GUEST COMMENTARY: SOCIETY WITHOUT PURPOSE by Renato Constantino

As a people we have been deprived for centuries of responsibility for our destiny.  Under the Spaniards, this deprivation was open.  They ruled, we obeyed.  Under the Americans, while we were ostensibly being prepared for self-government, for self-reliance, we were actually being maneuvered by means of political and economic pressures to defer to American decisions at the same time that we were being conditioned by our American education to prefer American ways.  The result is a people habituated to abdicating control over basic areas of their national life, unaccustomed to coming to grips with reality, prone to escape into fantasies; and a leadership which voluntarily chooses Western solutions for Philippine problems — partly because it is intellectually conditioned to believe in such solutions and partly for personal expediency, since politicians tacitly recognize the danger of displeasing foreign friends. 

Thus, we have existed since 1946 as a semi-ward, content with a semi-independent status, our leaders busying themselves with stop-gap measures that change nothing, our people retreating more and more into individualistic pursuits.  We have become a people that delights in fantasy.  Objective reality stares us in the face but we either ignore it or gloss over it.  The result is a way of life that is divorced from reality. 

Reality, however, is now asserting itself and this is the reason why so many of us are confused.  This is the reason why so many events in our contemporary life have become inexplicable to most of us.  The unwholesome tendencies which we regarded merely as aberations of our normal life, not as danger signals pointing to a coming general economic and moral breakdown, are now engulfing our society, making us more confused and desperate. 

We managed to get by before; we felt that we would always get by, we thought that there was nothing seriously wrong with our society.  Some of us continue to deceive ourselves into believing that present social and economic difficulties are symptomatic of progress and of a stage of development which inevitably will bring us to the threshold of happiness and prosperity.  The purveyors of optimistic forecasts and statistics steadfastly adhere to conclusions supported by an array of figures, graphs, and tables that we are a growing economy, that we are a nation on the move.  Yet the actual conditions in the countryside present a picture of unmitigated poverty, a picture virtually unchanged through several centuries. 

THE PURSUIT OF IDLENESS 

It is true that more and more Filipinos are enjoying the boons of American gadgetry, that we have many movie houses, more television sets, more transistor radios, more nightclubs and restaurants.  We can even boast of concreting more roads and the construction of more bridges.  But what of the steadily increasing tribe of unemployed and under-employed?  What of the exploding population of peasants for whom the future holds nothing but the same desperate search for food and security that occupies them today?  And what of the many of our young whose talents have been wasted because of lack of opportunity, because of deficient education, because of malnutrition and ill health? 

The glowing prose of status quo apologists notwithstanding, we are a society without a central, common purpose, whose members are obsessed with the pursuit of idleness.  Today, a small sector of our population is endeavoring to “pass the time” through the enjoyment of available entertainment media, while the greater part of the masses are idle because of lack of opportunity to work and the lack of cultural avenues to apply their talents fruitfully.  And while we have been existing in unthinking passivity, our social system has led inexorably to the emergence of the affluent few as a twin phenomenon of poverty for the majority.  The rising affluence of the privileged stratum has only assured the continued degradation of the masses.  And it is certain that the masses will continue getting poorer while a relatively diminishing minority of privileged individuals will enjoy the advantages of immense wealth.  The plutocratic content of our social system will become more exposed and the anti-popular nature of our government will be unmasked for an increasing number of our citizens.  We shall be a country with two distinct societies — the masses who will struggle more and more fiercely for change and the beneficiaries of the system who will fight back with violence and repression to preserve the status quo. 

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES 

The picture is indeed bleak, and the promises of the politicians, which in the past constituted the slim ray of hope, are now regarded with utter cynicism.  The electoral system which has hitherto been considered as our safety valve is now not even good entertainment; it is for many just a business proposition in which the vote is a commodity and neither buyer nor seller has faith in each other.  The lack of basic issues between the two contending parties has emphasized the bankruptcy of our political system.  That is why unrest is resurgent, that is why it is becoming increasingly clear to our people that the answer does not lie in electing different men to office nor in electing first one, then the other of our traditional political parties.  After the initial post-election euphoria, our people realize that there is still no change in their status.  Cynicism and indifference are rampant.  But these are only the initial reactions.  As objective conditions make life more unbearable, cynicism will turn into widespread dissent, and indifference will give way to an active search for real alternative approaches to our problems.  (featured in the Graphic, January 17, 1968)