Indolence of the Filipino People: A Reflection Paper
In spite of gaining independence from our colonizers, the Philippines is still beset by troubles of the past like rising unemployment rate, poverty, and food-insecurity. The cause of these issues may have originated in the past, when the country was under Spain. Before Spain took over the Philippines, the people in the country were productive and very skilled. However, that changed after the negative consequences brought by the Spanish rule. For these reasons, we can conclude that there needs to be more responsibility on our rulers so that we can avoid the similar backwardness that was occurring in the past. This paper will first investigate the geographical difficulties that the Filipinos encounter. Then it will be followed by an examination of the nation’s pre-colonial history. Next, it will discuss how the Spaniards adversely impacted our people. Fourthly, it will contain the relevance of the “Indolence of the Filipino People” by Jose Rizal to my personal life. Lastly, it will talk about the importance of the “Indolence of the Filipino People” to modern issues in the country.
The Philippines, despite its fruitful and fertile forest, is situated at a hot and humid area. Therefore, plenty of people would find it challenging to do labor and other physically demanding activities in the country. As evidenced by a study conducted by Gallup, Sachs, and Mellinger (1999), agricultural output in tropical areas can decrease between 30 and 50 percent in productivity when compared with the agricultural productivity found in areas that have mild temperatures. In addition to the dramatic decrease in agricultural productivity, a research by Somanathan, Somanathan, Sudarshan, and Tewari (2021) claims that the likelihood of people being absent from their work increases, whereas their productivity and economic output drops during years where temperature becomes hotter. Hence, it is safe to say that working in the Philippines is exhausting because of the average temperature in the country. Nonetheless, the pre-colonial Filipinos still lived very active lives under these conditions.
According to Valdepe ̃nas and Bautista (1974), pre-colonial Filipinos fished, hunted animals, and cultivated rice. They also reported that the variety of foods that the Filipinos of this period would consume also included millets, roasted bananas, beans, root crops, and wine. Since rice was their main staple of food , they frequently underwent labor-intensive and tedious obstacles to produce it. For instance, they put a huge amount of effort into protecting their crops from pests and animals. In situations where they were not able to produce enough for their household, they engaged in domestic trading through bartering. They would trade wax, fish, salt, gold, honey, rice, silver, cloth, swine, and raw cotton. The Chinese and the Arabs later on also went to the Philippines to give them items such as porcelain, commercial gold, iron vases, leaden objects, glass pearls of all colors, iron needles, black damask, silk fabrics, fish nets, tin, and silk umbrellas. The Filipinos, in exchange, would give them cotton, yellow wax, sinamay cloth, coconuts, onions, fine mats, pearls, soft-tortoise shells, betel nuts, jute, and kapok. Due to these trading activities with other nations, several Filipinos were inspired to also travel to Borneo, Malacca, and China for trading.
Although the pre-colonial Filipinos were hardworking and active even with the hot and humid climate, the aftermath of the Spanish colonization would later significantly damage the spirits of the Filipinos. During the Spanish colonization, the indolence of the Filipinos was commonly cited as the main reason for the issues present in the Philippines. However, that commonly held belief was wrong for assuming that it was the main cause, when it was actually the consequence of bad governance. Bad governance led to destructive wars, financial insecurity, discrimination and racism, and rampant gambling. These negative outcomes engendered reasons for Filipinos to have lower self-esteem, be more dependent on miracles, be less incentivized to work, and be envious of other Filipinos who succeed. Thus, the Spanish colonization ruined the people of the Philippines and caused them to retrogress.
Learning about these facts made me question my own indolence or laziness. I am an extremely lazy person who procrastinates way too much. As a result, I am unable to perform my best when it comes to academics and life in general. However, I have made numerous attempts in dealing with this issue. I have used alarms, utilized to-do lists and planners, temporarily deleted all my social media and entertainment applications, actively avoided talking to friends and family, read different threads about tips on being more disciplined, watched different videos on addressing procrastination and laziness, and more. Nevertheless, none of these solutions worked in the long run and I just kept going back to being detrimentally lazy. I still have not figured it out; however, I think that I am heading in the right direction. Reading the ``Indolence of the Filipino People’’ by Rizal, made me realize that it might have something to do with me being afraid that my efforts would be pointless in the end because I am most likely going to fail anyways. In addition, I do not have much confidence in my abilities and skills. Because of that, I learned that maybe I need to deal with these things first in order to become less indolent.
Going back to the indolence of the Filipinos, we are still suffering from this problem even today because we have not yet dealt with the root cause and maintainer of it, poor governance. Even after a century passed, we are still fighting against corruption that happens in our own government. For example, there was news about corruption and cronyism scandals involving the president, Joseph “Erap” Estrada, in the year 1999 (Ferrer, 2000). Furthermore, Abrea (2023) argues that the Oligarch-and-Clan system of corruption exists within our political system. To illustrate, government officials like Marcos and other politicians still keep their positions despite their convictions Abrea (2023). Not to mention, they abuse their power for the benefit of their family and themselves Abrea (2023). Therefore, our country is still facing the same problem that caused our indolence, the people in power that utilize their position for their selfish needs, just like as Rizal wrote “It matters little to him that the country is impoverished, without cultivation, without commerce, without, industry, just so the governor is quickly enriched!”.
As mentioned earlier, working in tropical areas is hard because of the heat and humidity. As a result, the pre-colonial Filipinos were very exceptionally talented because they were able to withstand those conditions while living very active lives. However, they were unfortunately deeply affected by the damages caused by their Spanish colonizers. One of the horrible ramifications was the Filipino indolence it caused. Reading more about that topic has somewhat convinced me to reflect more about my own indolence. Not only that, it has also led me to see the correlation of our current government and why our indolence problem still has not improved much. Hence, we need our government to be less selfish, unlike our previous rulers, and take more accountability instead of blaming the people or other unrelated factors. We are never going to successfully advance as a nation until we deal with this problematic root cause that has persisted for centuries.
References
- Abrea, R. A. (2023, March 13). A look at how corruption works in the philippines. INQUIRER.net. Retrieved 2023-03-13, from https://business.inquirer.net/390650/a-look-at-how-corruption-works-in-the-philippines
- Ferrer, M. C. (2000). The philippines: Governance issues come to the fore. Southeast Asian Affairs, 241–255. doi: 10.2307/27912254
- Gallup, J. L., Sachs, J. D., & Mellinger, A. D. (1999, August). Geography and economic development. International Regional Science Review , 22 (2), 179–232. doi: 10.1177/016001799761012334
- Somanathan, E., Somanathan, R., Sudarshan, A., & Tewari, M. (2021, June). The impact of temperature on productivity and labor supply: Evidence from indian manufacturing. Journal of Political Economy, 129 (6), 1797–1827. doi: 10.1086/713733
- Valdepe ̃nas, V. B., & Bautista, G. M. (1974). Philippine prehistoric economy. Philippine Studies, 22 (3/4), 280–296. Retrieved 2023-04-06, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42634874 doi: 10.2307/42634874