The Danger of Too Much Nuance

Where can we find the "Filipino"?

I get a lot of questions about precolonial society or the traditions of Indigenous peoples, and I’ve noticed that there seems to be an underlying assumption of a “pure” kind of Filipino. It’s as if the Filipino identity can be reduced to the core or “atom” of Filipino-ness. The question goes, “What were we really, before the influence of colonizers?” We keep looking for our origins, the seed of the modern-day Filipino. For what, I wonder? Do we intend to cut the old tree to plant a new one? Why not nourish the ancient tree weathered by centuries, whose thick roots break through the lifeless concrete of modernity?

Remember: the elements of a table is not the table itself, and a molecule of water is not, by itself, a wave. Reality is a pattern, and the words we use to describe it are merely the agreed-upon labels for shared experiences. Identity, then, is the pattern created by synchronicity and choice. Beyond the practical definition laid out by the 1987 Philippine Constitution, people don’t usually agree on what the “Filipino” actually is. The discourse surrounding “culture” is, as my undergraduate philosophy professor would say, mahaba at masalimuot (long and tedious). Personally, I know I’m Filipino because of my birth certificate. But some people would say that we should stop using the word “Filipino” (a colonial term) and go back to what we used to call each other depending on which island or specific ethnicity we come from.¹ Well, I was born in the Visayas, and my father is from Mindanao. I’ve lived most of my life in Luzon. If we were to base my identity on my origin, then am I Negrense (where I was born), or am I Davaoeño (like my father)? If I were to base my identity on where I spent most of my life, am I Tagalog? To complicate this further, my father’s family is actually from Ilocos, way up in Northern Luzon. They moved to Mindanao decades ago. Despite not having the lived experience of an Ilokano, does this nevertheless make me one?

If we base our identity on where we are geographically, then do we still consider as Filipinos those who were born to Filipino parents, but were not themselves born in the Philippines? Do we still consider Filipinos those who come from a Filipino lineage but no longer have a Filipino nationality, at least on their government IDs? Something that people like to do is claim that they have a fraction of this culture and a fraction of that, as though they actively participate in the lived experience of each of these cultures. This ignores the very obvious reality that bigotry attacks what you look like. (And so, if your appearance and behavior can “pass” as the ethnic majority, then you might have it much easier than those who don’t.) What then makes a Filipino a “Filipino” except the meaning that we give this word?

Now, then, one might say that we should go back to the pre-colonial. Which magnificent era of the pre-colonial can we find our roots? The Spaniards “discovered” us in 1521, and what of our ancestors a century before? What of our ancestors in the time of Siddhartha Gautama or Jesus of Nazareth? What was the culture of our archipelagic ancestors when the dynasties of ancient Egypt and China flourished? Actually, why don’t we go further back, to the pre-historic? Where do we “stop” and say finally that that is what we are supposed to be? If, then, we say that we reached the peak of native civilization right as Spain colonized us, then we are actually using the colonial era as a measurement. (It is the same sentiment as saying that the Philippines was a “Golden Era” before—or, as online propaganda insists, during—the administration of Marcos Sr.) I am pointing out this absurdity to show that our romanticization of the pre-colonial is actually just a selective regression.

It is the pilosopo who fixates on defining cultural identity based on specific elements or reducing it into a singular definition—that is, focusing on limitations rather than possibility. We use the word “pilosopo” when someone is being intentionally obtuse and unwilling to acknowledge the dynamism of things. The pilosopo is, like the ancient philosophers, very good at taking things apart, that in their doing so they forget that all tangible and intangible elements of the world are part of a magnificent, moving system.

The philosopher Leonardo Mercado described the transformation of culture in this way. In a small community, they used to sing songs as they went out fishing. When they installed motors on their boats, the noise drowned out their songs, and so as the generations went on, the songs were eventually forgotten. We might weep for the loss of their culture, but Mercado said that the songs are not the culture—the boat is the culture. Our ways of knowing and doing: this is our culture. The songs, stories, and designs all emerge naturally from these ways of knowing. That is why I always say that it is superficial if we are only wearing these aesthetics without any care for the shared reality from which they emerged—that is tokenism, or worse, cultural appropriation.

When it comes to “Filipino-ness,” it’s the meaning, not the label, that calls us back home. We can transcend the tendency to strictly focus on the “purity” of cultural identity and focus more on the context of who we are, where we’re from, and where we presently are. There are millions of Filipinos around the world, in the diaspora and as Overseas Filipino Workers. This expands our notion on what “Filipino-ness” can be. Over-categorizing culture reduces things to something static. Let us think of culture as dynamic—an identity in motion. So, as Virgilio Enriquez, considered the Father of Filipino Psychology, said: Pilipino kahit saan, kahit kailan (Filipino forever, wherever they are).

I discuss this further in my essay, Finding Filipino-ness.

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1. At this point, people like bringing up “Maharlika” as an alternative to “Philippines.” First of all, maharlika doesn’t mean what most of us think it means. It isn’t “noble class” (that’s maginoo); it’s “freemen” (that is, not slaves). Second, the so-called Kingdom of Maharlika (of which the Philippines was supposedly a part of) never existed, and was used as political propaganda by the Marcos family to explain their wealth (Read: Rappler, Inquirer). Myth-making is extremely important, and its use in Philippine politics has always been incredibly effective. We should be careful not to be fooled by this, otherwise we would, in turn, unintentionally condone disinformation.