W HILE cries for change have long been the most consistent refrain of Philippine society, there have been great debates on the questions of who, what, why, when and how to change. Administration after administration, sincere efforts have been made toward reforming bureaucracy and strengthening the institutions of government. Momentary improvements have been achieved, but things invariably get worse. T he improvements came from the sincerity of the efforts toward change, but the eventual slide to the unavoidable worsening comes from stupidity. From this truism which afflicts more than just Philippine society, the saying which goes "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" was born. G ood intentions plus wrong assumptions pave the way to hell. T his is the story of the Filipino people. Even now when the country wallows in poverty and corruption, there remain many in government who give their best to pursue reforms. Unfortunately, they will eventually give up in utter frustration. Or surrender to the lure of corruption and contribute to the perpetuation of poverty. L ike a body caught in the grip of a debilitating illness, Philippine society has struggled to apply cure after cure on itself to no avail. It has even called on global expertise and recommended therapies in its desperation, but the body degenerates nonetheless. Surely, by now, it should be obvious that neither diagnosis nor prescription has been accurate, much less effective. W ise men have said that fear is the bedrock of errant behavior more than malice. Even clinical psychologists have come to the conclusion that the baser and more destructive vices or cardinal sins are all founded on a more primal emotion fear. Beneath the anger, beneath the greed, beneath the lust or the envy is fear. Y et, even fear itself is not a source emotion. Fear does not arise of itself. A deeper energy causes fear. And that is ignorance. Worse, ignorance invariably graduates to stupidity. I gnorance or stupidity reflects a separation from the truth. It is this separation from the truth that binds man to error more than evil itself. To err is human, they say, but more from ignorance or stupidity than from evil. This must be so because society has learned to tolerate the more massive errant behavior born of ignorance or stupidity while it punishes acts driven by malice. T he wise who guide the rest of mankind toward enlightenment always have a first advice -- be aware. It seems that awareness is the key to the discovery of the truth, as though awareness itself allows the truth to be visible. The lack of awareness blocks much of existence from view and creates blindness, while blindness entraps, immobilizes and imprisons the human being. T ruth, indeed, sets us free. I t has been the great error of mankind to keep searching for the truth from the most exotic places when truth already resides in each one of us. The principle of recognition stems from a resonance of the inner to the outer. From within springs a connection to what is there outside. Even infants do respond to stimuli before they are taught anything. The reality is that the seeds of everything are our birthright. If not, then we can never acknowledge what we are incapable of recognizing. I t is the seed of truth that prods us to be in constant search for it. It is the natural potential of wisdom in each of us that propels the search for more and more of the truth even as we begin to discover it. T he truth begins with our very nature, with who and what we are. It is the lack of awareness, the blindness toward our nature, that makes us ignorant. And it is pride which makes us stupid, the kind of pride that drives us to claim that we know what we do not know. I t was stupidity which drove our foreign masters to impose their ways on us beyond raping us of our material resources. Even then, colonizers were involved in the cloning process, but partial cloning only. Our foreign masters thought they were superior to us and wanted to keep that advantage. Thus, they tried to teach us but as pets, docile but usefully functional. T o do that, they had to return us to ignorance. They had to distort our understanding, our very value system, and erase our memories. They had to reformulate our culture, bastardize what they could use, and obliterate what threatened them. They had to hide the truth. They had to turn the clarity of our sight and the brightness of our soul into a dark, distorted arena of confusion and despair. They turned our intelligence into stupidity. That way, we had to learn how to cling to them for survival. That way, we had to learn about scarcity in the midst of plenty and mendicancy despite a history of achievement. W hen our foreign masters left our shores, their teachings did not. Our natural aptitude for learning became a curse, as we retained foreign values and practices and adopted them as the truth -- our truth. We are not slaves anymore, but neither are we free. The truth remains hidden, and so is our freedom. W e must, therefore, strive to reconnect to the historical truth, to hunger and search for it. Our very salvation hinges on the rediscovery of our identity, our history. There can be no move forward where there is no inertia from our past, no recognized roots to propel us towards transformation and growth. We must look back, we must look in, we must find our truth. Reference: --- http://www.inq7.net/opi/2002/mar/15/opi_jmontelibano-1.htm