Our collective experience as Filipinos is what defines us as a people. Wherever the influences may come from it does not in any way diminish or cheapens our culture. Thus, I go along with the idea that our function as a people is not to rebuff and discard overseas influences but embrace them to our gain and improvement. Surely, in so many perspectives our life as a people can be analyzed in various and multi-faceted ways. Negative influences, corruption of culture and selfish drives and motivations could be some of the comfortable excuses to the question posed as to why have we arrived to this condition. But are we really ready to accept that the distortion or disintegration of our culture is a product of any of these. On the other hand, can we not just simply say that we are here as a product of a social conversion and perhaps revolution that was unfolding before our communities where active human interference was narrow and to some point restricted that eventually events resulted as they are seen and felt today. It brings me the famous paper of the foremost Filipino patriot, Dr. Jose Rizal- The Indolence of the Filipino People. Or on the other hand, can we not just comfortably say that all these, political and bureaucratic, social and cultural, religious and spiritual, family and domestic relations, etc. are all mere functions or some forms of growing pains of a developing social order. Thusly, theorizing that inequality, crime and poverty, conflict and a numerous social intricacies and even breakdown may just be equated and synonymous with the level of development of a nation. Conversely, the statement may be declared in the opposite, thus, development is dependent on how well a people carry itself vis-à-vis social fundamentals and its corollary challenges. And finally, this could be also be taken hand in hand and that is where theorizing from experience comes in.
Thusly, the more important affirmation should be the options that we have today. Realizing from our experiences, and gaining knowledge from it, we can now communally and cooperatively take control of our lives as a people. We can take a self-determining direction not independent of the global community but mutually supporting and inter-reliant with other peoples of the world.
