Our jocular regard for our national problems, great crimes, villainous scams and calamities
This is a photo originally posted by a certain Dan 周董 on his Facebook profile. You can access the photo at its original location in this Facebook album. It shows what looks like a gang of college students giddily posing for photos in front of the wreckage of the bus that was the scene of the recent siege that claimed the lives of eight Hong Kong tourists.It is illustrative of the sort of mentality that pervades in Filipino society -- a society described by an admired Filipino economist, based in New York as possessing a "weird culture". She further observes how we often exhibit...
[...] our jocular regard for our national problems, great crimes, villainous scams and calamities. Note that Filipinos are notorious for making fun, creating a joke of their misfortunes. The cellulars are full of them now. In other countries inhabited by serious and sensitive people, they mount crusades, indignation rallies or nationwide relief campaigns to meet such crises. They would weep or stomp their feet, or explode in anger, or demand punishment for the criminals or misfits. Here we tend to laugh at scams, crimes and natural calamities, as if they are part of the usual TV noon comedy shows, the Pinoy's daily diet.
It's very hard to be intellectual if you aren't serious. And so far the clear evidence is that we are not a serious people. Worse, we don't like to think.
Perhaps this inability to hunker down, be serious, and think is what predisposes Filipinos to the banal incompetence that so often showcases itself for all the world to see.
MGA WALANG HIYA!! its a scene of a crime so bad nalagay sa hiya bansa natin and yet nakuha pang magpapiktyur?? wtf??
ReplyDeleteWe are an emotional society, not rational. If we were, somebody like Dick Gordon or Nick Perlas would have been running this country.
ReplyDeleteWe got some yellow-clad clown instead.
But thank you Mr. Mendoza for attempting to undermine this clown of a president and a joke of a society in your own full-metal jacketed way.
This is nothing compared to what I saw on TV when GMA-7 and ABS-CBN were shooting the street in front of ULTRA where the dead bodies of old people were laid out. Uziseros that surround the dead bodies were smiling and waving to the camera.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, don't pretend China is perfect ;) China kills more people each day for unjust purposes. How many are rotting in your prison camps? How about counterfeit medicines? How about melamine in foods (baby formula at that!)? Do those things make you proud to be Chinese? If you want to generalize Filipinos, you better look in the mirror.
ReplyDeleteJohn, if we are really an emotional society then where is the sympathy an d empathy here? Losing your relatives, friends and love ones is an extremely emotional event then why are these Pinoy's treating it like some freak circus show, giggling and snapping up photos? Ah the insensitivity of the people really pisses me off.
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