Friday, June 12, 2009

Happy Independence Day?

Although I'm not entirely sure what we have to be happy about. Are we truly independent? Is anyone ever independent? Then how come we can't do anything without consulting somebody else? "Hold on, I'll check with my wife..." or "I'll have to get back to you on that." Heck, I can't even type this article without the spellchecker!

Of course one might argue that this has nothing to do with individual independence. Sure, but then does our country ever do anything independent? Don't we have to rely on the dollar, the world economy, pressure from China, and a million other things whenever our country enact a policy? In fact, probably the only thing that our country does independently is complain about how we are being maligned by other countries in their TV shows and articles--not that it's necessarily true. (I was supposed to say launch Con-Ass without our knowledge, but we all know those congressmen have no independent bone in their bodies.)

Not that independence is so great. In fact I think it's overrated. Sure we want to be free from foreign oppressors. That clearly is an upside of this so-called independence. Then again, we only traded foreign oppressors for local ones. And you know what's an even better news? We're actually paying them to do this to us.

So where am I going with this really? Am I one of those weirdos who wish we are still under American rule and thus de facto American citizens? Nope, no thank you.

These are just some random musings that to me seems to make sense in a sordid sort of way. Because really, can you honestly say that you are happy with our independence? Think about it. I'd really love to know.

7 comments:

Lizz said...

Happy Independence Day! Heavy post today, hehe.

Though if you think about it, perhaps it wouldn't be so terrible if were under America. Guam seems to be doing pretty good, lol.

J.D. Lim said...

I guess I would like to still believe to what Quezon said more than 70 years ago:

'I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos rather then a government run like heaven by Americans.'

It's not that I think a government like hell is good for us but if I have to give up what my ancestors did for me to gain this independence, even though it doesn't really benefit me much, I won't nudge even a little in exchange of the 'heavenly' rule by other nations.

Kumbaga, utang na loob. They did their part, we must do ours.

Laura said...

Happy independence day!

"Then again, we only traded foreign oppressors for local ones. And you know what's an even better news? We're actually paying them to do this to us."

we share the same view.

At least we werent called as indios as we were once tagged by the spaniards

and

I go with JD lim's comment.

philos said...

@Lizz: Hmm... I don't know, like JD down there, I can't really imagine myself not being Filipino... its just sad that we can't be the Filipinos our forefathers must've envisioned us to be.

@JD: I got you, except I don't think we should think of it as "utang na loob", its more like "utang natin sa sarili natin" to be better than this.

@Laura: I don't know how not being called a name makes any difference, but I get you. Thanks for coming by. :)

joyfulchicken said...

@philos: dude, your "forefathers" (and probably J.D. Lim's too) were from China. I don't think they really envisioned you to be Filipinos :-P

philos said...

@JC: Point taken. Should've said our countries forefather's eh?

J.D. Lim said...

Late react, haha.. :D

TO philos: Uhm, I guess un nga pero di ba un ung concept natin na if someone does good to us then we owe that person something in return. At un, ibinigay nila ang kanilang sarili, we should give ourselves too for the cause of changing our nation. :)