Filipino pride is getting in the way of cultural reform and social progress

All humans can change (although I suppose not necessarily IMPROVE) their thinking. To suggest that Filipinos can’t change is to imply that they’re not human. I refuse to accept this, as do most right-thinking people.

Filipinos are criticized and ridiculed by outsiders because they’re being held up to a common standard for human behavior. The Filipino has a thousand different excuses for holding himself to some lower standard, but in doing so he implicitly lowers his status to something less than human: he disrespects himself, while the rest of the world, in fact, is simply recognizing him as an equal member of the human race, with the same inherent potential but CHOOSING not to be anything more than he is.

Obviously, then, the answer is yes, the Filipino can change his thinking. But as I’ve said before, I don’t think he can change it himself. The name Lee Kuan Yew gets mentioned a lot on this blog. But LKY was ethnically Chinese, and culturally British. He was raised and educated from an early age with the upper-class English, and adopted those values. Cultural cross-pollination is the key to most development: it’s a common feature of every success story. If the Filipino can put aside his pride, stop pretending he knows everything, and import some wisdom from abroad, his children might be able to change their thinking. As long as those children are listening to Filipino teachers filling their heads with nonsense, they won’t.

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