As the great Henry David Thoreau said before: “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” Let’s not just spend our lives. What of the common Flip Gung Gong’s injunction Masarap mabuhay? Only deeply analyzed lives should give pleasure. Any other type of life which also happens to give pleasure is at best, incomplete; at worse, based upon a flawed system of values. And the Flip Gung Gong (actually a conception of a prolific AP commenter Ulong Pare; just check out his comments) is the archetype of that flawed value system.
While examining our lives as Filipinos, let us look abroad for one insight that can make us or shatter us. Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School and an expert of “disruptive innovation”, wrote an essay named “How Will You Measure Your Life?” (an expanded version can be bought as a book). In that essay, he mentions one of the episodes that changed his life, for better or for worse.
When he was studying at Oxford, he was a player for his varsity basketball team. His team breezed through the season without any losses, and then a few games later, the championship game arrived. The problem is Christensen vowed that he “had made a personal commitment to God at age 16 that I would never play ball on Sunday”. He continues his account of that episode:
In what ways could you have done something contrary to your principles but didn’t? Or – more commonly, what did you do that was contrary to your principles because this “just this one time” itch is tickling you – er, nagging you – on your mind? And why?
Marginal Benefits
Many of the actions that we do against our self-determined principles have marginal benefits.
Suppose you get a higher score when you cheat in an exam – you gain. Suppose you committed a crucial mistake in a game, for example in a basketball game where you saw yourself step out of bounds but no one else saw it – you and your team gains. Suppose a colleague invited you to falsify an expense sheet so that you can nick off a little more cash – you and your colleague gains. Suppose you put off doing any work you have – your mind gains some short-term relief from the harsh reality of the work.
All of them are pesky “one-time” deals. On some moments we decide to do something against our well-entrenched principles – just once. We figured out that setting our principles aside may be worth it, this one time, because we gain.
However, as Christensen shows us, all such gains are devilish bargains.
Every action against one’s own principles, whether because of your quest for some gain or because of peer pressure, ultimately makes it more likely that our mind is going to justify similar actions in the future, even if the initial action comes with a bond of “just once”. Here is where we traverse the psychology of the Flip Gung Gong.
Some Instances of Being a Flip Gung Gong
Suppose you cheated in a test once and you found the experience of getting a higher grade a euphoric buzz. But that may also give you the impression “hey, cheating in a test isn’t so bad after all”, and from then on this voice will always seep into your ears for every test you take. This turns worse once social proof blends into the mix; if you become compelled to break your own principles because there is social pressure around you, you may begin feeling that it’s OK. After all, everyone’s doing that, too, so you can enjoy their company.
Peer pressure is a powerful rationalization to enter the “just this once” fray. That is especially true not only for the Flip Gung Gong, but also for almost all generic Filipinos, for bad or for good. While we may pay lip service to standing up for ourselves, in a place where many Flip Gung Gongs gather peer pressure is so strong so as to break the back of anyone standing. That’s why it’s easy to cheat off a seatmate – or to ask for answers, which you will receive obligingly. Principles have become passé for the Flip Gung Gong’s thought processes.
If you have principles, you will be regarded as baduy and you will receive queries such as: Aanhin mo ang prinsipyo kung di mo nakakain? Makisama ka naman, pre! (This is similar to the lamest rebuttal that I received from the Math-haters; they used to say Sa panahon ng giyera di mo naman magagamit ang Algebra, mas mahalaga na matulin ang paa mo. How lame! You, sirs and madams, go to war and get your bodies smashed by tanks and falling flak, while I mind my Number Theory and Abstract Algebra atop a mile-high ivory tower so that I can see the carnage at the same time.)
The Flip Gung Gong may not realize that the “one time itch” is one such force that touches upon his psyche. He may believe that buying votes is bad, but not when done “just this once”. So he buys a vote once and – poof! – he’s off to buying more votes when the next election comes. For a Flip Gung Gong, some bad acts aren’t so bad, if only done once. The mind, moreover, supports him in the “just once” quest; many rationalizations will suddenly pile up, like a house of cards assembling themselves and then forming a steel fortress against any objections. Like your stomach. While the stomach is a good enough reason for anyone’s behavior on average, for the Flip Gung Gong it’s become a top-notch rationalization.
“I’m gonna buy the vote because the kids around me are starving.” Well, as I recall in a discussion forum: “The guy who kidnaps your kid has the same excuse.” We’ve got busted politics because of accumulated “just this once” actions that somehow aggregated to a monstrosity. We are what we vote.
Perhaps the hunt for rationalizations can also be said for the partying lifestyle in the Philippines; the Flip Gung Gong always has a reason to celebrate. Again, another instance of “living life to the fullest” without analyzing what “living” is, what “life” is, and what “full” is. Nearly anything can be a reason for the Flip Gung Gong to party, despite being poor before the party and drowned in debt afterward. Did your child graduate? Party! Despite the harsh reality after graduation (and despite the supreme importance of the learned stuff over the graduation itself). Did your child pass the board exams? Party! Despite the fact that board exams are just one-shot deals and is of small reliability in predicting future performance.
Once the partying mentality starts rolling full throttle, it’s hard to stop.
The Flip Gung Gong’s orientation towards learning also follows the “just this once” mentality. Ideally, a learner in the process of learning shouldn’t care much about any results; he should care about results, but should ensure that the process of learning should not get corrupted in some way. But the first time the Flip Gung Gong steps into the classroom – “Class, get one whole sheet of paper.” And the whole mound of the Flip’s orientation to learning falls atop his head – he starts worrying about his scores on the test, he starts worrying about making the honor roll, he begins worrying about his classmates’ scores, and so on. Pretty soon all the learning done in the school will be made just for firing at exam papers. The problem is compounded by teachers who may themselves be Flip Gung Gongs and who crunch numbers without knowing what they mean.
But anyone who want to snap out this predicament finds it hard. How many of the bright pupil’s classmates, who may be concerned solely with scores, want to listen to the maverick’s profound views about the commutative law or some other whatnot? How many of his teachers, who have measurable and time-bound constraints, would be willing to give him a hearing? So there’s the peer pressure to keep anyone in line and only a few Flip Gung Gongs can get out of it.
Even if you get out of school the “just this once” mentality can turn your entire working/professional life into one whole battery of activities that a typical Flip Gung Gong would do. You may reason out to yourself when you ticked off the box: “I took this course so I can make money so I can do whatever I want later on.” Well, that leads to the “later on” never coming at all, because of piling up responsibilities. And the Flip Gung Gong will get used to a life of drudgery such that he can tolerate more drudgery and more, until he has forgotten his main reason for why he wanted money in the first place.
And such is the reality we also want to pass on to our children. How many of us have the guts to tell them “Don’t do as I did?” or similar such stuff when we know we messed up (even if our subconscious drives it out of plain view)?
Throughout your whole life you can be jogging on the whole runway of being a Flip Gung Gong. You’ll be forced not to answer back, even if you’re answering back to someone whose logic is bizarre. And then you’ll wake up thirty years after with nothing to say when faced with the imbecilities of most people in power. You’ll be forced to follow orders – or at least, your thinking will be forged to the extent that you’ll think that the status quo is the best of all possible worlds.
That is the case – unless you abstain, right off the bat.
The Long Run
“In the long run”, as John Maynard Keynes used to say, “we will all die.” But then for people who pride themselves in believing in a Heaven, it’s unusual for us to behave in ways inconsistent with our beliefs.
Holding on to “not playing ball on a Sunday” is particularly fickle, but it’s wise that Christensen held on to it; it showed that he is capable of staying sturdy. That can come handy in the midst of more tempting, higher-stakes ethically ambiguous situations.
If you cheated in today’s forgettable test, no matter how trivial it is, think of the graver acts you may commit in the future once you set your brain to “OK-ing” successive acts of dishonesty. If you deliberately kept mum about your out-of-bounds step in a basketball game that you won, then think of the regret that may pile up once your brain starts “OK-ing” the notion that your career can be composed of such progressively serious chicaneries. If you agreed with your colleague that you’ll both falsify an expense sheet, then pretty soon, as both of you get higher up in the corporate rank, your brain may be “OK-ing” baser ideas. And are you going to procrastinate “just this once”? Then you’ll probably find yourself “OK-ing” future procrastinating; that sets off a lifetime of delays, until that one decisive delay that you’ll regret to your heels.
That’s why I suggest: don’t ever do an action that can push you a centimeter closer to being a Flip Gung Gong. Forgive the Flip Gung Gongs, and help them change their ways as you can, but don’t do as they do. As Yevgeny Yevtushenko used to say: “Forgive no error you recognize”, or else your children will bash you and condemn you for what you let pass.
Christensen tells us: “The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up.”
And so we have a rough sketch of the Flip Gung Gong. You can add your own examples to support the sketch, if you want. If you are a just a good Filipino, you’re damned because the twin forces of the “just this once” itch and peer pressure will drag you one step closer to becoming a Flip Gung Gong. And once you become a Flip Gung Gong, you’re damned forevermore, as Christensen suggests.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. – Dante, Inferno
P.S. And don’t wait for someone to tell you that there’s a heaven before you start doing something worthwhile.
Adapted from: http://percivalontheverge.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/the-perils-of-the-just-this-once-mentality/
About the Author
Cy has written 10 stories on this site.
An overeager student of logical processes taking place in the Filipino society. "Reason is God; love is unconditional." $&*%&%*&(^(*$$#*_T@$$()!!! My blog: http://percivalontheverge.wordpress.com/
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