Filipinolosophy

 

History teaches us that people never learnt anything from history. There are so many things in the past that we just can not get over with as a people. Or we just do not understand them at all. We do not know why we consented the killing of Bonifacio and never let justice be served to a hero. We do not know why we sheltered colonizers then labeled them as liberators.  We went to the streets to shout democracy; corrupted leaders crumbled for a while. We felt good and powerful thereafter, and then soon enough we forget. We brought down despots and elected one after the other. Oh how quickly we forget. So quick that we never established closure. Hence in the end we are confused with the past, we simply do not know what just happened. We lost our grasp with the present. And now we are confused with our identity as a nation, we cannot move on.

One reason why we can not establish closure is the fact that we are a bandwagon nation. We simply go with the flow. We let one event cover up one event. Maybe we are benumbed by repetitive oppression. After all, prolonged exposure to all these maladies may have just wear our senses off. And all these lies that were told us through all these years may have become “truth” that we unconsciously accepted. This culture of uncritical thinking proved us all to be so weak against this dominant system of oppression.

Sometimes I even wonder, maybe we simply set up this government so that we would have someone to blame with all these problems. And sometimes we blame our forefathers for leading this nation the wrong way. But of course blame is to be equally shared by all, blame should not be pointed to one specific generation. We look at our youth now and we see hopelessness. I guess that was also the case when our fathers were looked upon by their fathers. Such is our situation as a nation. We are caught in the quagmire of political turmoil, historical uncertainty and a multitude of social inconsistencies.

But let us not be that apathetic. Most people think that they can escape this reality by numbing their senses with gin or by watching their favorite fantaserye. When Rizal saw the potential of the Filipino youth, his generation did not have that many schools. The proliferation of information was not that widespread. So why can not we see the same potential when in fact we are more educated and empowered. We need to be critical with the past, not dwell in it. Let us start this new movement of finding who we really are, because if we do not find this social self as a nation then that identity will forever be gone. And without an identity, we can never function as one nation.