustic encrustation of the inner humility lobe. So old farts can no longer play witness to their own shortcomings. Can't even see them. All they have is memories that they keep reliving like a scratched CD reliving like a scratched CD reliving like a scratched CD circling again and again back to the same data. Nothing new can enter the brain. Like solutions to problems; they are blocked by the calcified synapses. Like proactive forward thinking; brain dead.

I have quite regularly recommended legislative acts that I think would do the Philippines good. One is a Judicial Empowerment Act that doubles the budget of Judiciary to free up the courts to rule that breaking the law is actually wrong. Today some 300,000 cases are backlogged with witnesses dying daily and evidence rotting away. Another measure I've shrilly cited is a Fair Employment Law that bans the hiring of friends, family and favorites. Incestuous hiring is the main cause of mediocrity in the Philippines as skill and ambition are supplanted by uncles, cousins and classmates.

But not one soul, not one, has echoed this call. No one evidently sees that a society and economy built on rotten wood MUST collapse. From this I conclude that most bloggers in the Philippines are well on their way to calcification, too. I don't know if that is only because old farts can afford computers, so all the bloggers are decrepit, of if calcification is genetically advanced in the Philippines and sets in about age 18. Certainly, one would look at the universities and say there is not much innovation or push for progressive society coming from those ivied halls. Is it ivy? Maybe it's not ivy. Perhaps it's those horrid jungle vines that grow about a foot a day with thorns up and down that latch onto your clothes or eyeballs with barbed stingers that ensure several days of pain.

Yes, probably that's why not much goes on in the vine-enshrouded halls. Students are on the defensive.

It seems to me the rigidly quiet and obedient students wouldn't know how to protest FOR anything if their lives and careers depended on it. Which they do. They are cemented into place and the place is singing and dancing. Evidently they suffer from severe caustic encrustation of the inner ambition lobe.

The youth of the Philippines are synaptically challenged, locked in a perpetual do-loop of no useful function and no “end” command, unable to see how to build a progressive society.

The Philippines is a nation of old farts bopping around in young bodies, and old farts shuffling along in ancient bodies. Some might conclude that the whole country is senile.* I would never do that, of course.

Too many parties going on . . .

Doctor Joe, O.F.E.

*Standard apology offered to those who do not deserve to be so painted with this generalized brush, said brush being slopped against the canvas to make a stinging intellectual point, not insult anyone personally. Said differently I would merely beg that younger people do all they can do to get the calcified old farts out of the way and work to build a modern, fair, productive nation. And for the love of God, DO SOMETHING specific and constructive. Get a goal on the national table and work for it. Fair Employment, for example. Stop allowing those narrow minded, compassion deficient, crusty old farts to place incompetent friends, family and favorites smack dab in the middle of YOUR career path.

Dirty War, Clean War

War has changed. The days of uniformed soldiers hunkering down in trenches are fading.

First of all, one main combatant today has no armied forces. Fighters operate out of clandestine cells spread around the globe. It is led by a nebulous, self-perpetuating cadre of men – you will not find women leading this insanity - directing a large flow of arms and terror with the goal to kill innocents and thereby honor a good and almighty God. It's a very dirty way to fight.

Make no mistake, man is not advanced compared to unreasoning animals.

The other main combatant is driving technology to its war-wicked limits by building bombs that penetrate deep bunkers, cruise missiles that can drop the bunker blaster on a peso, and drone airplanes that fire missiles that carry death to the enemy with nary an American scratch. The drones can be piloted out of Washington DC to kill people in Pakistan. It's a very clean way to fight.

The first combatant is motivated by the mad-minded extreme human interpretation of a religious book. The latter is driven by modern media that bring vivid photos of death to the doorstep over the cell phone, instilling a rabid desire for a sanitized war absent any American harm.

The motivation to avoid American deaths has driven American war policy since World War II. Cell phone and U-Tube videos have made it an obsession.

The Philippine connection comes from this principle of a sanitized war, and the price the Philippines played because of it.

Intramuros. Do you know of it? I did not until the History Channel a few weeks ago explained the battle for Manila in WW II in all its irrational, gruesome, heart-wrenching detail. Two mighty war machines met in Manila, one determined to win, no matter the cost, one determined to fight to the end, no matter the cost. The cost was the slaughter of 100,000 Filipino civilians caught in the ruthless cross-fire between Japanese atrocities and American cannons. About 16,000 Japanese soldiers died in the battle for Manila. About 1,000 Americans soldiers died. 100,000. 16,000. 1,000.

The American perspective was that any amount of firepower was preferable to the loss of one American life. No matter what or who was at the other end of the firepower. This was an extension of the thinking that would soon order up atom bombs for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Win, win decisively, no matter the cost to others. Stop the fighting with power and might. Win the war. Save lives. Especially American lives.

Back story. The Japanese in the Philippines were so decimated by February 1945 that they feared revolt from Filipinos. The Japanese knew they could not hold back such a tide. So they gathered up Filipino men – husbands, brothers, sons - killed them without mercy, and threw them into the sea or left the bodies in the streets and buildings. By the thousands. 600 corpses were found in the underground rooms of Intramuros alone, where the Japanese made their last stand. More bodies were found, arms and legs tied, outside the Intramuros walls, facing the incoming American artillery.

Many Japanese had to get drunk to sustain the insanity of their atrocities; others committed suicide or were killed. Few surrendered.

The madness of war also had the Americans in its grip. If Americans had been bound arm and leg and tied to the outside wall, would the cannons have been fired so relentlessly?

I doubt it.

That is a horrible recognition.

So how does an American who strives for high principle deal with the recognition that his fellow countrymen, on this occasion, were mindlessly ruthless? I stretch for any justification.

A: The past no longer exists. “Well, we Americans are different now. We were racist then but that changed in the 1960's and 1970's. So let's forget about it and move on. It doesn't count any more.”

B: Dump the blame. “Well, if the Filipinos hadn't coddled the Japanese, had risen up, they could have ended the war a lot sooner and easier. They were too passive. So they are just as much at fault.”

C: The Nagasaki rationale. “The Japanese were the villains here, not the Americans. If the US had not thrown all that firepower at them and ended the war quickly, they would have slaughtered even more Filipinos. The Japanese did not believe in surrender. Be thankful the Americans freed Manila from those butchers.”

D: War is hell. “War is fought from afar where generals do not see the destruction or smell the reek of death. They see markings on a war map. It is a cold, remote, rational exercise detached from the horror and loud, frantic bloodletting in the field. It's simply the way of things. Don't search for sanity in a battlefield.”

E: The apology. “I'm sorry for what those Americans back then did. I had nothing to do with it, you know.”

F: Build and defend. “Let's make sure the Philippines can take care of itself and no longer has to rely on those who serve their own interests first. That is something to work for.”

Well, of course, I choose Option F. But I soften my personal burden by believing each of the other arguments holds at least a thimbleful of water. But still, I feel a burden imposed by my country's acts.

What do we see if we move from WWII to the present?

The pro-forma American war is technological and sanitized.

The pro-forma Al Queda war is psychological and ruthless.

Today the fight is pretty much a standoff. Both combatants win or lose a skirmish once in a while; both are searching for the dominant strike: America, to kill Osama bin Laden, Al Queda, to nuke New York.

One can be assured that Al Queda will not take up a kinder, gentler approach. Their plan, after all, is working. Recruiting is up and even some American Muslims are tilting toward their religion and away from the patriotic American “freedom of religion” ideal. The extremists are successfully spreading terror and unrest in a score of nations, including the Philippines. From the chaos, they intend to see Allah rising. They have no agenda but death and terror. They offer no kindness.

The question I would pose is, should the US take up a more aggressive approach to stop this inhumane scourge? The US is cast as a demon if it kills one innocent. The enemy paints itself the angel if it murders thousands. There is no logic here.

If the strategy would reasonably assure that New York would not be nuked, should the US rain death across the hillsides of Western Pakistan and anywhere else where a good many known terrorists hide among civilians? Should the US return to the ruthless rain of bombs and aggression to impose unbearable suffering to stop the madness? In other words, deploy the same strategy that destroyed Manila, Hiroshima and Nagasaki but brought WWII to an end?

Is the moral imperative to do what is necessary to end the war soon, no matter the cost, or is the moral imperative to use restraint where civilians are present, even if it may place American lives at risk? Millions of lives?

I have my answer, but it is shaky. I'd welcome other insights.

Ego Economics

In a prior commentary, I criticized the “trade of favors” that is undertaken by those in power as they obtain personal enrichment by leveraging their power. I questioned how the Philippines could ever expect to achieve anything but mediocrity if appointments don't focus on skill and instill ambition as the driving force in economic production. If the standard is to appoint wives and uncles and those you owe favors, or from whom you expect favors, how will the nation ever develop competence? If the standard is to give out Farm to Market roads in exchange for political loyalty, how will infrastructure investment ever get directed to highest and best use? If the standard is to add large percentage kickbacks for construction projects, how will the financial return on investment ever reach a positive number?

Well, as Don Quixote's loyal sidekick Sancho Panza would observe, “the proof is in the pudding” (apology to thenashman). Sancho never met a trite wisdom he couldn't wing into the conversation. And pudding it is . . .

In the Philippines, excellence refuses to reign. I'm confident you are as tired of dessert as I am. Poverty pudding. Corruption pudding. Pollution pudding. There can be no doubt that the public's investment is going places other than to public good.

Nowhere have so many decent and intelligent people backed by a reasonable constitution bowed so low to the whims of the powerful. And been taxed out their earholes to make up for the financial transgressions of those responsible for the integrity of the nation's fiscal dealings.

In successful capitalistic societies, the drive to be efficient and create profits assures excellence. You can only compete if you hire the best and invest wisely. The entire social architecture is competitive and ambitious, always driving toward better performance. Government must itself create value. The agency that slacks off will get publicly reamed six ways from Sunday (thank's, Sancho); its Director will be fired and new operating rules will be put in place to right the listing ship. The public is empowered by the constitution and a justice system relentless about righting wrongs, not emasculated by those who circumvent good by trading in favors.

In the Philippines, the systematic method whereby investments are made and public funds spent is “ego economics”. The financial rigor of most investment deals would not stand up to an accountant's inspection. It doesn't have to. Those in power paper over the lousy financial returns with words. And cover their tracks with IOU's and favors. Dean De La Paz recently explained how the approved budget to build more electricity generation capacity on Mindanao is sufficient to generate 400 megawatts of power, but the expectation is that only 160 megawatts will be obtained.

The national highway is an economy-busting, traffic-jammed slaughterhouse of dogs, chickens and bicyclists, but infrastructure money goes to concrete strips across the rice paddies, used by an occasional water buffalo. You see, the “Farm to Market” concrete gets the local legislators re-elected, and they perform like the indebted ratpack they are, so many toadies kissing the queen's behind.

You don't need excellence to stay in power. You don't even need a sound economy. You simply need to be able to get and give favors. That is the primary currency. Favors and power. Ego economics.

Sancho again: “You pat my back, I'll pat yours.”

In ego economics, the measure of success is “return on favors”, measured by the duration and weight of power achieved. The skilled practitioner does not need to worry about the rigors of accounting, for the books are balanced out with favors.

“Cooked”, Sancho would say.

My Brain is a Stranger

My Brain Is a Stranger

Do you ever have those moments when you wonder who you are? My brain is a stranger at times, cooking up concepts and ideas that I have no part in. I lecture my wife about not using her favorite expression “s**its happen” in front of our young son. Then I turn around and cut lose an expletive laden tirade against those flipping a**holes in Customs who levy a P1,800 fee for inbound shipment of two pairs of size 12 flip-flops costing P2,200.

I don't know that hot-headed hypocrite, the guy who says one thing and does another.

Or take that cute chick next door with the big bazoos. I'm a happily married man, loyal and true, but the stranger in my brain ogles her like a lion in the grass salivating over fresh meat down by the watering hole. Who is this guy who preaches high values and propriety and doing the difficult things that must be done, yet lusts automatically, without even thinking. My brain has a life of its own, I'm certain. It is not me. It's on its own.

Or the arrogant bastard who struts his blogs as if he knew down to the dimple on Jesus' knee what makes the world, and especially the Philippines, tick. In real life, I am a sweet and even shy guy. What happens to my brain when I sit down at the keyboard? I tell you, whoever is in there is not me. He is irreverent and cynical and obnoxious and ridiculous and manipulative. He's smarter than me, so I know he comes from somewhere else.

Maybe an alien got implanted there that day back in 1982 when I fell asleep in the haystack after Laurie and I . . . um m m never mind . . .

The words that pop out of my head prove the point. I don't even know what half of them mean, but they leap forward in perfect context as if I were Webster hisself, polishing for the publisher. Turpitude or exigency or salubrious. My brain even makes up words, like “ego economics” and the “trading of favors”. It is bound by no rules of grammar or punctuation or fine considerations of tact. It is a runamuck brain, making up words as it goes along.

Helloooooo! Who's in there? And what kind of kickapoo joy juice you been sipping on in there?

I'm sure my brain has rolled more eyes than most. It has a strange sense of humor and comes at issues from left field. Certainly Bert's eyes gyrate with each unkind observation I output about the Philippines. But really, Bert, it's not my fault. I love the Philippines.

There's a stranger in my cranium.

He did it.

The Humorous Bone

It comes to me occasionally that there is not a great deal of literary wit on Filipino blog sites. Oh, manuelbuencamino offers up a bit of satire now and then and occasionally a humorous bone is dropped into a discussion thread, and that fires up a good chortle. But most of the writing bewails the state of the state or criticizes leading characters or activities in the archipelago's multi-act comedy-tragedy.

I have remarked that you rarely see Filipinos with a book, reading casually. In Europe one is much more apt to trip over a book than here. The US has lots of books and some fine booksellers.

Reading expands the mind enormously and breaks down rigid walls of perspective. Always musing, I wonder, without concluding anything, if there is a correlation between Filipino stubbornness and lack of reading, or if there would be more compassion if there were more readers.

I was a narrow-minded chump at the age of 26 when I met and married my first ex-wife, a passionate Singaporean of Chinese descent and British accent whose father was a communist writer and whose mother put Singapore's birth control measures into place in the 1960's.

I figure that puts the Philippines exactly one-half century behind the Singaporeans. And still fading. I suppose there is an advantage to not having the Catholic Church hung about one's neck like a rusty anchor pretending it is a pretty gold necklace with magical powers of redemption.

But I digress.

I was a narrow-minded chump at 26, bred on a farm and raised with simple values honed by the Golden Rule, not to mention an oft recited Pledge of Allegiance that lead young and innocent minds to believe America stood for all that is good on God's great green earth. I was fresh out of the army and various escapades in Viet Nam. That was a hallucinatory year and I never took drugs. It is the only place I've ever been that is more surreal than the Philippines. But that was mainly because of the lunacy of the war. That one year rocked my naive American foundations, so it was fairly easy for the commie pinko's daughter to tilt her husband hard left.

We were poor in those days. My ex worked for a pittance as a radio music programmer to help me get a masters degree which led to a job in banking. I worked the early years at a pittance to help her get her Doctoral degree in literature. Needless to say, she liked reading, and so I took it up, too. Deeper works than the Hardy Boys I had read on the farm. Russian writers, German, British, American. Our TV sat there, neglected and dusty and turned off. I grew my hair long, protested Viet Nam, earning the honor of my own file at the Los Angeles FBI office, and worked like crazy at the bank. Then the first-ex and I hit the rocks and we went our different directions.

Somewhere during that period, my brain got bent. It stopped being defined by other people's thoughts and expectations and came up with its own. I learned that others generally had very limited points of view, shaped by where they'd been, and those perspectives were fixed as if they alone had been granted the awakening plucked like a red ripe apple from the Tree of Knowledge. I determined to open my intellectual windows and did this by reading and traveling about the globe. I rose rapidly in the bank because, as a drunk colleague confided at a drunken executive conference, “Joe, you are successful because you can think around corners”. Yes, that and I could work computer spreadsheets like a speed freak, so I had the answer while others were still figuring out the question.

Even today, I read about two hours a day, usually in the afternoon munching on barbecue flavored Nagaraya and lounging in a comfortable P1,200 canvas chair acquired at SM Mall Pampanga. My current undertaking is entitled “Jeeves in the Morning” by P.G. Wodehouse, a British writer. This is comedy as only the superbly dry and witty Brits can cook it up.

Let me share a little of it, as we bloggists are way too full of ourselves.

Our hero, Bertie Wooster, has been given residence in a small house, Wee Nooke, owned by his Uncle Percy on the outskirts of London. Bertie is standing outside the house, which has been set ablaze by Uncle Percy's son. Uncle Percy arrives, more than perplexed, and Bertie speaks, gives him greeting.

______

“Oh, hullo, Uncle Percy,” I said. “Good afternoon, good afternoon.”

My civil greeting elicited no response. He was staring past me at the little home, now beyond any possible doubt destined to be a total loss. Edwin might return with all the fire brigades in Hampshire, but nothing was going to prevent Wee Nooke winding up as a heap of ashes.

“What?” he said, speaking thickly, as if the soul were bruised, as I imagine to have been the case. “What? What? What? What . . .?”

I saw that unless checked, this was going to take some time.

“There's been a fire,“ I said.

“What do you mean?”

Well I don't see how I could have put it much clearer.

“A fire,” I repeated, waving a hand in the direction of the burning edifice, as much as to tell him to take a glance for himself. “How are you, Uncle Percy? You're looking fine.”

He wasn't, as a matter of fact, nor did this attempt to ease the strain by giving him the old oil have the desired effect. He directed at me a kind of frenzied glare, containing practically nil in the way of an Uncle's love, and spoke in a sort of hollow, despairing voice.

“I might have known! My best friends would have warned me what would come of letting a lunatic like you loose in the place. I ought to have guessed that the first thing you would do – before so much as unpacking – would be to set the whole damned premises ablaze.”

“Not me,” I said, wishing to give credit where credit was due. “Edwin.”

“Edwin? My son?”

“Yes, I know”, I said sympathetically. “Too bad. Yes, he's your son, all right. He's been tidying up.”

“You can't start a fire by tidying up.”

“You can if you use gunpowder.”

“Gunpowder?”

“He appears to have touched off a keg or two in the kitchen chimney, to correct a disposition on its part to harbor soot.”

Well, I had naturally supposed, as anyone would have supposed, that this frank discussion would have set me right, causing him to dismiss me without a stain on my character, and that the rather personal note which had crept into his remarks would instantly have been switched off. What I anticipated was that he would issue an apology about that crack about lunatics, which I would gratefully accept, and that we would then get together like two old buddies and shake our heads over the impulsiveness of the younger generation.

Not a bit of it, however. He continued to bend upon me the accusing gaze which I had disliked so much from the start.

“Why the devil did you give the boy gunpowder?”

I saw that he had still got the wrong angle.

“I didn't give the boy gunpowder.”

“Only a congenital idiot would give a boy gunpowder. There's not a man in England, except you, who wouldn't know what would happen if you gave a boy gunpowder. Do you realize what you have done? The sole reason for your coming here was that I could have a place where I could meet an old friend and discuss certain matters of interest, and now look at it. I ask you. Look at it.”

“Not too good,” I was forced to concede, as the roof fell in, sending up a shower of sparks and causing a genial glow to play about our cheeks.

A Nation of Traitors

I'm sure some are likely to reject this notion without consideration: “What an arrogant twit. And we thought that Chinese dude was bad.”

Well, let me exercise your brain a little, limber it up, rather like stretching before the basketball game. See if you can get in the mode of thinking before you do the concluding. I know it is sometimes hard to do that, but the discipline is good.

I'll pose five questions that set the scene. And as always, I must apologize for painting in generalities, as they unfairly include those who ought not to be so painted.

1. What is a foreigner living in the Philippines to do? He is a leper, an outcast from the rightful caretakers of Philippine society. He has few rights, little respect among skins of onion, and little power. But he sees things differently because he carries a different historical and societal telescope.

2. I wonder, do our fundamental premises agree? Do Filipinos, in the main, want a modern, productive, clean, honest society? Or do Filipinos opt for their culture, as it is, because it is their culture, and they are proud of it?

3. If they want a progressive nation, do Filipinos understand that things have to change in order to change? Or do they believe things can both change and stay the same?

4. If they understand that things have to change, do they agree on the general direction of change, or are they forever locked in the inertia of debates that paralyze action?

5. Can those with power let go of their power for the empowerment of the people?

Here are my answers:

1. He must do his best for the Philippines, and not join the inert.

2. We agree. A modern, productive, clean, honest society assures a longer and richer life for more Filipinos.

3. Filipinos in the main understand that things must change, but they also want to retain the unique identity that is “Filipino”. They like being different from other Asian or Western cultures. They are proud of their heritage, tortured though it may be.

4. Here things get difficult. Filipinos are a self-confident people. That often translates into hard-headedness and a firm insistence that there is only one way to do things: my way. Compassion, concession and generosity are not stalwart characteristics of cultural norms. Power, if available, will be wielded, and there is not a great deal of concern about how others might be affected.

5. No, they can't

Government is deeply infested with men and women of power who use this power for their own gain, first, and the gain of the state, if it is convenient.

These people sacrifice the nation's well-being for their own gain. This treachery is not carried out by some ambitious, ego-stoked general wanting to stamp his iron fist into the history books. It is not spirited away in the middle of the night by some sneaky spy in a trench coat creeping down the back stairs with an arm-load of secret government documents.

These villains simply walk in and sit down at their desks. They are everywhere, in the Palace, in the Legislature, behind court benches, and in every nook and cranny of government from the LTO to the Ombudsman's office to the barangay Captain's chair. Yes, even there.

Let us define our words, as Humpty Dumpty would expect no less. Humpty had no Wiki, but we are blessed . . .

Treason: The crime that covers some of the more serious acts of betrayal of one's nation.

Traitor: A person who commits treason.

Sovereign State: A political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state.

Betrayal of one's nation! Understand that notion in all it's profound meaning.

Originally, treason applied to assassins who would seek to execute a head of state. But then it became political, and, under totalitarian regimes, anyone who disagreed with those in power could be hauled off and executed for treason.

But in the Philippines it is neither murderous nor political. It is societal.

“Wha? You threw a blank at me, Joe.”

Yes, that statement is so obtuse as to be meaningless. So let me explain.

Treason is societal in that the means for bringing down the state are accepted by society. Indeed, most who participate in the Filipino brand of treason are just doing what has long been done: exercising their personal power. They do, however, commit a gross sin of omission; they fail to connect their small private acts to the ruination of the Philippines.

But, make no mistake, they are bringing down the state, one stolen brick at a time.

These men and women, oh so invisible, black of hat and shady of eye, don't trade in coded messages or smuggled micro-diskettes loaded with megabytes of classified information. They trade in favors. One after another, piling up like so many demons in hell. They gather as the accumulated demons of a nation and overwhelm the honest trade of commerce and virtue.

Favors are an exchange of private benefits. They are outside the official mandate for public service and outside the oath of office that government officials swear to.

This sinister trading of bad values for good undermines the wealth and honor of the Philippines. It is insidious for the way it is wrapped in acceptability and carried out right before the public's eyes. It is an overt act opposed to the best interest of the Philippines and it is done without a twinge of conscience or ounce of regret.

The exchange of a nation's well-being for personal gain is done so surreptitiously that you are more likely to get angry with me for insulting your esteemed culture with words than rail at those who would tear your beautiful nation stem from root with deeds.

The king is very, very naked, and he has not been on the treadmill lately. It ain't a pretty sight.

Two values anchor the well-being of a nation. Wealth and Honor.

Wealth is represented in the sum of all economic activity over the whole of history, the equity arising from money raised through taxes less money spent on infrastructure and services aimed at taking care of the people. Wealth-building requires high productivity to care for more people in a better way. Wealth is represented in the vibrancy of the business community and the availability of technology and financial instruments such as loans and investments. It is represented in stability and protection against disasters and nations or people of bad character. It is represented in jobs and opportunity and food on the table.

Honor is represented in the moral fiber of the people, in trust, in honesty, in valor during battle, in dignity, in compassion, in bravery, in caring for those who can't care for themselves: the children and the old people, the sick and the disenfranchised. Honor is represented in the will and courage to do the tough deeds necessary to protect one's family, neighbors and fellow-citizens; it asks that some give their lives to protect the greater community.

The trade of favors undermines all of this.

Favors are not real values. They are not earned in the marketplace of ingenuity or competition. They are cheaters' values. They destroy wealth rather than create it. They undermine honor rather than cherish it.

Sometimes favors are a manipulation of the machines of power to keep legislative or mayoral positions in the family. Some families have been locked in offices so long that the Manila street signs bearing their names have rusted away. These entrenched scions block innovative thought. They block skilled work, crisp rational decisions and progress. They thrive in the mediocrity that is their offal, the very fertilizer of their foul deeds. They don't have to try hard because they are blessed with title.

Even the President - perhaps ignorantly, perhaps with intent – works against the well-being of the nation. When you stock the cabinet, the armed forces and the supreme court with cronies, you expect favors and obedience. You don't expect skill or commitment to public trust. Any appointment based on a criterion other than capability creates an IOU of favor. It suppresses the appointee's honesty. It puts personal power and gain ahead of the nation's well-being. How does the country ever get to excellence if its leaders fill positions with pals instead of experts? How does it achieve wealth if economic might is replaced by personal IOU's. How does it achieve honor if the trade of favors is itself dishonorable?

The President behaves as if she were a housewife who has appointed her coffee klatch friends to power. She does not act as an executive, intent upon skilled appointments, good management and productivity. Productivity for her is a new evening gown to wear at an Obama dinner.

It would be better to sell the nation out to the Koreans or the Japanese or the Chinese, or, praise Mary, even those dastardly Americans. They at least understand the importance of productivity. They know how to honor achievement and they know how to honor honor.

Every favor granted or called in the Philippines undermines the nation's well-being. It is treason, soft and innocent of cloak, but black-hearted of soul.

Every job filled by a friend, family member or favorite – outside of their proven ability - is a job that is not filled by an ambitious, capable person working diligently for a career and an opportunity to grow. National success is by definition the sum of all individuals' contributions to achievement.

That is what is being side-tracked and stolen every day in the Philippines. The power to achieve.

Therein rests the mediocrity of the Philippines, and its grand collective treason. It is the trading of favors and the swapping away of productivity for personal gain. It is trading the future down the tubes so our children have only chaos and poverty as their inheritance. It is the denial of the right of the people to be ambitious and productive, to have skills and a career path, to rise by making good decisions instead of bad ones, to find deep satisfaction in achievement.

It is the nation's wealth, stolen, and its honor, corrupted.

It is the trade of favors. It is the suppression of ambition and skill. It is treason.

Now some of you are probably doing the old water off a duck's back “big deal” shrug. “Another arrogant foreigner trying to pretend he knows more than us.”

Before you dismiss me, at least let me remind you what the trade of favors brings to the Philippines and you tell me if those who enable these outcomes undertake “serious acts of betrayal of one's country”:

The selling of young girls. Construction kickbacks funded with public money. Heavy taxation of the poor and tax concessions for the rich. Dirty, unhealthy living conditions for children and the elderly. Clothes-hanger abortions in the dark alleys of squatters villages. Deaths; deaths in poorly equipped hospitals, in ferries, on the riverbanks of flood-swollen rivers, in political killings and massacres, in extra-judicial murders of journalists; deaths in the home from diseases that the poor do not even know, for there is no medical care there. It is a killer society that frets over condoms, offering that up a laughable pretense of high moral value.

Make no mistake about it, when an official charged with public service engages in a trade of favors for personal gain, he is stealing value from the economy and from the honor of a nation. He is enabling these horrible flaws to flourish.

The trade of favors is serious business and it is betrayal of the Philippines.

It is treason.

Dedicated to Mama Dora who died March 10, 2010, on the floor of her shanty in the fishing village that was her home all of her short life, of an illness unknown and untreated. Government officials traded away her well-being for their personal advantage. They did not notice her passing.

It was a serious act of betrayal.