“Sacrosanct” undermines our creativity

(Creativity is a gift to the Filipino that we must harness)

If Eden had the forbidden fruit while being paradise, our romanticism has serendipity while being the fountain of our creativity.

A columnist talked about the Thais apparently copying our economic blue print and succeeding in the execution while we did not. Is it because we are intellectual and creative yet our instinct turns us fatalistic and less passionate about execution? Or is it because we have been working, fishing all night yet still without our rightful catch that we feel exhausted? And so we fall back to praying and hoping? But as the apostles learned, we ought to keep trying and casting our nets again and again and again.

Nice guys finish last – it is not about wanting to be first, it is about working to be first. Nor can we rationalize our failings by pointing to the shortcomings of others – those bully-countries and neighbors in recession. It is not about rationalization, it is about doing our problem-solving and executing.

Similarly, our hierarchical culture instinctively makes us deferential – to the church, the elite, and the wealthy, among others? Yet we are equals . . . brothers and sisters . . . and sinners alike: “He who is pure cast the first stone.”

The Pharisees were proud of their knowledge of the teachings of the Master. And so they were quick to emphasize that sinners were the cause of the curses the community was experiencing. And it angered them that Christ chose to hang around with the evil ones instead of the “chosen ones”. (Full disclosure: the writer: (a) had a confessor-friend (may he rest in peace) who was a moral theologian, (b) is a born again and had ministered a Christian community; (c) comes from a family that produced a nun, and was recognized model Catholic family some years back.)

Problem-solving demands our reservoir of creativity – it has no respect for sacred cows. Piling do’s and don’ts in our psyche has undermined our ability to produce tangible solutions for our challenges. We similarly pile do’s and don’ts in our execution efforts . . . if we ever get to that point. Most times we are left spinning wheels or navigating around sacred cows like they were booby traps.

As we defer down the line of our social structure we are left with a very narrow playing field to do problem-solving – that there is no room to cast our nets? And with of our instincts of inclusion and compassion, we swing the pendulum to the opposite direction and ensure we take the poor into account as well. (Full disclosure: the writer regularly supports the family’s favorite charity efforts.)

And given our romanticism we find ourselves leaning towards serendipity instead of exploiting our creativity. For instance, instead of focusing on how we can move forward, we keep dissecting the liabilities of other countries and the shortcomings of the free-market system. We can be productive and relevant by directing our analyses on the net worth of these countries and what we can learn from them. Likewise, the democratic, free market’s ideal is majority rules – in elections and markets – not everyone. And predictably it has produced progress with its own shortcomings. Socialism wanted to top that ideal and failed. We have to move forward and snap out of our serendipity and focus on lifting our economy. Our economic development is adolescent – we need to provide it adult supervision.

The bottom line: whatever firepower is left for us to address our challenges has been reduced to a dud. We have punctured so many leaks into our fuel tank and yet expect us to get from point A to point B?