What in “rapid development” are we yet to figure out?

This is the 21st century. Do we wonder why we’re at least 50 years behind in infrastructure development? We can’t sweep that aside being a most grievous fault. Think repentance and restitution. 

Until we square the circle we will take things for granted and why Build! Build! Build! is floundering. No different from our inability to put Marcos behind us. Think of how despots became history in other parts of the world. And conversely where they are entrenched freedom suffers with harrowing consequences.

There are perilous things we must put to bed if we are to move forward as a nation. The road to nirvana is straight and narrow and that must be the guiding principle if we are to accelerate infrastructure development and gear up for industrialization – and be well on the way to development. 

Note that we’re nowhere near being an industrialized economy – when the world … today … is witness to how the future is playing out: modernize or perish … automation is irreversible. That’s the Chinese speaking. Not that long ago, they were begging for Western money and technology.

If we struggle with “development” what more with “rapid”? China or Deng in particular, learned from Singapore and Malaysia. And we still believe we can’t learn from others? Because we have yet to figure out how parochialism and insularity has sunk us?

Is it the tyranny of the elite – and Juan de la Cruz has been at its mercy since time immemorial? “Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it,” says Rizal.

And thus our “culture” or way of life: We are parochial and insular. We value hierarchy and the paternalism it brings. And we rely on political patronage and oligarchy given the spoils they bestow. That when all is said and done, we bite the bullet – aka a culture of impunity.

Why do we send our kids to the best schools? It is a given if we expect them to develop and be a contributing member of society. 

Then think of infrastructure and industrialization – with the latter advancing deeply into automation – being fundamental to economic development and nation building. Why is development like pulling teeth with Juan de la Cruz? In the meantime, we are proud that we are addressing poverty.

Yet our poverty is the effect (not the cause) of our underdevelopment. And why we need to benchmark against the rest of the world – and learn from others. Granted we are superior if not holier than thou. That’s the crux of the matter. We in the elite class take parochialism and insularity for granted. Which will preserve the status quo – as in hierarchy and privilege.

And it is a given like destiny and can’t be undone. It is so ... for us Pinoys that have yet to figure out what a fixed mindset is as opposed to a growth mindset. Which explains why we’re still discussing the disastrous effects of land reform, for example. The bottom line: A fixed mindset equals shortsightedness and thus our inability to develop our sense of foresight.

The writer could only pity the folks behind our export processing zones for their weeping – that all we have to offer is incentives that if TRAIN-2 takes them away we can only drive FDIs away. It’s indeed pathetic.

Fifteen years ago, when the writer first arrived in Eastern Europe, he felt for his then newfound friends who proudly showed their manufacturing facility. They were expecting him to compliment them and instead he introduced the idea of continuous improvement. “This serves the purpose today, but since ours is a highly competitive business, we want to constantly move up to the next level.”

Today their manufacturing complex – of seven state-of-the-art factories – would be like a mini Philippine Export Processing Zone with one very indispensable exception. Every item that comes out is a product conceived and developed inhouse and exported to scores of countries. It is not a labor-only concept like what we have in the Philippines.

Of course, they are day-to-day products that every family need. But then again, that is why we Pinoys never had the courage to compete against our neighbors. Our mind is so set even when it comes to invention or innovation. When where it starts is with human needs. And for that reason right at the get-go we would shoot ourselves in the foot.

It goes back to hierarchy and privilege. When we think of Juan de la Cruz as the consumer, we see him as “wa-class.” He cannot appreciate high-value added because he is “mahirap.” But we turn that into a positive by creating something he can afford … Or so we thought … And walk right into the trap of a vicious circle – which is where we are too in our efforts against poverty. More to the point, it is the root of our inability to pursue industrialization as in we don’t need to.

And that is reinforced by our parochialism and insularity. There are seven billion people in the global market. And there is technology that can be tapped if we figured out what product development is. 

When Steve Jobs moved beyond the Mac to the iPod, what he did was to figure out a human need and then pulled ideas together that were already around. Beethoven was no different. In the case of the iPod, Jobs’ sensitivity to human need informed him that music is the way to the soul. So why limit her to a hundred songs, which was what the Walkman was. Thus, the imperative to go digital.

Jobs knew that the Japanese excelled in miniaturization – think bonsai and the transistor radio. And sent his engineers to Japan to look for a miniaturized hard drive. And the rest as they say is history. But we Pinoys don’t like to learn from others? Is it why we can’t produce a Beethoven or a Jobs?

When the writer talks about his Eastern European friends conceiving and developing products inhouse, it doesn’t mean they start from scratch. It is the idea that is key, that it will address a human need. And the world is full of knowledge as in technology that may not be sitting in one place that can be tapped. But it presupposes that one has a developed sense of foresight and is forward-leaning and outward-looking.

Which is where the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff comes from. [If we want to be biblical, it comes from a pure heart or if we stay secular, it comes from a sense of purpose.] Otherwise we will be like a ship adrift, disoriented and confused that we applaud the war on drugs, for example, being the key to rapid development. And that EJK is a virtue. If land reform demonstrated our shortsightedness, how do we square EJKs?

That’s precisely why truly freedom-loving nations condemned us and yet we wonder why? Reads a recent news report from overseas captured by local media, “Duterte’s erratic, crass leadership style showing signs of putting off investors.” At the end of the day, it reflects how parochialism and insularity continue to bury us.

We Pinoys may not have the Soviet Union in our consciousness, but the writer’s Eastern European friends do. Consider: “The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union,” Natan Sharansky, The New York Times, 20th Jul 2018; Mr. Sharansky, the author of “The Case for Democracy,” is a former spokesman for Andrei Sakharov. He spent nine years in Soviet prisons and the gulag.

“Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

“Sakharov’s essay carried a mild title — ‘Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom’ — but it was explosive. ‘Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships,’ he wrote. Suddenly the Soviet Union’s most decorated physicist became its most prominent dissident.” 

Of course, we’ve suffered from failed leadership time and again. But that is because visionary leadership has never been our success model. See above re our culture or way of life. In the meantime, the world will not wait for us. Until we commit to rapid development we will be like spinning wheels ... with the engine revving ... but staying in place.

Gising bayan!

“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]

“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]

“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]

“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists . . . A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]

“Development [is informed by a people’s] worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]

Perfection, indeed, is not of this world

“Thanks in part to Mr. Trump himself and in part to the multiple dysfunctions that brought him to the White House, America is becoming a source of bad ideas rather than good ones, of polarization rather than problem-solving and, bizarrely, of parochialism rather than cosmopolitanism.

“America has become a source of bad ideas, polarization and parochialism.” [The special relationship once enriched Britain’s politics. No longer, Bagehot, The Economist, 5th Jul 2018]

Are the Brits with their own plate full given the confusion that is Brexit piling on the former colony? “In … ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ Adam Smith argued that trade barriers and protections offered to dying industries will not, in the long run, serve the interests of the people. On the contrary, they will lead to an ossified economy that will splinter in the face of competition. President Trump seems not to have grasped this point. His protectionist policies resemble those of postwar socialist governments in Europe, which insulated dysfunctional industries from competition and led not merely to economic stagnation but also to a kind of cultural pessimism that surely goes entirely against the American grain.

“Conservative thinkers have on the whole praised the free market, but they do not think that market values are the only values there are. Their primary concern is with the aspects of society in which markets have little or no part to play: education, culture, religion, marriage and the family. Such spheres of social endeavor arise not through buying and selling but through cherishing what cannot be bought and sold: things like love, loyalty, art and knowledge, which are not means to an end but ends in themselves.

“About such things it is fair to say that Mr. Trump has at best only a distorted vision. He is a product of the cultural decline that is rapidly consigning our artistic and philosophical inheritance to oblivion. And perhaps the principal reason for doubting Mr. Trump’s conservative credentials is that being a creation of social media, he has lost the sense that there is a civilization out there that stands above his deals and his tweets in a posture of disinterested judgment.” [What Trump Doesn’t Get About Conservatism, Roger Scruton, The New York Times, 4th Jul 2018]

It brings Bertrand Russell to mind, “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.” [Bertrand Russell on what makes a fulfilling life, Maria Popova, brainpickings.org, 3rd Jul 2018]

And here’s a perspective from a naturalized (or non-native) American: “For me, ‘sure’ is the most beautiful American word. Not yes I’ll do it, or maybe, but sure I will. It’s forward-leaning and risk-embracing. It signals the space that Europe lacks. It captures America’s spirit.

“Nowhere else is becoming somebody else so easy. There is space, still, to be free. Sure there is. The divisions between those who came first and those who came later are fungible.

“Or so, on July 4, I want to believe. This will not be another American century. Old structures that worked are giving way to something as yet indiscernible, with its share of menace. All this may induce a sense that the American idea is lost.

“But that idea has always been fought for — through slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, Vietnam. America healed from these lacerations. It cohered: E pluribus unum.

“In this time of tribal smallness, never shrug at the assault from on high on the American idea, flawed as it has always been. In 1938 … the German writer, defined democracy as ‘that form of government and society which is inspired above every other with the feeling and consciousness of the dignity of man.’

“Beyond all the current indignities inflicted upon it, America will be, uplifting once more in its imperfection.” [America Never Was, Yet Will Be, Roger Cohen, The New York Times, 6th Jul 2018]

Put another way, the American idea is bigger than Trump. But what the world and Americans especially must not forget is that among the dysfunctions that brought Trump to the White House is the global financial crisis of 2008 – more precisely its genesis, i.e., greed – that the world is yet to fully put behind. In more ways than one, Trump successfully packaged the crisis to define his campaign: Make America Great Again.

“Andrew Lo [Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management; Director, MIT Laboratory of Financial Engineering] believed that the crisis was about more than economic forces. In his mind, a human element was at play, most notably the emotions of greed and fear of the unknown. As Lo stated in his House Oversight Committee testimony:

“During extended periods of prosperity, market participants become complacent about the risk of loss—either through a systematic underestimation of those risks because of recent history, or a decline in their risk aversion due to increasing wealth, or both. [T]here is mounting evidence from cognitive neuroscientists that financial gain affects the same ‘pleasure centers’ of the brain that are activated by certain narcotics. [P]rolonged periods of economic growth and prosperity can induce a collective sense of euphoria and complacency among investors that is not unlike the drug-induced stupor of a cocaine addict. The seeds of this crisis were created during a lengthy period of prosperity. During this period we became much more risk tolerant.

“In other words, ‘we’ became greedy. [T]his greed was spurred on by ‘the profit motive, the intoxicating and anesthetic effects of success.’

“When everything began to collapse, our greed then turned into fear. What we feared … was the unknown—in this case, who and what we owed, what our assets were worth, and how bad things really were.” [The Global Financial Crisis of 2008: The Role of Greed, Fear, and Oligarchs, Cate Reavis, MIT Sloan Management, 16th Mar 2012]

But is Trump missing something in his definition of MAGA? Consider: “To remain competitive, and to give low- and high-skilled workers alike the best chance of success, economies need to offer training and career-focused education throughout people’s working lives. [And] efforts [are] being made to connect education and employment in new ways, both by smoothing entry into the labor force and by enabling people to learn new skills throughout their careers. Many of these initiatives are still embryonic, but they offer a glimpse into the future and a guide to the problems raised by lifelong reskilling.

“Quite a lot is already happening on the ground. General Assembly, for example, is just one of a number of coding-bootcamp providers. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by companies such as Coursera and Udacity, feted at the start of this decade and then dismissed as hype within a couple of years, have embraced new employment-focused business models. LinkedIn … bought an online training business, Lynda, and is now offering courses through a service called LinkedIn Learning. Pluralsight has a library of on-demand training videos and a valuation in unicorn territory. Amazon’s cloud-computing division also has an education arm.

“Universities are embracing online and modular learning more vigorously. Places like Singapore are investing heavily in providing their citizens with learning credits that they can draw on throughout their working lives. Individuals, too, increasingly seem to accept the need for continuous rebooting … Meanwhile, employers are putting increasing emphasis on learning as a skill in its own right.” [Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative, The Economist, 12th Jan 2017]

Lifelong learning is consistent with the growth mindset that the blog has raised time and again. And the challenge will remain overwhelming if we Pinoys can’t overcome our instincts that hierarchy and rank are destiny.

And the challenge doesn’t get any easier. “In terms of global competitiveness, the name of the game is soft skills. Having strong government institutions and appropriate infrastructure are now givens for rapidly progressing economies like those in ASEAN. What will set apart the good from the great is the quality of its work force — their skills, their adoption to new technologies, their aptitude in the sciences, and culture of innovation.

“To this, government must focus on making the next generation of Filipinos more astute, competent, creative and skilled. It must also create an environment that is conducive to invention and innovation.

“We operate in a very competitive region and the Philippines needs to step up its game in no less than revolutionary ways to secure a place in tomorrow’s world.” [How competitive is the Philippine economy today (?), Andrew J. Masigan, Numbers Don’t Lie, BusinessWorld, 8th Jul 2018]

And not to forget, “If we want to make the Philippines more attractive to investors, we need to make sure that the market is fair. If we build a level playing field—they will come. No sensible player would want to join a high-stakes game that is rigged against them.” [Playing fair to court investors, Arsenio M. Balisacan, Competition Matters, BusinessMirror, 10th Jul 2018]

Is our market unfair? If the global financial crisis of 2008 was brought about by greed, what about the state of our market? Does it come with the territory, where we love tyranny?

Greed dates as far back as Eden. And indeed, to add insult to injury, the world suffers from tyranny as well. Remember the Arab Spring and Syria and Iran and Libya? And Africa and Latin America? What about Turkey, Russia and even the Philippines? The list goes on.

Yet humankind has demonstrated its genius and brought marvels through the centuries. And isn’t it time we Pinoys step up to the plate – if not now when?

Learning, curiosity and motivation – critical for us to keep growing and be dynamic – cannot come from isolation, and parochialism and insularity. They come from challenges that we must face – and why innovation and global competitiveness has defined the 21st century; and why the Chinese know that they must modernize or perish, and that automation is irreversible – that in turn build character.

The path of least resistance as in “pwede na ‘yan” that we’ve taken for decades – and eschewed industrialization – is why we’re the regional laggard.

But let’s get back to Trump. If people in the West, including Americans, aren’t applauding him, it is because they see him as misrepresenting the American idea. Of course, his base which represents the minority sees otherwise. He plays to them – and forget about what he takes beyond what he gives – which translates to the tyranny of the minority … and feeds polarization and parochialism. Not surprisingly, the US no longer is the benchmark for global competitiveness. It has its work cut out for Uncle Sam.

Conversely, it must be a lesson for us Pinoys that hierarchy and rank aren’t destiny – and why empires come and go – and no one is stopping us from traversing the journey from poverty to prosperity. And that means getting our act together.

Sadly, we love tyranny and appear powerless, married to the status quo and the vicious circle it produces. The evidence? We’re still fighting poverty – forgetting charity triggers pleasure, an established finding in neuroscience, and fortifies hierarchy – despite the lesson Asian Tigers gave the world, i.e., rapid development catapulted them from third-world to first-world. And we’re even adding another layer of complexity, system of government. Which Asian Tiger showed us that success model? Or should the question be, what planet are we from?

“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]

“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]

“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]

“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists . . . A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]

“Development [is informed by a people’s] worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]

Is China a study in dynamism?

And Singapore too? Consider this news report: “In a study by researchers from Stanford and Yale-NUS college in Singapore—a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore—soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers examined ‘implicit theories of interest.’

“[T]hey measured the effects of fixed versus growth mindsets—belief in inherent interests as opposed to those that are developed—to determine how our convictions influence learning and resilience.

“Based on the latest findings, people who have a fixed mindset—the almost mystical belief that passions are revealed to us magically—seem to be less curious and motivated than those with a growth mindset, who understand interests unfold as a process.

“This latest study builds on the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who has written a great deal about the benefits of a growth mindset. She worked on the new study as well. Dweck’s previous research has shown that people who perceive of themselves as works in progress, who believe in the possibilities of development rather than the fact that we’re all born with inherent fixed traits, tend to be happier, more motivated, and more successful.

“In this [growth] mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts …” [“Find your passion” is bad advice, say Yale and Stanford psychologists; Be wildly curious, Ephrat Livni, Quartz.com, 26th Jun 2018]

And here’s the news from China. “Beijing’s vision of Made in China 2025 — the ambitious state-driven plan to retool China’s industries to compete in areas like automation, microchips and self-driving cars — is not being pushed just by the Communist Party’s top leaders. Instead, the drive is also coming from the bottom up: from the businesses and cities across China that know they must modernize or perish.

“The modernization may not happen in 2025. In fact, it may be long after that. But China will get there, mostly because it has to.

“If Made in China 2025 were a car, the engine has started and it’s definitely moving along … The city was automating well before Made in China 2025 came out in 2015 … but the policy provided [is] a clear direction.”

“The biggest trend in manufacturing is that automation is irreversible … No doubt many Chinese companies will fail in their effort to upgrade. Made in China 2025’s other goals, such as building up world-class microchip industries or self-driving cars, remain out of sight for now.

“Yet when it comes to manufacturing … Made in China 2025 will succeed partly because the effort is bigger than Beijing. Chinese companies and local government officials are determined to climb the value chain so they will not fall into obsolescence.

“The best Washington can do is to make sure its policies help American companies stay ahead of the game.” [Why Made in China 2025 Will Succeed, Despite Trump, Li Yuan, The New York Times, 4th Jul 2018]

That’s quite a dig on the US. What about us in PH?

Consider: “‘Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself’. Ignore for a moment that one of history’s most reviled people—Adolf Hitler—said that because it does makes sense. We tell our children not to be envious of other people because what we see in others does not tell the whole story.

“On almost any category we can always find someone else who is ‘better’ than we are and someone who is ‘worse’ than we are. Comparisons are never valid enough to be taken too seriously, as the world rarely offers a fair and level playing field.” [‘The Philippines is worse than…,’ BusinessMirror Editorial, 1st Jul 2018]

What should we make out of this Editorial? Here is another local perspective: “As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists and editors – have an obligation to this country to report events, accurately and fairly, with all sides in a controversy or an ongoing debate on major issues well covered and represented.

“As a rule today, this does not happen. The current rules governing mainstream media are imbedded in the following indelible principles: First, protect the interests of their owners and those whom their owners support. Second, on issues that do not affect their owners, media persons, as a rule, are practitioners of “envelopmental journalism” and the ACDC principle (attack and collect, defend and collect), meaning whoever gives the money could see their names and ideas in print or in radio or television. Third, partisanship and bias are the names of the game. If you belong to their crowd you can get your name in the newspapers, radio and television, even if your activities and ideas are inane or stupid or both. Fourth, there is no serious discussion of ideas. Fifth, there is no in depth knowledge of events and their implication on the life of the people. Sixth, there is no effort to educate the people. Seventh, there is stress on idiotic entertainment and game shows. Eighth, never mind ideas, just know whether he holds public office; it makes no difference whether his ideas are idiotic or insane, quote him.

“In plain and simple words, there is celebration of documented irrelevance.” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]

If it isn’t obvious yet, the blog is about reinventing ourselves. And why postings end with the quotes below. And as it continues to argue, the challenge every organism face is development. It is the natural law. And that creation is dynamic not static. Especially in a hierarchical culture, static is preserving rank and privilege. Which is incongruous to the interdependence that is the universe and its ecosystem.

As the blog constantly raises, even religious dogmas were upended by Christ himself, e.g., as in what the Sabbath is and isn’t. And in nation building, development means moving from underdeveloped to developed. Which translates to the journey from poverty to prosperity and reinforced by the parable of the talents. Development isn’t evil nor inhuman or unchristian. It is the natural law.

In a recent posting, the blog discussed what net worth is, i.e., the yield after we discount our liabilities from our assets. And benchmarking is also not a new topic. If we are to understand innovation and global competitiveness, we must learn what benchmarking is and isn’t.

It is not about being envious of Singapore or China but an imperative to traverse the journey from underdeveloped to developed or from poverty to prosperity – i.e., to pick and choose the best practices of success models and not be fixated on their weaknesses, given that this world is not about perfection.

The Japanese, the South Koreans and more recently the Chinese (and even Vietnamese) demonstrated the value of benchmarking. It is beyond disassembling a submarine or a German car as the Japanese did to advance their knowledge in technology and into something more profound as in Deng picking the brains of Lee and Mahathir, i.e., to beg for Western money and technology. 

It is what the social science calls “unfreezing” – i.e., to unfreeze whatever is set in the mind – to give room for learning and curiosity and motivation. And once they have been absorbed, to refreeze the new mindset. It is at the core of development. Because to develop is to evolve and change – and be dynamic not static.

Consider: Our mindset is set and stuck with OFW remittances and the BPO industry that despite a major effort to develop and pursue Arangkada it has no room to accommodate and learn and be curious and motivated about the pursuit of industrialization as in the JFC’s seven industry winners. Because “pwede na ‘yan” made us embrace the vast consumption cum local economy it created, including a bigger middle class and a handful of billionaires.

It is a disease – our own Dutch disease – that fails to recognize that development is not to preserve the status quo. Which in the case of PH is preserving rank and privilege – nurtured by political patronage and oligarchy – with a little help from us in the elite class.

“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]

“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]

“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]

“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists . . . A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]

“Development [is informed by a people’s] worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]