A new thesis

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

This reminder from Mr. Santayana currently haunts me like a ghost that won’t be silenced until it is heard and its cries acted on. In particular, I am afraid that if we as a nation and as Filipinos fail to learn and immediately take action on the things we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is most likely that we will repeat and become who and what we were before the outbreak.

Judging from the behavior of people protesting against lockdowns and quarantine particularly in the Un-United States of America, parts of Europe and South America, it all seems as if there was never a deadly viral outbreak and people in their self-generated desperation to work and get economies started are clearly willing to forget all about the hundreds of thousands worldwide that have died directly due to COVID-19, many of them unburied and still in reefer vans. In the Philippines, the general direction of people seems to be toward the lifting of the ECQs and GCQs and the reopening of offices, companies and industries. The saddest part of it all is that no group, nobody, no government agency has ever talked about collecting everything we have learned from the pandemic beyond the science and medicine. The DOH and the medical community are well able to gather all the discoveries and sort out what is valid, invalid and from all that formulate real useful information as basis for making plans, addressing needs and organizing everything toward building a new and relevant universal health care program in the Philippines.

But what about all the other things we’ve learned so far? For the longest time many businessmen and top corporations have devoted themselves to raking in earnings year after year, bragging about corporate earnings in the billions and now they find themselves on their knees asking God or government to bail them out. I guess the saying is true, that if you are a failure at home you will be a failure at work. For the last two decades we as a country have participated and cooperated in global and regional systems that rank and judge nations based on economic measures and does not prioritize the overall quality of life and well being of individuals and families. But none of that matters now. Thanks to COVID-19 and a global “Act of God” we find ourselves more concerned with survival than credit ratings. We are now eating humble pie as we are forced to borrow money abroad.

For the last 20 years, property developers have been riding the construction bubble that never seem to burst, all the while building their empires on the backs of millions of workers who are not even provided decent housing fit for human beings, and not “shacks of light materials” where developers would not house their pet dogs. The business community has long been guilty of bringing in workers, directly contributing to the creation of slums while constantly opposing wage hikes and anything that would entail “added cost,” and perpetually threatening job cuts and retrenchments. So now we are locked down together with about two million workers, many of whom will surely run back to the provinces when the ECQ or GCQs are lifted and many of them will surely opt to find safer, simpler jobs near home in the provinces. In the mean time, the rest of us will surely think twice about retiring in Metro Manila or buying condos and townhouses where the next pandemic or rebound will probably happen.

What I want to get at is to call everyone’s attention. What are you going to correct or change in the way you used to think, live, buy, or do business and to what degree? One thing I have been a nagger about is to remind people to buy locally made products even if it requires some lifestyle change, reorienting your taste buds of paying a little more rather than send the money out to China or some other “cheap manufacturer” in the region. In terms of earnings, I believe we all need to review or assess our motivation to ear, to succeed, and to achieve. During the ECQ I came to realize that many of the things people strive or work so hard for are often things they were denied, lost or could not afford as a child or as a young adult. The problem is even after getting all the things we were denied in life, we carry on striving and working to give it to our children who never went through the experience. Our noble statement is we want to give them a secure future. The brutal reality or question would be: At what cost?

A college age girl got pregnant and we had her mother who was working abroad on the line, asking why her daughter allowed herself to get pregnant knowing that she the mother was working so hard in order to send her to a private college. The young lady’s answer was so shocking I was left speechless; “I did not want you to go abroad, I never asked you to send me to a private school, all I asked was for you to stay home with me but you didn’t listen.”

The same could be said about corporate earnings and target profits and growth; how much is enough? For years people have been telling business leaders to temper their greed because the environment can’t handle the rate by which natural resources are being sucked out, how many communities are suffering and people being killed for gold, silver or ore. How deforestation was causing flash floods and landslides all over the country. But no one listened until COVID-19 struck. The question is, have you learned your lessons yet? Or are we going to be repeaters, people perpetually flunking our history classes on disasters.

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