The Spratleys and Envy

Are you ever surprised at what comes out of your mind? It is amusing to me that certain words pop out onto the keyboard with no thought attached. They are simply an alignment of word to context, unconsciously. Two words that popped up recently were “temerity” and “flaccid”. I never use these words, but they emerged onto the computer screen in perfect union with the meanings I was driving at. I suppose because I read relentlessly, they are recorded in some wayward sector of my hard drive, and my central processing unit has a good contextual search engine.

The alignment of words is similarly amazing to me. On a good day, some profound alignment or another will simply emerge from my brain and flow onto the paper. On other days it is a struggle to write anything at all.

One of the recent gems that flowed forth had to do with an assessment of China’s bellicose stance toward the Spratleys and other islands in the oceans hereabouts. A bloggist on the Pro-Pinoy site commented that the Philippines has a defense agreement with the US, and presumably the US would ride to the rescue if the Philippines got into a pissing contest with China.

That led to some amusement on my part, for I know how much resentment is held in the Philippines toward the US. Usually, it is couched in terms that the prior colonial rule by the US was racist and brutal, and all the problems that exist in the nation today somehow derive from that imperialist thuggery. Well, no question, American rule was racist and brutal. But, also no question, since then, the acts of Filipinos have something to do with what the Philippines is today.

I wrote something like “the hate that arises from envy is within the envious person, not the person being envied, so the solution must come from the envious person.”

My enlightenment on this originates from having discovered how envy drives a lot of the bad behavior of Filipinos. Sensitive egos get bent out of shape and the urge to knock down others becomes the profound driver of behaviors. So there is a lot of tearing down, and not a lot of building up hereabouts.

The interesting thing is how envy results in a denial of responsibility for one’s own bad behavior.

If Filipinos are envious of the US because of its power, and Filipinos issue up hateful or critical comments as a result, there is little the US can do to respond unless the US decides to become less powerful. Then the hateful Filipinos would ridicule the US for being weak. And the US would be less able to defend its own citizens, and the Philippines.

The more constructive approach is for envious nation to assume responsibility for the failures that drive the envy, and to change ITS OWN behavior.

It seems to me that the Philippine nation, and Filipinos in general, are masters at denying responsibility, at tearing down instead of building, at finding excuses or casting blames. When the rubber hits the road over China and the Spratleys, you can bet that the Philippines will play its US card. Never mind that the Philippines was the first nation to flee Iraq when the bullets started flying there. The US was not allowed to play its Philippines card because envy is a one-way street. Responsibility is a two way street.