Once in a while you run across somebody's viewpoint and you realize you are not a "voice in the wilderness" to quote Former Philippines Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Perfecto Yasay Jr. To blindly support something just because it matches your nationality is a sign of insecurity and totally depletes your objectiveness and IQ. Maybe and just maybe I can see this better than most because I have lived elsewhere and saw how they acted like weenies then I moved back here and saw it was worse. I truly believe that Filipinos are truly starved for attention. They will complain vigorously if the subject is very stupid but they will beat their chests if it's just moderately stupid. Why do I know this? Just by watching what Filipinos around the world will cheer for, defend or protest against. Also by all the stupid chain email and texts that live on in this country in particular. All using the wounded national spirit as bait to perpetuate whatever hoax it is. Anyway allow me to sprout off some of my philosophies:
- What is good is good , regardless of age, gender or country of origin
- Be a good citizen of the world and being good to your country will automatically follow.
- We share the same biology regardless of ideology (thanks Sting)
- Instead of being proud of a guy in shorts who pounds Mexican brain cells into submission, be proud of a community that votes politicians who selfless, intelligent and altruistic.
- All men are brothers until the day they die, its a wonderful world. (The most neglected line of a very misunderstood song, Short People by Randy Newman).
All I am saying is if you want to be proud of something , be proud of the right thing for the right reason. Ed
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090113-182963/One_of_us
One of us
By Herbert Docena
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:51:00 01/13/2009
Filed Under: Social Issues, history
As I watched the Pacquiao-De la Hoya boxing match, one question struck me for its seeming silliness: How was it that practically every Filipino automatically—and so passionately—cheered for Manny Pacquiao and not his opponent? This sounds foolish because the answer seems obvious: unlike the Mexican, Pacquiao is “one of us”—meaning, he happened to have been accidentally born like the rest of us in the same patch of islands that as a result of events not of our own making became the Philippines (never mind for the moment that he’s pro-Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, unlike most of us).
This logic does not seem to apply, however, to local contests where we are not likely to automatically root for one contestant just because he was born on our side of the neighborhood. And yet, when it’s in Vegas, for a Filipino to not root for a Pacquiao remains unthinkable and almost treasonous.
Perhaps no single event in recent memory proves as clearly that nationalism endures. Few things, it seems, can draw it out more easily than a fight. But it’s a double-edged sword.
Nationalism can be a good thing, as demonstrated by how Filipinos, fired by their ideals, succeeded in kicking out the Spanish, the Japanese, and the Americans. So necessary was nationalism that Jose Rizal and his generation saw the need to invent it in order to unite inhabitants of various islands who did not think of themselves as belonging to one “nation.”
Historians have pointed out that the concept of “Filipino,” like so many other national identities worldwide, is a modern invention constructed for practical purposes. Across the globe, colonized peoples rose against their colonial masters, inspired by a collective desire to be free.
In such instances, nationalism has been a force for good. By dispelling the myth that some people are intrinsically superior; leading those who are presumed inferior to question their subordination; by compelling us to look at those who are part of our imagined community as equals and therefore deserving of solidarity and respect; by convincing us that together as a collective we can achieve goals we can’t otherwise achieve on our own, nationalism can bring out the best in us.
But, mixed with racism and chauvinism, nationalism can also bring out the worst in us. The European colonists, convinced that they were bringing God’s light to the New World, decimated whole tribes of Indians. The Nazis, believing themselves to be the superior race, exterminated over six million Jews. Turkish nationalists annihilated over a million Armenians. Closer to home, Indonesian nationalism justified the taking of West Papua and Timor. Thai nationalists have made sure that Patani Malays will have no country of their own.
And right here at home, nationalism has been mobilized to justify the continuing colonization of the Moro people and the indigenous peoples in Mindanao. It has been invoked by those seeking an ideological cover with which to wrap their vested interests and has given those that they entice to kill for them a flag with which to cover their coffins.
This kind of nationalism has been the first refuge of politicians eager to stoke prejudice in exchange for votes; of those threatened with losing a portion of their vast fiefdoms; of those whose careers depend on defending the status quo; of those like Teodoro Locsin, whose justification for keeping Moros colonized reminds us of the Spaniards’: We “indios” [natives] are barbarians and incapable of self-government. Add those who, while recognizing the historical injustice committed against Moros, nevertheless insist on giving them no other recourse but to be part of the “Filipino family.” (But who would want to be part of a family in which your brothers seek to kill you and throw you out of your own house?)
Bad nationalism is of course not the preserve of the dominant power. Among the Moros, opportunistic nationalism is also the refuge of those elites who are eager to take over the lands grabbed by Filipino landlords so that they themselves can oppress the Moro masses. They will use the freedom they seek to deprive others of their freedom.
Nationalism is a bad thing when it forces us to see those who do not belong to our “nation”—or who do not wish to belong despite our wanting them to do—as “others”; when it makes those who do belong feel superior to those who don’t; and when it becomes a justification for depriving those who don’t belong of what we claim for ourselves, like their own nation and their own freedom.
By erecting false distinctions, nationalism blinds us to the real boundaries that divide people. Who do poor, landless Christian migrants in Mindanao have more in common with, the poor landless Moros or the Christian landlords like the Piñols and the Lobregats? With whom do the landed Moros have more affinity, their fellow Moros or their fellow landlords? And yet, it is the landless Filipinos who are incited to kill their fellow landless Moros so that the Piñols and the Lobregats can keep their lands. And it has often been the rich, landed Moros who have been the first to sell out in the fight for freedom.
In the face of destructive nationalism, we need to recover the liberating kind of nationalism that seeks to free instead of oppress, that seeks equality instead of hierarchy, that seeks solidarity instead of war. This kind of nationalism recognizes that freedom should be universal; that so-called national differences are transcended by our common humanity; that boundaries are imaginary but power relations are real. And if good nationalism becomes only a defensive reaction in the face of domination, then its ultimate aim is to make itself unnecessary. A world without colonialism is a world that has no need for nationalism.
Just as the anti-colonial revolutionaries took on the full might of empires, Manny Pacquiao proved yet again that it is possible to overcome the odds, to prevail over those who are much bigger than us. That he is “one of us” is not a cause for automatic allegiance, only added proof that we who, like him, have been made to feel small are no less capable.
Herbert Docena, 27, a former editor in chief of the Philippine Collegian, the student newspaper of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, works as a peace activist.
Related links
http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/journal/item/399/Sometimes_You_Cant_Defend_The_Philippines http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/tag/bbc http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/journal/item/263/The_Filipino_Olympic_Effort_and_Results_my_reaction_ http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/tag/pacquaio http://cornholiogogs.multiply.com/tag/desperate%20housewives http://nebuchadnezzarwoollyd.blogspot.com/2007/12/nationalism-study-of-imagined.html
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