THE BENEFITS OF SELFLESSNESS

By: Cristina Gratia Tantengco

Jose Rizal, the essential Filipino man and the father of perennially quoted sound bytes, once
said, Ang kabataan ang pag-asa ng bayan (The youth is the hope of the nation). He said this
towards the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when the privileged youth were being
sent away to Europe to be educated. He hoped that they would return and turn our country
around. He died, of course, without seeing this happen. Two world wars, a dictator, countless
yellow ribbons and a few EDSA revolutions later – what do we have?
The Philippines still relies heavily (too heavily, if I may be so bold) on the help of foreigners.
President Gloria Arroyo never leaves out the “Yay! America!” portion of her SONA. We send our
brightest men and women to work in faraway lands. The very helicopters and planes set to
guard first world countries. And yet the government seems to be happy. At the end of the day,
we remain as we were two centuries ago: the third-world underlings of richer men.
I say this neither to denigrate the accomplishments of the past generations – for surely their
revolts and suffering were not in vain – nor to cast blame sweepingly upon yesterday’s youth. I
say to you our nation is stagnant not because our people cannot change, but because change is
hard to sustain. This is why Rizal turned to the youth as saviors of the nation and more
importantly, this is where today’s youth come in. We are young enough to change.
This is part in Noli Me Tangere where Elias and Ibarra argue whether reform or revolt is the
answer to the Philippines’ problems. Perhaps the answer is a compromise : I propose that we
teenagers reform our revolution. Sure, the change brought about by the revolts past was
temporary, but change occurred nonetheless. What is needed is a different kind of revolution. I
propose an internal revolution- we must change our way of thinking. After all, globally
competitive nations are made up of globally competitive individuals.
We’ve always been told that success has a blueprint: that western ideas are and will always be
better than local ones, that we must model whatever business or government principle we
have on western ideas, that local products will always be inferior to those we import from other
countries, and that whatever hope of success lies in migrating out and away from here. Well.
The blueprint is wrong. We must stop believing in that formula, for it’s just another offshoot of
colonial mentality. What we need is the revival of the Filipino First spirit. What is needed is a
shift in the collective consciousness.
We need to have faith in our country. We need to start buying Filipino made products. But it’s
bigger than that. More than buying local products and putting flags on our cars, we need to
believe, to honestly feel within us, that the Philippines is worth saving. Only then can we wear
ourselves to the cause of helping it. We need to be proud of our country.
Watching Manny Pacquiao makes me happy. Sure, most of his airtime is spent beating up
Mexicans. But there’s something endearing about the way he looks into the camera after
reducing his opponent to a bloody pulp, saying, “Pilipinas – para sa ‘yo ito!” When we are
committed to our country, we do our jobs for the Philippines, not just for personal profit. By
being better citizens, we build a better Philippines, not just for personal profit. By being better
citizens, we build a better Philippines. At the same time, having a vision that extends beyond
one’s self makes us better, more efficient people. Ironic, eh? Call it benefit of selflessness.
Selflessness is not passively beneficial. By what I mean that selflessness is not one of those
things that, while nice, aren’t immediate needs. Selflessness is beneficial precisely because
selfishness is detrimental. Just take a look at the social group/cultural phenomenon called Emo
Kids.
Emo Kids are amusing. They seem to be everywhere nowadays, with their vision-obscuring
bangs and their ever tightening jeans which may or may not impair reproductive ability. Their
blogs, decorated in black and with glittering skulls, decry the sad state of their lives. An Emo girl
I know from the school blogs that if only she could move to Prague and live as ‘a starving artist
underground youth”, her life would be so much better. An Emo girl from Prague replies no; her
country is a hellhole, too. It is interesting to note that all Emo kids, regardless of nationality and
location, reach at some point the conclusion that their city is, if not a hellhole, a “shithole”, a
“dump”, and/or “the worst place on Earth” (All quotes verbatim, amusing, and coming from
upper middleclass teenagers who apparently have no idea where Payatas is).
They’re not so different, I believe, from a lot of Filipinos, who don’t exactly prance around in
thick eyeliner and stare ponderously off-frame in pictures, but do have the sense of
hopelessness and apathy in regards to our country. Many people choose not to vote in
elections because they believe the system is corrupt anyway and their one vote does nothing.
Many people don’t even register. Yet the same people complain endlessly about how messed
up our country is. Some people would say you can’t blame them. Well you know what? I do.
I blame them because they can do something. I blame them because people who do not vote,
quite literally, no choice in who runs the country, and thus have no right to complain. I blame
them because society is a numbers game, and we are statistics. Either you do something to
make this country better or you don’t, and in doing so make things worse. There is no gray
area. Nut up or shut up.
I’d like to think my generation can do more than whine. If the Philippines is such a “hellhole”,
then the logical thing to do would be to try and fix things, not mope around, complain, and wish
we were someplace else. Many of us hole up in our houses during the summer and spend hours
in front of a computer. This means, among other things, than those who have become rather
out of touch with reality can still be reached. We can organize ourselves. We can circulate
writing memes – instead of “How do you feel about that new movie?” why not “How do you
feel about our country?” It doesn’t have to be pages upon pages of righteous political outrage,
but just a few words to show you how you feel. The point is to start caring.
Even better would be to ask, “What will you do to better our country?” How many times have
we been told that actions speak louder than words? Think about it if all the young bloggers in
the Philippines would write one blog entry each, we could reach so many people. One blog
entry out of the hundred of pictures of what you wore today. One blog entry out of the many
“My boyfriend doesn’t love me!!1!1” speeches. And if each one of us acted on what we
promised we could do, then not only would we be proving our generation to actually be of
some use, but we would be making an investment in our country. And that at the very least is a
step in the right direction.
Many people have stopped believing in promises, and it’s not surprising that they do, with all
the oaths from politicians we hear every election that remain unfulfilled everyday. But I tell you
today that the answer is not to stop making promises, but to start keeping them. And that is at
the heart of the internal revolution – to care enough about the Philippines to honor it, and to
believe in it enough to once more believe in ourselves.
Gandhi once said that we must be the change we want to see in the world. We mustn’t think
that there’s nothing we can do. We mustn’t think our actions don’t affect the bigger picture.
We can vote, we can write, and we can speak. So let’s stop thinking about ourselves. Let’s stop
being Emo.
We are the change, and we have work to do.