Exploring Positive Changes Toward a New Normal

By Roger Santos

The Management Association of the Philippines, together with the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations, hosted a webinar last March 3, 2022. They invited Nanette Dungo, a sociology professor at the University of Asia and the Pacific. Prof. Dungo gave a lecture, entitled “Interrogating Philippine Culture and its Vulnerabilities”, and I would like to share some of the important messages she shared with the group, as well as some recommendations.

Prof. Dungo said that, upon independence, we had a choice to adapt what was left behind and to configure a state structure befitting our needs. The choice made installed a weak state that cultivated anti-developmental values, which activated regressive factors for national development. Our developmental trajectory became a puzzling paradox that hindered progress despite the natural comparative advantage we enjoyed and the opportunities provided by history.

National development embeds not only instrumental values but also non-economic elements such as intrinsic values that spring from an inner imperative called “morals”. Moreso, culture matters in development, and that part of culture, called “ethics”, comes from the moral core of man. In development, people should be at the center and developmental change must address human integrity.

We did not benefit from the colonial years and from 75 years of democracy. No doubt, Spain left God-loving Filipinos; the U.S. gave a global language that enabled us to have outstanding careers in other countries and gave massive cultural, social, educational, and military assistance to the point where we became dependent on them. Policies followed a path-dependent nature, where we have looked out to external sources more to solve our problems rather than look inward into ourselves.

In path dependence theory, decisions are initially open to revisions, but at a certain point onwards, past decisions have become imperative for future courses of action because of their positive returns that are self-reinforcing. We get locked in and other alternatives cease to be feasible. This is anti-developmental. It’s time to get out of that dependency path and seek transformations toward becoming a sovereign and developed nation — and good governance drives development.

In Search of Transformative Mechanisms

Social reality is always changing, it’s a permanent feature of society. Culture change is usually a response to problems people face — it can either be planned or unplanned, its direction either bottom-up or top-down. But culture change is difficult to handle for it touches the inner strivings of man, which means programs designed for change may need to be experiential and involve changes in human valuing processes. But wherever and whenever it occurs, the source of change would be people—their creative responsiveness and inherent desire for social order. Change is the result of human inventiveness, creation, and search. Social change is a group action and it has the capacity to mobilize the range of material and human resources needed, in the proper combination required, to address the targeted change desired.

Need for Programs for Social Change

Since we are looking at values, and “values are caught rather than taught,” then the program will have to be experiential, designed specifically to achieve specific targets for social change. No single individual can undertake social change. The suggestion is to form alliances, a collaboration in the form of government-business-civil society partnerships.

Alliances and collaboration can bring partnerships that can mutually support each one to resolve multiple needs of programs. We are already in the era of collaboration because our problems are global and we need strategies that are plural in form to capture the issue holistically.

Suggestions for Interventions

• business-government-civil society collaboration for specific transformative programs
• face poverty through collaboration on CSR projects for poverty reduction
• partnership with universities, colleges, and schools through their community extension programs to offer voter education and sustainability seminars (for our home planet is on the edge of its limits indicated by the hovering climate change)
• representations in municipalities, barangay councils, neighborhood associations to resonate the public’s voice and make the government accountable to the people
• technology education for farmers

Partnership with Education for Reforms in the Area of Teaching Pedagogy

• sponsor teacher training programs for specific disciplines — math, science, reading and comprehension, pedagogy for creative thinking
• encourage teachers to do competitive recitations in class
• school contests for science and math
• sponsor contests for critical and creative thinking skills among students, (e.g., encourage students to discover innovative projects in any area of their interest individually or as a group to cultivate creative, constructive thinking skills)

Need for a Strong Autonomous State

• sponsor town hall meetings, where a politician can be invited to dialogue with the people about government programs/projects
• voter education for vulnerable groups like sidewalk vendors, drivers, the informal sector, and the elderly, who are the clients of dynasties with a false consciousness of security that needs to be transformed
• select candidates, whose idea of governance is people-centered, action-oriented, who recognize guidance from above, are sincere, and with two feet on the ground

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About the author:

Roger is a family man who loves to cook and play with his son. He spends most of his free time watching movies, especially the ones included in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Roger loves to sing and, when he’s happy, he sings his heart out, without minding the people around him.