Clarence Henderson
Henderson Consulting International
Manila, Philippines

This Month's Focus: Understanding the intricate and fascinating matrix and human drama of modern day Manila, and what it means to be an expatriate living and working in a land far removed from one's roots

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After over a year writing Pearl, I occasionally receive complementary e-mails telling me my columns are well-written and informative, but not particularly random. I resemble such remarks. Given my subtitle - "Random Thoughts on Life and Business in Manila" - and not wanting to be accused of false advertising (and getting a bit tired of researching and writing on globalization and sugar cane and such), herewith a few random thoughts dealing with: (1) understanding the intricate and fascinating matrix and human drama of modern day Manila, and (2) grokking what it means to be an expatriate living and working in a land far removed from one's roots. The themes have something to do with one another, although a Sunday afternoon ramble may or may not shed much light on the parallels.

Without getting bogged down in Pol Sci 101 or Intro to Dead White Men Philosophy, and at the risk of illustrating the harm overeducation can do to an erstwhile hillbilly/factory worker from the boondocks of Southern Indiana, why don't we zap through some early political philosophy and classic sociological theory, a bit of Joseph Campbell, perhaps a smidgen of Luke Skywalker, and some drug-tinged lyrics written by Gram Parsons and immortalized by the Flying Burrito Brothers, with a quick tip of the hat to Thomas Wolfe? It's random, remember?

Land of Smiles?

The Philippines has long had a reputation as the land of smiles and happy-go-lucky people. Think of the warm tropical images of French painters Gaugin and Matisse, the atmospheric novels of W. Somerset Maugham, Marlon Brando-esque images of palm trees swaying gently in the wind and coconuts falling like manna from heaven, and the friendly natives in Rodgers and Hammerstein's King and I or South Pacific.

Like most cultural stereotypes, however, the "land of smiles" images are inaccurate and superficial when applied to the urban jungle of contemporary Manila. Lurking just beneath the surface are elemental passions like love and hate, anger and pain, fear and hope, grief and joy. Such passions are reflected in the horrendous stories reported (briefly, almost as asides) in the Manila papers each and every day. The stories, which give new meaning to the phrase "man's inhumanity to man," deal with random shootings in karaoke joints (usually involving perceived effrontery when one inebriated out-of-tune singer refuses to give up the coveted microphone to an even more inebriated out-of-tune singer), people being hacked to machete-pieces (often in brutal domestic disputes involving heated accusations of infidelity), and sex workers hurling themselves out of 31st story windows after being held captive and poked full of shabu (amphetamine) for a week by some visiting Yakuza in town to launder his ill gotten gains. They say that drivers of commercial vehicles in this town are told that, in the unfortunate event they clip a pedestrian, they should promptly go back and run over the poor sucker a couple more times to finish the job properly, then promptly leave the scene. Corpses tell fewer tales than maimed human beings, not to mention being a whole lot less likely to sue.

Of course there are similar stories in the pages of newspapers around the world. I myself survived 15 years in Los Angeles, home of drive-by shootings, the Manson Family, the Watts Riots, and the Hillside Strangler. Low grade violence and the threat of the Big One hitting at any time were integrated into the lifestyle and psyche. Yet the randomness and sheer ferocity of some of the violence we see in Manila are somehow even more shocking. What happened to those smiles and the happy-go-lucky part?

The Latin temperament certainly has something to do with it (remember, the Philippines is more Latino than Asian (IMHO), see An Oversimplified History Lesson). But so does the too-many-rats-in-a-cage aspects of life in today's overcrowded Manila. Laboratory studies show that overcrowded conditions cause aggressive behaviors in both cats and rats, to an extent far exceeding the aggression exhibited when there is plenty of space. Overcrowded conditions create chronic anxiety and contribute to aggressive behavior.

The inhumanity in Manila doesn't just play out in violent incidents. The business world itself is not a very nice place, especially when it comes to the way Filipino Captains of Industry treat the working class. Just to give one example, the thousands of girls who work in certain large department stores are mercilessly exploited and treated like serfs. The next time you feel like going ballistic about the lack of customer service that characterizes such places, bear in mind that the employees are not allowed to talk to one another, must always remains standing, and earn somewhere around a hundred bucks US a month for working 50 hours a week. They live with constant insecurity related to the fact that they are fired en masse whenever labor organizers are suspected to be in the neighborhood, generally every six months or so. Management simply cleans house, leaving hundreds or thousands unemployed, bringing in a new crew of young girls who eagerly line up around the block for the chance to be treated like interchangeable cogs in a cruel and unforgiving machine.

Academic Gobbledygook Section

One way to look at it is to use the old concept of the social contract. Usually associated with English philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries (Thomas Hobbes and John Locke) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the Noble Savage guy), the assumption is that we all originally lived in a pretty primitive state. In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes described the state of nature as one with no criteria for right and wrong. It was every man for himself, with human life being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." In other words, a state of war of one against all and all against one. Peace could only come when individuals entered into a social contract.

Organized government was seen as better than such a state of nature, and reasonable people cooperated to set up a government as an attractive, voluntary obligation leading to a social contract, from which the essential rights and duties of citizens flowed naturally. Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1690) elaborated the social contract using the concept of "natural law," while Rousseau's Du contrat social (1762) added the twist that the government should obtain the consent of the governed (volonté générale, "general will").

So what happens when the social contract breaks down? How much stress can people handle before things become nasty and brutish yet again?

Moving down the ivied halls from Poli Sci 101 to the Sociology department, one might also mention the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies and his influential tome Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887; Community and Society). The key distinction is between Gemeinschaft (communal society) and Gesellschaft (associational society). In rural, peasant societies, personal relationships based on traditional social rules and roles predominate. People had face-to-face relations that were authentic and concrete, with emotions expressed naturally and spontaneously.

Gesellschaft, in contrast, is characterized by Kürwille (rational will), with large and complex modern societies dominated by bureaucracies and industrial organizations. In the Gesellschaft , rational self-interest takes over, conduct and behaviors are carefully calculated, and the traditional bonds of family, kinship, and religion deteriorate. Industrialization and modernization - as symbolized in the migration from the provinces to the big city of Manila - lead to the gradual breakdown of traditional social networks and their replacement by impersonal and cold interactions. The result? Pervasive alienation and the loss of cohesive peasant values.

Of course, you have to be careful not to idealize the Gemeinschaft image, as Tönnies posed his polar opposites as ideal types rather than as actual categories of classification. Nevertheless, it's a pretty useful device for understanding what's going on here and around the world, what with globalization and all (see Globalization Part 1 and Globalization Part 2).

You Can't Go Home Again?

Sometimes this country boy from the American Midwest gets a little wistful and nostalgic, perhaps wondering what the hell I'm doing here, especially when my inspiration flags and my back aches after yet another 70 hour week in the tropics. Sheesh, I could have stayed in LA if I knew how hard it was to get rich and famous here.

I grew up in Southern Indiana in a place called Brown County, a sparsely populated, forested, and hilly region, a locale of great natural beauty, a setting that delights tourists, artists, photographers, naturalists, and lovers of scenic beauty and outdoor recreation. Think hills and streams, wooded glens, blissfully peaceful lakes, gentle hiking trails wending their way through the forest. A truly idyllic setting featuring scenic overlooks with undulating hill country stretching out in the background as far as the eye can see, the remnants of the jagged trenches cut by the receding glaciers at the end of the Ice Age.

It's also a place not yet quite eaten up by the evils of modern civilization, and one where traditional norms and society (Tönnies' Gemeinschaft) still exist, if beginning to fade under the onslaught of modern technology and media. Easy enough to idealize, I suppose, especially when I spend all my time breathing filthy air, fighting with sharks, and negotiating the mobbed highways and byways of Manila.

As part of my work, I sometimes do multicultural trainings focusing on teaching international types (ex-pats) to understand the Philippines, how to deal with culture shock, and how to manage Filipino workers who come from a totally different place. Although I tend not to use the metaphor in my training, some multicultural writers and trainer use Campbell's "Hero's Journey" metaphor to make sense of it all.

Campbell, of course, explored and synthesized myths from cultures around the globe. Many of the key themes revolve around the hero's journey, which in classical myth takes the form of a voyage of transformation involving seemingly infinite trials and revelations. The lesson? The hero (or ex-pat equivalent) must let go of his or her past and embrace the future in order to overcome adversity and reach the Holy Grail.

Campbell argued that the great myths are regenerated in each and every generation. One prototype in the current generation is none other than George Lucas' Star Wars Trilogy. The cinematic saga reflects, among other things, the Biblical themes of the fall, wandering, redemption, and eventual return and juxtaposition of the dark side versus the light side, compassion versus greed, and the Force versus Darth Vader. Indeed, the Phantom Menace would seem to allude to Lucifer in Paradise Lost or the devil in Dante's Inferno. One of the most important mythical themes is that of separation from the world, an initiation involving penetration to some previously unknown source of power, and then a triumphant and life-enhancing return. All in all, a simple yet complex cosmic construction.

According to multiculturalists, the ex-pat starting in a new country is journeying into the great unknown In my case, I have immersed myself so thoroughly in Filipino culture that I am sometimes not quite sure what I know and what I don't know. Not working in the context of a multinational or international agency, not living in an ex-pat village, and not belonging to Amcham or other ex-pat organizations, I am simply an entrepreneur operating on the ground in the jungle that is the Manila business world. Maybe I'm having a mythical drink in the surreal Bar Scene in Star Wars, or being sucked into the enemy space station along with Han Solo's spaceship. In Campbell's terms, the Belly of the Whale. I can certainly testify from experience that having the patience of Job or the resilience of Jonah is an asset (damn those trials and tribulations, why can't everything just be transparent anyway?)

So What?

(I warned you this Pearl would ramble). I suppose the commonality in the above two themes (the modern Philippines quandary and issues of expatriate angst) lies in the clash of cultures and the inevitable decline of traditional society as we hurtle headfirst into the new millennium.

Sometimes, I hear the siren call of those hills back home, especially as I reflect on a life spent in far flung locales like Thailand, South Texas, New York, Los Angeles, and now the Philippines. One solution is to slip on the old headphones for some quality time with the Flying Burrito Brothers, mellowing out to songs like Sin City (penned by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman way back when, I'd imagine a few readers who are old hippies and/or cosmic cowboys will know what I'm talking about here), replete with apocalyptic echoes of earthquakes, militarism, and rampant fundamentalism:

This old town filled with sin,
It'll swallow you in
If you've got some money to burn.
Take it home right away,
You've got three years to pay
But Satan is waiting his turn

This old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poor house.
It seems like this whole town's insane
On the thirty-first floor your gold plated door
Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain

Beam Me Down, Scotty

Better return to earth and a make a soft landing from this strange little excursion.

Based on the above comments, you're probably wondering: If things are so awful in Manila, isn't it inevitable that the end result must be a Third World Bladerunner mutation? Where will redemption come from? Given the unacceptable rate of population growth, ongoing degradation of the city's infrastructure, looming ecological disaster, and various and sundry other dilemmas (as discussed in detail in other Pearls), rosy predictions are hard to make.

Reflecting on my earlier pseudo-erudite analysis of the Filipino condition in today's Manila, I would hasten to add that there are many examples of human kindness and personal sacrifice (see Eva from Cebu and Leavin'on a Jet Plane for some examples). Devoted teachers, hard-working social workers, committed development workers, NGO volunteers, and many others are doing their damnedest to help Filipinos overcome adversity and move towards a brighter future. The Philippines is still trying mightily to pull itself up by its bootstraps, as it has for so many years.

Despite the sociological theory of Tönnies and his academic descendents implying that traditional society is a goner, the Filipino people (even in the worst Manila slums or living on garbage dumps) maintain inner reservoirs of strength, based in their fervent belief in the inherent beneficence of God and security related to the reliability of family and neighborhood associations. The deep-seated awareness of the gulang ng palad (wheel of fate) and knowledge that what goes around comes around is something Westerners could learn a great deal from. Filipinos are always ready to fight back in the face of adversity and maintain an almost cock-eyed optimism during hard times, rooted (perhaps) in the fatalism of bahala na (see Filipino Norms, Etiquette, and Values.)

Returning to the question (regarding the future), there are no easy answers. As we recently learned from Ridley Scott, Dekker was a replicant all along (savvy cultists already knew that). But didn't he have a heart of gold buried in there somewhere?

And the ex-pat entrepeneur? I'm not about to give up the quest to succeed in the Far East. Heck, those hillbilly genes also include a real stubborn streak - and, as Thomas Wolfe knew so well, you can't go home again no matter how appealing in the abstract. Anyway, those Bladerunner images were LA-based, and that's what I left behind in the rear view mirror of a jumbo jet. One can draw strength from the fact that Luke Skywalker and Han Solo did okay in the end, albeit after fighting some king hell battles. Personally, I plan on picking up a used jedi sword at one of the local flea markets, tapping into the Force, and venturing forth where no ex-pat has gone before . . .

Clarence Henderson

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