3.CREATIVITY
Filipinos are creative and resourceful people. We are quick learners. Example of this is the Ifugaos? widely known Rice Terraces or Hagdan hagdan Palayan. They can make something out of what they can get from trees or stones and pebbles. Filipinos have always something in mind which if only being supported by the government can compete to foreign resources. Filipino products are indeed more creative and more fashionable than other products. The results are inventions, productivity and development.
4.ABILITY TO SURVIVE
Because Filipinos are by nature fighter, whatever pains they have to go through could not hinder them to live.. Filipinos are survivor. They have been conquered by foreign countries but still they get by to survive.
These certain qualities of Filipinos can lead them to overcome poverty. But because of wrong interpretations and misuse of these qualities it has become their weaknesses.
And the Weaknesses are as follows:
1.LACK OF DISCIPLINE
Filipino lacks discipline in their work. We have a casual and relaxed attitude toward time and space. We have a poor management of our time. We are disorganized when it comes to obligations and compromisions. For the westerners, ?time wasted is gone foreve?r but for Filipino, ?there is always tomorrow? which is reflected in our maxims, ?Paglipas ng dilim, may umagang darating.? (Mercado.93:112-113). The BAHALA NA SYNDROME are manifested in his attitude toward his work. Bahala na means leaving matters as they are leaving nature to take its course. It is contraction of the word ?bathala na? meaning ?God will take care?. This shows Filipinos strong faith to their creator yet wrong notions such as predestinations, ?suerte?, ?hula?, ?tadhana? were developed among Filipinos. Which led them to endure sufferings, poverty tragedy and enables them to accept pain and frustrations with tolerance. Another is NINGAS COGON.
( a grass fire). It means great enthusiasm of Filipinos to their work that marks the start of a project or of a new organization but the interest eventually dies down as days passes by. This attitude gives them unfinished work and unattained success. Resulting to inefficiency and wasteful work systems, poor service and transgressions.
Filipino?s indolence or ?katamaran? were charged by Spaniards.(Pilar.1981:48) For other people, this attitude brought out our poverty. Because Filipino LACKS INITIATIVE and ambitions they seldom achieve something . They have to wait to be told what has to be done. They always rely on others. Especially in the presence of authority which they securely submit themselves. Filipinos have small dreams thus they have small achievements. Although Rizal refuted this charge as he explained that this perception only came about because of Spanish colonizations, this attitude has become part of Filipinos nature.
2. COLONIAL MENTALITY
?Filipinos have colonial mentality which is made up of two dimensions: the first is lack of PATRIOTISM or of an active awareness, appreciation and love of the Philippines; and the second is an actual preference for things foreign.?( Schwenk. 1989: 17). Filipinos are very passive people. Indeed, they can easily adapt and adjust to new environment yet Filipinos when they have already adjusted to a certain place, they easily give in and incorporate themselves to the nature of the society and forget their own identity. Sometimes, their notion of survival is to be socially accepted and please other people which led them to imitate and desire to be like other people which they think is ?acceptable?. Filipinos submit their identity to another identity to be acknowledged and to succeed. Being like the other is their perception as being ?in? and desirable. Even in the way one speaks, the color of the skin, the food that they eat are all borrowed to foreign countries. This attitude of PASSIVITY among Filipinos was brought about their LACK OF SELF ANALYSIS and SELF REFLECTION. Filipinos seldom know themselves. That is why until now, seldom knows what they want in life. Almost of us long to succeed but the steps to success were taken for granted because we do lack self evaluation and analysis. Knowing what we want is knowing how to get them. And knowing how to get them is knowing our abilities and limitations to achieve it. But Filipinos do not know these and even seldom question what they can do for them to succeed yet often pursue to their dreams without analyzing their capabilities and stand.
Filipinos weaknesses continue to shrink our potentials. And it is very clear that we have much good in us but there is much more that needs to be changed. And if we do not do anything to overcome these? it will not be our weakness anymore? but will become our identity.
So what can we do to overcome this? Is there any possibility that Filipinos can still change and succeed? Maybe yes?If we only be authentic as Martin Heidegger?s Dasein.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER
Heidegger was influenced by the pre-Socratics of Greek philosophy, by the Danish Soren Kierkegaard, and by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. His most important and influential work, is Being and Time(1927).
Heidegger attempts to uncover the basic structures of human existence-such as concern and mood-in virtue of which knowledge and understanding are possible. He said that we are self-interpreting, deciding entities practically involved along with others in a world that we have not made but that consists of potential useful things, including cultural as well as natural objects. And because these objects and artifacts come to humanity from the past and are used in the present for the sake of future goals, Heidegger posited a fundamental relation between the mode of being of objects and of humanity and the structure of time. He argues that a person?s usual understanding is dictated by the anonymous ?public? or ?them?, and that the individual authenticity-the prospect of which is experienced in the state of anxiety-requires distancing from ?them? and ?resolutely? forging one?s own ?projects? and view of things. The individual is, however, always in danger of being submerged in the world of objects, everyday routine, and the conventional, shallow behavior of the crowd. This sense of potential individuality is reinforced by the sober recognition of mortality, since a person?s own death, and the way he faces up to it, is something that is uniquely his or her own.
BEING
The question of being is considered superfluous and is the most general and is undefinable. Being seems to be already included in all that we grasp of things. But because of lack of understanding of what being really is, grave misunderstanding arises.
Yet for heidegger, in the question of being, the one who asks is himself a being. The interrogator of being is already a being himself. By asking what being is, the interrogator asks what he himself is. Heidegger believes, and with reason, that we cannot hope to understand being without first of all understanding what we ourselves are. Man is the key to the understanding of being. But the fact remains that not all men attempt to understand what they are or who they are. Thus, Heidegger was compelled to group men into two classes: the authentic man (Dasein) and the inauthentic man (das Man).
DASEIN and DAS MAN
Dasein is Heidegger?s way of referring both to the human being and to the type of being that humans have. It comes from the verb dasein, which means ?to exist? or ?to be there, to be here?. The noun dasein is used by other philosophers, by kant for example, for the existence of entity. But heidegger restricts it to human being. And human being as a dasein is questioners, choosers and self-producers.
Dasein is possibility. And is prior to his actuality. And has three characteristics: He is hurdled into the world and found there (Befindlichkeit) and realizes that he is thrown (Geworfen) and has more control over its own being; he understands (Verstehen) that while being abandoned in the world, he has to realize a future. He therefore must understand the ultimate connection between an impoverished, weakened past and an unfulfilled future. Dasein is an entity that can decide whether to be or not to be. Yet cannot become whatever it wants because circumstamces places restrictions on what one does. On the other hand, das Man never asks himself what he is, hence does not have a sense of abandonment. His existence is that of ambiguity and his involvement is ambiguous because he does even not know what he is or why he is. Instead of understanding which is characteristic of dasein, das Man is impelled by curiosity and because of lack of true understanding, his mode of speech is that of idle or silly speeches. He is not creative