What We've Been Writing #13: In which we attempt to make something out of this season
This month's round-up isn't festive. Admittedly, we probably don't feel that festive these days. But still, we'll try to make something out of Christmas this year, because, well, it's Christmas.
As this should be the last post from Stack Natin for the year, may I take the chance to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year?
And also, may I take the chance to point out that, at least from my vantage point, it doesn’t feel like many of us are in the mood for the holidays?
I mean, this year feels more exhausting than any of the other post-pandemic ones (and yes, I know there aren’t a lot of those to choose from). The number of calamities that have hit our shores just in the last six months alone is overwhelming; while the plight of those directly affected are no longer on our screens, our constant exposure to disaster just tells us that they’re still out there, picking up the pieces and trying to make the best of what they have left. (You can still help out, if you’re so inclined.) And then there are the still ongoing revelations of corruption among our government officials, and never-ending machinations among our political leaders, reminding us that while they fight over what isn’t rightfully theirs, we’re left to fend for ourselves. The wheels of justice, as we all dreaded but expected, roll slow.
Yet, despite the muted vibe, we’re still trying so hard to celebrate Christmas. The Philippines may be a predominantly Catholic country, but this is no longer so much about marking the birth of Jesus as it is an opportunity to return to family and loved ones and look back at the year that was—our equivalent to the American Thanksgiving. So, we’re still contending with (much) heavier than usual traffic. As my colleague, the economist Ronilo Balbieran, is keen to put it, the Filipino’s “animal spirit” is still alive and kicking, and it’s a good thing.
That said, please forgive me for the somewhat downbeat selection of pieces from Filipino writers across Substack this month. I suppose it cannot be helped.
“Saan aabot ang 500 pesos mo?”
I suppose what captures this push and pull best is the reaction surrounding the pronouncement of a key government official about how Filipino families should be able to afford the traditional Noche Buena—a meal shared by family as midnight strikes on Christmas day—on just PHP 500, or just a little over USD 8.
I was watching (yes) that radio interview with trade secretary Ma. Cristina Roque, and when she said what she said, I remember thinking, well, that’s an ideal, but there’s a lot of work needed to get there. (If I may put my day job hat on… I talk about it a little bit in a radio interview about a completely different topic from a few months ago. Also, full disclosure: what I am writing now are my personal opinions and not of the organization I work for.) The pushback was pretty instantaneous, both from civil groups and from regular Fiipinos, quickly turning the statement into online fodder—and yet more proof of how out of touch the government is.
The Manila Dialectics Society launched their Substack publication just a few weeks ago and this whole topic was among one of their earlier offerings. Written by Ron Joshua Imperial, who’s studying post-graduate philosophy at the University of the Philippines, this piece is on the academic side, but it does capture a bit of the pushback.
Essentially, the DTI’s remark that a 500-peso Noche Buena is enough is a great example of an attempt at preference lowballing. It lowballs what an agent may prefer. It normalizes the agent’s adaptive preferences (e.g., a 500-peso worth of Noche Buena for a family of four), and thus further buries the original preferences (that even an impoverished family may dare to desire, among others, a whole hamon). In doing so, preference lowballing also further conceals the causal circumstances that cause the agent to undergo adaptive preference formation. Because a 500-peso Noche Buena is normalized and deemed appropriate, while exceeding it is to be “ostentatious,” the agent is preemptively prevented from reflecting the genesis of one’s wants. Because of that, they are barred from realizing that if not, for instance, for poverty, they could have wanted more. Realizing so can be a catalyst for radical change.
With Christmas also comes heavier than usual traffic. Some might argue that this is only really a concern in Metro Manila—where roughly 20 million people either live, or work, or both, in a space that’s just slightly smaller than all of Singapore—but in many ways, it represents both the priorities the Filipino has, and the constraints they face in achieving it. This car-centric society sees automobile ownership as a sign of '“making it”, for one—and it’s something that’s reflected in the infrastructure that does get made (read: more highways and less public transportation) and, err, what we all know gets pocketed.
Economist Tisha Evite has worked in both the public and private sectors and is also an advocate for economics literacy. On her Substack she has a pretty enlightening piece about how different things are in Europe compared to the Philippines—something we most likely already know but feels stark when laid out plainly, and also in a bulleted list—and, more importantly, talks about what we lose with all the time we spend traveling.
Time poverty is when the number of hours you spend doing things you must do (working, commuting, cooking, caring for people) leaves almost no time for things you want to do. Economists and transport scholars talk about it as the lack of “discretionary time.” And commuting is a huge part of that.
[…]
Some even argue that travel time should be treated as a form of poverty in itself because it steals the hours that could have gone to rest, family, or leisure. But the question is by who? The Philippines lag behind neighboring countries when it comes to infrastructure investment. Besides poor planning, a lot of it goes to the pockets of supposed for-people leaders. In 2019, it was estimated that the country loses P700 billion or EUR 10 billion every year due to corruption which could have covered 1 year’s worth of medical expense in the country for ~50% of our population.
How much further can we go?
The way I’ve set this up, I may have made this Christmas season look very grim indeed. There is pushback—this is the only time of the year we can do so! one might say—but then there is also surrender. We can be tired, and we have gotten tired, and amidst all this talk of resistance and fighting I feel we forget that sometimes the only option people have is to surrender, for now, and recharge to fight another day.
I’ve had this piece from Maria Nilad in my head for a while, hooked by the opening paragraph, and then drawn into a thought exercise that can be seen by some as unproductive daydreaming, and by others as harnessing the power of the universe to manifest.
Even if reality is healing only in our minds, couldn’t we sit and conjure that vision for as long as we can? The word Utopia comes from the Greek roots not and place, a place that exists nowhere. But Eutopia, its homonym, comes from the words good place. Both can be true at the same time, and in the course of human history, it’s entirely possible that one meaning becomes favored over another.
In my utopic vision, there’s a house with many rooms backed by the mountains and facing the sun. The house stands on fertile soil that we tend to as one great garden. In the garden, there are countless fruit trees of mango, guava, rambutan, jackfruit, as well as atis, guyabano, caimito, suha. We grow leafy vegetables and root crops in colorful patches—my favorite crop is calabasa for its sweet color and flavor.
We have arrived. Home. For now.
Like Holy Week and Undas, Christmas is a time for Filipinos to flock back to the provinces, especially if they have family there. It’s a little less pronounced though—they’re more likely to fly out for a vacation at this time, especially if they can afford to go to a country where there’s winter—but still, I’m highlighting several posts that (very barely, I admit) allude to that exodus in this, perhaps the most family-centric holiday of them all.
First, this piece from Filipino-Canadian journalist Renato Gandia on “pag-uwi”, which, he points out, does not exactly translate to “coming home”.
When I migrated to Canada, I discovered that English offers no real equivalent for pag-uwi. “Coming home” is close, but it misses the interiority of the Filipino word. Pag-uwi is a noun, a container—a whole emotional event. It holds longing and obligation, tenderness and dread, hope and the residue of unfinished conversations. It is something you prepare for. Something you rehearse. Augustine might call it a movement of the heart toward its rightful place; Heidegger might see it as a return to one’s dwelling; Buber might call it a turn toward the I–Thou relationship, the face meeting another face in honesty.
Well, this is the season of distant relatives asking you questions about your life as if they really have a stake in it.
Speaking of awkward questions, this is the time when we quietly plead for our relatives to not impose their idea of success on us and just be happy that we are there. I feel an alignment between that and this piece from writer and rambler (in the walking sense, note) Vince Imbat, written in Filipino with an English translation.
Ang pakikinig ay pagpapatuloy ng aking mga kaisipan sa mga kaisipan ng iba. Hindi kailangang bago ang dapat kong marinig. Malamang sa malamang narinig ko na ito noon—naisip ko na. Ngunit, hindi sa boses ng kasalukuyang nagsasalita. Pakikinig ang paglilipat natin ng ating kamalayan sa iba—ang paghiram natin ng antipara ng ating kapwa upang mas tignan ng malapitan ang isang penomeno.
The funny thing with Christmas, though—especially with the reunions and the vacations, but even if you’re spending the holiday mostly alone, which, I hope not—is how it reminds you of the passage of time. Not just because the new year is almost around, but because you see relatives you only see once a year, and you see how different they’ve become—how old they’ve become—and you see your cousins as adults rather than as fellow kids you used to play with. And we ourselves change, too, although sometimes not fast enough for pesky aunts and their questions.
I’m wrapping up this digest with a piece from Janelle on goodbyes and rebirths. I told you these will be barely connected, but it felt like a poetic way to end this month’s round-up.
When I was younger, the only measure for sticking around was happiness. Am I still happy? Is it making me happy? Will it make me happy? Having ‘yes or no’ questions to make decisions can be limiting, but it was enough for my 20-year-old self to power through and take leaps. But as I grew older, I find myself asking more questions that go beyond happiness, deliberating my next steps with a little more nuance and intention: Is this the right direction? Does it align with my values? Am I ready to embrace the consequences of leaving?
But how do you find answers to that? When is a farewell ever easy? How do we know when it’s better to carry the weight of parting than the weight of staying?
Also, Janelle talking about turning 33 makes this guy turning 37 in three weeks feel old.
Before we close, a big hello and welcome to the newest additions to the Stack Natin directory: Carina, Cate de Leon, Cheps and winslow moon! (Yep, they all featured in last month’s digest.) You can also join the directory by filling out this form—we won’t add you unless you do this! Or you can browse the directory for your next favorite read. And with that, on behalf of the Stack Natin community, may your Noche Buena (or whatever your equivalent is) be good, and may your gifts be meaningful, and may your holidays be bright.
Thoughtful curation that threads a narrative through seemingly disparate pieces. The time poverty angle from Tisha Evite hits hard, especially against the backdrop of mandated festivity. I've always found roundups like this more useful than single-perspective analysis becuase they capture the fractal nature of shared experiense without flattening it into one tidy takeaway.