We beg to differ.
When Vice President Sara Duterte follows her father’s playbook by exploiting the word adik to score political low blows against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., she isn’t just engaging in political theater. She is weaponizing a slur that inflicts profound psychological harm on millions of Filipinos living with undiagnosed and untreated neurodivergent conditions. The intense shame…
One of the weirdest things from Filipinos is their transfixation on emotion, as I mentioned in my article about the raucous pursuit of highs. I remember when eating at a fast-food restaurant one time, I saw students doing a school project. One girl held up a paper-plate clock she made, and said “ang lungkot tingnan…
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(Author’s note: This article is a translation of a previous essay I wrote entitled “Anti-Vaxxers: A Dangerous Trend the Philippines Needs to Avoid.” I found it convenient to write this version so as to have a wider reach, and to have more people be aware of an emerging dangerous trend. As with the vaccines themselves,…
Parents only want the best for their child, be it as general as a good environment to grow up in or as specific as health. I grew up knowing that quite a number of deadly diseases could easily be cured through vaccination. Granted the means of delivering the vaccine are scary (children always cringe at…
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What I have noticed about ordinary Filipinos is that they seem heavily motivated to avoid shame in their actions. Filipinos seem more afraid of embarrassment than failure. If they are afraid of failure, such as failure of their movement or ideas becoming popular and accepted, it is because they fear the embarrassment they assume it…
Read More “The Filipino Sense of Shame: Misguided and Misplaced” »