13 A Heritage of Smallness PCLELY 1 ive viipino isa seat ovat the bogey. ‘Geography forthe Fliping i smal locality: the bari. History fr the Filipino isa small vogue saying: maida pa kay Mahima; cong pectin Enterprise forthe Flipino isa small sta: the sas. Industry and prodction for the Plipino are the small lmmate seratchings ofeach a amg hai, sg ub ‘And coenmerce forthe Filipino is the very smallest degree of retail the tng ‘What mast astonshes foreigners in the Plippines is that this is a country, perhaps the only one inthe world, where people buy ani sell one tick of iar, ha a head of gar, a dab of hair pomace, pat ofthe contents of a can ‘or bot, ane single egg, one single Banana, To foreigners wed fo buying things by the carton or the dozen or the pound, ad in the large economy ses, the exquisiteCulture and History transaction of Plipine ting cannot but sem ‘So much effort by so many for so litle! Lik all those children skin. eck an He in the trafic to sll one fof cigarette at atime, Or those grown-up men ha idewalls all day towel puppy ora lantem or a pall focks The amount of effort they spend seems out of proportion tothe returs. Such folk are obviowsly, aot indolent—bt ot being indolent i, just a obviously ‘enough. Laboriousness just can rever be the equal of sill Iabor as audacity, labor as enterprise. “The Filipino who travels abroad gets to thinking isthe hardest working county inthe world. By si oF seven inthe morning we ae already up and on our Designee ama ipuevimall —‘Bijurtamall smo the tt ta wal foeay fe ast a ing forte pcos he Sr Ga ing teh a igh eh tp ag ty fr the ‘ai ye igor ncnatt peer nl mens fe mlontepetny “gana thay rail achat pct anit ts ge (A Heritage of Smaliness work; shops and markets are open: the wheels of industry are already agrind, Abrood, expecially in the West, if you 80 out at seven in the morning you'e ina deod town Everybody’ till n bed; everything's sill dosed up. ‘Activity doesn't begin Hill nwo on — ant cxaeoe promptly at five pm. By sx the business sections are dead ‘ovens again, And entre cites goto sleep om weekends. ‘They have a shorter working day, a shorter working week. Yet they pile up move mileage than we who work all day and all week. Is the disparity to our disparagement? ‘We work more but make less. Why? Because we acto such a pigmy sale? Abroad, they woud think you mad if you went into a store and tried to buy just one stick oF ‘igarete. They don’t operate on that scale. The difference is ‘eater than between having and not having; the diference ‘im the way of thinking. They are accustomed to <éynamically. We have the habit, whatever our indiv resoures of thinking poor, of thinking petty 1s that the explanation for our continuing failure to ese that we buy all and sel small that we aim small and tay smal that we think small and do sa Are we not confasing timidy foe humility and making virtue of what may be the wort of our vices? Is rot out timorous clinging to smallness the bondage we must break we are ever fo inherit the earth and be free, independent, Progressive? The small must ever be prey to the big. Aldous Hurley said that some people are born victims or ‘murderees.” He came to the Pilppines and thought us the “east original” of peoples. Is there not relation between, his to terms? Originality requires daring: the daring to estoy the obsolete, to anbilate the petty. I's codCulture and History conf hike hres epd ht nd of Sean my Perl yw al bt ping ot hats of pean” be rl hss ol rated ope as howe re gob ty fnd~ iat fe rig, py Hg Sah ge fi ce Al rs tatoo bs ent wh b met poral asin Ar ner oa ole nol a ts a far ty on ey nebo il rooms po ac ri cea barge oon oe ‘See cy ef stl) ar no few ne rn ea We a rg ee ten tical Imei cen er he pon trot Fo ll euro ener hs oe ‘cer ipo flo Mey tne a pete ech nl oi nat og oe nel Costin A ply of oe no a Ceara cag nd yo clack al he be fora paren oft al tar Corto es rf Fe The spain etn pine bry wa Big cae ean rep roar a fs cars acres or tty tempt We ty gute toy ting tne wi oe be gin Fe vento a tt pale ho el ot A Heritage of Salinens diference betreen the two ventures. One was a vayage ‘2270s an ocean into an unknown world the other was a soing to and fro among neighboring islands. One was 2 bind leap into space; the other seems, in comparison, a mere crossing of rivers. The nature of the ono required ‘organization, sustained effort, special skill, special tools, the building of lange ships. The natute ofthe other is revealed by its vehicle, the barangay, which isa small rowboat, nota seafaring vessel designed for long distances or the avenues ofthe ocean, ‘The migrations were thus seiflimited, never moved far from their point of origin and clung to the heat ofa small ‘known world: the islands clustered round the Malay Peninsula, The movement into the Philippines, fr instance, was from points as next-door geographically as Boroeo and Sumatra. Since the Philippines atthe heart ofthis epion, the movement was toward center or, one may say, from ear to stil nearer, rather than to farther out Just of the smal brief circuit ofthese migrations was another world: ‘the vast mysterious continent of Australis but there was, Significantly, no movement towards this terra incognita, It ‘ust have seemed too perilous, to unfriendly of climate, oo big t00 hard, So, Australia was conquered not bythe folk next door bat by strangers from across two oceans and the other side ofthe world, They were more enterprising, they have been rewarded, But history has punished the loggard by setting up over them a White Australia with doors close to the crowded Malay world ‘The trangays that came to the Philippines were small both in scope and size. A barangay with a hunkred households would already be enormous; some hrengeys had only 30 Families, o les. These, however, could have been‘Culture and History: the seed of great society if there had not becn in them fatal aversion to synthesis. The hrangey settlements Aisplayed a Phlipine characters: the tendency 19 in noation instead of consolidating, oto spit smaller Instead of growing, That within the small area of Bay there should be tvce different kingdoms (Tondo, “Monila and Pasay) may mean thatthe area was settled by thee diferent tarangays that remained never came together, never fused o it could mean Single original setement, a it grew, split into thee pieces. Pllippine society, as though fearing bigness, ever to revert to the condition ofthe bung: ofthe small. cenelosed society. We don't grow like a seed, we split most The momenta town grows big it becomes owns. The moment 4 province becomes populous it lsintegrates into two o¢ three smaller provinces. The ‘excuse offered for division is always the alleged ‘of administering x0 huge an entity. But Philippine are microscopic compared to an American state lik “Texas, where the local government isn't heard it cant efficiently handle so vast an area. We, on the hand, make a confession of character whenever We {town of province to avoid having to cope with big problems and operations. What we're admitting is the big scale, we cant be efficiont; we are capable ‘he smal. The decentralization and bari-autonony ‘movernent expresses our craving to return tothe one society we fel adequate t: the harangay, with its 30 1 hundred families. Anything larger intimates. We elierately limit ourselves to the small performances ‘This attude, an immemorial one, explains wh’ ‘A Heritage af Smaliness finding it so hard to become a nation, and why our pagan ve ‘forefathers could not even unos Imagine the ak. Not ese urs rams the impuein ‘itl ice ‘our culture but Out of many, wp gue see pasara come and nie orn ory ‘i te the labor was far beyond our ones. owe. Gra wis ekg of Sugbu, bat he ould’ even Bees ‘contol the tiny ise across his meee bay. Federation is still not even cea) mien Caneel ele aaa North; and the Moro sitanates ‘bch lke our political partis: they keep spliting of into particles Because we cannot unite forthe lage effort even the small efor i increasingly beyond us Thee isles and feso to cam in ou schools, but even this lite is protested by ‘young, too hard. The falling line on the graph of ‘forts sls, rcuring pattern in cur history. Our artifacts but repeat a refrain of deine and fl, which ‘wouldnt beso sad if there had been a summit to decine from, but the evidence is that we start smal and end small without ever having sealed any peaks. Used ony to the small effort, we are nol asa result capable ofthe sstnad sffort and lose momentum fast. We have aterm frit ines cog Go t any exhibit of Philippine artifacts and the tems that form our “cultural heritage” but confim three theories out us which shouldbe stated again.Culture and History Fis: thatthe Filipino works best ana small sale tiny figurines, small pots, filigree workin gold or ecorativearabesques. The deduction here is that we! adequate to the challenge of the small, but are cowed challenge of the big ‘Second: thatthe Flipino chonses to workin sft, ‘materials — clay, molten metal, re bark and vine and the softer woods and stones. Collectors say that. Uhe searching has file to tu up anything eelly ‘monumental in hardstone. Even carabso horn, an material for native cratsmen, has not been used #9 ‘extent remotely comparable to the use of ivory inthe ‘counties. The deduction here is that we fel equal 10 raters that yield but evade the challenge of that resis. ‘Third: that having mastered a material, craft or we tent rut init and don’t move on to a next larger development, based on what we have lard fact, we instantly lay down even what mastery We. possess when confronted by a challenge from outside something more mastely, instead of being provoked velop by the threat of competition. Faced by the challenge of Chinese porcelain, the native ar of simply decined, though porcelain should have bee ext phase for our pottery makers. There was corto steal and master the arts of the Chinese. The excuse offered here — that we didnot have the ror the techniques forthe making of porcelain — lum brotherhood yesterday's pottery makers and ‘would-be industrialists. The native pot got buried by ‘Chinese porcelain, as Philippine tobacco is sil being by blue seal ” (A Heritage of Smaliness (Ou cultural history, rather than a cumulative development, seems mostly a series of dead ends. One reason i fear of mowing an toa more complex phase: another reason isa fear of tool. Native pottery, for instance, somehow never ot far enengh to grasp the principle ofthe wheel. Nether dd native agriculture ever ‘each the point of discovering the plow for itself, or even the idea ofthe draft animal, though the carabao was handy Whee! and plow had to come from ouside because we always stopped short of technology. This stoppage ata ‘certain levels the recurring fate of our arts and rats The santos everybody’s collecting nov are charming as legacies, depressing a indies, forthe ot ofthe senero was ‘small an a not very demanding medium: wood. Having achieved perfection in i the santo was faced by the challenge of proving he could achieve equal perfection ‘larger scale and in more dificlt material: hardsone, ‘marble, bronze. The challenge was not met. Like the pagan potter before him, the sant stuck to his tiny rt, repeating his ttle pertctions over and over. The iron law of life i Develop oe decay: The at ofthe seer didnot advance 59 ‘tdectined. Instead of moving on toa harder materia, ‘etreated to a material even easier than wood: plaster and Plaster has wrought the death of relighous art ‘One could goon and on with this tan. Philippine movies started 80 years ago and, during the ‘As reached a certain level of proficiency, where it stopped and has ruted ever sinc, looking, more and more primitive 4 the rest ofthe cinema world speeds by on the way to new frontiers. We have tobe realist, say local movie producers, we're in this business not to make at but ‘money. But even from the business viewpoint, they not 99‘Culture and History “elite” a ll. The tue businessman ever seeks to increase his market and therefore ever tris to improve product. Business dies whon it resigns itself, as local rave done oa limited market -Ator more than half a century of writing in Enis Philippine Literature in that medium is til identified the short story. That small trary form is apparently a8 muh as we fol equal to. But Ta limiting ourselves to the sal fa sipirnce ‘fort, we make ourselves less poste tian Jess capable even ofthe small ‘etn kavting thing — asthe fate ofthe sand nt hang potter and the Christian sinter Cedifnce in should have warned us. fs m0 emg of Jonge 25 obvious tay that thinking. Piping writer has mastered short story form. We hast the Its two decades since the babi, whasoser but what were mere makeshift urns postwar days have petrified sees of institutions — hike the eopney inking por which we all now tobe inking ot, ‘uncomfortable and inadequate, yet cannot get rid of because ‘would mean having to tackle problem of modernizing our systems of tansportation =: problem we think so huge we hide from it in the smallness ofthe jeepney. small solution to a huge — do we decive ourselves into thinking that possible? spe hints that we do, forthe jp as a pbc {is about as adaquate a a spoon to empty a river wit, ‘With the population swelling and land values rising, A Heritage of Smaliness there shouldbe, in our cites an upward thrust in architecture, but we continue to bil smal, in our timid ‘wostory fashion. Oh, see have excuses. The land is of; ‘earthquakes are frequent. But Mexico City, fr instance, x ‘on far swampier land, and Mexico Cit isnot a two-story toven. San Francisco and Takyo are in worse earthquake belts, but San Fanciso and Tokyo rch up fr the skies. Isnt our architecture another expeession of our smallness of spirit? To build big would pose problems too—big for us ‘The water pressure, for example, would have to be Improved-—and is hard enough to get water on the ground floor. Fat and fal, 0 cites indicate our tisincination to make any bu the seals efor posible. Tk wouldn't beso bad if our aversion to bigness and our slinging to the smal denoted a preference for quality over bulk but the litle things we tke all forever to do foo often tum out o be worse than the mass-produced article. Out ‘outurirs, fo instance, grow even limp of wrist when, after wating months and month for pita weaver to produce a yard or two ofthe fbr they find they have to lscard most ofthe suff because i's so slppily done Foreigners who think of pushing Philippine fabrics inthe ‘world market pve up in despair after experiencing our Inability to deliver in quantity. Our provd apologist ‘mass production would ruin the “quality” of our products ‘But Philippine crafts might be roused from the doldrums if forced to come up to mass-production standards. Is easy enough to quote the West agains el, to Gite all those Westom artists and writers who rail against the cult of bigness and mass production and the “bitch goddess succes"; but the arguments against technological progress, Tike the arguments against nationalism, are posible only “Culture and History those who have already gone through that stage 50 succesfully they can now afford to reve it. The rest carly cte hb coup te eral bigness eth pret ll we sen be eo do pagan evidence and blame ou inability to sustain the sffrt on our colonizers: they crushes our will and cur inative and eign. But coloilsm is not cur ordeal but eather a univer experience: Other ‘went under the hee! ofthe conqueror but have not rest of thei lives whining. What people were more under than the Jews? But each havoc in thee lng ‘woe merely toughened them up. Spain was 80 yeas ‘the Moors, but what should have been a thoroughly crushed nation got up and conquered new worlds ‘The Norman conquest of England was followed by a ljuation of the natives very similar to our Cit ned om a pt we i ‘empire and the verve of anew language ‘Wit be tre that we were enrvated by the los of Primordial frestom, culture and institations, then the tres that were never under Spin avd dda’ lose did should be showing a strange wil and spit Inative andl originality richer cultare and greater progres, han the Chistian Filipino. Dp they? And avo apotoga of ours gts further blasted when we ‘consider that a people who, alongside us, suffered a greater trampling yet never lost their enterprising the contrary, despite centuries of ghetos and repressive measures and racial som, the Chinese in Philippines clambered tothe top ofthe economic are il ight ‘up there when it comes to the big del 22 A Heotage of Saline ‘Shouldn't they have long come to the conchison as we say ‘we dd) that there's no pint in hustling and laboring and ‘amassing wealth ony t se it wrested away and oneself Punished for rising? An honest reading of our history should eather to admit that it was the colonial years that pushed toward the larger effor. There was actually an advance in freedom, forthe unification ofthe lan, the organization of towns and provinces, and the influx of new ides, started ‘our liberation from the rule of the pty, whether of clan, locality or custom. Are we not vexed today atthe hinterland sill bound by primordial terors and taboos? Do we not say we have to set hin “re” trough ‘education? Freedom, ater al fs more than apolitical condition; and the colniallowlander — especially a person like, say, Rizal —was surely more of a feeman than the Unconquered tribesmen up inthe ils, As whee! and plow ‘se us fee from a bondage to nature, so town and province liberate us from the Bounds ofthe brangey. ‘The liberation canbe sen just by comparing our pagan ‘with our Christan statuary. What was satc and stolid in the one becomes, in the other, dynamic motion and ‘expression It can be read in the soar of architecture. Now, at last the Flipino attempts the massive — the stone bridge ‘hat unites, the irrigation dam that gives increase, the adobe church that identifies. If we have “heritage of greatness” its in these labors and in the three epic acts ofthe colonial Petlod: frst, the defense ofthe land during two centuries of siege second, the Propaganda Movement and thin, the Revolution. ‘The fist a heroic age that profoundly shaped us, began | 1600 with the S.year war withthe Dutch and may be‘Calkure and History sai to have drawn to close withthe British invasion 1762. The wa with the Dutch i the most underrated {nour history, frit was the Great War in our history. has to be pointe out that the Philipines, a small prartivlly abandoned to itsel, yet held at bay for hal Century the mightiest aval power in the world at the though the Dutch sent armada after armada, year afte yar, to conquer the colony o, by euting of the thar were i link with America, starve the colony tit knees, We rose so gloriously to the challenge the spirit sent us spilling down to Bomeo and the Moliceas ‘up to Formosa and Indochina, and it seemed fora ‘we might erate an empire. But the iremendous fot create an lite vital to our history: dhe Creole-Tagaloge -Pampango princiala — which was the nation in which defended the land and ruled it together during ‘ontules of siege, and which would climax its military caer with the war of resistance aginst the British in 176. By then, this elite alreaely so deeply fel self a ration thatthe government set up in Bacolor actually efcd the captive government in Mania as illegitimate rom here flows the heritage that would flower in for centuries of heroic effort had bred, inthe Tagalog the Pampango, a habit of leadership, lrdliness of ‘They hod proved themeeves capable of the great and. sustained enterprise destiny was theirs. An analyst of Iristory notes that the sun on ur lg has eight rays, which stands fora Tagalog or Pampango province, and the Tagalogs and Pampangos at Biak-na-Bato “assumed representation ofthe entre couniry and, therefore, in fac the Philippines.” ‘Fron the fed of bate this elite would after the A Heritage of Smallness ‘War, shift othe fick of politi, a significant move: and the Propaganda, which began asa Creole campaign against the Peninsular, would tur into the nationalist movement of Rizal and Del Pilar. This second epi actin our history scemed a further annulment ofthe tition of fmiity A ‘man lke Rizal was a deliberate rebel agaist the cult ofthe small; he was so various a magus because he was ston proving thatthe Flipino could tackle the big thing the ‘complex job. His novels have epic intentions; his poems ‘sustain the Longline and go guint Garcia Villa's ore A. characte Philippine Prorat tum that poetry i the coping inity smal intense tne Pruning With the Revolution cur “main ine culture isin dichotomy. This fk may te ep oF 96 sind a great nine rv? cffrt— bt by a small minority. The Tagalog and mt ts ampango fad taken hing tmnt upon themscves to protest Aehndiene nt the grevanes of he entre rk fan enrte archipelago” Mover, taht teenth a within the movement was a Sei nnn, clash betwen the two Sains payin” jn our culture — between the ‘propensity for the small activity and the will to something more ambitious. ‘onifacio’s Katipunan was large iv nabs but sal in scope it was a rating of bolas and is postinco efforts are litle more than amok raids inthe manner the Fling is ‘i fo excel in. (An observation about us in the ast warCulvare and History as that we fight best, not as an army, but in small local uprisings or Moro raid ofthe past because it had above tribe and saw itself asthe national destiny. Tis the highest we have reached in nationalistic effort. But again, having reached a curtain level of achievement We stopped. The Revolution is, as we say today," “The trend since the turn ofthe century, and since the war, coms to be back to the tradition of the heritage of smallness. We soe to be making less es effort, thinking ever smaller, doing even smaller. air dsoops with a feeling of inadequacy. We can’t copes dw respond; we are not rising to challenges. So tiny a land as outs shoulda be to hard to connect with transportation — but we get crashed on smal jeepney [ile on small trans, get drowned in small boats and more populous cites abroad find it no problem to ‘themselves clean — but the simple matter of garbage create a criss” in the small ity of Manila, One remakes that, afer seing Manila’s chaos of wae he ‘began to appreciate how his ity of Los Angeles far far greater volume of tfc Is building a rood that won't braak down when i mins no longer within ou powers? Is even the building of sidewalks too herclean task for us? ‘One weiter, ashe surveyed the landscape of no rice, no water, no garbage collectors, no peace, order — gloonly mumbled that disintegration seem creeping upon us and groped for Yeats’ terfying. we “A Heriage of Saliness ‘Things fl apart; the center cannot hd; Mere anarchy sos Have our capacities been so diminished by the small ‘fort we ace becoming incapable even ofthe seal hing? ‘Our present problems ae surely not what might be called ‘colossal oF insurmountable — yet we stand heples before them. As the population swells those problems wll expand. and multiply. If they daunt us now, will hey erush us then? ‘The prospect tesfyng On the Fens of Freedom we may do well to ponder the Parable ofthe Servants and the Talents. The enterprising servants who increased the talents entrusted 4 them were rewarded by their Led; but the tii servant who made ‘0 fort to double the one talent given to him was “deprived ofthat talent and cast ito the outer darkness, ‘where there was weeping and grashing of teth: "For to him who has, more shall be given; but from him ho has not, even the ite he has shal be ten away.”