It is easy to tell that Fiesta Election season in the Philippines is just around the corner. There is ayuda talk aplenty with one or the other politician “pushing” one “initiative” or the other to “alleviate” the “plight” of “the poor”. Many of these are initiatives are well within the power of administrators of various government agencies to implement — often simply by instituting refinements in policies and guidelines as well as streamlining processes.
It does not take executive orders from Malacañang or congressional “inquiries” to effect these changes. Yet, seeing the sorts of headlines published by “news” media organisations, one could be excused for thinking that Filipino politicians are like knights in shining armour galloping in from the horizon to rescue Filipinos from their wretchedness.
Why does “helping the poor” resonate so powerfully in Philippine politics? It seems this was either an inadvertent or a deliberate conditioning of the Filipino psyche to keep voters ripe for influence in the lead up to elections. The Philippine electorate is, after all, a vast vote farm made fertile by dole outs that keep Filipinos’ ayuda mentality nice and fat. Politicians seen to be prioritising “helping the poor” build the best name recall equity. This then creates a vicious cycle — politicians in pissing contests to look “helpful” and people making entire livings out of lapping all of that up.
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Meanwhile, across the rest of the world, there are bigger fish to fry. Climate changes to arrest, the spread of AI that threatens human livelihood, industrial competitions to win, territory to dominate, and world-class brands to build. It seems Filipinos are not up to stepping up to those big challenges. No. They would rather wait to be helped.
Perhaps this is the reason why Filipinos haven’t invested much in education — which is why the country now languishes at the bottom of the heap in world IQ and academic achievement rankings. After all, as the likely Filipino thinking goes, why improve one’s self when one is entitled to help, right?
In this light, it is hard to imagine how Filipinos can step out of this spiral into utter kaboboan. Democracy, after all, is a popularity contest. Politicians gunning for positions of power only need to pander to ideas and beliefs that are popular with Filipinos. The trouble with that is popularity does not have a track record of being a strong indicator of what is valid or sound. And in a society where the main channel for propagating information are privately-held profit-oriented mass media businesses one can easily see why popularity trumps sense any day.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
A huge problem with Filipino society is they think helping the poor is all about giving money to them which actually does more harm than good especially in the long run. It won’t be surprising if Filipinos’ mindset is “You can’t eat dignity and honor” because they’re too shortsighted and they never learn yet they complain that they’re still poor and they wonder why Philippines is still a 3rd world horse crap with little to no improvement since what, year 1997?
These so-called pro-poor politicians love the poor people only because they get votes from the poor. In fact, they want people to remain poor and stupid so that they can get votes. Education and wealth are threats to them. If majority of Filipinos are educated and above middle class, these “pro-poor” politicians will never be voted.
We can probably say that the Philipines is some sort of “neo-monarchy” or “feudalism” because it is being governed by political families.
Filipino society deserves to suffer because they’re corrupt and they vote for corrupt officials. It’s funny that many Filipinos blame the past colonizers and the Americans for their country’s failures yet the Filipinos themselves are the ones responsible for destroying the Philippines, not the Americans, not the Chinese and not the Europeans.
No Data, care to elaborate more on your statement, please?
“…with little to no improvement since what, year 1997?”
What’s the significance of the year 1997? This was the time of the Ramos administration, am I right? What ‘improvement’ are referring to during his time?
Sam, the 1997 is just a guess. My point is Philippines has no big improvements. Philippines is a backward country which is worse than being stuck or stagnant. Philippines seems to be worse than it was during 1997. Look at the Philippine senate now. It’s nothing more than a witch-hunting ground and a ground for grandstanding, degradation and public humiliation. It really got worse when Tulfo brought his RTIA style in the senate which is very disrespectful, arrogant and foul. The senators aren’t doing their jobs. All they do is grandstand.
Well, if the majority are no longer able to rule over themselves, their domain and their relationship with everything else, what do you think happens? We tend to forget that WE bestow power on our “rulers”. Again, there can be no dictatorship where no one allows it.
add in the fake outrage about sexpats and grandpas with young pinays. Phil needs the money. Period.
Just like the west, it is a transactional relationship. Like the degenerate us empire-and western lackeys __the friends with -benefits- debased thing–the relationship is prostitutional. I get what i want, you get what you want, with no feelings, no deep attachments etc. Yet the economy is helped with old wasps buying homes in the boonies, paying for overpriced western meals, and buying their “brides” and “girlfriends” goodies from the overconsumption us capitalistic malls.
How is the US the bad guy here? It’s not their fault that Philippines is the degenerate “whore”.
The Filipino society only got themselves to blame for their garbage country’s miseries, got nobody else to blame.
Joined-up thinking is desperately lacking, & it’s absolutely getting worse. Commonsense says one thing leads to another – bad to bad, good to good. However, IQ is dropping meaning the next generation of teachers won’t be up to it; billions spent on unnecessary road widening making them far more dangerous than already; eagerly grabbing money from inappropriate places (China) to only waste it through massive corruption (theft) on the wrong things (how many generations ruined paying back our new masters); meaningless elections where candidates only want the money (always the money) where no proper good works are ever achieved; a society of selfishness where grabbing land & money is more important than familial ties; neighbours who damage each other’s lives with noise, pollution; & on & on & one. One can be forgiven for concluding it’s better to stop our epic fail & start again, rather than continue with this shambles of a government & society. But I guess we’ll just continue & consign our next generations to more of the worse, we just aren’t brave enough, smart enough or able to join up our thinking.
As it is already becoming obvious, technology that spreads information today also multiplies such an unfortunate fact. What more with digitized Greed? Can you just imagine?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
Slightly below the middle isn’t Bottom of the Barrel.
And while I do agree that we need to get rid of the entire political class, the failure of “political realism” which assumes that current trends will continue indefinitely, is visible for all to see.
There’s a reason no one reads this site and why Burnham was never taken seriously.
I suppose one reason for this is because this generation misses out a lot when it comes to observing and understanding the natural world and how it inspires. I mean you can put someone in the “best” schools and I bet he will still be comprehension-challenged. People in cages guarantees the death of their imagination.
LOL, you already blogged your boy PBBM into the Presidency, benign0. You’re still not happy?