I’ve come to realise that much of Philippine history was really all about a monumental effort to counter centuries of butthurt. The Philippine “revolution” of 1898 was an epic reaction to 400 years of butthurt in the hands of Spain. The arbitrary re-defining of the 4th of July, 1946 from “Philippine Independence Day” to “Philippine-American Friendship Day” originated from former President Diosdado Macapagal’s butthurt reaction to Filipinos’ incurable colonial mentality at the time and successive presidents’ efforts to appeal to their respective constituents’ “nationalist” sentiments. Then there was the kicking out of the US’s massive military presence in the Philippines in 1992. That was the Philippine Senate’s epic butthurt reaction to perceptions that the Philippines could not stand on its own two feet and take care of itself.
Even way back in the early 2000’s Filipinos were already renowned for their chronic national butthurt condition. The late consultant Clarence Henderson wrote an extensive treatise on the subject of Pinoy butthurt in his seminal 2002 essay Cyber-Flamings & Onion Skins: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Pinoy Dream. Even back then, there were excellent case studies on what, at the time, was termed Filipino onionskinnedness.
The Probe Team: The Probe Team, a GMA news magazine and the longest running public affairs TV program in the country, also airs in Singapore. In early 2001, in prototypical reality television show format, certain stories dealt with sensitive topics: pedophilia in the provinces, the sex tourism business, the Payatas mountain of garbage, and college students dying in fraternity hazings. The new segments were accurate and reflected objective realities of life in the Philippines.
A group of OFWs promptly organized a vocal protest and did all they could to keep the show from being shown in the Lion City. Their bone of contention, of course, was that it made the Philippines look bad in the pristine city-state of Singapore. Why air dirty laundry when those things could be so easily ignored?
Live Show: In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I described the uproar that occurred in Manila when Jose Javier Reyes’ cinema verite piece, Live Show (originally known as Toro) was released. This existential and engaging film told the sad story of young people whose extreme poverty led them to perform live sex on stage in order to survive.
The critics were all over the film, which was soon repressed with the blessing of Cardinal Sin and the devout Philippine President. Their argument was that the film encouraged promiscuity and painted an inappropriately sordid portrait. In reality, it was a well-done work of art that called attention to an unfortunate social reality. But that was not acceptable.
Claire Danes’ “Ghastly Manila” remarks: About four years ago, Claire Danes came to Manila to film Brokedown Palace. After returning to the states, she made several not-very-flattering remarks about Manila in the pages of Vogue and Premiere magazines. Specifically, she described Manila as a “ghastly and weird city,” said that the city “smelled like cockroaches”, and noted that “rats were everywhere”.
The whole country, led by the Manila City Council, was immediately inflamed and up in arms. There was a major move to ban all of Danes’ films in Manila and her name is now considered synonymous with “Ugly American”. Very few politicians or commentators were brave enough to note that Danes’ comments were basically accurate and that something badly needs to be done about the state of the Philippines’ capital city.
Top American thought leaders were not spared by non-thinking Filipinos’ butthurt tirades. Henderson also recounts how then US Ambassador Frank Riccardione earned the ire of Philippine government and media honchos when he candidly pointed out before Manila-based journalists how the Philippines continues to fail to attract significant amounts of foreign investment due to “widespread” corruption.
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The most famous of all American inducers of Filipino butthurt is journalist James Fallows whose famous 1987 article A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? published on The Atlantic attracted the modern-day mother of all Pinoy butthurt. In that article, Fallows made his most pointed assessment of Filipino society in these words: “Because the boundaries of [decent] treatment are limited to the family or tribe, they exclude at least 90 percent of the people in the country. And because of this fragmentation–this lack of nationalism–people treat each other worse in the Philippines than in any other Asian country I have seen.” Since then, Fallows had been the favourite “whipping boy” of Filipino “nationalists” and “patriots”. Yes, Philippine “nationalism”, indeed, is an oxymoron in a country described by Fallows as one where “people treat each other worse […] than in any other Asian country.”
To digress a bit, it is interesting to note that Fallows, in a brilliant stroke of prescience, made this observation as well in that article:
BECAUSE PREVIOUS CHANGES OF GOVERNMENT HAVE meant so little to the Philippines, it is hard to believe that replacing Marcos with Aquino, desirable as it doubtless is, will do much besides stanching the flow of crony profits out of the country. In a sociological sense the elevation of Corazon Aquino through the EDSA revolution should probably be seen not as a revolution but as the restoration of the old order.
Remember, those were words written back in 1987 — which, as it turns out, probably highlights an important point — that;
A lucid understanding of the Philippines’ issues at a cultural level provides a better lens through which one could regard its politics.
Fallows, back in 1987, showed that building a thesis on Philippine politics using culture as its primary intellectual foundation yields motherlodes of timeless principles. This is made even truer when one considers that a democracy where officials are elected by popular vote necessarily yields leaders and representatives that directly reflect the character — the culture — of their constituents.
See this now in the context of how the most popular of Filipinos’ butthurt reactions to critics of their society involves pointing to their crooked politicans as the supposed source of all of what makes the Philippines the chronic failure that it is. This highlights one of the more disturbing aspects of the Philippines’ butthurt culture — that Filipinos are prone to missing important points (such as the point here that they elected their crooked leaders and representatives) because of the dulling effect this inclination to butthurt has on their abilities to think clearly. Hardly surprising then that Filipinos keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
It’s high time that Filipinos end this cycle of using butthurt to mark important points in their history and, instead, look to objective achievement to mark the key milestones in the histroy they are yet to make.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Thank you for this work. I would also like to add the incapacity to detect satire. Maybe this trait is related to the ones you pointed out.
That and being overall a metaphorically-challenged people.
@ Benigno. Yours is a noble cause and I admire it.
BUT, from what I have seen close-up and personal, in a scant decade (and from afar for 3 more decades), it is also a lost cause. It saddens me to say this. I echo the sentiments of Mr. Fallowes in that I’ve never been in a country where the people the people treat each other so badly. I have been to many places and the Philippines has problems that run so deep into its society that straightening the problems out will take nothing short of a miracle.
One irony I found eery was that the leader of the nations Church of choice, Roman Catholicism, is named Cardinal Sin.
Only in the Philippines.I mean really,WTF?
It’s not really a lost cause. It only seems like it because the popular discourse revolves around politics rather than on the underlying issue that we have long insisted is the real deal: Filipino Culture.
The politics and the bozos who populate it are mere reflections of the character of the society they infest, sort of like the way rats infest an unsanitary building or home. Killing the rats does not cure the underlying malaise. You need to clean up the rot so that the rats don’t come back.
OK, I C UR POINT, I DO, but if the rats are causing the rot (and most people think they are) something must be done about the rats. Elections are either rigged/bought, so that has not worked…so,WHAT?
When a building in the West has a RAT problem, the exterminators are called in and the rats are mercilessly exterminated. The military in the country is so in-effective and with the NCR police having to buy their own bullets due to gov’t. theft (PUNO?) the people would have very little trouble if they just went and did what needs to be done. For some reason, they do not…..so, look forward to decades of the same shit happening. Gov’t scandals making headlines, laughable ‘blue-ribbon’ committee’s ‘investigations’ getting nothing accomplished, humanitarian crisis after crisis getting donations pilfered and so on.
The writing is on the wall and all the people have to do is write their own story as there is little the gov’t. could do to stop them. The only thing the gov’t. could do is appeal to an outside entity, the USA?, to intervene.And yet, there the people sit, doing nothing. AMAZING.
I’ve learned never to employ sarcasm whenever I talk to a Pinoy. They will either get offended or be completely clueless to what is being said.
Pinoys don’t engage with sarcasm because they prefer communicate directly with honor and honestly. Under such an open and positive environment, sarcasm is simply not necessary.
Open? maybe… Positive? You’ve got to be kidding me.
is this sarcasm?
Quite similar to Major League Baseball. The reform on performance enhancing drugs was spearheaded by the one of the most KSP personalities in sports. Picture a baseball player with Kris Aquino personality and on the juice and you get Jose Canseco. Congress had to act when baseball just sat back. The union of course was part of that hindrance.
The problem is that filipino butts are still being kicked by anyone who cares to take a shot.
If obama says ‘ bend over’ to aquino, pnoy does so, and with a smile/grin on his face.
If a foreigner says ‘bend over’ to a filipino(a), they do so, for a 500 peso note in their hand.
Butthurt, the butt of jokes. It must be a bum deal being filipino and eating sh!t all the time.
About time they stopped accepting being the toilet cleaners to the world, bringing up the rear, and flushing their future down the pan.
A strong disinfectant is needed to rid the stink, starting with the gay in the closet in malacanan, who suffers from verbal diarrhea, mental constipation, and is about as popular as a fart in a lift, and as useful as an empty toilet roll.
@ Libertas,R U not a Filipino? For one who seems to never be at a loss for words, WHAT would you do? Seriously, besides calling for the ouster of one Man? The thought that getting rid of the ‘flack-catcher’ is going to stop anything from happening and that it will somehow make a difference is one of the things I find soooooooo amusing about you and your idiocies.
Typical attitude of using tapal (patch) to cover things up, instead of admitting that our filipino society is in bad mess and that it has to be fixed.
Richard Gordon has a good perspective on it.
“The problem with Filipinos is we do not think… we react!”
The only chance of progress is if a non trapo, non dynasty politician with principles and integrity is elected president, and the system is specifically designed so that such an occurence would be as likely as finding a 16 year old virgin in tondo.
It’s like chickens electing which fox decides on the menu for dinner. Lose-lose.
Reality really hurts. It is thru our understanding of our National Illness: butt hurt, idiotic leaders, crooked politicians, incompetent Presidents, etc…that we can begin to heal the country.This is called :catharsis… Mentally ill people are prone to be Hurt easily. They cannot accept realities. They are “in denial” of their bad situations. So, they delude themselves, that everything is okay…
Seems the paradigm shift that Filipinos need is to stop being reactive. Stop basing their lives and country’s principles on butthurt. Because a butthurt-based life is short-term and thoughtless. They should think of moving up and improving themselves to really earn respect and not make another reason for themselves to be butthurt.
Butthurt comes from insecurity.
@ Gogs, Get out ‘Joe’s Garage’ pts. 2&3 and give
“Keep it greasy” a good ole listen as it spells out the answer to the cultural problem in the Filippines: Butthurt.
“Here comes that crazy screaming sound..”, LOL!
FZ, whatta guy!
Musings – amused and bemused by a confused society
Amused
‘It’s more fun in the philippines’ is the tourist slogan, but one wonders for who.
With abject poverty, endemic unemployment, and wholesale corruption then it is certainly not fun for the vast majority who struggle on a daily basis, or for those who in desperation leave their families to work abroad in low paid menial jobs, or for the increasing numbers who fall prey to sex traffickers or enter the growing sex trade.
It can’t be much fun either for those who travel on shoddy roads in air polluting rust buckets, or the growing army of digital slaves in their tiny cubicles answering complaints from irate foreigners.
And it is definitely not fun for those who become ill and need medical treatment.
Bemused
The answer to all of the philippines problems is naturally not to solve them, but to carry on regardless, pass the blame, promise a better tomorrow, and then create diversions, intrigue, and keep people occupied with telenovelas, beauty pageants, endless gossip, and meaningless world record attempts.
Simple pleasures for simple people, and whilst they are distracted, steal more of their money. Like taking candy from a baby.
Confused
The inherent problems which exist today in a confused and divided society, are clearly rooted in centuries of historical subservience, and the rise of political plutocracy, geographical fiefdoms, and an economic oligarchy following independence, resulting in a national psyche which displays low self-esteem, no coherent identity, and poor cultural values, all combining to create a lack of creativity, a low work ethic, moral hypocricy, political apathy and a victim mentality with a begging bowl in hand.
The spanish 200 years ago called the philippines – ‘the land of thieves’, and if you are a criminal, then it can be more fun and very profitable in the philippines, where life is cheap, everyone can be bought, and the food stinks.
But ultimately it is down to the individual to change their own values, take personal responsibility, and gain their own self respect, not jump on a false notion of manufactured pinoy pride!
Be your own man, or some-one else’s poodle.
Hi Benigno: it is good know that there are Filipinos like you with a proper sense of patriotism and a will to point out the problems that should be erradicated immediately. I am a foreigner living here for almost 5 years, and as you and your colleagues commented previously in other articles, my criticisms are not welcome AT ALL. I have lived in other countries, and I never found such an extreme sensibility to criticisms. So, you can guess that, after so many troubles found just to speak out what I think in a very respectful and constructive way-coz, after all, I am a bit concerned about the place where I am living-, I have decided to shut up and just tell Filipinos what they want to listen: “Your country is great and wonderful”. I feel refreshed reading your posts. Congratulations.
Thanks. We do our best to challenge the popular sentiment and are guided by the simple principle that the popularity of an idea has never been a good indicator of its validity.