Conclusion of “Speculative View: Are Feelings Still A Factor of Philippine Social Reformation?”, Paper delivered at the Psychological Association of the Philippines (PAP) Convention, Robinson Galleria, August 24, 2001
For a focus, what is the insinuating profile of Philippine families today? Some 5.2 million families lived below the poverty line in Year 2000 (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 4 August 2001). One out of five families in Metro Manila and Cebu and seven out of ten families in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao are below the poverty level (National Statistical Coordination Board, ibid). Only 10% of families composing the ABC socioeconomic class live in homes with at least some lawns, and 90% of families making up the bottom DE class live in homes with at most only small lots and with shabby furnishing (M.C.R.B. Bautista, 2001). One million Filipinos leave this year for overseas contract work. Ninety percent of males and 6o% of females in families with OFWs are involved in extramarital affairs (PDI, 5 August 2001). Fifteen million Filipinos start the day without breakfast (PDI, 26 July 2001). Yet each of the more than 200 congressmen will soon receive P15 million in pork barrel.
Of course, thus sums up only to about P3 billion, just enough to give each of the 15 million [Filipinos who start the day without breakfast], his breakfast for a week. Still, it may add up to classrooms, books, and science laboratories for the poor students of public schools. Washington Sycip can likely not see this matter kindly, as he considers education as “…the most effective economic [and social] equalizer” and foundation for national peace and stability (U.P. Diliman Update, May-June 2001).
Social inequities gravely exist in our country today, worse than before. A previous decade looks better than that which follows it. Feelings still rule the citizenry and the state’s governance. Philippine society is still being reformed in this fashion. So cast and recast no matter how many times, it will not likely get approximately close enough to an ideal society, where laws of covenance and force of reason rule over individual and national behavior and aspiration. Of course, one can claim that the Philippine society, as a society, even at its current form is already some 2500 years ahead from the Athens of the Greek Golden Age; notwithstanding, it is not close enough to Plato’s ideal society or St. Augustine’s City of Christian God.
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