I am an avid Filipino armchair tourist, and while watching travel documentaries, I sometimes feel a sense of cultural inferiority complex. I catch myself regretting that we don’t have magnificent ancient structures like Angkor Wat or the Borobudur temples or the Taj Mahal. We don’t have awesome pyramids like Egypt or Central America. Ok, we have the Banawe rice terraces but it’s not so breathtaking as the Great Wall of China and besides other countries have similar rice terraces carved out of mountains.
I rationalized this by attributing it to the fact that we are a young country with a short history. Come to think of it, our main ancestors settled here only some 800 years ago. Compared to China’s 5,000-year-old history, we’re still a baby in terms of cultural history.
In one chapter of his book A Heritage of Smallness Nick Joaquin pointed out that the Pinoy “works best on small scale-tiny figurines, small pots, filigree works in gold or silver, decorative arabesque. The deduction here is that we feel adequate to the challenge of the small, but are cowed by the challenge of the big. This manifests itself in our preference for buying tingi-tingi instead of in bulk. How come our economy has been lagging behind our Asian counterparts? Many analysts would probably point to the Pinoy’s inability to push beyond the small and easy into the hard and big projects.
Whatever, I still would not be so rash in belittling the Filipino. For it has slowly dawned on me that the Filipino is really not too keen on building colossal monuments or big infrastructure projects. He is not instinctively obsessed with bigness or permanence of physical exterior structures. Since time immemorial, he has been contented to live in his nipa hut or dampa, which can easily collapse in an earthquake or blown away by a strong buhawi.
The more I think about it, the more I have come to believe that his values are more inward oriented rather than outward oriented. It comes from his cultural DNA, specifically the value of kalooban, whose root word is loob, which means the inner part.
In his book Loób and Kapwa: An Introduction to a Filipino Virtue Ethics, Jeremiah Reyes contends that loob can easily be misunderstood when literally translated into English as “inside” but which is better translated as “relational will.” It means that it is externally oriented, with kapwa as the complementing virtue, and both are “directed toward the preservation and strengthening of human relationships.”
I prefer to believe that loob has something more to do with Buddhist inner self, his interiority.
This kalooban shapes the Filipino’s philosophy or view of life. This kalooban is the foundation of a sophisticated sense of inner values that govern his behavior and shape his character. On the outside, he is like a child, not taking anything seriously, always wanting to put fun in any endeavor. But it is a deceptive veneer. He has an inner compass and grounding that tells him what is right and what is wrong.
But then foreigners will see this interior disposition as contradictory to his image as inherently flippant. They say the Filipino never takes anything seriously. Like a child, he prefers to indulge in play. Even national tragedies become fodder for jokes.
But if one digs deeper, the reason the Filipino is a laughing culture is because of the balance in his interior being. The Philippine society has never had a need for big number of psychiatrists. It is because the Filipino has a healthy inner self.
There is a native term called palabas which means “external display.” It is meant to be a pejorative word. To the Filipino “showmanship” is to be avoided or shunned. Palabas smacks of superficiality and speaks of things without depth, hinting on insincerity or hypocrisy. It is not true or authentic. It is nothing but pabibo. Thus a person who enjoys superficiality is mababaw ang kaligayahan (He is easily pleased).
Most of the Filipino’s way of looking at life and people is related to or explained by the root concept of kalooban. The within-ness or inner-ness. That is where the original Filipino resides.
The Philippine revolutionaries were motivated and guided by the ideas of kapatiran (brotherhood) and kalooban. The leaders were expected to do more than spearhead the fight. They were in effect the spiritual leaders as well. They were to maintain a kalooban or inner life that was pure. The pureness of one’s inner self is believed to affect the outcome of the events in the outside world (labas). If one is not pure inside, any anting-anting (talisman) will have no effect because such objects derived their power from the purity of one’s kalooban.
His kaloob-looban (innermost self) has an enormous capacity to absorb afflictions and suffering, which enables him to endure misfortunes, natural calamities and even this pandemic. He will just patiently accept it all and say “talagang ganyan, tiisin muna, isasa-loob ko na lang” because deep inside, he believes it is “kalooban ng Diyos.” (God’s will.)
The value that the Filipino puts on interiority or “inner-ness” can be gleaned from the many terms that stems from the word loob, such as mabuting loob, tibay ng loob, mababang loob, bukas ang loob, kaloob-looban and many other words that show how much the vocabulary of the Filipino is centered on the inner self.
Even some idiomatic expressions or folk sayings keep alluding to the importance of this inner dimension.
“Ang may malinis na kalooban ay walang kinatatakutan” (One who is pure of heart has nothing to be afraid of).
“Maghirap na ang katauhan huwag lang ang kalooban” (It is much preferable to suffer physically than to suffer internally).
“May lakas, may loob, at may lalim” describes a banga or water jar, which to the Filipino is a metaphor for the man worthy of respect and emulation.
“Alamin mo ang nilalaman ng kanyang loob” refers to the advice not to judge a person from what you see but what he feels inside. The kalooban is an essential inner nature—intrinsic, given. Each person’s inner nature is in part unique to himself. To be an authentic person is to be true to one’s inner nature—kalooban.
As you can see the Filipino has a sophisticated sense of inner values that govern his behavior. The terms he uses in everyday language serve as clues to the inner-orientation or importance given to the inner world of the individual person.
The virtue of “buo ang loob” (inner force is whole) is perhaps the reason why I strongly believe that in the face of this public health crisis that is disrupting and destroying lives around the world, the ordinary Filipino will be able to endure and survive.
After coming to terms with the concept of kalooban, the modern-day Filipino should no longer wonder why there are no towering monuments or magnificent structures that have become part of the Philippine landscape. While other cultures and civilizations have been obsessed with building physical grandiosities that are meant to impress and to awe people for generations, the Filipino has always had his sight focused elsewhere. Inside his heart, his mind, his soul.