Chapter 1 

An Urgent Imperative 

Sense of History Defined

SENSE OF HISTORY or “kamalayan sa kasaysayan” (or, for short, “kamalaysayan,” as a common noun) means knowing what history is and is not, it means having a keen interest in, and working knowledge of, the main threads and most significant events and developments in our nation's “LifeStory,” and having a consistent conscious effort to apply the lessons and frames of history to present tasks of opinion leadership and decision-making.

Such sense of history would help enable the people to grapple effectively with the problems of the present and chart a bright future for this and the coming generations.

As of now, there is a gross lack of consciousness among the people about our national heritage. This is evidenced by the absence of unity on a clear national purpose and direction and by the dominance of foreign over Filipino role models.

There is also the widespread aversion to the study of historical subjects. This is due to the usual way they have been taught in the schools, using approaches that impose the memorization of so many names and dates but fail to trace the more essential strands of development all the way to their present-day consequences.

Should anybody be surprised, then, that many Filipino children aspire to be come American or Japanese citizens when they grow up?  Don't their parents, trying to earn dollars, prefer to sell their products and services, at times even themselves, to foreigners? 

There is an urgent need for all of us to go back to our roots, in a vibrant enhancement of our sense of history. It is urgent because the process becomes increasingly difficult as the problems of alienation and fragmentation worsen, and as the present batch of children grows up ignorant, even contemptuous, of their national identity.

This is unfair to our Inang Bayan because there is actually so much beauty and greatness to be loved, if only these are known enough and cultivated for more greatness for the present and for the future.

Why It Is an Urgency

Many Filipinos working in various countries overseas are raising their families in social contexts where they are, and the children of most of these overseas Filipinos and immigrants of Filipino origin carry with them the lack of  sense of history, and the resultant lack of self-identity and self-esteem that they have long harbored even when they had not yet left the homeland.

Bearing the idea that ours is an inferior system created by an inferior race, they cannot but pass this self-demeaning idea on to their offspring who are growing up in these foreign lands, idolizing the other peoples’ ways and supposed “superiority.”

An entire new generation of Filipinos is emerging that is potentially more slavish in attitude when relating to other peoples. Identifying themselves more with those host countries, especially if Western, they even develop the tendency to condescend upon compatriots in the homeland.

This misdirected blame game ignores completely how our country’s economy, which was second only to Japan’s less half a century ago was turned into the “second-placer from below” by the pro-foreign strategies and policies imposed on the Philip­pines by the institutions of international usury.

These institutions have been led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) after the Diosdado Macapagal administration sought and obtained our first foreign loan from the WB during the early ‘60s.

A strong sense of history among our people would have put to rest much earlier the conveniently recurring lie that native corruption, instead of foreign exploitation, mainly accounts for mass poverty in our country.

Sense of history, which includes an inquisitive and critical mind, would unearth and highlight for all, the facts in the centuries-old patterns of direct and indirect colonialism behind the discrepancy between the lifesyles in developed Western countries and lifestyles in the Philip­pines and other impoverished countries.

The discrepancies are not matters of discussion of comparison and contrast. They are glaring truths deserving to be discussed and understood fully as subjects of causality. These countries are so rich not only in contrast to the rest of the world, but precisely because of what they have done to the rest of the world and to the planet itself.

Without a sense of history, we cannot know ourselves (or, to highlight our wcollect­ivity,) ourself.  We cannot know our capabilities, options and prerogatives, We cannot know the various available trajectories for our development, Instead of arising to advance to improve our conditions, we can only wallow in self-pity and self-flagellation. The earlier we can end this situa­tion the better for our emerging new generations.

Towards Defining History

FOR MANY PEOPLE, history is defined as a record of the past.  One common illustration is a thick book.  But this is like equating your very life itself to your autobiography, or worse, equating yourself to your mere image in a framed portrait.

No, history is the very life, across a definite or indefinite stretch of time of actual existence and development, of an individual or a group of individuals or an entity formed by individuals like an institution, a corporation or a community.

It is not a mere record of it’s birth, activities, experiences, and death, but the very content any such recording seeks to capture.

History is not an image or a written record; although we do have historical images and historical records.  Just as you cannot equate Nature to Science, because Nature lives and Science can only observe and study it, you cannot symbolize history with a book, even a very thick one!  

As the long and ever-unfinished “novel-life” of a collectivity of individuals living in a specific part of the world for millennia, the history of the Filipino people is their, our, collective life as lived --  as experienced, as witnessed, as suffered, as enjoyed, as learned from – by batches or generations of the same Filipino people, and not as merely recorded in books and documents, even if it were possible to record it completely. 

For one thing, any written record can only pertain to past events, and the past events in the life of this nation form only part of this life. There is the very real current circumstance being addressed right now by the actions (including non-actions) by the Filipino people as individuals, local communities, sectoral and occupational groupings, and as a a national community. 

And there are the future events still being shaped by plans and quiet factors and the molding of character of our citizenry.  History is not a relic of what is completely past. It extends indefinitely from past to present to future, making up a continuum in time called “KahaNgaBuk” (Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas) belonging to only one unbroken and seamless stream.

“History is not about the Past. Rather it is about the Path.” In a fairly recent blog posting this writer refers to “the path already trod by the people collectively, which leads to the point of deciding on a new path  subsequently to take  in the hopeful periods of the of the Morrow.”

Instead of what events happened in the past, it should rather focus on how have most of the people been living, and what factors determined it? What have been their patterns of thinking, behavior and interaction, and what factors determined these? how briefly or how long did those patterns last? what factors accounted for all the quick and the slow changes? what patterns of thinking, behavior and interaction are prevalent in our lives now? and what will they likely be in the coming decades and centuries?

For another thing, any written record cannot make a complete reflection even of past events.  The observation, recollection and recording of the events definitely reflect the choices made by the recorders and writers according to their personal biases and judgments as to which events, which actions and which persons and entities their records would be focused on.

Chances are, these would be all about “superstars” and their “super-feats.”  Chances are, the actions of the ordinary people and the “sub-ordinary people,” like the women and the indigenous minorities, would be downplayed if not altogether ignored.

We are all called upon to do our share in an urgent education-promotion campaign to strengthen and enhance the people's "kamalayan sa kasaysayan," their sense of history. 

Otherwise, many more Bonifacios and Rizals may have to die, including us or at least some of our loved­ones and admired-ones, before we realize the need to move together towards a future of real freedom and real progress.  And if more heroes are indeed killed for espousing these ideals, most of us may not be prepared to even just take notice, unless these heroes and heroines had earlier been among the prominent individuals in our society.

Leaders’ and Visionaries’ Dreams

TO HIGHLIGHT the importance of the futuristic or forward-looking component of history as an continuum, co-terminus with existence itself, we have to grasp the value of collective dreams in the people’s attainment of collective proactive role in the determination of their collective history.

These collective dreams start off as dreams only of a few that these few persons succeed in making even just a critical mass of the rest of the population adopt as their very own and act to transfer to the level of real-life reality.

The Kamalaysayan organization recently came out with a challenge directed at leaders or would-be leaders of the people to forge and refine their own dreams and convincingly present these to the people as both “desirable” and “doable.”  One would discover that to be able to do so effectively, they ought to base their dreams and general plans on factors that have been created by past history and current conditions.

It would be a clear indicator of their individual preparedness to be the people’s chosen leaders how well they can craft such dreams and gain a wide following for them.

Kamalaysayan’s challenge, targetting mainly the candidates for executive and legislative posts in the 2010 national and local elections, says the following, in part:

Leadership is a word that refers to the function of influencing other people to cooperate in pursuing and achieving clear collective goals. This involves two simultaneous directions of movement -- the forward movement from present reality to the desired reality, and the inward movement of consolidation or “solidification” of all participants into a greater degree of cohesion, teamwork and harmony.

This presupposes the attainment of a clarity of goals.

Without this, the leadership function has to start with encouraging and efficient facilitation of the consensus-building process applied to having collective clarity on the main concerns being addressed, on the general direction of the forward movement, and the specific plans that would include sub-plans and assigned specific roles.

In this situation, the leadership function covers the presentation of well-thought-out points of attention and carefully-crafted proposals, or the act of encouraging and efficient facilitation of collective wisdom aforming, or both.

Of course, the roles are discussed after the goals. Teams come after the clear syntheses of individual dreams. And finally they assign or self-assign roles to play in the implementation.

Would-be leaders of our country, in various scopes of constituency, are therefore challenged to lead in restoring our people’s faith in dreaming, in earnest and consequential dreaming. They are seriously challenged now by our heroic history to “Dare Declare Your Own Doable Dreams” and also your Realistic Plans to Set them on the Clear Track to Fulfillment!”

And be earnest in making sure the people will not be frustrated and betrayed still another time by our official leaders presenting “pipe dreams,” empty promises, and later on blaming the world and even God, but never themselves and their lack of earnest effort, for all the better failure their presented dreams and plans would expectedly result in.

We dare to challenge the candidates: Do not even file your candidacies for municipal leadership posts, let alone for national positions, if you cannot even prove that you know clearly what you would do for the fulfillment of your constituents’ dreams!

Do not wait to “cross the bridge when you come to it” upon electoral victory before thinking of what you intend to do for the people’s future.  Neither wait to con­sult with constituents after using their support to win.

Dare declare your own dream and prepare to prove that it is realistic – foresee obstacles and propose realistic ways to overcome them, ways that would not have to depend on monetary resources from external sources but on the sheer will power of the teeming dozens of millions of Filipinos whom your leadership capability can draw in support because your dreams shall have come from them, in the first place.

Will precedes the wallet!

ON THIS MATTER, the late lamented Professor Nito Doria of the University of Sto. Tomas  Social Research Center (UST-SRC), left us with this legacy of wisdom:

“If progress is to be shared and enjoyed by all, then it must be the achievement of all, the result of concerted effort of a responsible citizenry to make progress a way of life for the nation; not the result of some singular heroic effort of some excep­tional individual who does not exist except in myth.

“A responsible citizenry, however, is just a con­cert of responsible individual citizens libe­rated, in­formed and empowered, and made res­ponsible for their own welfare, It must necessarily be in that se­quence of development, for one cannot expect to make a responsible citizen out of one who remains un-liberated, un-informed and un-empowered.

“A strategy for national progress must be an exhilarating liberating factor in the nation’s life, one that will free the Filipinos from the disquiet and listlessness generated by failed models of dogmata that have shackled their mind for centuries and in­evitably made them dependent on and beholden to the patronage of oppressive power.

“Such a strategy can be no less than a new conceptual scheme, no less than what Thomas Kuhn in a landmark dissertation, The Structure of Scien­tific Revolutions, refers to as a ‘paradigm shift.’

Sense of history is also an essential element in a certain legislator’s vision for our country:

“I dream of a Philippines where we celebrate our history, we honor our ancestors, especially our heroes and heroines. And all the ordinary people we never forget, we remember those who went before us.” (source of quote: then-Rep.Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel)

A. Debunking Some Misconceptions

1. It is Not a Book nor a Finished Story

HISTORY IS LIFE, your life, our lives! 

HISTORY IS NOT A LIFELESS diary notebook with exciting dramatic entries, or a thick but equally lifeless book.  History is a living story, a long-running but still ongoing “telenovela” with real-life characters like you and me, a “novel-life.”

And exciting suspense can be felt, because we are deeply involved in the story, literally. We are not just wartching it, and we don’t know what kind of chapters this living story of our lives will be emerging from decisions we now make.

History does not only invite us to eagerly await these coming episodes, as in “Abangan ang susunod na kabanata!”  It challenges us to actively participate in shaping up these forthcoming chapters, without any certainty on whether we shall succeed in getting the desired favorable future and to what extent we possibly can, given the complexity of many factors. 

Patterns have been established in past chapters, but will they repeat themselves predictably in the future?

Indeed, what sort of future episodes of this ever-unfinished novel-life are still forthcoming will be the result of all the actions or non-actions we now take together, hopefully guided by lessons from the past and with full sincere concern for the well-being of the coming generations.

Our own children and grandchildren may either thank us or blame us for the kind of lives they will be living in their own time.  With our own very real and exciting lives now, we are going to be their past history, to be scrutinized by their hindsight, and consequently to be thanked or blamed, as we deserve.

Parental consciousness of preparing well for the socio-economic conditions of their children’s generation is a clear indicator of parental love and caring, the reality of intergenerational bonding.

Parents cannot secure the future of their own children by striving to equip only them with capabilities to cope with and overcome the challenge of future society. Parents do have to take seriously the probable trajectories of society itself. This is why history has to be forward-looking.

B. Knowledge of History vs. Sense of History

1. Remembering From Understanding, Not From Memorizing

Questions: (to be answered before and after reading the Input Article) Do students of History courses see the need to really understand the lessons? What is the difference, if any, of schooling and real education? Explain. What factor makes us remember things we don’t take pains to memorize?

IN HISTORY COURSES, most of the students do get to memorize a lot of data and develop hatred for the subject because of this horrible mental burden, but only a handful, relatively, can make any sense of what they have memorized. And they see no need to understand these at all. After all, most schools are all about memorizations, exams and grades and, eventually, diplomas.

Education is quite another thing altogether.  How many of our students taking up history subjects, for example, are being helped to develop their investigative and analytical skills?  Such skills are needed to have a real grasp of circumstances, analyses and decisions of the past, to draw from them a maximum dosage of inspiration and practical lessons, and to apply such heritage to opinion leadership and decision challenges of the present. 

What would be real education, not mere schooling, is helping them develop such skills.

In this context, the data found useful in analysis would be easily remembered, the ease of remembering is directly proportional to the usefulness.   Do you have the need to memorize a telephone number that you call almost everyday? No!  Its usefulness makes it easy to memorize. You never need to memorize any number or e-mail address you almost never use; you just have to know where to find that listed in a public or private directory. 

So with dates in history. You need the specific date of an event for an analysis you are doing?  That’s when you need to go to the books or the Internet, which had already “memorized” the data for you.  If such data is so useful you’d want to use it often, and then you will get to remember them. There’s practically no need to memorize!

2. The ‘Kamalaysayan Habit’

WHAT is the “Kamalaysayan” or Sense of History Habit?  It is the habit or consistent practice of:

a. being interested more in the essential significance of events, rather than in their trivial details;

b. being interested in the real reasons and the immediate and longterm consequences of events we would recognize as “historical”;

c. being on the lookout for parallels, distinctions and lessons from such events, to apply to present-day challenges of opinion-leadership, decision-making and honorable citizenship; and

d. taking the long view in the changes, for better or for worse, in the lives of the people, and being sensitive to incremental progressions to know whether of not these build up to bigger or more basic and stable ones.

3. Each Individual’s ‘Index of Interest’

ANY INDIVIDUAL person’s level of interest in the study of history is determined by that person’s relationship to the exact configuration of its current chapter (does he or she have any possibility of helping determine the developments in such configuration?) and to the latter’s alternative consequences (does he or she have any significant stake or risk on whichever way the configuration develops?)

This depends directly on the person’s attitude about his or her own significance or potential effect on a situation, on whether he or she is predisposed to try to be of some consequence or the stronger predisposition is to throw up one’s hands in complete surrender, abdi­cating any reason to choose among options and invoke total helplessness. In short, it all depends on whether one sees  himself or herself as  basically  a  sleepwalker, or a mere spectator, or an active co-creator in the un­folding of events.  

For the active, sense and knowledge of history is a necessary useful tool for choosing a role to play and for being able to play it well; for the passive, it is just a burden for the mind.  The individual’s level of interest in history depends on which of the three he or she chooses to be.

Sleepwalkers

The very first issue of  Light-Share Digest  (LD-1, Second Quarter, 2005) carries my piece on being “Happily Awake,” where I share this observation:

 “Many people sleepwalk to the bathroom upon ‘waking up.’  Many others sleepwalk all over town – to work or school and back – the whole day everyday, all their lives! That is not being happily awake. That’s not even being really awake!”

And why do I say “all their lives” in that sentence? Because the storyline is pre-dictated by society’s blueprint of collective expectations. Much pressure is exerted by parents and peers for everyone to just obey that sort of script, and not assert one’s own ardent personal preferences.

Only a minority would pay heed to clarifications that self-determination – whether individual or collective – is an inviolable divine gift implanted in the essence of free will. The rest would benefit much from a reminder from Light-Share Digest  Associate Editor Joydee Elizondo (nee Robledo) in “No Need to Rush to the Wedding Altar” (LD-3, Fourth Quarter, 2005):

“Living by the dictates of society has both its good and bad sides. It is really now up to the person how to make all these unsolicited pieces of advice from all directions work for one’s best interests.”

Many people still, by default, blindly choose to join society’s slow-motion stampede along the predetermined paths as herded by society’s rules.
Many among us have allowed themselves to be trapped in “dust-in-the-wind” existence.

These people have grown so accustomed to the veritable “railroad tracks of life,” the socially-dictated strictly-linear road map of conformism and passivity, obediently obeying what are widely perceived as unalterable ways of proper experience for everyone.

This writer has been conducting mini surveys and focused group discussions, and has observed the trend that majority of our people are contented to be sleepwalkers in our life as a nation or even in their own personal lives.

Spectators

A number of people, overlapping widely with the sleepwalkers, are the spectators of their own lives, the avid readers of their own life stories, each a faithful chronicler or documentor of one’s own novel-life.

These people do not make any long-term road maps on their journeys, but at least they know how to enjoy the trip!

I have written a novel, a number of novelettes and a whole bunch of short stories, where the fictional character  confronts  a  fictional circumstance  in  each of the scenes. I have tried to make each confrontation exciting for readers, each with a number of various plausible outcomes of triumph or defeat on the part of the character, holding the readers in excited suspense as to which scenario would play out further on in the story. With this background of mine that allows for fully appreciating exciting scenes in stories that I read and stories that I write, I have grown to appreciate exciting confrontation scenes in my own life.

In my 1996 book, My NoveLife, I share some thoughts along these lines: We are really characters in novels that are our own lives. Appreciating the series of scenes that have made up my own life as an unfinished novel, I have come to believe that there is a powerful Author who created me as a character, an artistic work-in-progress, and has been setting me up against all sorts of configurations of circumstances for character-development and character-manifestation purposes.

This Great Author has not only been very creative but also skillful and at times even playful, in stringing up suspenseful episodes for characters like me, and has even been doing it all simultaneously, orchestrating how we, as we live our own respective novel-lives, walk in and out of one another’s lives as strong supporting cast or at least in important cameo roles!

Yes, what we often dismiss as plain luck, accidental coincidences and chance encounters are cosmically-scripted “Celestine Coincidences.” The more precise term is serendipity. Deep consciousness of this raises us clearly from the level of long-term sleepwalkers “blowin’ in the wind” to the level of appreciative and, therefore, happy spectators. 

Having been created as characters with the power of choice and the guaranteed freedom to exercise such power of choice, we human beings actually participate in shaping up the novels of our lives.

Co-Authors

Any spectator following the unfolding of a 'teleplay,' a radio drama, a novel or a short story, would somehow form his or her own emotional preference or wish as to how the story would eventually run in succeeding scenes or pages.

The main character developed by a skillful writer would win a strong sympathy or a strong antagonism, and the readers or audience would be moved to celebrate or grieve, as the case may be, this character’s triumph or destruction.

But these readers or audiences would be conscious that the entire stage play has been completely scripted and that members of the cast have memorized that completed script.

There is only room left for wishing the characters well or ill and for anxious curiosity as to how the author had chosen long before how the story is to unfold and end.

But there is one very important story production where the main character and spectator has a real say in the plot outcome and succeeding scenes and chapters.

This is the still-unfinished scripting of the story of your own life. Not only have you been given, right from the start, the opportunity to participate in designing the exciting circumstances you as character would be made to confront, you as a long-designated co-author have been given the chance to participate in designing yourself as the main character in the story of your life.

As a spectator in the story of your own life, you form your wishes as to how the story would unfold in future scenes and chapters, wishing for the main character that is yourself the best of fortunes in the series of circumstances to be confronted. But in contrast to readers and audiences of pre-completed scripts or manuscripts, such wishes carry much weight in forming the story itself – creating desired scenes, pre-altering undesirable ones, making changes in the main characteristics of the main character which have been, up to this point, plainly unexpectable.

As co-author you can transform your own lifestory from one full of torment and suffering to one rich in fun, pleasure and, most important of all, deep and sustainable happiness!

Our status as Co-Authors of our own respective lives has been conferred by the Main Author when we were created as beings with free will. Although we were not told in plain words about that gift of free will, we have gradually discerned this from experience, especially of causality.

The principle of causality has been learned by all humans who have awakened to some substantial degree of wisdom. From a full understanding of causality emerge the profound concepts of responsibility and the proactive mindset.

The Great Author sets you up against all sorts of circumstances, and you as co-author choose how you as main character would respond to all these circumstances, in such manner determining the nature or elements of future circumstances, and at the same time determining how you as main character would respond to similar circumstances in the future. We do our co-authoring by the choices we make. We decide what to do, and then we decide whether or not to stand by the first decision, and we decide how to respond to the consequences of all our decisions.

Yes, indeed, I believe we are all co-authors from the very start.

In the philosophical novel Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield says each one of us as eternal spirit chooses the physical body to use as vehicle for earth life (by choosing which pair of parents that physical body would emerge from), and chooses one’s response to all external influences felt in the course of that earth life. But we have our own different levels of awareness about this. And the aware have had different responses to such consciousness.

Attaining Synergy in Co-Authoring

Strong human synergy can only be attained for social consequencess if enough individuals honorably decide to be proactive and decide as well to develop themselves well as humans, and decide, finally, to band together in close teamwork and harmony as mutually-respecting fellow-humans.

As much as each of us is co-authoring one’s own personal lifestory, choosing and implementing our respective missions in life, we are also collective co-authors of our collective lives, our community histories, simultaneously living as individuals and as communities.

Judging by your own personal behavior, are you a sleepwalker, a spectator or a co-author of your own life?

Do you see any value in striving to be an active co-author?  Think of this and discuss it with your closest friends.

Back to list.