Why is the deeper meaning of baybayin important to Filipinos today? Why is decolonization and indigenization important to Filipinos today?
One of the answers is that it helps Filipinos become more integrated in their own cultural identity. It also helps them become strengthened as a collective of people who are of the archipelago called the Philippines or whose ancestry hails from there.
Why do Filipinos have some sort of cultural identity crisis? How does colonial mentality affect the Philippine economy, create poverty and eliminate a people’s economic self-sustainability? Maybe this can help you find answers:
One of the answers is that it helps Filipinos become more integrated in their own cultural identity. It also helps them become strengthened as a collective of people who are of the archipelago called the Philippines or whose ancestry hails from there.
Why do Filipinos have some sort of cultural identity crisis? How does colonial mentality affect the Philippine economy, create poverty and eliminate a people’s economic self-sustainability? Maybe this can help you find answers:
Here is the long version of the intro to the Curing Colonial Stupor booklist at amazon.com:
Effective imperialism teaches indigenous people to become eurocentric & disdain their own ways & even their own people… a human sickness sets in that is called colonial mentality and its effects are degraded culture, language & economic self-sustainability.This is a systemic, traumatic education/programming of minds. It is people with a profiting agenda, teaching with brutal methods another people how to have an inferiority complex, how to be innately dysfunctional as human beings & how to rely on multinational goods.Colonial mentality also replaces a people’s indigenous worldview—the philosophy that one is connected to other beings, to Earth, nature & Cosmos— with a belief in hierarchies of privilege that separate people from their fellow beings (kapwa) & thus justifies & fosters selfishness & exploitation.This dysfunction—colonial/conqueror mentality—can be cured, one person at a time. How?—understand a bit more what colonization is.
—get angry. The first book listed here might help you do that & is called The Forbidden Book for a reason. Who among the U.S. imperial forces want the little people, among those they colonized & in their own country, to understand the demented thinking they have that justifies their colonization of people who seek their own independence & ways of life?
—figure out that this whole Life thing & how people think is all a Game of sorts. The illusions that people project upon us, that we agree to uphold can be shattered.
—find ways to rid yourself of programmed thinking that you unconsciously began to subscribe to throughout your life. Aha! That’s the catch—it takes years to deprogram. But a personal practice of meditation & self-reflection can help you achieve that.
—return to your roots. Rediscover your people’s ancient, indigenous worldview.
—unsubscribe from belief systems that benefit one people & take away from another.
—support indigenous people’s right.
—find healing, wholeness, Clarity.Mabuhay-LifeLightLove
This booklist is not just for people of colonized lands(Philippines, Ireland, Britain, Mexico, Africa, etc) but also for people of nations that were colonizers(Britain, U.S. Spain, etc.).
The list includes titles such as:
- Forbidden Book, by Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, Helen Toribio
- Waking Up In Time: Finding Inner Peace In Times of Accelerating Change by Peter Russell
- Coming Full Circle, by Leny Strobel
- If Life is a Game These are the Rules by Chérie Carter-Scott
- How to See Yourself as You Really Are… by by Dalai Lama
Click here to see the amazon booklist on “Curing colonial stupor” here