Chapter 2 

The '3-D View' of History'

THE TERM “three-dimensional” is applied on realities and representations that have thickness and depth, instead of only two dimensions, length and width. That would differentiate Bonifacio’s face squeezed into the ten-peso bill from the same face represented in his statue in front of the Central Post Office in Manila or in all his monuments and busts. 

But a history book, which has physical dimensions occupying space, and therefore three-dimensional, is still “flat” if it simply lists events with data on dates and on identities of persons and places (or even of boats!) and fails to capture the breathing life and significance of those events chosen to be included as “historical.”

That would only be “good” for a memorization-oriented and grades-indicated schooling system where correct answers on exam papers in terms of memorized data translate into grades and eventually into diplomas in the hands of graduates who had learned to hate historical subject matters and are only too glad to forget all that they had memorized if they had not much earlier done so.

Such memorization of data from all the data-rich but essentially flat books represent the first “D” in the “3-D view of history.”  Unfortunately, “D” as in “Detalye” is practically the only “D” existing in the way history is being taught in our schools. The three dimensions are Detalye, Daloy and Diwa.  Attention to each of these, and dynamic integration of all three, is what the “3-D View of History” is all about.

A. First ‘D’: Detalye.

Detalye – facts remembered due to significance; history researchers’ similarity to police investigators and news reporters.

“D” AS IN “DETALYE” is practically the only “D” in the way Philippine history is being taught in our schools.

Essential Completeness of Information

And so we were made to memorize the fact that the Katipunan had a Code of Behavior known as the “Kartilya”  and   that  it  was  written  by  Emilio  Jacinto,

but we have retained no familiarity at all about its contents and much less were we taught the impact or the basis of such writing.

We have been taught that our archipelago had been named Filipinas after Philip II, but we have never been given a backgrounder as to the character of that Spanish monarch, and we learned much later and quite accidentally from private reading how historically despicable that monarch was. It’s as if we were forcibly given the collective name “Iscariot” and merely told that the name came from no less than the Bible! 

Fairly recently, even the contemporary government leaders made much of the docu­ment Acta de Independencia which was read in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898, and on the basis only of that document’s title transferred “Independence Day” to June 12 every year.

More recently, the government spun a high-impact, broad, expensive, even lucrative, centennial comme­moration of that event on the basis of the title and assumed intent of the document and not on the basis of its contrary content.  But who of them bothered to read the long texts from the document enough to see how that Acta merely shifted subservience from Spain to the United States and mandated our own flag to have the same color as a form of saluting the latter’s own Stars and Stripes?

Worse, what we have been made to memorize was not all factual. The textbooks may have been changed but the date the Philippines was supposedly discovered by Magellan is still singing in our minds (to the tune of a song by a popular Visayan comedian-singer) as March 16, 1521.

And the Katipunan flags are still being presented as an “evolution” even though they were unit flags that had no real design influence on one another. And the labels that history textbooks have attached with finality to some of our more prominent heroes have not been subjected to critical inquiry as to the validity of their judgments.

Effect of Familiarity or Non-Familiarity

Considering all these, when a friend who eventually joined Kamalaysayan was asked what he had earlier known of our history, he said, “Nothing really.” 

And with all the memorized data having fallen off from his brain, an old expatriate Filipino whose son then growing up in New Jersey asked him pointblank with a sneer, “What is there to be proud of in being Filipino???” could only stare in silent frustration, and then shout out “Basta!” to end the conversation with an assertion of parental authority.

Actually, there is much to be said to answer the child’s question, and it’s there in our history. But the parent, having only memorized and later forgotten details in his old history lessons, could not find answers in his mind.

Accurate?  No, Just Most Credible

Those of us who fully uphold the principle of intellectual honesty consider the value of accuracy of data given in historical accounts. The intention is to present “the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth” in all historical accounts, so that our people, availing themselves of enough such information, may be enabled  to make their  own observations,   analyses, conclusions and recommendations for the resolution of present-day dilemmas. 

But even the best of intentions and the best of efforts to gather and present only the facts are impeded by objective difficulties in ascertaining and verifying facts from the past.  Policemen face dificulties in solving a would-be murder case even if they arrive at the crime scene only a few minutes from the occurrence of the killing, and all the witnesses and all the relatives and friends of the victim are still available for questioning,

Media reporters, especially investigative journalists have a hard time hitting the most important angles to that same murder story even if they could interview everyone.  It is definitely more difficult to investigate a historical event that happened a century ago!

This is why the matter of accuracy is generally an ideal to be pursued in earnest, while researchers and writers of historical accounts have had to be contented, at least temporarily, with presenting their data in the order of their comparative credibility of the conflicting sources of information and the comparative plausibility of the conflicting data. 

Which source is more credible about a Katipunan event in 1896, a mere spectator writing a few days after the event or a direct participant recalling the event after 30 years?  There are no simple answers to questions like this, especially if various possible motives are to be considered fully.

For this reason, an account on a historical event four centuries ago may still be drastically altered if new research could unearth additional data supportive of the version of the story that had earlier been dismissed as improbable.  Even the history book should be alive, with its accounts forever open to refinements in reliability. 

Some of the students taking a Philippine History course this semester may turn out to be among future discoverers of one fact or another that would force a drastic revision of historical accounts that we have been made to memorize as “sacred.”

There is no such “sacredness” in the living study of  history!

B. Second ‘D’: Daloy. 

Daloy – the storyline. “KahaNgaBuk” – history as a past-present-future continuum.

1. Relate the Dates: The Matter of Chronology and Time Lapse

DETAILS are important if the fibers of fact are woven by critical analysis into a profound comprehension of the second “D” in the framework: Daloy or Flow. 

A date in history is proved significant only in relation to another date. This relation establishes chronology and time lapse. Chronology: the people of Pasig under the Katipunero Gen. Valentin Cruz assaulted and overran the Spanish garrison at Pasig on August 29, 1896; the following day, the victorious Pasiguenos joined

the bigger Katipunan group in the Battle of Pinaglabanan, established to have been held on August 30, 1896, but stubbornly still billed as the “First Major Battle of the Katipunan,” a debacle.

What a gross chronological inaccuracy, this label, just to be able to say that the first victory of the Katipunan was in Binakayan, Cavite!

This was pointed out in 1996 by Pasig historians led by the recently-deceased Dean Carlos Tech, to then National Centennial Commission chair Salvador H. Laurel, who promised a correction but no such correction has come.

Let’s deal with time lapse, and consider this: we fully revere the heroism of Gen. Gregorio del Pilar’s last stand at Tirad Pass that delayed by some years Aguinaldo’s taking the oath of allegiance to the American flag, but pay little attention to the fact that heroism at Mactan delayed by 44 years, or almost half a centrury, the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.

The details are to be fully established and proportionately appreciated only by finding their appropriate and actual places within the storyline of history.  Otherwise, the glimpses of scenes do not make up a logical flow in the minds of the students. 

Such comprehension of logical flow would be an invaluable factor in making them feel our very real connection with our heroic ancestors of historical chapters past, giving them full reason to be proud of a rich bayanihan and kabayanihan heritage that would surely inspire and guide them in present-day and future chapters in this same lifestory of this same nation. 

Without any sense of daloy or flow, of storyline, our familiarity with Philippine history would be akin to watching the same dramatic slapping, fighting and love-making scenes in a third-rate movie that we had all seen in the television promo and finding no storyline because in the first place the producer had not required the scriptwriter to make one.

What kind of historia has no istorya?  Ours, the way we have been teaching this in schools!

No Need to Memorize Dates!

DATES, dates, and more dates. This is not about what an otherwise lonely bachelor would have or try to have to overcome his loneliness. Neither is this about oversized raisins. I'm talking about dates in our history, the kind of dates my teachers made me memorize (and made me hate history as a subject).

When it comes to "Dates in Our History," the first one that many people remember is March 16, 1521. After all, we were all made to memorize that date as that of Magellan's discovery of the Philippines.

So wide has been the familiarity, the degree of mass memorization, that a popular comedian singer, Yoyoy Villame, started one of his songs precisely with what supposedly happened on that date.

So wide and deeply-entrenched has been its mass memorization that many would raise their eyebrows way past their foreheads whenever I say we were memorizing the wrong date all along.

Yes, the history books have quietly been corrected in more recent decades. They now say March 17.   What happened was Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler, had failed to account for what has become a science-based international convention of adding or subtracting one day whenever one crosses the Pacific Ocean, depending on direction. Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor date; it was already December 8 here but the official date is the date of event where it happened. Magellan's discovery happened here, so the date is March 17.

No Big Deal!

But what's the big deal, really? Save for some degree of embarrassment that we were almost swearing by that date as gospel truth, it really didn't matter much if it was the 16th or the 17th. The event and its consequence was and will be the same even if we were all to agree, arbitrarily of course, that it happened on “February 45, 1521”! 

A date in history can be shown to be of any significance only as we relate it to another date.  Interrelating two dates shows their chrono­logical order and the time lapse between them.

Only in the order or the time lapse or both can we find any significance -- understanding, pro­found lessons and inspiration -- in those dates. Part of what was exciting about the founding of Rizal's La Liga Filipina and Bonifacio's Katipunan, with widely disparate aims, is that they both happened within only five days in mid-1892!

Take March 16 or 17, 1521. What is significant about that? We know that within a few weeks from that date, native forces in Mactan led by Lapu-Lapu annihilated those of Magellan, and even killed this conquistador, in battle. After being routed, and subsequently almost finished off by the forces of Humabon in mainland Cebu, the Spanish expedition, or what was left of it, packed its bags and fled homeward. It was still 1521 then. Let me relate that date (1521) now to year 1565 when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi was able to finally establish Spanish colonial rule in our archipelago. Subtraction tells us that our Victory at Mactan postponed by 44 years, roughly half a century, the Spanish colonization of our history.

I would prefer having our pupils and students remember that data (the roughly-half-century delay) more than exact dates which can even turn out to be inaccurate or at least debatable (like the place we were memorizing to be the site of the first mass).

It's good that many people are somewhat familiar about Bohol's 85 years (almost a century) of freedom from Spanish rule due to Dagohoy's successful revolt, without really memorizing the starting and ending years. For those who wish to know, these dates are in the history books, anyway.

Data storage is a function of records, from scrolls and books to microdiskettes and CDs; the human mind was created for greater things, like thinking, analyzing, appreciating.

March 16, 1521 is not even a date in our history. On that date, Magellan was about to "discover the Philippines," but even he didn't know that-- it was to happen the following day. Our ancestors couldn't care less. And even when he came and he saw and he tried to conquer, the heroes of Mactan foiled his attempt. And set back Spanish intrusion and domination over us by about half a century. 

What did happen on March 16, 1521 in our history was what our ancestors were doing all over the archipelago on that date and in the decades that came before and the decades that followed.   What kind of civilization was flourishing here before the Spaniards destroyed our culture and historical records? We practically don't know. How much do we know about our history beyond memorization of unrelated dates that are more important to foreigners than to our ancestors? Beyond when, where and who and what, do we also ask how and why?

2. Time Lapse: Lesson From a Ruler

There is an important realization to be had with the help of any one-foot ruler.

If we take the Chou dynasty chronicles of B.C. 722 as the hypothetical starting point (as the date of the oldest existing written record), and 2009 as the end, we have had at least 2777 years of written history, or about "230 years per inch" on the ruler. It was only in the last 488 years, or roughly a mere one-sixth of this entire time span, that we have been under any measure of Spanish and American domination (1521 to present).

Looking at a one-foot ruler, therefore, we can say that we are relatively familiar with only its last two-inch segment, from the "10" marking to the end. We know next to nothing about almost the entire length (ten inches) of that ruler!

3. Two Vital Questions for Every “Historic” Event

Questions: (to be answered before and after reading the Input Article) About any historical event, which of the questions are most important to ask?  Who? what? when? where? how? how many? why? so what? As the economic hardships suffered by the Filipino people continue to worsen, blame should be laid entirely on whoever is in power. Is it possible or desirable to trace the effects of centuries-old events

IF ANY event in the past is to be considered “historic” or “historically significant,” the significance of that event should be fully established by answering this pair of earnest questions: 

First, the inquisitive “Why?”    Second, the irreverent “So what???”  These questions would elicit explanations that clarify the place of that event in the continuum of the flow, the “storyline” of our collective history.

The question “Why?” seeks to understand the events and circumstances imediately preceding the event, including the motivations and capabilities of the people involved. 

Things, even accidents, do not just happen; they are caused.  If we do not know the causes or reasons of an event, we have a very shallow familiarity of it (we just know that it happened). Even if we fully know the details, including exact sound and color and exact names and places and precise time, even down to exact seconds, of occurrence, if we don’t know the reasons why the event took place, we really don’t really know about it.

The question “So what?” seeks to validate the judgment that the event is indeed of historical signi­ficance.  It seeks to establish noteworthy consequences, which are of two kinds: first, the immediate conse­quences, which would carry our consciousess for­ward along the storyline; and, second, the present-day consequences, which would convince us that the event has an effect on our character and our lives and is therefore worth remembering, worth studying by pres­ent-day students. This establishes the relevance of histo­rical studies to contemporary lives, our own lives now.

So what if the illegitimate authoritarian regime of President Marcos (1974-86) got a lot of loans from foreign creditors and so what if the extremely popular President Aquino chose to announce to the world a policy to pay all those loans to the last cent?  So what?—well, we all carry now the giant (still growing)  foreign debt burden. All of us are paying now, including those who were born way after 1986! 

The worsening economic hardship we suffer now is the never-ending consequence of those loans to Marcos and that ill-advised policy of the Aquino administration.  And yet, people of shorter memory would blame only Aquino’s successors and all “corrupt” government officials for our economic woes!

4. Taking the Long View

MANY good poems and sayings carry the existential idea that the past is a mere memory, the future is a mere promise, and only the present is real. A very close friend even said that thinking of the past makes one recall a lot of frustrations, and thinking of the future only brings on worries. I can agree. But I would like to ask—How long, really, is the present?

Kamalaysayan came out as early as 1991 with what may have been an advanced response to this: “Let us bring all lessons and happy memories from the past into the decisions and actions that we make and take in the present in order to prepare well for a pleasant future.”

This assigns to us, the present generation, a vital role that connects in thought, word and deed the lives of the Filipino people of the past with the lives of the Filipino people of the future. Abdication on this responsibility is a great sin of omission that may result in irreparable loss for this nation’s patrimony, indeed a great crime to our nation, albeit an inadvertent one due to sheer ignorance.

The name of this regular history-oriented section of LightShare Digest is “Kaha-Nga-Buk,” a coined word standing for a component of dynamic sense of history. Some would understandably imagine it to mean “an admirable book.”

The term actually combines the starting syllables of the Filipino/Tagalog words “kahapon,” “ngayon” and “bukas” (yesterday, today and tomorrow).

About a decade ago, I coined this as only one word to emphasize the real relationships among events along a historical timeline, to stress the seamless continuity in the the collective lifestory flow  (also called “history”) of our

people from ancient past to the distant future.While the word “ngayon” was used as “today” in the sequence described above, this same word also translates into English as “now.”

And “now” actually refers to a very stretchable amount of time. The word “now” can refer to a period within this day or within these few minutes. “Right this split-second” would, of course, be one meaning.  Still, “right this nanosecond” would be another.

The boundary between present-tense “now” and the past-tense “then” is seen more as one between qualitatively-different conditions. “Yesterday,” sang the Beatles, “all my troubles seemed so far away.” How long a “now” was being implied to follow that? The word “now” in the next line covers the entire stretch of time these troubles look as though they’re here to stay. How long a “now” that will be depends on what happens next. The same goes for the line, “Now we are tall, and Christmas trees are small!” Up to when shall we be tall and those trees small?

Maybe forever!

The ‘Longer Now’

Or take this summary passage from The Celestine Prophecy: A Pocket Guide to the Nine Insights by James Redfield, specifically the chapter title, The Second Insight: The Longer Now:

“Our new spiritual awakening represents the creation of a more complete worldview, which replaces a five-hundred-year-old preoccupation with secular survival and comfort. While this preoccupation with tech­nological advancement was an important step, our awakening to life’s coincidences is opening us up to the real purpose of human life on this planet and the real nature of our universe.”

The just-ended past, where we, as the entire Human Race, were pre-occupied with secular survival and comfort, spanned more than half a millennium; it is too early to tell how long the current “now” of our spiritual awakening will last before we enter the centuries- or millennia-long “now” of having fully awakened to cosmic and divine realities. (Some scholars believe that short of that, the homo sapiens is actually still in the pre-human stage of evolution.)

In the Katipunan’s initiation rites, three questions on history were asked with pre-formulated three answers applicant members were expected to reply with. These questions asked for the summary of conditions in three distinct periods as the kahapon, ngayon and bukas of Philippine history. If we were to answer these questions now, in English, we can say:

Kahapon (yesterday): a period spanning thousands upon thousands of years where free communities and free peoples lived in the islands we now call Philippines (known by other names before being branded in “honor” of a dishonorable Spanish monarch), with the communities in gradual process of voluntary clustering and naturally developing a “national synergy.”

Ngayon (today/now): a period, more than four centuries so far, in which the majority people of the Philippines got and remained colonized/dominated by foreign powers, a present period that will last until we Filipinos are able to really free ourselves from foreign domination on the  Philippine economy,  culture,  educational system, politics, military, etc. etc.

Bukas (tomorrow): People of the Philippines fully freed from foreign domination, with us Filipinos collectively in full and productive control of our lives.
Didn’t the second period end with the defeat and departure of the Spanish colonialists? Hasn’t that “ngayon” ended with the escape of Japanese officers and soldiers or in the “granting of Philippine independence” by the Americans in 1946?

By now, AD2010, has that “ngayon” really ended? Any substantial depth of analysis of Philippine society would shout or groan out a negative response.

C. Third ‘D’: Diwa. 

Diwa – The spirit – the intention and worldview

Positive Intention – Collective Quest for the Truth

Questions: (to be answered before and after reading the Input Article) Do we know nothing at all, or do we know enough, about our history? What of the things we were made to memorize in earlier History lessons are now being held in serious doubt? What did Jose Rizal, Austin Craig and Conrado Benitez discover in Chinese historical records about our ancestors?

IF BLACK Americans find much inspiration in Alex Haley's Pulitzer-winning true-story novel, titled Roots, which traces his own ancestry and bloodline history through seven generations back to a small village in Africa, so might Filipinos all over the world find some sort of invigoration of the psyche by finding and cherishing our own roots

Dare We Admit That We Know So Little?

Of course it would be wrong for anyone to say that we know absolutely nothing about "pre-Spanish Philippines" (term not coming from our own point of view).  After all, we did study in class about "waves of migration," the datus, the aliping namamahay and aliping saguiguilid, the baranggays and the so-called "trials-by-ordeal."  Much of these really have to be rediscussed in an honest-to-goodness review.

For example, it turns out from wider research that the migration pattern in our region of the world was all southward, so how could we easily believe now those “waves of migration” going northward? 

We were told that the Indonesians and the Malays joined our aborigine Aetas here to become our people’s ancestors!  

Really now, even as many of us were going with the Ramos administration’s dream for a newly-industrialized “Philippines 2000” how much did we know about the lives of our ancestors during the time of "Philippines 1000"?

How were they during the time of Christ? Believe it or not, they were already here that early, in fact, much earlier.

At the time Jesus Christ was being crucified, our ancestors already had the renowned Banaue rice terraces and the Manunggul Jar (more than 3,500 years old by now), which proved their belief in the Afterlife. 

In a chapter he wrote for the book Philippine Progress Prior to 1898, which he co-authored with Conrado Benitez, Austin Craig cited passages in Chinese history, including chronicles covering the Chou dynasty (B.C. 722), describing active interaction between the Asian mainland and what later came to be called the Philippine archipelago.

Rizal, in his "The Indolence of the Filipinos," asserted that "the Filipinos have not always been what they are," and cited as witnesses to this point "all the historians of the first years" after Magellan's expedition.

Wrote he:

"Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Malayan Filipinos carried on an active trade, not only among themselves but also with all the neighboring count ries. A Chinese manuscript of the 13th Century, translated by Dr. Hirth, which we will take up at another time, speaks of China's relations with the islands, relations purely commercial, which mention is made of the activity and honesty of the traders of Luzon, who took the Chinese products and distributed them throughout all the islands, traveling for nine months, and then returned to pay religiously even for the merchandise that the Chinamen did not remember having given them."

And the little we know, from Rizal, Craig and the others, is not anything that describes the "notorious Pinoy" that we now tend, with resignation, to identify ourselves with.

On the contrary, we do have reason to be proud of our ancestry and heritage, if we could only diminish our collective ignorance and disinterest in our own lifestory as the people of these islands.

1. Intellectual Honesty Needed in Seeking and Sharing Learnings

INTELLECTUAL honesty and real humility based on such honesty are part of any honest-to-goodness search for learnings and of any attempt to discuss such learnings in earnest.  No one would be at real peace while fooling himself into accepting what one knows to be wrong or essentially inadequate (also wrong) information. 

We cannot afford to accommodate, much less contribute, in earnest discourse any intentional lies, distortions, tricks, and half-truths for any reason whatsoever.  We have to acknowledge  what is at any point not yet really known or established. 

Therefore, humility in the context of intellectual honesty is not the mere politeness of the hypocrytical type. It is a genuine admission to self and public whatever measure of uncertainty actually exists, because “the more you know, the more you realize that you do not know.” 

Whenever possible, inform­ation released should be cited as to source and also labeled with its status  of  certainty, i.e. whether it is a proven certainty, a likelihood, a possibility, etc. Because we need reliable information, all who spread inaccurate data labeled as “certain” shall be made to lose their cre­dibility; let not such dishonesty, or at least irres­ponsibility, be taken lightly, for such mal­practices and misdeeds would erode the validity of our discourse.

Because we need the widest breadth of participation, we should shun im­mature impatience and elitist arrogance that would discourage many from participating. One who is secure about the validity of his own point can very well afford to speak his truth “quietly and clearly” and not to condescend or dismiss with arrogance the other persons’ declarations. Only those who cannot rely on the real merits of their points are often tempted to employ psychological, structural or other means, to assert their point among those who remain unconvinced.

b. Point of View: The Need for the ‘Tayo’ Discourse.

POINT OF VIEW is most important in this question: Whose history are we studying, anyway?  The answer should define which viewpoint, what flow and events, which details, are to be given focus in the study.

Personal and Collective Histories

If we are studying the biography of Dr. Jose Rizal, it is important to seek out to the best of our capabilities the truth in the “Retraction Controversy.”  If we are studying the history of the Filipino people as a whole, discussions about Rizal’s alleged retraction can be mentioned but the crucial question would be: what, if any, was the effect on the people of Spanish claims that Rizal retracted. Did the people stop believing in what he had written? 

If we are studying the biography of Ferdinand Magellan, even the name of his brother-in-law who got involved in his project may really be significant. Otherwise…. 

And we come to the matter of “discovering” or “rediscovering” the Philippines.

From whose point of view do we talk about regarding this 1521 event? From the point of view of Europe, thitherto ignorant of our islands and our people existing beyond what they had thought to be the edge of a flat world, Magellan did discover the Philippines, no ifs, no buts, and no sense “re-discovering” us, either.

From our point of view here in what they and only they can have reason to call “Far” East, from the view of Filipinos then, now and to come, we discovered Magellan and whom he represented, a pink-colored people of heavy metal clothing, greedy for gold, with powerful weapons, big boats, peculiar behavior, symbols and rituals. And we did not have any reason to “rediscover” him, either.

From our point of view here in what they and only they can have reason to call “Far” East, from the view of Filipinos then, now and to come, we discovered Magellan and whom he represented, a pink-colored people of heavy metal clothing, greedy for gold, with powerful weapons, big boats, peculiar behavior, symbols and rituals. And we did not have any reason to “rediscover” him, either.

From the point of view of studying the respective local histories of Limasaua and Butuan, as communities, who have been rivals for the controversial distinction of hosting the first mass in these islands, the challenge has been to make any connection of relevance of that mass to any felt impact in those local histories.

Failing to establish any, both communities must admit that the competition pertains not to any noble effort to complete their own heritage but entirely to the lucrative monetary potentials of the claims, used in luring in tourists.

Indeed, for example, aside from tourism valuie now, what has been the impact on local history and sense of pride of Leytenos in the dubious disctinction that a certain incompetent but superstar American general and  chose the shores of Leyte to land on in returning to recolonize the Philippines? 

With due respect to those who seek a sense of pride from pure luck, the self-respecting Filipino, proud of his own people’s heroic heritage, would find the MacArthur landing hereabouts a cheap, even dubious, kind of glory.

The ‘Tayo’ Discourse

The “Tayo” Discourse, according to the “Pang-Tayong Pananaw,” seeks to correct earlier frameworks of study of our people and our history, and seeks to reestablish what was destroyed by the colonizers when they came here. 

It seeks to redeem our original sense of collective self-awareness and collective self-esteem, an inner view of our collective selves that is far more important than impressions of us in the eyes of other peoples.

Before the Spaniards came, our ancestors had already developed a system of writing using symbols representing syllables. This is what is now called baybayin or pantigan, more popularly called by its Academe-coined name, “alibata.”

Unable to understand these writings, the Spanish clergy ordered them destroyed after judging them as “works of the devil.”  Few artifacts survived, including the copperplate document found in Laguna just a few years ago. 

We have reason to believe that these writings told our ancestors of things about our ancestors, the original pang-tayo view, where we are the subject, the speakers and the addressees in the discourse.

There is even a theory being currently researched on for possible wider validation that some of these traditionally-written manuscripts referred to Christian beliefs and practices among our ancestors long before the arrival of the colonizing Spaniards who, as claimed by Spain, were the ones who brought Christianity to these islands!

Spanish colonizers made several attempts to write to inform  their own people  in Spain  about us  –  about our people and our land.  This was the “Sila” Discourse, where the Tagalog-speaking Spanish friar would be saying “Sila na mana Indio ay mana tonto…” in explanations addressed to their compatriots. The Americans continued this pattern, with the pro-colonalism politicians and writers telling their fellow-Americans that we were unfit for self-governance. 

The Taft Commission made sure that Philippine history be rewritten, this time from the American colonizer’s point of view. Many of the early Filipino historians maintained such basically foreign viewpoint. That was the “Sila” Discourse.

Earlier, in the last decades of Spanish rule, Rizal and the other activists of the Propaganda Movement carried on a “Kami” Discourse.  These were articles and orations from us, about us, but addressed to Spaniards and other Europeans, telling them that we were a noble race being oppressed by Spanish friars and colonial authorities.  “Kami ay marangal; kami ay inaapi.”

What we urgently need now is the “Tayo”  Discourse.  We have to have Filipino opinion leaders addressing Filipino audiences about Filipino characteristics, woes, aspirations, common efforts, and directions.  We need to tell ourselves the Truth about ourselves from the inermost recesses of the Filipino soul, and stop falling completely for foreign standards, judgments and remote analyses about our own lives as a nation. Such homegrown consensus, taking consideration of foreign viewpoints but no longer beguiled or intimidated by them, would be an important component of our efforts to really build our sense of nationhood.

2. Integrative and Dynamic World View

WHO SHOULD REALLY BE our national hero?  We have often heard this question, or have even joined in raising it.  Anyone who thinks within the 3-D view of history would be careful not to simplistically, much less emotionally, choose between Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio.  The question is not a valid one to ask in the first place; it is divisive in its inception, by intention. 

The Americans, who told us in the early 1900s that we needed to have a national hero, do not have one. And therefore they see no need to quarrel over the comparative merits of Washing­ton, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln, whom they call and venerate as, collectively, their “Founding Fathers.” But the U.S. government with its colonial intentions saw value in keeping the Filipinos divided over a lot of things.

On this specific question they really succeeded and so we are still divided. Answering the question is to perpetuate this useless divisiveness.  It falls within the intellectual tendency strong among westerners to dissect things and overproject particles and individuals, as opposed to the more oriental and more spiritual predisposition to focus more on the integration of things.

Rizal and Bonifacio both shone and led in different periods of our history. Each one of them responded to a specific set of socio-political circumstances that differed from that addressed by the other. And the response of one in his own time and circumstance cannot be fairly compared to the response of the other to the latter's own challenging circumstance.  And there isn’t even any real need to compare them. 

Rizal took on from the period of Gom-Bur-Za when there was nascent collective consciousness of our distinction from, discrimination by, and basic equality to, the colonizers. There was need to amplify this further, and this could best be projected in political debate and other forms of competition with the colonizers in their own games and in their own country. Rizal led in this Propaganda Movement along with Marcelo H. del Pilar and Graciano Lopez Jaena, and, in their own distinct way, Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo. They were also able to learn and show from their own experience the futility of any further expatriate struggle for reform. Rizal persisted in the struggle for reform, but brought it home. He founded the La Liga Filipina, and his experience of being arrested and exiled to Dapitan showed that even this was no longer workable.  (Rizal came out with a statement in December 1896 condemning the Revolution, but even the Katipuneros understood it to have been made under duress -- he was a prisoner in anticipation an execution, and, contrary to popular belief, he was not perfect.)  

Bonifacio really learned a lot from the writings of Rizal, Plaridel and the others, but integrated them appropriately and creatively with his own studies of indigenous pre-Spanish philosophies and of the beliefs of proto-nationalist protest Christianity in the great tradition of Herman Pule's Confradia. Contrary to popular belief that he was semi-illiterate, Bonifacio understood three western languages, was a philosopher and a brilliant literary writer, whose statesmanship was superior to most others.

He was in a good position to lead in the birthing of this nation and he did not balk at this. He formed the Katipunan, led it in a moral and ethical education campaign and organizing work for four long years, before finally presiding over a state assembly (‘Asam­blea Magna’) in Pasig that decided to start the Revolution by the next rainy season. He led in planning and undertaking the brilliant military scheme for a Katipunan victory in August 29-30, 1896, which could have succeeded if only the Katipunan contingents from Cavite had shown up to perform their assigned crucial role of capturing Intramuros, after Bonifacio himself led the decoy force that made the Spanish forces leave the fortified city en masse.

Bonifacio was responding well to challenges that had to be faced in his own time in our history, quite different from the challenges that had to be faced by Rizal. So why compare them?  Or why compare only them? 

We have Apolinario Mabini, Emilio Jacinto, Marcelo del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena, Tandang Sora, Gregoria de Jesus, Teresa Magbanua, Trinidad Tecson, and Antonio Luna, to name only a few more, and they are all national heroes and heroines in their own right, whose heroism was given the opportunity to be fulfilled and made known to us due to the heroic efforts of countless other Filipinos now unknown to us. 

Lapu-Lapu did not single-handedly repulse the Spanish invasion force the way the biblical David faced Goliath alone in combat.  It was a collective victory won by our ancestors steeped in the synergetic spirit of bayanihan.  It was only the history book writers, akin to the sensationalism of the present-day mass media, that plucked out certain names to be projected as bida, leaving the rest to be practically forgotten as a “cast of a thousand extras.”

An integrative worldview is really needed to comprehend our history accurately and usefully.  Reporting about the workshop on history in a conference of the Lambat-Liwanag, the then mainly-Academe-based network for empowering paradigms, in 2001, the chairman of Kamalaysayan (Kaisahan sa Kamalayan sa Kasaysayan, or Solidarity on Sense of History), University of the Philippines Manila Prof. Bernard LM Karganilla said the following:

“The workshop also brought out the following important points: (1) the synergistic approach must be utilized in the discussion of historic controversies like the dispute over the site and the date of the First Cry of the Revolution (Pugad-Lawin on August 23, 1896), (2) the recognition of the role of women enhances the telling of the story of the Filipinos, (3) there are three decks in the Philippine saga and the discussion of the political aspect must be joined with the economic and the cultural, and (4) the cross-breeding of academic disciplines can bolster our people's understanding of their, our, own history.

“Synergism, which is the ‘cooperative action, as of medicines or muscles, producing a greater effect than the sum  of the  individual  effects,’  is necessary for the construction of a true national history.

“Keeping in mind that our society consists of 200 linguistic and ethnic groups, each sector, class, gender, tribe, organization and region is obliged to write its particular history to (prove that it qualifies) as a building block.”

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