According to a study conducted by the Brussels-based Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the Philippines is Mother Nature’s top whipping boy, trumping all other nations on the planet in a “list of countries that are most vulnerable to disasters“. That kind of contradicts the “blessed” place in the heart of the Almighty that we constantly imagine ourselves to be in whenever we emphasise our being the only beacon of Catholicism in a region of infidels and heathen animists.
Consider that, plus looming global “challenges” around sustainable access to safe water supplies and falling rice cultivation yields, and we can appreciate just how vulnerable the Philippines is to catastrophic collapse.
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Firstly, our capability to feed ourselves is dwindling.
We are currently the top importer of rice on the planet. If we are to believe figures indicating that 18 to 25 percent of domestic rice supplies are lost post harvest, a big chunk of the opportunity to save ourselves lies in getting a grip over our pwede-na-yan approaches to doing things. According to a paper written by Professor Prudenciano U. Gordoncillo of the University of the Philippines that, among other things, highlights the above loss statistics…
[...] addressing the efficiency of post-harvest facilities and practices can readily resolve the rice self-sufficiency problem.
Just reducing post-harvest losses by half can potentially wipe out the historic dependence on imports for 10 percent of domestic requirements for the staple.
Are we up to the challenge of achieving operational excellence in supply chain management as far as handling our own food? For a people who traditionally couldn’t even be bothered to take up the use of chopsticks to shove rice grains into our maws (before we learned to do this with spoons), I doubt if such an aspiration can compete with the bigger world of pwede-na-yan mentalities that imprison our minds.
Second, we continue to multiply like cockroaches.
There are 100 million of us now is Inquirer.net columnist Rigoberto Tiglao’s lament. Indeed it is something we can only lament. The continued increase in numbers — to the tune of two million wretched souls a year — of the elements of a society not exactly renowned for an exemplary record of contribution to the intellectual, cultural, and economic capital of human civilisation is absolutely no cause for celebration (not unless you are one of the honchos of the much-revered Roman Catholic Church).
The lucidity of Tiglao’s message is brilliant:
[...] our annual population growth rate from 2005 to 2010 of 1.9 percent is the second highest among the 12 biggest countries in the world, following Nigeria’s 2.3 percent, a country which is practically only moving now to the modern era. Just in case the connection between population and economic growth still isn’t clear, we are followed in this listing by Pakistan, 1.8 percent; Bangladesh, 1.7 percent; and India, 1.5 percent. The Philippines’ fertility rate from 2000 to 2010 was 3.4 percent, higher than any Asian country. Those with higher fertility rates are almost all poor African countries.It is one of the massive weaknesses of the Philippine state-its failure to provide the means for Filipinos to control their lives by being able to choose in the most important decision in a couple’s life, which is having or not having children.
There is hope, however; and it comes in the form of my allusion to the humble six-legged vermin that infests the average Pinoy household. Cockroaches, as the pop-science factoid goes, are renowned for their “resilience” — supposedly a safe bet for a species to survive the two very plausible forms of catastrophe that could wipe out everything humanity has achieved over the last 2,000 years — (1) environmental collapse and (2) warfare involving extensive use of any form of weapon of mass destruction (e.g. nuclear, chemical, or biological).
The image of the humble cockroach crawling out of the rubble is something Filipinos can latch on to as the defining image of “hope” for their future. Quite convenient today, considering we have a President whose Administration shares a similar defining trait.
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The top headline splashed on the Web site of Fortune reads Is this finally the economic collapse? Arianna Huffington of the venerable Huffingtonpost.com warns that America may be in danger of becoming a Third World nation.
For those who are in the habit of highlighting the woes of the First World presumably to provide “perspective” around the doom that wretched countries like ours face, I provide the above two to spare you all a bit of googling. Knock yourselves out.
The fact remains that while America’s (and for that matter Japan’s) “impending” slide into the Stone Age is relative, any collapse on the part of sorry-ass countries like ours can only be measured in absolute terms. Americans in a depression may suffer from a loss of dollars to finance their purchases of entertainment systems, the latest Apple trinket, or a holiday in Europe. Many Filipinos, on the other hand, make do with only one meal a day even in good times.
Go figure, as the fact of bozoic news reports concerning the President’s definition of “private time” getting splashed all over our premiere broadsheets all but reflects the moronism of our priorities as a people.
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Comments
Should probably start by giving a lecture on Population and the RH Bill huh?
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Let those find greener pasture and not be slackers!
They be committing the sin of Sloth.
Dudes… Find work and suck it up and eat what you need to survive. Not what you want!
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Somehow, it is getting tiresome to point out again and again the need for us to focus on issues and solutions in our politics, rather than the absurd. . . Maybe, we should buy air space on TV, oooops, can’t afford that, only oligarchs have that much cash, to bring focus to issues that need urgent attention of the bumbling president. Tsk, tsk, tsk. . . hope indeed we will be as resilient as ****roaches when a big catastrophe hits, but the nihilist in me says, who cares if all the Filipino race or the whole human race for that matter is obliterated from the face of the earth, and the optimist in me says, we should do something about improving the quality of human life in ways we are able to while still on earth. Can AP make a difference?
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benign0 Reply:
August 12th, 2010 at 1:20 am
Actually, there really isn’t much we can do about the possibility that all this can go kaput in the event that an asteroid crashes into the Earth or a superbug somehow evolves and annihilates the human race.
But just because there is a risk that all that will happen does not mean we as a species should stop our efforts to improve our lot.
As indeed you say, Ms Miriam, while we are still on Earth we may as well make use of that time to focus on earthly aspirations. That’s kind of an otherwise simple principle that a people such as Pinoys who are focused on the “afterlife” cannot seem to grasp. And it makes it doubly hard when a 2000-year-old immensely powerful institution keeps hammering moronic principles in peoples heads that the “meek” will inherit the earth and that the poor are “blessed”.
There is nothing blessed about being poor and there is no way in hell that the meek will get anywhere in life.
Both are subliminal messages repeated ad-nauseum to the flock to encourage them to just lie down and stay out of trouble by doing as little as possible in order that their “soul” may remain unstained and prepared for the day that they are “judged” after they kick the bucket.
Hardly surprising then that we Pinoys continue to see ourselves as some perverse prayerful form in a region of “non-Christians” even as our country degenerates into the hellish place that a certain ex-Commonwealth President envisioned it would turn into under our own watch.
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You always have a very interesting intellectual spin on the simplest idea. I want to believe that as a people, we should be able to transcend this superstition, the belief and focus on the after-life with the right education. But it seems the prevailing culture is that what they call “the culture of poverty”, even the intelligentsia could be persuaded to vote for a non-performing politician, a nondescript politician according to the Economist out of desperation, and perhaps because of Emo-politics. Could the same superstitious culture/culture of poverty be responsible for the gullibility of the so-called intelligentsia. If you look at the supporters of the current president, they are not all from the rabble, there are middle class, and well-educated among them. Where did our educational system go wrong? And I tend to think that with economic development and scientific education, we will be able to fight the brainwashing of the Catholic Church.
I tried discussing with my niece the damaging influence of the Catholic Church on our society and culture, and she said, well, let the Catholic Church have its say, it is the fault of the people if they get swayed by the opinion of the church. The church is entitled to its own opinion too, but you are right, it is way too influential, and especially for the poor who go to church every Sunday and give whatever meager funds they have, they tend to listen to the teachings and follow them literally. Why are the elites in the country the biggest patrons of the Church when they are supposed to be economically well-off and are well-educated? This class is actually the most reactionary element in our society, thus, the RH bill will never see the light of day in congress, the very people in congress who come from elite backgrounds are the ones that are swayed by the arguments of the church against the RH bill. I don’t even think it is out of political calculations that they are against it, it is truly their religious convictions that the RH bill is on the side of the devil. . .
This brings us to the conclusion that we need to wrest power from the elite, the religious captives of the church, power should be transferred to the non-religious fanatics, those who are able to use their education and knowledge and can separate state and church in their legislative agenda. Ohhhhh, I don’t know, I am tired of thinking about the Philippines, as my co-blogger from FV said, kapoy kaayo ang politics sa Pilipinas, we blogged extensively together over at FV, defending the same political positions, we are both Gibo supporters, where did all that blogging lead to. . .
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Granting the citizenry the right to elect their leaders was supposed to give Filipinos a means to shape their destiny.
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