Just when I thought that I’m lucky to feel a bit at home far from home, with the comfort from being within a Filipino community here in a foreign country, my eldest brother tells me about being careful about trusting people too much.
When I meet people for the first time, I pretty much assume that they’re basically good people. Everyone should start with a clean slate after all. With most of the relationships that I’ve developed, these slates remain clean. Of course, there are a few exceptions. Some people just do the meanest and nastiest things that taint or, sometimes, totally destroy the good relationship you have with them.
I don’t understand why Filipinos just can’t live harmoniously with each other. I thought that the crab mentality is already a thing of the past. I guess, I’m wrong: it’s pretty much embedded in the Pinoy culture. This is one of the things I hate about being Filipino. I don’t understand why some Pinoys have to keep pulling people DOWN. I don’t understand why some Pinoys who are already "up there" can’t help pull other people UP so everyone will be up there. I don’t understand why some of us are envious of other’s success. I don’t understand why some might feel that ‘nalalamangan sila’ just because other people are just more successful than they are (of course, ’success’ is a relative term).
Is crab mentality all about being envious? Is it all about avoiding ‘gulangan’, ‘isahan’, or ‘utakan’ (being outsmarted)? Is it all about being afraid of equality?
Although we can immediately trace this mentality back to our history, I don’t want to put the blame on the Spanish colonisation AGAIN. Yes, the oppression that Filipinos experienced during THAT PERIOD from the Spanish friars and government (and Filipino social climbers at that time?) made the people of THAT PERIOD feel that they have to rise higher, higher than the OPPRESSORS. Thus, the revolution… and the revolution was successful, the Spanish fled. (Or was it really successful? - This should be another blog topic!) The Filipino acted as crabs when they pulled down those Spaniards (Spanish bastards) from their seats of self-proclaimed power.
It has been more than a century since the Spaniards left our country. We should all admit that those 333 years brought about the worst and best things about being Filipino. It helped mould our identity. It’s been a long time ago. We should stop blaming our history MOST OF THE TIME, if not all the time, for our cultural gaps, social breakdowns, political and economic troubles, etc. I think ‘acting like crabs’ was good for us during the Spanish period but that period has been over a hundred years ago.
The social relationships most of us have now don’t necessarily involve oppression and yet some will still try to bring people down as if they feel the need to fight back and take revenge. I hope we can break away from this crab mentality. It will definitely bring about great changes, not only socially, but also politically and economically, if we do.
It makes me sad that I can’t be comfortable with people from the same nationality that I have. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust any Filipino here in Australia as easily again, given the social crabs that I am surrounded with. Being Pinoy, I may subconsciously be one of them but now that I am more aware of the ‘phenomenon,’ I hope I’d be more careful not to be one.
Crabs. They’re creepy creatures crawling everywhere. Beware!
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