Filipino pride

“We must note however that the Philippine Misery Index must have improved drastically in the last quarters owing to the tremendous reduction in inflation from its staggering height last year.

To be self-deprecating is almost part of our culture. It’s unfortunate. In the past, when a foreigner would visit, one of the itineraries on a guided tour of the metropolis was a short hop to what was once “Smokey Mountain.” The place had gotten so much attention in foreign media that visitors, for a mere $16, were actually asking to see it to validate the international notoriety it had gotten mainly from foreign publications, most believing all bad news was good news.

The other on the itinerary was a visit to the Malacañang Museum post EDSA. For the most part of that tour’s segment, it was not the historicity of Filipino bravery and defiance that would be on display and thus be a source of pride, but instead, again as asked and delivered, the focus would be on the hundreds of shoes Imelda Marcos collected over the years of her husband’s unfortunate reign.

We always seem to take pride in aspects of Filipino life that somehow reflect negativity. Note how some stores actually sell T-shirts emblazoned with “Don’t English me. I’m panic.” or “Trust me. I’m a Filipina.” These range from the minutiae and trivial to national embarrassments like Smokey Mountain and Imelda’s shoes.

Some point to self-ridicule as a necessary ingredient of our resiliency where we can turn adversity into a joke. We laugh when we should be crying. Our economic indices not only quantify but actually found such ironies where we rank 69th out of 156 on the happiness index in paradoxic relation to the heights of our misery index — the latter computed by adding seasonally adjusted unemployment rates to the annual inflation rate.

We must note however that the Philippine Misery Index must have improved drastically in the last quarters owing to the tremendous reduction in inflation from its staggering height last year. As for employment, well that’s what the “Build, Build, Build” initiative was supposed to address. With both aggregate prices and employment seen to improve, the Misery Index is likewise expected to fall. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find happiness in a statistic. And harder still to use it to fuel pride.

Even as we surrender to the upsides where some form of self-deprecation is part of being honest to ourselves and thus genuinely self-actualize, the humor that denigrates to self-ridicule cannot possibly be a source of pride in the final analysis if the adversity behind it perpetuates and negativity overwhelms positivity.

Admittedly some of the impetus is catalyzed by negative foreign media exposure which Filipinos afflicted with this bizarre “colonial mentality” syndrome value. Indeed it is unfortunate that there are a number among us that accommodate this, thus feeding into the negativity, almost promoting it, and worse, almost displaying it with not only false pride, but a distinctly warped sense of values.

The exhilarating positivity and pride we are experiencing as most eloquently expressed by our most incisive friend Harry Roque recently when he wrote of our successes at hosting and competing in the ongoing Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) is an impetus worth valuing way beyond these 10 days. While knee-jerking idiot trolls and bobo bloggers point out the unsustainability of a continuing high on SEAG, they misunderstand how seeds that grow into giant redwoods work.

For the cynical politicians who really had to dwell on scheduling snafus, cauldrons, kikiam, and kosher cuisine; for the morons in media who manufacture fake news to sell papers and primetime; for the idiot trolls who think victory is a one-moment fleeting gold medal; and most especially, for those who would politicize and inject partisanship into sports, we have one advice — go to hell.

It was not the show that was impressive. It was the talent behind it. It was not merely winning a competition that counted, it is winning against the adversity placed before our athletes. We did not have pride based on the number of competitors that we had beaten, or the magnificence of the digital screens, lasers and light shows. We had pride in being Filipino.