Let me begin by means of re-inventing a Jungian idea: "If, for a moment, we regard the country as one man or woman, we see that it's miles like a person over excited by means of unconscious powers; and loves to maintain certain problems tucked away in separate drawers." There is of course an concept that rests inside the heart of Philippine records-an idea so absurd that one might also lead to believe that Jung was right whilst he stated that "our world is, so to speak, dissociated like a neurotic". And the concept is this: alternate is merciless, so one ought to reject exchange for something comes from change is only a corruption of the authentic; for change too has grow to be a problem in Philippine history that one should "tuck it away" in a "separate drawer" in order for the people to see what they simplest want to see.
Philippine history is filled with myths which are, in a way of speakme, a step shorter from delusions and hallucinations. As an instance, I give myths and a consequence of these myths. The first myth is that of a Filipino Civilization before the approaching of the Spaniards-or to be greater accurate, earlier than the coming of Islam. The 2nd fantasy is that of the True Filipinos who reside inside the sort of civilization. The aggregate of each produces the first narrative of the neurotic records of the Filipino human beings. It appears now that inside the starting there was a civilization and the civilization turned into correct; the early Filipinos (therefore, True Filipinos) have been appropriate maritime navigators, already have a form of religion, had been capable of produce songs, create wares, build small huts, cultivate lands and started out agriculture, establish a central authority system called barangay, set up change with other Southeast Asian neighbours, and many others. And many others. It became when the Spaniards came (the second and already expurgated narrative of the neurotic history of the Filipino people) that this civilization become enslaved, exploited, oppressed, raped and ripped to pieces, and of route enslaved, exploited, oppressed, raped and ripped to pieces. (Just examine any Philippine records ebook.)
Here is what it without a doubt appeared preferred-maritime navigation that failed to establish a local folklore on sea adventures (generally because those maritime specialists were pirates and raiders), a religion so primitively pagan and animistic, songs that had been never written due to the fact writing culture turned into no longer yet mainstream, wares that had been someplace between simple and tricky, small huts and an architectural layout that by no means went beyond primitive, lands cultivated by way of sticks, rice terraces without the garage centers within the style of Mohenjo Daro, agriculture so primitive it never went beyond the world of their minute political recognition, with politics as minute as a ship, and an ego-centric change (history tells of neighbours coming to the Philippines and trading with the Filipinos, however by no means the opposite way round after they have been supposedly expert maritime navigators). If this is what it approach to be civilization, then I'm starting to surprise what civilization sincerely intended the first time it became used. After all, Philippine historians-lots greater like Philippine politicians-are fond of redefining terms to fulfill their needs. One should rethink the term "civilization" while we talk about pre-colonial Philippines inasmuch as one have to additionally reconsider the phrases "literature" and "history" because of the shortage of a writing way of life. Besides, those True Filipinos of the pre-colonial length-irony of ironies!-do now not have a bit of a idea of what it takes to be Filipino, what's a Filipino, and that Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao are island groupings taken into consideration as a unmarried political unit known as the Philippines.
One can also marvel if you may call the Celts in primeval Britain the True English (horrendous!), or the Ainus of ancient Japan because the True Japanese (implausible!), or the Goths of early Iberia because the True Spaniards and the True Portuguese (intoxicating!). This will lead us to the outcome of our neurotic history: the concept of ancestral area, that is the presumption that folks that settled on the land first are its authentic owners. Is it now not genuine that the Celts settled the British simple some distance too long than the Philippine indigenous peoples have settled anywhere-they-had been earlier than? I surprise if the Japanese authorities will give up the Yamato undeniable to the Ainus and move the Japanese capital far to the frozen north. Will the European Union supply to the Italians-descendants of the Romans-the ancestral domain which changed into once beneath the jurisdiction of the Roman Senate? Pure folly that could most effective come from the Filipinos.
The neurotic history of the Filipino people can be summarized in this manner:
(1) they had civilization;
(2) the Spaniards came and arrested similarly developments of that civilization;
(3) the Americans came and also contributed to the destruction of something remained from that civilization;
(4) such that till now they're burdened of what and who they may be because they have got misplaced a lot of their former innocence;
(five) that they emerged as, and nonetheless are, Limited Filipinos of the contemporary international.
The adjustments that have came about in the past 443 years (even greater) are to be considered as a corruption of their pre-1521 way of life. They criticize themselves for being fakes and having colonial mentality, and praise their remote beyond for his or her innocence-for being "unique" (something which means).
So, if we-in Jungian phrases-translate the country as an man or woman, what do we have on the Filipinos is that this:
(1) an innocent child packed with so much curiosity and freedom that what subjects with him changed into handiest playing and consuming;
(2) the first wave of changes got here when his mother and father commenced pressuring him over many stuff and he started thinking that life is not as easy as before;
(three) the second wave came via peer pressure as he entered into a complicated age of youth and actually began to bicker that being a child is tons extra amusing;
(4) he emerged as a pressured person despising himself for having been corrupted with the aid of all the modifications that took place to his existence;
(five) worry of the existing made him lengthy for his innocent beyond-at this stage, the character represses his own records as a records of pain and suffering, tucks it in a drawer, and creates substitute stories to cover the ache and struggling.
Nostalgia for the beyond is manifested in constantly summoning the beyond to seem essential of the prevailing. To cover the hysteria produced by way of the very changes that occurred to him, he creates myths. Philippine history is neurotic thus far.
But, within the Freudian, Adlerian, and Jungian manner, these myths-this neurotic history of the Filipino human beings-cannot avoid to show up what turned into tucked away inside the unconscious. Thus, Philippine history to date is describable in the commonplace neurotic symptoms of melancholy, tension, and the lack of ability to evolve through the resulting modifications of life and time. What we certainly have in Philippine history is the documentation of their personal fears and tragedies and the longing to move returned to a time whilst the Spaniards were now not there yet to smash the whole lot. The fabricated from one of these records is a large collective inferiority complicated that can handiest feel pride within the punches of a Pacquiao, within the strokes of billiard gamers, at the top of Mt. Everest, on the passing of a bar examination, and on the little matters that other countries discover now not a lot of a importance but are in the Philippines taken into consideration large time. What their history is producing is not a ancient people which can find some thing to be pleased with in their records-for Philippine history isn't always a records of changes and accomplishments however of struggles and sacrifices-no, no longer a historical human beings; for as long as their history is like a Philippine tele-novela, just like its media counterpart, it's far doomed to intend nothing. What it's miles producing are a hysterical humans afraid and dissociated of its records-a neurotic race from its neurotic tales.
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