Our reactive instinct comes from our caste system.

In other words, we are sitting pretty because we are in a good situation – especially us in the Philippine elite class.

But that’s not unique. “Immigrants contribute disproportionately to entrepreneurship. And immigrants aren’t just creating more businesses; they’re creating successful ones. Many of the qualities that would seem to make immigrants more likely to build their businesses are reasons you should consider hiring them to help build yours. Immigrants can bring a growth mindset, adaptation skills, and global readiness to companies that are seeking to grow.” [“Research Shows Immigrants Help Businesses Grow,” Nataly Kelly, Harvard Business Review, 26th Oct 2018]

Does it bring to mind the late Henry Sy, the wealthiest Filipino, until his passing away?

On the other hand, our sheltered upbring comes from hierarchy, i.e., rank has its privileges. Why be proactive if that will upend the status quo?

Here’s a family anecdote. When my MNC-company wanted to transfer the family to New York, the wife had to be wined and dined when we were in New York for a look-see. “You are not accepting this job.”

We moved to our dream house – in one of our desirable gated communities – just a little over a year earlier, and the wife supervised its construction that took all of eight months. I already had a regional cum traveling job while she was assisting a friend in their export business. When the company heard why they responded with an alternative.

“We propose inviting the family over for a year, and then you can return to the Philippines. On the other hand, if you choose to stay, you can stay. You don’t have to touch your home; bring the clothes and whatever else you want.”

The daughter had a sheltered life, i.e., she had a “yaya” like every child in the neighborhood, and you see them at the country club until we were in front of the consular officer at the US embassy in Manila. “We cannot give the ‘yaya’ a visa. A grade six pupil in America will be embarrassed to say she has one. Trust me. She will not want to be mocked by her classmates.”

She turned into a natural leader in the Catholic school near our suburban home. She was surprised that most of her classmates haven’t been to Manhattan while she was a veteran traveler. One day the principal agreed to let her lead a field trip to Central Park. And because they were taking French lessons, she brought them to a French department store – she knew from a trip to Paris – and be immersed in lots of French stuff.

She had turned on a dime – didn’t miss the “yaya.” On the day the family moved to their first US home, she swiftly organized her room as though it’s been there awhile. And a year later, she said to the mother, “Mom, we aren’t leaving for the Philippines.” What mother will deny her daughter?

She became her person. Between Wellesley and Brown – and the mom favored the former – she chose the latter. A family friend on the board of Wellesley was disappointed. She forged ahead. In her sophomore year, she came to me to say she was spending her junior year in Bologna. “Dad, they are in the network for the ‘Study abroad’ program. And there are no extras to pay beyond what Brown charges.”

Again, the mother was aghast and scolded both father and daughter. Mother knows best. It finally dawned on me what she meant when I got scared to leave her alone in Bologna. To allay our fears, the wife took several trips to visit her, accompanying her to experience her typical day, including sitting in her classes.

She wanted to be a museum curator – apt for one that reads and comprehends a libretto and speaks Italian – but ended up being a banker. I called her on the day she interviewed in a bank while overseas, “Dad, they want me to start right away, like today.”

On the other hand, our reactive instinct as Filipinos comes from our caste system. We are sitting pretty because we are in a good situation. And it is a universal phenomenon. But because the family, including the daughter, are immigrants, we overcame the challenge and learned to embrace a growth mindset.

Consider these articles in the local media: (1) Philippines reliance on prolonged lockdowns caused economic deterioration – WB; (2) Treacherous tightrope; (3) A disaster.

“The Philippines relied more on prolonged restrictions on mobility rather than an effective test-based strategy,” the WB report said. “Countries with more significant quarterly growth contraction in 2020 had higher infection rates, imposed more stringent mobility restrictions, had more highly indebted governments, and were more dependent on earnings from tourism.” [“Philippines reliance on prolonged lockdowns caused economic deterioration – WB,” Louise Maureen Simeon, The Philippine Star, 27th Mar 2021]

“Let’s face it: We completely botched handling the pandemic. A year after the first lockdown in the country, we are not just back to square one. According to highly respected former health secretary Esperanza Cabral in a widely circulated post, we are ten steps back from square one.” [“Treacherous tightrope,” Cielito F. Habito, NO FREE LUNCH, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 23rd Mar 2021]

“The result of Duterte’s lockdown has been an unmitigated disaster. It triggered an economic collapse, the deepest in 500 years, with economic production declining a record - 9.5 percent, -11.1 percent in GNI terms, in 2020. The actual negative rate wiped out nearly all the robust ‘economic’ gains of 2019 and 2018.

“About 70 percent of businesses were shut down. Half of the workforce, or more than 20 million workers, went out of work. Poverty and hunger gnawed at 50 percent of the population.” [“A disaster,” Tony Lopez, Virtual Reality, manilastandard.net, 24th Mar 2021]

Twelve years ago, when the blog started, it was already apparent that we in the Philippines would be overtaken by Vietnam, for example. They were already attracting tons of FDI and investing lots more than we did.

And it is not rocket science. We were sitting pretty, given the windfall we were getting from OFW remittances.

I saw how we regressed over a period of almost fifty years. We drew the WB-IMF delegations’ attention, especially when we hosted their meeting in Manila that also saw foreign hotels’ rapid entry.

Yet, to this day, despite the economic miracles demonstrated by our neighbors, ours remains a reactive instinct.

With due respect to our opinion leaders, we are still not taking the extra mile to break the status quo’s back. And we can’t help it because we lag these neighbors in cognitive development. And it is not easy to move from binary thinking to relativism, especially if we are the present-day Padre Damaso.

In the West, they express, “We must walk and chew gum at the same time.”

But we can’t comprehend that because of the crab mentality – aka tribalism that we see today even in wealthy nations.

“Focus on the mission,” Dr. Jun Ynares, THE VIEW FROM RIZAL, Manila Bulletin, 28th Mar 2021. “Many young people usually approach me about a year before elections. They come to ask for advice. Some want counsel on whether or not they should aspire for an elective post. Others ask me how they can win in an election.

"The severe advice I give to them is to learn the lesson of Palm Sunday: Be careful – the crowd who’s cheering for you today could very well be the same people who will later on cry out for your crucifixion.

“Jesus knew that He was about to disappoint that crowd seriously – the palm-waving fans were there to welcome him as a political liberator of sorts. They were dead wrong. That Jesus proceeded to cleanse the Temple of merchants and money traders after that only aggravated the misimpression and misperception.

“He kept his focus on the mission. Jesus came to Jerusalem for one purpose alone, and that was to meet his death.”

In other words, the Paschal mystery. “The liturgy of the church, the celebration of the sacraments, and the seasons of Lent and Easter are particular times when we pay attention to what Jesus Christ has done for us through his passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Yet, these are not the only times when we experience the Paschal Mystery. It is a part of our everyday life; it is the undercurrent of all that we do and all that we are.” [Loyola Press]

Can Juan de la Cruz walk and chew gum at the same time? Not if we can’t unlearn binary thinking.

For example, because we can’t recognize that poverty isn’t our be-all and end-all, we can’t comprehend the imperative to traverse poverty to prosperity. Recall the blog keeps speaking to the photosynthesis phenomenon. We aren’t in this universe to starve to death. The dynamism of the universe demonstrates that we are to thrive in this milieu.

Simply put, Juan de la Cruz is more significant than poverty.

And this is where we can appreciate the failings of higher education even in America. And why the demands of the 21st-century skills of (1) Critical thinking, (2) Creativity, (3) Collaboration, (4) Communication.

And they reinforce the demands of cognitive development.

Still, it is an enigma to Juan de la Cruz. How come our neighbors all learned from each other?

Recall why the blog spoke to the Ph.D. candidate that I assisted in her dissertation. “I will agree to help you if you commit to employing the final product to a real-world challenge.”

Because she shared with me the access to the library of reference materials (for candidates like her), it was apparent to a practitioner like me that even in post-graduate work, the “vital few” must prevail over the “trivial many.” In other words, how many dissertations ever see the light of day – we call the real world? On the other hand, her Western employer saw in her the ability to lead one of the world’s most recognizable brands and promoted her to global marketing director.

Recall why the blog keeps focusing our attention on benchmarking against our neighbors. Vietnam is doing it today, after the Asian Tigers did, as did China. Tomorrow it will be Cambodia and Myanmar.

We must put our best foot forward, including the slew of legislation meant to make us attractive to investment, that we focus on the “vital few” that will leapfrog our income stream. For example, doubling investment in bananas will yield a minuscule output – including tax revenues – compared to getting Apple AirPods to the Philippines.

We need infrastructures like roads and bridges. They are enablers to economic development, but we must rapidly drive our GDP as we go along. In other words, walk and chew gum at the same time.

While elsewhere in this posting is the subject of religion, recall Pope Francis preached against making religion a license for extremism.

“Americans have rejected the institutions of religion, but not the religious urge—including a yearning for moral certainty and communal identity—that churches and synagogues have traditionally catered.

“The right might look more straightforwardly religious. Under Donald Trump, white evangelical Christians, a mainstay of the party for decades, became its most important group. But even if it includes some old-style values voters, this is no longer your father’s moral majority. Most white evangelicals backed Mr. Trump—more zealously than they had any previous Republican—mainly for cultural reasons that had nothing to do with Christianity.

“They were motivated far more by his immigration policies and racially infused law-and-order rhetoric than his judicial nominees. They have since shown little interest in Mr. Biden’s faith. Or in his efforts to restore the civic religion—an age-old idea of America as a nation blessed by God and united in moral purpose—that Mr. Trump disdained. Around a third of white evangelicals subscribe to the QAnon cult. That was apparent in the prominence of large crosses and other Christian paraphernalia among the cultists who stormed the Capitol Building on 6th Jan.

“This pseudo-religious makeover on the right was instigated by lapsed white evangelicals, who backed Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican primary when observant ones held back. Their continued self-identification as Christians, though they do not attend church, is often a proxy for ethnonationalism.

“Christian leaders, confusing the decline of their congregations with the cultural threat of liberalism, made common cause with Mr. Trump and the pseudo-evangelicals. For partisan reasons, the rest of the Republican coalition followed them. The party has never been more avowedly Christian or more clearly out of line with gospel doctrines.

“The situation on the left is roughly the opposite. The most avowedly secular Democrats—well-educated ‘woke’ liberals—are also the likeliest to moralize. Their Puritanical racial and gender politics sit in a long tradition of progressive Utopianism, rooted in mainstream Protestantism. Barack Obama’s Messianic first presidential campaign was also in that vein. These new Puritans of the left, though (or perhaps because) they are more secular than earlier progressives are far more extreme.

“Woke liberalism is less prevalent than many conservatives claim. The Democrats would not have nominated the pious, grandfatherly Mr. Biden otherwise. His pragmatic espousal of social justice is different in kind from the woke fringe. Therefore, his appeals to America’s better angels went down with white liberals almost as severely as they did with white evangelicals. Yet on the cultural questions that now define American politics, the Puritanical left is often as influential as the zealous right.

“No wonder political compromise has become impossible. Not since the 1850s – when New England’s Puritans embraced the ‘abolitionist’ case, and southern Baptists preached a divine justification for slavery – have politics and religion been so utterly confused. It is not a reassuring parallel.” [“America’s new religious war: Religious fervor is migrating into politics,” The Economist, 27th Mar 2021]

The bottom line: Cognitive development, even in wealthy nations, can suffer decline because of tribalism – aka binary thinking.

Recall that I have no respect for US politics. That also explains what benchmarking is. In benchmarking against our neighbors, including China, we must pick and choose best practices but not embrace those that can undermine the common good.

Democracy is the mirror image of Christianity, i.e., the imperative of personal responsibility for the common good – not to reinforce the status quo because we are sitting pretty in the Philippine elite class.

Gising bayan!