No point in outlawing 'corruption' in the Philippines because Filipinos consider it NORMAL

I’ve noticed Filipinos are perfectly capable of thinking, but they deliberately avoid it. By pretending to be more stupid, ignorant, or thoughtless than they actually are, everything becomes somebody else’s fault. You are responsible for nothing. If all else fails, it’s all “the will of God”. Hard to tell how much of this behaviour is driven by the Church and how much by social factors.

As regards the Law, a critical point that most people miss is that truly successful laws (that is, statutes) do not drive behavior: they merely codify common consensus. The few who refuse to conform are then subject to punishment of some sort, but the general social consensus is what drives compliance, not the existence of the written statute. The statute is merely a reaffirmation of what everyone already thinks. There is absolutely no point in outlawing “corruption” because (a) most people don’t even comprehend what it is and (b) if described, most people think it’s normal and acceptable.

Unfortunately, Filipinos seem to view the Law as some sort of hocus-pocus in the same vein as religion – hence the proliferation of rubber-stamping of documents that contain no information and “notarization” of things that don’t need notarizing. It’s all just ritual. Example: in the Philippines, a lawyer is someone who sprinkles magic dust on a contract and makes it “real”. Everywhere else, a contract is a promise between two people that they enforce as a matter of honor, and the Lawyer’s job is merely to make sure they’ve promised something that’s logically consistent and fair.

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