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HINDSIGHT

Modernizing Elites

11/10/2018

2 Comments

 
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First published in The Philippine Star, November 10, 2018

In the mid-1960s, Carlos Fernandez, CEO of the shipping company, Compania Maritima, invited the English historian, Arnold Toynbee, to address the Columbian Club on Taft Avenue.
 At the time, Toynbee's magnum opus, A Study of History, had elicited worldwide commentary. Carling and I had a long conversation with him.

Toynbee traced the beginnings, growth, and decay of nations and civilizations, the river systems that bring life to a nation, and how these nations become strong through the development of communication systems maintained by a powerful army. The character of the leaders eventually defined the people and the nation they led.

Some of Toynbee’s ideas have been confirmed, among them the possibility of a perfect society built by imperfect men. Most of all -- although I am afraid this is simplifying his main thesis -- that the response of a people and their leaders to challenges shapes history. But then, responses to significant challenges can go wrong in the process of change, and this can be life-threatening to nations in decay. 

THE FAULT LINES IN OUR HISTORY were obvious early enough to our ilustrados, Rizal most of all. We have always been fragmented by ethnicities, clans, and most of all, by the social divide. So, we must now locate and define ourselves in history. There are several states a nation goes through in its development. Anarchy (not the political philosophy) destroys a people. A nation divided and polarized will soon succumb to civil war. Even when that war is concluded, the wounds will take a long time to heal or may not heal at all. And, finally, revolution or modernization can unite us the way EDSA I did.

And what state are we in right now?

I sense we are in the deep throes of anarchy, aggravated by institutions in dystopia. This condition may last very long, lulling us with a false sense of stability and permanence, blinded as we are to the opportunities for survival and rebirth. When the end finally comes and everything implodes, we may not even realize that we have lost a country. Applying the Toynbee thesis to our condition, we must recognize that the greatest challenge to us is poverty, and that we must act to build a just, sovereign and strong nation.

This year is the 150th anniversary of Japan's Meiji Restoration.  Before the Tokugawa shoguns united Japan in the 16th century, Japan was fragmented, with various clans fighting one another. In the more than two centuries under the Tokugawa dynasty, Japan became stable and prosperous. Tokyo in the 17th century had a population of more than a million, rivaling such capitals as London and Paris. 

Then Commodore Perry and his ships sailed to Japan and demanded that the country -- secluded from the West for 200 years -- be open to trade. Western imperialism was at their door. Japan’s response to the challenge was to create a new strategy, modernize the military and government, transfer the Emperor from Kyoto to Tokyo.

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THE MEIJI RESTORATION OR REVOLUTION was masterminded by only a hundred purposeful leaders -- samurai, teachers, professionals, and merchants. They sent teachers to Europe and the United States to study Western technology, convinced that it should be backed by the Japanese spirit. For ten years, they worked at modernizing Japan during which period the modernizers were assassinated and limited wars broke out. But in the end, Japan emerged strong and coveting a co-prosperity empire. The Meiji Restoration is perhaps the best example of a revolution that was shaped not by the masses but by the elite.

The leaders who modernized America were neither revolutionaries nor proletarians. In fact, they were -- to describe them correctly --  immigrants. They were not saints. The Americans themselves called them "robber barons." They raped the land, exploited their workers. But they also built railroads, steel mills, factories, and great universities. They encouraged entrepreneurship and flung open the doors of the country to immigrants from Europe, and soon after, from Asia. It is this immigrant infusion and dynamism that powered American progress and, with it, the institutions that would make that nation endure.

The recent modernization of Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore was accomplished by middle-class leaders steeped in the Confucian tradition.

Can we modernize?

THROUGH THE YEARS, our educational system has produced thousands of professionals -- the intellectual infrastructure for modernization. We now have the technology, the expertise in business and in government. Yet many in this elite force cannot find fulfillment here.  

Look around us and see these magnificent condominiums, shopping malls, casinos and resorts, all surrounded by slums. Our elites that built them have the mentality of landlords, much of it acquired from our colonizers. As landlords, all they do is wait for the harvest and the rent. How wonderful if these beautiful capitalist structures were factories. How wonderful if all those rich Filipinos who sent their money abroad would bring their money back and thus encourage the return of the thousands of Filipinos building and strengthening other countries rather than ours.

The triumph of revolution signals even more and even harder work. The conspirators and heretics who ushered that revolution must now be managers and builders of the institutions that will make the gains of that revolution endure. This will take equal dedication, which must now be backed by expertise.

The final goal of revolution and modernization is freedom, the embodiment of the deepest human aspirations. This freedom must be nurtured and shielded from apathy and neglect. It has been said that freedom lives only in the heart and if it dies there, no power on earth can ever bring it back to life.

​https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2018/11/10/1867264/modernizing-elites​

2 Comments
Conrado ViriƱa
11/10/2018 07:58:41

It is by far your strongest write in our troubling time. Thank you, sir. I hope our current leaders in government and in business listen. Before we all become history.

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Jose M Suris
11/13/2018 20:16:06

I met Ramón Vilaró in Barcelona at a presentation of his book "Mabuhay", a walk through the Philippines related to Spanish links, and there I knew about F.Sionil José. This mention leaded me to reading "Po on" and now into "Tree". Good language and good novel, which gets you into the feelings that the characters had at their time.
I am Spanish, married to a mestiza born in Manila. Our kids hold now double citizenship.
I value the spirit of Sionil for building a national sentiment, although sometimes this seems to be for him somehow higher than the individuals. Not for me, specially in times where borders and countries diminish into a global citizenship. I see no sense in ranking higher the being Filipino to being Ilocano or SW Asian.
For your delight I can assure that most of the Filipinos living in Spain feel proud Filipinos. Possibly the large forced immigration from their homeland will help building this national sentiment.
I am concerned about colonialism, being from the bullying part. But I think that all that is not "Spain", it is about the people from the XIX century. All Europeans at that time saw themselves smarter and entitled to eternal (and God driven) dominance over Asians, Americans, Africans. But those elites had a very similar vision and attitudes over their own lower classes. British elites slaved the lower classes in a similar way they did on colonies.
Now regarding the future, I share the vision of Padre José that people have to take over power and elites hand it over. At that time it was Spain, now it is local elites that keep all big business to themselves. If elites hand over power in an ordered way they will see middle class grow and turn the Philippines into a richer and safer place for all. Yes, their kids will not have that much dominance, but they will live better, and wave away the risk of a new come dictator, and the risk of people taking it. Revolution has always been bad on the short term, and is a big risk on only a change of dictator.
Sionil looks on how to become a developed country, but should not look at Japan, nor Europe, nor the USA as a model, for they raised in a rush for consumption and money, and now they want but can not step down from it. The only relevant difference between developed countries and the Philippines is OPPORTUNITIES. My kids in Spain, late teenagers, have the whole world at their reach. To have that you need Education, and an entrepreneural environment.
This is what Government and elites must foster: education, empowerment in the Filipino being, and business opportunities (access to loans, investment in infrastructure, policies to foster entrepreneurship and avoid elites from taking all new ventures)

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