May 1st, 2009
Personalism vis-a-vis Parochialism
(A Reaction to a Piece on Personalism by Verdman)
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(an old piece written in June 2004)
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“Walang personalan. Trabaho lang.”
- a line from a movie about a cop (played by Rudy Fernandez) who summarily executes a criminal (“Markang Bungo” yata… not sure though…)
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“i think (i could be wrong, most of the time i am), that the root of our problem is our personalistic approach to life. we easily sacrifice objectivity in order to accomodate our personal affiliations, thus negating our chance to cultivate values that are necessary to achieve real progress. personalism is in every fabric of pinoylife. from the moment of birth (kung sino ang magiging ninong), up to the time of death (kung sinong asawa ang may karapatan sa bangkay). whether business, sports, politics, gov’t, etc…. personalism always plays a part. nothing wrong with cultivating personal ties per se, we are a social animal afterall, it’s when personalism is accomodated at the expense of objectivity, this is where corruption starts, first morally, then leading up to plunder.”
- Verdman (a nom de plume), On Personalism
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What’s the problem with personalism?
The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with personalism per se. In fact, it is precisely this personalism that makes Noypis so lovable, and as Ninoy put it, “worth dying for.”
It is when personalism clashes with “objectivity” that the problem arises. It thus degenerates to parochialism. Parochialism, i.e., my interests over your interests, my family over your family, my clan over your clan, my my hey hey!… Parochialism, narrow-mindedness, “subjectivism,” bigotry…
The Philippines is relatively a young country. We’ve only started to think of ourselves as one nation during the 19th century, the credit mainly to the ilustrados (which include Rizal). (See Leon Ma. Guerrero’s “The First Filipino.”) Probably no small wonder that we’re still trying to find our bearings… still trying to get our act together.
But this personalism, this concern for the “kapwa-tao” is, as Virgilio Enriquez pointed out (See “Kapwa: A Core Concept in Filipino Social Psychology,” in “Sikolohiyang Pilipino.”) key to the understanding of who the Pinoy is. Part of the miseducation (courtesy of Frank Lynch and the rest of the authors of the IPC papers from Ateneo de Manila University) that we had is the emphasis given to the supposed values of “pakikisama” and “smooth interpersonal relationship.” As Enriquez correctly pointed out, these remain to be surface values.
At a deeper level is the Pinoy’s value of “pakikiisa,” “pakikiramay,” etc. All of these, from the most superficial to the deepest way of relating, are multi-farious forms of “pakikipagkapwa-tao.”
As I always say, it is a real cause of puzzlement for me why the Noypi, individually considered, with all his personalism and pakikipagkapwa-tao continue to have a government that stinks to high heavens in its corruption and degeneracy.
Even as we recognize the truism that a people deserves the government that it gets, I accuse…
If we, as a people, have become insensitive and apathetic to the commonweal, I see it as mainly due to its betrayal by our supposed leaders.
If the government leaders will be the first ones to screw us the moment they get the chance, then it’s no cause for surprise that a great number of us have become dispirited, cynical, apathetic, parochial.
We are a young nation. I maintain that the hearts of the Noypis are, for the most part, in the right place. We just need leaders who’d lead by example. We need leaders who’d inspire us to live up to our potentials as a great, personalistic nation…
Where everyone is treated (barring rhetorics and propaganda) as “kabarkada,” “kapamilya,” “kapuso.”
best regards,
ian
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“Well we get what we deserve, and we pay for what we get…”
- Cynthia Alexander, “Motorbykle”