I have a cousin who is rather high up in an American multinational (I think he’s the first Filipino to hold such responsibilities in the organization) and I asked him, once, why it seemed so few Filipinos reached really high positions in firms overseas. While the American bureaucracy, for one, has more than its fair share of Filipinos, and there are multinationals the world over, filled to the gills with mid-level Filipino managers, why are there so few Filipino top bosses? Hardly any, actually.
His answer came quickly, as befits an executive: “a lack of ambition.”
I asked him to elaborate on his opinion.
“We are easily contented,” he explained. “Once many Filipinos reach a certain level of comfort, they’re not inclined to go any higher.”
This was the genesis of my view that most Filipinos possess a bureaucrat’s mentality: and why the civil service seems so (cozily) ideal for many. I myself noticed I am inclined to be this way: I crave security, I want to minimize risks, I want to, most of all, work to live and not live to work. Employment makes this possible: the company health plan, the company union that fights for it, the predictable paycheck and annual bonuses.
Which is not to pass judgment on this mentality as unhealthy or inferior, per se. It can even be argued that it’s a healthier one than Darwinian capitalism taken to extremes. Yet, taken to extremes, too, there’s the danger that the bureaucratic mentality is not a mental framework that values innovation, or which, when you come to think of it, puts a premium on excellence.
The reality is that the mentality is so pervasive as to have nothing to do with education or social status. Some months ago I had a chat with a banker from Hong Kong who’s fond of the Philippines and Filipinos (with the kind of exasperated affection you might hear an ordnung-obsessed German talking about Italians and their dolce vita). His line is wealth management and so he’s intimately aware of the mental framework of the country’s economic movers and shakers.
“You’re an archipelago,” he began, “with this giant moat comprised of the sea, and so your Ayalas and Sys are, ultimately, safe. They have a captive audience and a natural barrier to anyone challenging them from overseas. Why innovate? Why compete? Once you figure out how to make money, it ends up reproducing itself. You don’t have to be particularly good, just well positioned, and so your energies are better used to preserving your preeminent position rather than embarking on taking risks or competing globally. It’s all very tidy, effortless, and really, quite lucrative. They are the envy of other businessmen in other countries who wish they had it so good.”
But I have gotten increasingly convinced that this mentality, while it has its charms, and may actually make for a better quality of life for most of us, is only made possible by a flawed understanding of business. I have been looking for an appropriate analogy, a useful comparison, and I think I’ve found it.
For some time now, I’ve been of the opinion -or perhaps, it’s more accurate to say, I have a sneaking suspicion- that we live in a Cargo Cult society. As this article, The Cargo Cults, explains,
When soldiers and airmen from the United States and other allied countries arrived in the islands with huge war cargoes, it was for the worshipers proof that those who followed the beliefs of a cargo cult were to be rewarded for their faith. Though the natives did not benefit directly from the appearance on their islands of those types of cargo, the cultists believed that their predictions were confirmed and that the cargo-millennium was at hand. A time of plenty had arrived. There was no longer a need to work. Money was unnecessary. Crops could be, and were, neglected. Pigs were randomly slaughtered for feasts. It was a time to celebrate, and the cultists lived it up.
Things didn’t turn out as the cultists expected, but few lost the faith. When goods fail to appear, as in the postwar period, the followers usually assume it is because they have not yet performed the correct ritual, because foreigners have schemed against them, or because the cultists have neglected the gods.
The complexities of the modern world: it is like Darwinian evolution versus Man being made in God’s image. The ferocious debate between science and faith is like the ferocious debate between those approaching society and its problems from an economic perspective, with its focus on increasing value and promoting efficiency, an essentially remorseless and amoral attitude, to those who possess an essentially philosophical perspective, which has, at its heart, moral questions whether based on religious faith or a more secular approach. But just as the seemingly hopeless divide between faith and science can be bridged, perhaps the great divide between those who put a premium on business and those who hold things like democracy and freedom as what should be, properly, the main considerations of human society, can be closed, as well.
Diosdado Macapagal, a lawyer turned economist, once paid tribute to himself by suggesting he held a competitive edge over his peers:
Leadership in the country today requires a knowledge of economics. The vital problems of the nation are economic in character, namely, unemployment, high prices, underproduction, imbalance of payments, currency controls, etc. Public men who have hazy notions of the fundamentals of economic science and whose minds, for lack of background or aptitude, cannot fathom the mysteries of the economic issues involved in important matters of state, are at a disadvantage. They are like men who treat the sick without the knowledge of medicine, who handle a trial without knowledge of law, who fashion a table or chair without knowledge of carpentry. They are like the Pharisees of old who were the “blind guides of blind men. But if a blind man guides a blind man, both fall into a pit.”
He conveniently forgot to point out that a leader imbued with a thorough understanding of “economic science,” but who lacked political gifts, would be at a disadvantage, too: not least because he’d be unable to muster support for his programs. Most of all, as befitted a person with a doctorate, he put a premium on expertise while forgetting that the bedrock of democracy is popular participation by the non-experts, too. To be sure, a non-lawyer involved in legislation is handicapped compared to a lawyer, but not permanently so: among other things, the non-lawyer can bring fresh eyes and common sense to the legislative process; and economists, too, must realize that their science began as “political economy,” which suggests that what once was, must ever be: you cannot divorce the two. Everything is political and in essence, much of what is political predates the sciences and isn’t subject to the scientific method. But Cong Dadong was on to something, and it was something his daughter took to heart.
Though again, the two approaches are not irreconcilable; they are complimentary. Scientific methods and principles, the handling of statistics, are used in gauging public opinion; but it requires a certain dexterity, an instinctive feel and skill, to marshal that opinion, mold it, hold it, wield it. Politics will always have a mystical attribute attached to it, which is why I pointed out that even a pragmatist like the President consults prophesying nuns, her one time ally turned nemesis Jose de Venecia, Jr. pays attention to letters dictated by his dead daughter, and Romulo Neri, Jr. begins his day by consulting the I Ching and a high percentage of officialdom consults geomancers and fortune-tellers.
The difference between officialdom and their constituents is greater familiarity with the formal structures of government, the regulations the officials themselves make -and break- and perhaps, of the true sources of wealth in our country. Yet all belong to the Cargo Cult.
From the four corners of the world, transported in the holds of ships traveling the seven seas, or in the bellies of aircraft, our cargo comes: rich or poor, the balikbayan box is expected, because demanded; how it gets from door to door, is no one’s concern, really.
And this brings us to what makes possible the door to door service: gaming the system.
It may be more accurate to say that Gaming the System, and not really politics, is our national pastime. We’re very good at it and, indeed, we can game practically any system; and engaged in this collective gaming, what, then, is the real advantage or even logic, in reforming the system and making it invulnerable to being gamed? None. No one will admit it, everyone’s secretly content with it. Which is another reason nothing really happens.
In Wikitruth, there’s an entry on Gaming the system:
Gaming the System means, simply, using the rules, policies and procedures of a system against itself for purposes outside what these rules were intended for. Most of the time, a set of rules will be put in place towards a simple goal. The goal might be to prevent innocents from being harassed to preventing wasted time covering well-tread (and decided-upon) ground. Unfortunately, when a system puts too many rules in place, makes them too vague, or otherwise fails to know the consequences of these rules, people who study the rules closely can then use this massive (often contradictory) ruleset to play the “game” their own, unexpected way.
Think, for example, about the dizzying regulations concerning official corruption in our country, which actually fosters the very thing the laws are meant to prevent.
And it concludes with this solution:
Believe it or not, a stronger central authority fixes more of this problem than anything else. This may sound like something against the goals of Wikipedia, but currently Jimbo Wales or Danny will step in and apply rules against the system as they need to: hard, fast rules with no appeal that are permanent. These are called Wikipedia Office Decisions. They make total sense: the people who are running the system get to make choices. But because Wikipedia falsely makes it sound like everyone has a say, these moves look like dictators running roughshod on the People.
Hence, the not-so-secret yearnings of so many Filipinos for a Man on Horseback who will “Hoy, Puñeta!” a fractious and undisciplined population into line. Which, besides being only a temporary solution at best, also causes more problems than it solves.
Which makes this tart piece of advice with which the Wikitruth article ends, apropos to our discussion:
Over time, Wikipedia’s central authority will make rules more hard and fast. But until then, we remind you that the only way to win against a gamed system is not to play.
Which is exactly what hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Filipinos have done. Incidentally, they are among our best and brightest or at least those with a more enterprising bent. It has ever been so: what brought the Malays to what’s now the Philippines in the first place, and led those from one island to move to another, and another, if not dissatisfaction with the status quo, so that there’s one theory that Tagalog is derived from Cebuano? An island peoples are, essentially, a nomadic people, we have wanderlust genetically programmed into us.
Anyway, let me finally get to this photo, which I took some weeks back to illustrate a point I wanted to make.
Typhoons and bad weather are inevitable: and we’ve become used to thinking that power outtages and electrical fires are a predictable consequence of typhoons. But mitigating the reasons typhoons lead to power failures doesn’t occur to anyone: what happens is, energy is devoted to clearing up the mess in the wake of a typhoon and, as soon as that’s done, everything goes back to normal -until the next time a typhoon strikes. The power failures are blamed on trees whose branches are unpruned, mainly, but hardly ever on the truly abominable state of the electric lines, which are a chaotic mass of dangling or tangled wires on leaning posts, with buildings hooked up to them willy-nilly.
Now I’m sure if you ordered Meralco to take responsibility for the chaotic condition of the electrical wires, they’d plead that the effort would bankrupt them. Oddly enough, no order has been made, which might force the creation of some sort of plan: things being less tangled in places like Alabang, you could start with Tatalon. You could even insist, if you were the government, that any new development has to have underground wiring, which would be more typhoon-proof (though there’s the question of flooding!), and where old buildings are razed and new ones erected, underground connections should replace the old-fashioned posts. One reason no order’s been given is that it would bring up the inconvenient reality that local and national governments don’t take zoning particularly seriously, and that the population has swamped the existing infrastructure.
But the individual citizen thinks, do something, anything! But instead, nothing: the problems are so vast, no solution can be contemplated, much less attempted. And so, when the inevitable occurs -the system breaks down- everyone just has to appear busy long enough to patch things back together until the next time it all breaks down. And yet, with the tangled wires in plain sight, people end up shocked by transmission losses! It’s really a failure to even comprehend how electricity gets from point A to point B, what’s involved, how things work, and that electricity isn’t some sort of magical ether.
Never mind how the system’s supposed to work: everyone’s gamed it, anyway. Which is why, as a balikbayan recently told me, “everytime I come home, everything’s slightly more decayed, the people are poorer, life is a little worse, but everyone’s seems so accustomed to it.”
We have abandoned our ambitions, viewing coping as a kind of triumph; and because we have turned to worshipping the little-understood abstractions of the economy, raising it above the political, we fail to see how until and unless we master politics, everything, including progress, will truly be beyond our grasp.
smoke, who has put forward gaming the system quite often as a way to understand what’s going on, though, since hope springs eternal, we still have to strive for the reality she sees-
…far too many Filipinos are still lazy, unimaginative, and mediocre; far too many of our youth are pathologically enamored with consumerism; and we are still a nation run by morons, who are ‘fiscalized’ by idiots, with running commentary from mercenary retards.
Not being a permanent reality in our country (and change is taking place, on a smaller scale, with people groping their way towards trying to build up the momentum to achieve it on a bigger scale). But in the meantime, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the grimness of things, as The Warrior Lawyer sees it, and as {caffeine_sparks} experiences it.
Good piece, mlq3.
Lack of ambition translates to “puwede na” mindset.
Cargo culture is why Sulpicio cargo will be allowed to ply the seas soon.
Gaming the system: is this why Pinoys are addicted to Wowoweee!
I hope the commentaries don’t turn into Pinoy-bashing. We have our nice traits too.
A most excellent reflection on our national character, MLQ3. Let me add some of my own thoughts…
For most Filipinos, “gaming the system” actually means sabotaging it in some subtle but self-serving way, bypassing its crucial safeguards through subterfuge or stealth in order to get away with something it never intended to be attained in that manner. What really matters to gamers of the system is not understanding what really makes it work, but what flaws exist that can be exploited to make it not work as designed. To game the system is to cheat the rules just enough not to break the system but to make it do things it was not meant to do in just that way. The so called “understanding” of systems that we seek to accomplish is often how to defeat them.
I think this attitude arises from an amalgam of native superstitiousness emboldened by Roman Catholic teachings involving miracles and intercessions, which after all are the ultimate means of bypassing the all-encompassing System we Darwinians call “Nature”. In Religion we find the ultimate subterfuge of the natural world with its axiom of supernatural beings and deities that do not have to obey the Laws of Nature, presumably because they made those Laws and can always chacha them for our own benefit under the right conditions of holy incantation and obeisance to the liturgies and local surrogates of the artificers that made the system.
In this sense, I believe that the greatest intellectual struggle we must undertake is to free ourselves of the shackles of Religion. I for one no longer believe it is possible to reconcile Science with Religion, Faith with Reason, because I believe that Modern Science evolved from Ancient Religion, so much so that Modern Science and Modern Religion stand in the same relation to Ancient Religion as men and monkeys do to the Common Ancestor. Yet one cannot say that there is any way to “bridge” the world of men with the world of monkeys. They have lost the ability to blend their genes and memes for common progeny. Even if both evolved from a common sensibility and share many superficial characteristics, their basic postulates and axioms are now radically different, so different that they lead to entirely different conclusions, attitudes and behaviors.
Our old friend William Howard Taft realized this about the Catholic Church in the Philippines and tried to do something about it. But he was defeated by the Men in Skirts who were committed goddess worshippers and knew the Filipino’s weakness much more intimately than he did. They gamed the system he and America sought to establish here, and the result is a bizarre mutation of what might have been.
I see the role of Filipino intellectuals in the present epoch as the duty to complete the enterprise he began of distributing the most precious cargo that they brought to these shores, the light of reason and enlightenment that awoke the sleepers of the centuries by momentarily and valiantly trying to wipe away the sleeping powders and mud of ignorance that covered their eyes. He saw in Jose Rizal proof positive that Filipinos could indeed transcend the Catholic toxin implanted in their brains, without destroying the moral sense and goodness and love that is to be found in every heart. I have become very Dawkinsian of late, but I won’t quote the acerbic Brit, rather the more gentle fellow American with the long but musical verses…
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God’s right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened;-
re: lack of ambition
you should be asking several people MLQ3. An opinion of one does not necessarily reflect the whole. My favorite example is, a branch is not always the tree.
It is not the lack of ambition nor the lack of qualification and training which are the reasons why Filipinos do not reach the top post (if you are referring to
CEO or President because VP is also a top post). It is the politics in the corporate world. Even in the Corporate America, discrimination is the name of the game. It is not only about the race…it is also about gender.
In the MNC where I worked for some months consulting with the VP-a Filipino, the latter resigned when a do-not-know-anything-pretends-to-know-everything expat was assigned as
Acting CEO. And that was when the major problems and kinks were already ironed out by the VP.
cargo cult
In Hong Kong, all buildings are constructed using feng shui. Businessmen use the luck number 8 and avoid the number 4. If you are a businessman from the West and you are meeting with some Asian Businessmen, do not gift them with sharp objects like letter opener, even if the handle is made of gold.
In India, a management and business school made a god-monkey, it’s chairman of the board. It has its own office and a laptop.
During the dot.com era in Silicon Valley, a business strategist consultant
(a very fancy name for a fortune teller) made more money than the venture capitalists. Many of these VC’s and dot.com execs consulted this lady who was a grauuate from a school of fortune telling in Berkeley.
grim predictions and experience
What is grimmer than get shot in the US because a person was suspected of going ahead of the line?
Oil price increase
You do not need a crystal ball and a good analyst to predict that price of oil is going to increase.
The oil producing nations are aware that sooner or later, their oil reserves will be depleted and an alternative source of energy is going to be discovered. So they make hay while the sun shines. Did you see the latest
breath taking infrastructures in the Middle East and the new “Air Force One ” of the sultan of a small oil producing country?
Remember the rich donyas of Philippine movies (even back in LVN and Sampaguita days) would castigate their lessers who dream big in life and in love as “ambisyosa” or “ambisyoso”. The word had been demonized in our culture for G-d knows how long. In corporate culture as I have experienced, giving extra TLC to a rather mundane office task like writing reports and presentations are deemed “nagpapasikat” kasi “ambisyoso”. I say more than the lack of ambition, I find the less ambitious ones lacking imagination in their lives. Before one has ambition he has to dream first. No wonder our landscape has grey tinge in it, right Manolo? Hindi makulay and kanilang buhay!
djb, for your consideration:
http://darwiniana.com/2008/04/29/interview-manque/
and this, too:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/26/agnosticaboutatheism
i don’t agree with your view the men in skirts subverted old bill taft, himself a machine politician. the democracy we observed and practiced was a democracy quite contemporary in the early 20th century but soon subjected to challenges and an accelerated evolution in america. our own evolution has taken other directions, but if the pendergast machine, which gave forth truman, and the daley machine, which helped elect kennedy, persisted to the 40s and 60s respectively, it’s no surprise we perfected the same mechanisms from the 30s to to the 60s.
for much of the 20th century the catholic church was kept in check by residual hostility from the era of the revolution. i’d date the rehabilitation of the church, politically, to the decline, politically, of masons, whose influence (and role) in politics was taken over by that american introduction, the college fraternity.
how the system could be gamed is better demonstrated by the decline of masonry as a political and cultural force, and the rise of the fraternity in politics and the professions. it’s no coincidence, to me, that the first time a president dared participate in a religious procession, as president, was magsaysay’s time, when the old heirs of the european enlightenment were passing from the scene, the rectos and laurels, and the new blood, politically, were catholic candidates educated by american jesuits -manglapus, soc rodrigo, etc.
there’s two politico-spiritual threads in filipino catholicism, after all, the patently hispanic, and the aggressively american: the catholic version of this exemplified by manglapus, manahan, rodrigo (all good people), the protestant, exemplified by evangelical christians like bro. eddie villanueva. this in turn has inspired el shaddai among the catholics.
PSI: certainly, this shouldn’t lead to pinoy-bashing. Bashing has no point: we are, as we are; from what we are, will come whatever we set out to be.
cat, for god’s sakes, obviously i;ve asked more than one person. i am merely putting forward the most eloquent of the explanations i got, by means of illustration.
re 1st: those are obstacles all minorities face. yet the curious thing is the relative abundance (or success) of filipinos in mid-level but not upper management positions.
re 2nd: the feng shui has been programmed into construction as psychic insurance, but you really have to wonder if the abruptness of paranormal intervention is as extreme elsewhere as still done here: the letter from beyond the grave jdv was receiving, for example, directly affected his handling of the last impeachment effort.
‘lack of ambition’ has some truth to it. for a good many Pinoys, becoming a US citizen is their ambition. kahit on welfare, basta US citizen na, ok lang!
scalia, how many fil-ams are on welfare? jeez.
i wonder what was the message was…that impeachment would not work? even a normal person would know that considering his “credibility”.
Welfare is given only to people who are physically disable when they are not qualified for the Social Security pension yet or to those who have reached the age of 65 and have not worked to accumulate the 40 quarters’ contributions.
So when you are still able-bodied citizen, you got to work to earn your living.
To ponder about, from New York Times:
”Admissions people felt that all Asians were the same,” he said, ”that they were all pre-med or engineers, and that they all played the piano or the violin.”
For example, he said, many of his colleagues did not know that Filipinos are among the largest subgroups of Asians in the United States, at least by population, yet among the poorest and least educated.
”They were natural candidates for affirmative action,” said Mr. Hu, now a dean at Harvard-Westlake, a private high school in Los Angeles.
http://phoenix.liunet.edu/~uroy/Labor/AffAct/asians2.html
WELL, I’LL BE…
An impassioned analysis but more in the soul-searching variety rather than attempting a truly philosophical viewpoint on Filipino culture.
MLQ, how, for example, do you figure our love for hereos in this unambitious climate? How about all those martyrs abroad who sacrifice “ambition” for the love of their children?
And oh, I almost forgot. The Iglesia ni Kristo founder actually believes he is the chosen one. Is this lack of ambition?
To push past “… lack of ambition” is to send the message that
Hi Manolo, i don’t mean to nitpick, and i know this is probably so off-topic.
just want to correct one comment. the theory that the “malays” populated the philippines is misleading. the austronesian race initially came from taiwan, moved towards the philippines, and from luzon eventually propagated the rest of the islands including malaysia and indonesia. our ancestors were not malay, in fact we could say that modern-day malaysians and indonesians owe their ancestry to early sea-faring filipino tribes.
genetics-wise, we are closer in ancestry to the ami tribes of taiwan. one can even argue that our indigenous tribes are genetically similar to the han chinese. we actually need to rewrite all those history and filipino culture books used in the grade school. but that’s an altogether different topic right there.
otherwise, i do agree with you, lack of ambition is prevalent. borrowing from maslow, we filipinos are far from self-actualizing.
Re: Electrical Posts and tangled wires. Besides from new constructions, most of older transmission of power still utilized the old “ wooden Posts†but to withstand the brutal wind the worst of winter storms can bring they are reinforced with cable support. I also observed that although only mostly one side of the street carries the line, every line of wire connection to every dwelling is wrapped around a Steel Cable for support and anchored in a strong structure usually a solid steel by the rooftop or wall, that even a tree branch fall on the wire the steel cable can still withstand the force to stop to breakage, also the steel cable prevents the wire from sagging or dangling… Not really a very expensive preventive measures, but very effective in avoiding unnecessary outage or disruptions of power every time there are hiccups of Nature.
But don’t you folks understand that it is only chance why someone has become financially better-off than another? The elite speak of “…lack of ambition” as they sneer at those below them. But not all the children of the elite are elite, some fall into the clutches of drug addiction!!
When one analyzes the statistical patterns, one will arrive at the conclusion that it is randomness, chaos theory, a butterfly that flapped its wings 20 years 35 days ago in a field in Peru, plus a morning that because the sun shone at a particular angle, one begins to like the effort-of-making-sipsip and another realizes he detests it, randomness to can explain why some people are in Singapore and some people are riding jeepneys to their job in Ortigas.
And what is that line again… money is root of all evil
Re Lack of Ambition:
It’s also related to the standard of living here in these isles. As you have discussed in a previous post, the cost of living here isn’t lower than what we have abroad, compared to the minimum wage (the comparison of wages of janitors & domestic helpers here, in HK, & in Singapore, versus the price of a kilo of rice in those countries). As such, one would have to work very hard just to reach a comfortable level of lifestyle. Abroad, especially in the US, one could work for a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the level he may have here, and get much more (say a car and a house in less than five years with easy financing). Since one’s pecking order here in the Philippines is directly tied to his salary, his purchasing power, and his access to resources, one has no choice but to kayod his way to the top. On the other hand, since one could get comfortable in the US in five years what one could get here in ten to fifteen, one’s pretty much set.
Re Gaming the System:
Sometimes when you’ve reached the intermediate level in gaming (as opposed to the expert manipulators), you can’t help but think about those novice players who ditched the game early, went abroad, and are earning more than you might have in your level of gaming. You know you can’t be that good a gamer since you’ve been around too long and still haven’t gotten the comforts offered by the master players, but you’re still comfortable enough not to scrounge around for scraps. But for how long?
This makes it worse, that the non-gamers get out, live decent and comfortable lives, send money back home, and the expert gamers ultimately siphon off these earnings and become even more rich. There’s no need to reform the system, the expert gamers have it made!
‘scalia, how many fil-ams are on welfare? jeez.’
Not many. And this is only New York City. I believe Filipinos in California and New Jersy are much better.
‘Census Profile: New York City’s
Filipino American Population
Income
By all measures of income, Filipino New Yorkers surpassed
city residents as a whole. Filipino median household
income was $69,228, far exceeding $38,293 city-wide,
and Filipino median family income of $78,219 was much
higher than $41,887 for the total city population.8 Filipino
per capita income was $27,065, compared with $22,402
city-wide.
Poverty
Poverty rates for Filipinos were considerably lower than for
the total New York City population.
Among all Filipinos in the city, 6 percent (3,897) lived
below the poverty line – less than one-third of the overall
New York City poverty rate of 21 percent. By age
category, 5 percent (684) of the city’s Filipino children
lived in poverty, compared with 30 percent of children
city-wide, while 8 percent (413) of elderly Filipinos
experienced poverty, compared with 18 percent of senior
citizens city-wide.
Nearly half (47 percent, or 307) of Filipino children in
poverty lived in two-parent families, compared with 34
percent of all city children below the poverty line.
Housing
Filipinos were more likely to own their homes than the
general population. According to the census, 62 percent
of Filipinos in the city rented and 38 percent owned their
homes, compared with 70 percent renters and 30 percent
homeowners in the city overall.
Filipino New Yorkers in 2000 had an average household
size of 2.82 people – larger than 2.59 for the general New
York City population.’
anthony scalia,
‘lack of ambition’ has some truth to it. for a good many Pinoys, becoming a US citizen is their ambition. kahit on welfare, basta US citizen na, ok lang!
You probably did not get your daily ration of Fil-American dog shit.
The pinoy word for gaming the system is WAIS.
Sometimes lack of ambition is just another word for indolence. An indolent man would rather game the system than work within it. And so the indolent give grudging admiration to the wais, the successful gamer, the one who gets away with it, the role model for the indolent.
Our society, as an earlier commenter pointed out, is not geared for the ambitious, That’s why in this country the shortest distance between two points is a crooked line. The crooks make it, And fast. And get away with it. All the time.
“Gaming the System means, simply, using the rules, policies and procedures of a system against itself for purposes outside what these rules were intended for”
True but the game our politicians played don’t have no clear rules and regulations. The system do no exist. There is no clarity of job description, skills, education and years of experience required. Rules and Regulations are the framework of how a system will work from finance, accounting, management, human resources, payroll, risk management and quality services . A good example of gaming the system is the RESULT of what the Commission on Election has done. This Commission has no policies. Most KB’s , barangay capitanss, mayor, congressmen, governors and senators have all paid money to buy votes. These people already violated our constitution and yet, comelec do not have no clear rules and regulations of disqualifications and qualifications.
The Philippine don’t have a SYSTEM. The Constitution only holds the codes and the bills pass thru by Congress but the process of implementation – the rules and regulations that should come with it do not exist. A bill to subsidize the farmer is only a bill and yet communication with department of agriculture and departmemt of natural resources for zoning never exist or if there is, there’s no clear rules and regulations. The people that are supposed to work with it with a certain timeframe to accomplish will pay the GAME. These people who plays an easy game and make money that way , will always know how to make money that way. The concept applies to all politicians and all government employees. No exemptions. It is very obvious… The RESULT of collective performance of public officials and employees is making us forever- third world country.
Gaming the system is the middle class version of ‘some are smarter than others’, Marcos’ crony capitalism.
Quote from Imelda “Sometimes you have smart relatives who can make it… My dear, there are always people who are just a little faster, more brilliant, more aggressive.â€Â
pinoy don’t have no ambition?
i will agree with Manolo… the RESULT is obvious…
when one performs well with prayers, of course… the result will be positive. Just like my mother and my ather. Both are poor , but work hard and pray. The danger of Catholic is when people pray everyday but unemployed. They pray that they will find a job to feed their children…
Now whose JOB is that.
out of topic: I am looking a for President who is experienced in human resources. Ability to increase 5% to 10% YEARLY of Country’s employment rate is a must. Pls apply and provide the process of implementation of how and why you will be a good fit to the job.. email… sa [email protected]
And “lack of ambition” could also be interpreted in three ways:
1. Level of incompetence (Peter Principle);
2. Level of satisfaction (‘mababaw ang kaligayahan’ ‘happy na ko sa buhay ko’;
3. Level of risk-taking (‘Baka sumama lang’)
Or all of the above.
Related to ambition and success:
CBS Interview of Pinoy Arnel Pineda, new lead singer of the band Journey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_2UivtEhs
“We are easily contented,â€Â
Nothing inherently wrong with this as regards to going up the corporate ladder (as opposed to being ‘easily contented’ with shoddy work).
(and incidentally, must we ask more Filipinos to go up to the top just for the sake of having Filipinos on the top?)
Manuel V. Pangilinan himself says he has NOT had a proper vacation in 8 years (or so). Rightfully, he is paid lots for his time.
And there are the rest of us who choose to be content and use up all our 45 days vacation per year…
As an employee of a Multinational and an OFW, i personally don’t see striving for Top Management as being worth it. Above a certain level, it becomes a matter of politics. What i value more is work-life balance. That is not to say that i lack ambition, but i think defining success in terms of rank in a Company (or income) is outdated.
Come to think of it, this is one of my complaints about the literary community. Maybe this has also something to do with the rather oppressive crab culture. It should also confirm my belief that we are still at heart slaves.
it’s hard work not to take a vacation. two reasons: that person don’t work smart or they don’t know how to get there. by midlife, that person is burned out and will continue to work just to live.
Pubic service is doing beyond one’s self interest. It is no longer work for just me, me me but work for humanity, including sacrifice to be a role model to his/her children , his community and his country. The contentment is doing good things and what’s acceptable to our society. For me, life is simply about giving. Nothing else. Contentment is an alibi for those who cannot step forward or for those who can no longer comprehend what’s beyond his/herself. A new environment and a new set of leaders may break the habit of old thinking. Our leaders must take seminars for encouragement, enlightenment combine with business management. CEU’s of 24 hours a year is highly recommended.
For electric wires: underground wiring is a city project or an additional service by realestate developers in residential and commercials.
hoping that the new president will look into two infrastructures: 1. affordable water travel connecting the islands and 2. underground wiring… Now how can the president finance all these projects.? Number 1 is easy…. take over sulpicio’s and remove them from ” Gaming the weak System”
number 2.. may take an outside contractor experience in such technology by way of NGO.
obviously, you mention only your relative. very subjective.
cat, there were several letters, encouraging the father to repent and impeach gma. the father was touched but didn’t want to take such a bold step. there was the contradictory message, you see, of a butterfly, symbol of the daughter, having perched on the president’s dress during the first death anniversary…
this was discussed within political circles but never really reported out of deference to the genuine tragedy experienced by jdv with his daughter’s death… and it was just so… wierd. the president was shown one of the letters and basically reacted, “but.. this.. does… not… compute…”
matches: glad you pointed that out, and added the latest scholarship and more relevant views. it’s by means of exchanges like these that we get to catch up on what’s relevant and what’s obsolete.
PSI: am dumbfounded by the idea fil-ams are generally poorer and less educated than other asian-americans.
brian, the heroes do the fighting, the unambitious do the cheering and bury the heroes. as for those who go abroad, its either for glory or as an economic refugee, the heroism there is the personal kind, the family sort, not the national kind. that and their ambition is precisely, their children, raising them to become professionals if the parent’s were’nt, etc/.
“PSI: am dumbfounded by the idea fil-ams are generally poorer and less educated than other asian-americans. ” – mlq3
Maybe true compared to the Korean-, Chinese-, and Indian (South Asian)-Americans. But coming from a Chinese-American, the observation could be biased.
MLQ,
Point is, our ambition may not be of the material kind. If we had great poets and culturally rich like India, I wonder where we’ll be.
mlq3,
Furthermore, I suppose the relative stature of Filipino-Americans in the U.S. would just reflect the level of progress of RP vis-a-vis the other countries in this part of the world. Sad thing is, the Filipinos were one of the first immgrants in the U.S.
Watch out. Vietnam is rising.
On this topic of fil-ams are generally poorer and less educated than other asian-americans
The sentence requires less anecdotes and more statistics (percentage of Fil-heritage US citizens are college-graduates and corresponding percentage of Vietnam-heritage US citizens; Chinese-heritage US citizens; etcetera. Then percentage in top-20% household and percentage in bottom 20%-household income). Even with the statistics, one will need to look at the geographical distribution. It has always been imagined that Hawaii/lower-West-Coast Fil-Am’s have more of the farmers/blue-collars while rest-of-US (especially Chicago and the Atlanta-to-Boston corridor will have more of white-collar doctors, engineers, Assumptionistas-UE-UST-and-UP grads’s working as secretaries in embassies or at the UN, accountants).
I heard that Fil-Ams make great cooks.
“while rest-of-US (especially Chicago and the Atlanta-to-Boston corridor will have more of white-collar doctors, engineers, Assumptionistas-UE-UST-and-UP grads’s working as secretaries in embassies or at the UN, accountants).” – UP n
True. But remember also that the other nationalities, especially the Koreans, own and run successful businesses. As I said, they reflect the relative progress of the home countries.
now, on “… the relative stature of Filipino-americans in the US”…. somewhere in the blogosphere, I thought I saw benign0 commenting that the organizational skills of Pinoys in US only reach the kababayan-level — Abe Margallo and his co-Iriguenos and similar.
Of course, there is Daly City, California.
Now the stature of some Americans are indeed based on their heritage — e.g. Al Sharpton and Rev J Jackson and their black-American heritage. Unless these 2 people, Pinoy-Americans compete as a US citizen, not as an American with Filipino heritage, mirroring what apparently many others have done like Alberto Gonzales (former Attorney General), Elaine Chao (labor secretary), Colin Powell or Arnold Swarchnegger.
now, on “… the relative stature of Filipino-americans in the US”…. somewhere in the blogosphere, I thought I saw benign0 commenting that the organizational skills of Pinoys in US only reach the kababayan-level — Abe Margallo and his co-Iriguenos and similar.
Of course, there is Daly City, California.
Now the stature of some Americans are indeed based on their heritage — e.g. Al Sharpton and Rev J Jackson and their black-American heritage. Unlike these 2 people, Pinoy-Americans compete as US citizens, not as an American with Filipino heritage, mirroring what apparently many others have done like Alberto Gonzales (former Attorney General), Elaine Chao (labor secretary), Colin Powell or Arnold Swarchnegger.
“…once paid tribute to himself by suggesting he held a competitive edge over his peers.” mlq3.
i don’t know , manolo. what is your beef against diosdado macapagal? i know you hate his daughter with a passion, but do you have to be disdainful of everything that has anything to do with her, including her father who has not done anything to you directly, indirectly or vicariously?
the late president was talking about something particularly important that a “leader” needs to have to be effective. obviously, he wasn’t enumerating all and everything that such a leader must have. he was discussing the importance of economic orientation. he was not claiming that it was the be-all and end-all of an effective presidency. of course, “political gift” is a quality of every president, and would not reach that political pinnacle without that. i believe that was a given when he referred to “leaders” or “leadership” because in our system, political gift is a necessary ingredient of becoming a leader.
and where did “paid tribute to himself” and “suggesting he held a competitive edge over his peers” come from? nothing in your quote indicates that, as far as i can see. just because he may have that particular attribute is not necessarily indicative that he was paying himself a tribute or that he claims to be better than his peers.
gma may be the daughter of his dad but there is no sane reason for blaming one for the perceived shortcomings of the other.
“…once paid tribute to himself by suggesting he held a competitive edge over his peers.” mlq3.
i don’t know , manolo. what is your beef against diosdado macapagal? i know you hate his daughter with a passion, but do you have to be disdainful of everything that has anything to do with her, including her father who has not done anything to you directly, indirectly or vicariously?
the late president was talking about something particularly important that a “leader” needs to have to be effective. obviously, he wasn’t enumerating all and everything that such a leader must have. he was discussing the importance of economic orientation. he was not claiming that it was the be-all and end-all of an effective presidency. of course, “political gift” is a quality of every president, and would not reach that political pinnacle without that. i believe that was a given when he referred to “leaders” or “leadership” because in our system, political gift is a necessary ingredient of becoming a leader.
and where did “paid tribute to himself” and “suggesting he held a competitive edge over his peers” come from? nothing in your quote indicates that, as far as i can see. just because he may have that particular attribute is not necessarily indicative that he was paying himself a tribute or that he claims to be better than his peers.
gma may be the daughter of his dad but there is no sane reason for blaming one for the perceived shortcomings of the other.
Read page 15 and 17 instead of speculating about the status of Filipino-Americans. I think I already said this before but I have to say it again ‘Don’t worry about us’.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/acs-05.pdf
sorry for the double post. a little glitz on my computer.
the political gift that the people should have enjoyed did not come with a colorful gift wrap, a ribbon, and the actual gift itself but instead an empty box filled with empty promises… randam na randam niyo ba?
to PSI and your comment about “…..the other nationalities, especially the Koreans, own and run successful businesses. As I said, they reflect the relative progress of the home countries.”
My understanding is that it is even simpler — even more basic — than that. You’ve seen the movie-snippets where suddenly the actor screams “…. holy shit, I am behaving like my father!!!!” It really appears to be like that. You are your father.
the adult of 40 begins to mirror the mores and behavior (idiosyncracies, attitude towards “making sipsip”, attitudes towards the dichotomy “…good home life” versus “up-the-corporate-ladder”, attitude towards citizenry, the community, civic-action, volunteerism).
And even the continuum-breaks are predictable, namely the parents in regular white-collar or blue-collar jobs in support of a son or daughter who somehow got this flash of inspiration to become a medical doctor, dentist, engineer, systems analyst, politician, etcetera.
So take a hundred newly-landed immigrants into USA who came from lower-middle-class in Pinas. Twenty years later, the odds are that they are in the lower-middle-class of USA strata (with cars, High-definition TV’s, etcetera) but in same income-strata as where they were when in Pinas.
Tell me about d0d0ng and give me twenty d0d0ng’s and I will predict the income-strata of 18 of these d0d0ng’s twenty-years from now. Their children, too.
Which is why I say … Tell the children/encourage the children/push the children. The children’s job is to exceed their parents.
The reason why very few Pinoys in USA get to corporate upper-strata?
Very few Pinoys in Pinas get to the corporate upper-strata. [worse in Pinas, much worse in Pinas about getting to corporate upper-strata]
———————
[my opinion…….]
‘True. But remember also that the other nationalities, especially the Koreans, own and run successful businesses. As I said, they reflect the relative progress of the home countries.’
Wrong. Never been to California?
“I thought I saw benign0 commenting that the organizational skills of Pinoys in US only reach the kababayan-level  Abe Margallo and his co-Iriguenos and similar”
no wonder benigno made a generalization that pinoy are vacuous and organizational skills of US pinoys only reach the kababayan level because
obviously Benigno belongs to this category. the kababayan level with a vacuous mind… this is too funny and ironic.