A Damage Culture is a new Philippines?

Judy R. Sullano January 23, 2014
II-6 BSE Social Science Prof. Minda Valencia

A Damage Culture: A New Philippines?
Summary:
The article was all about the condition of the Philippines way back in 1987 after dethroning Ferdinand Marcos by Corazon Coquangco Aquino. But I could say that the description of the writer is strongly evident until now. The article revolved around how the damage culture affects Filipino lives. The writer had made good points in chunking the details. It has three main topics/ideas namely as: The Post Kleptocratic Economy, The Meaning of the Smokey Mountain and lastly The War of Every Man Against Every Man. Let’s discuss these ideas on how it was represented by the writer, first the Post Kleptocratic Economy. Kleptocratic means a form of political and government corruption. During this time there were two foreign economists said that the Philippines is not good for manufacturing, agriculture, service and other industries and resources investment due to some problems. Smokey Mountain for us is a place where a mountain of garbage is located but for the people who lived here it’s like a paradise in where they earn their living. The people there were from Visayas looking their fortune in the urban place. It’s ok for them to live there because they were near from the city and malls. And lastly The War of Every Man Against Every Man a challenge for us how to restore our culture damage and not to pin point who was the reason why we are poor.

Reaction: No. I could say that a damage culture is not a new Philippines. Why? Basically the text had answered this question but I will try to explain it by how I understand the article and from my prior knowledge. If the question will apply these day with the use of the article not regarding the statuses of the Southeast and North Asian Nation my answer is still NO. During the latest ranking from these nation our neighboring country is in there way going up with their well preserved culture like South Korea, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and a lot more and we are leaving behind. To understand further let’s define culture. Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notion of time, roles, and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Another definition of culture is the sum total of the learned behavior of a group of the people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation. Basically if anyone asks what’s the culture of the Filipino we say that we are hospitable, we have close family ties, we have respect for elders, loyalty, sensitive, lack of initiative, curious , pagtanaw ng utang na loob and etc. These are some of the culture or more specific the traits or values of the Filipinos. But if not used in right thing it may harm us. Like we use the wrong connotation of loyalty instead to be loyal to our country we tend to loyal to our friends that somehow the reason why were like this. According to what I had watched the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform was made during the late Mrs. Aquino but did not flourished and become effective because, she herself was a haciendera and her family will greatly affected by the CARP the best example of close family ties. And according to what the article said Cory Aquino had with her office the people who has no knowledge about politics and help her during her presidency. These people helped her during campaigns and for her to payback she gave them positions like the cronies of Marcos. These are basically to pay them back or pagtanaw ng utang na loob. We also have this mentality that the Americans are our hero and our friend that is why we are very loyal to them. It is evident that we have a good and wonderful culture that basically will help us to go up. But we used it wrong that’s why, we have a damage culture. Damage culture is not the new Philippines because for me Philippines is a sovereign country with upright and good people living on it. They flourished their culture and had learned from the past mistake. Even though maybe some people say that the damage culture is a new Philippines it will not last for long. According to our elders, “Ang isang pagkakamali ay hindi maitatama ng isa pang pagkakamali.” Which merely states that if there are a lot of problems that we had face or we are going to face it is not right to do the not right things to be right. We say that it is our culture because it’s basically proven and tested that these things are good and moral. It is the matter of how we will use it.Again Damage Culture is NOT The New Philippines.

Resources:
Agoncillo, Teodoro A. History of the Filipino People 8th Edition. heritage.org/index/ranking tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html