A Purpose-Driven...Nation?

It was a mammoth bestseller. It seemed to appear out of nowhere and then the next second all the bookshelves were overflowing with stacks of copies. All of a sudden, one single book gave rest to the question everybody, Pinoys included, seemed to have kept buried deep inside themselves and which yearned desperately, clawingly, for a definitive resolution: What are we alive for?

The Christian author Rick Warren has calmly written down in plain, simple, perhaps even insightful language that one need not look far for the answer. God is our purpose in life, he declares, and he elaborates on this concept in such a smooth and comforting manner that the readers don't mind at all that it takes the time and effort to read a whole book just to fully grasp the implications of this message--even if that message has been the same old song being played since the Middle Ages. No matter that the theme behind the book might not be a landmark; the book's impact surely is--as seen in how copies still fly off the bookshelves in truckloads like popcorn.

Many readers of the book comment that Warren's writings helped them contextualize their acts in the proper perspective. This perspective puts lifelong goals in sensible order and imbues every activity with selfless and noble motives, and this actually translates to achieving the purpose for which we live. A pursuit such as this is unarguably beneficial and should be encouraged all the time!--whether you've read the book or not.

If such a guiding principle could empower individual people into realizing their potentials, shouldn't whole countries tread the same route? If a nation were driven by a correct purpose...then wouldn't that nation reach the success it was meant to reach?

But then again, do whole nations abide by a purpose? Why, of course they do! And they do bother to spell it out.

High school education among Pinoys would have taught us that one need not look for any bestselling book or esoteric sources to find the purpose of--for example--our own nation, the Republic of the Philippines. It's right there in the constitution, in the preamble.

Now, we Pinoys know that we don't care a whit about what those words mean. For all its formidable rhetoric, it might as well be saying that we are supposed to be ruled by heavenly spirits and not by humans. However, that does not necessarily mean that we do not have a gut instinct about what the real purpose of the Republic is, which is, of course, to generally provide Pinoys a good life--that is the purpose it's supposed to serve.

And how do Pinoys know what a good life is? Well, judging by the overwhelming sentiment that millions of Pinoys would rather stay in the United States than the Philippines, it could be taken to mean that a good life for a Pinoy is what the Americans enjoy in the United States.

By the way, if one would bother to read the purpose of the U.S., as embodied in the preamble to their consitution, one would find this.


It would appear quite readily that the purpose of the US could be contained in fewer words than the purpose of our own country! Which could probably explain why, should you ask any Pinoy to name in any specific terms why the Philippines exists, chances are that the Pinoy wouldn't come up with the answers--because memorizing the preamble to our own constitution is just too damn tedious.

Granted, the Americans themselves most probably don't bother to remember by heart their own preamble verbatim. And yet, Americans certainly know what the US is for.

The United States has always been the "greatest", that unsurpassable yardstick for measuring the best of human endeavour--the richest country, the best in weaponry and systems of war, the most cutting-edge in the fields of science, medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, space technology, electronics, education...you name it. They also enjoy the highest standard of living among all the First World nations. The Americans know that they must maintain this standing in the world community. Even their present President Barack Obama always says this in all his speeches. If you want to be number one in the whole world, they say, you ought to make it big in their country. To cite an example, Pacquiao became ranked the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the whole world not by fighting in his homeland, but in slugging it out in the fabled US of A! In that veritable heartland of boxing, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Japanese also seem to be certain about what their nation is about. It has always been all about overtaking what the United States has done throughout its existence. In short, the Japanese clearly want to take the place of the US as the leader of the world. They tried doing it during World War II by engaging in war with the United States ( interestingly enough, the war era Japanese constitution outlines an objective to become the Ruler of the World, with the finality of installing their Emperor, the living personification of the Sun God, as supreme leader ), they are still doing so now by perpetually trying to outdo the US in commerce and trade--evidence of this in their country being the second richest in the world.

Yes, my fellow Pinoys, some nations do know what their existence is for, even if it's not readily extruded from the obstruse semantics of their constitutions--even if the Americans themselves or the Japanese never bothered to read their own preambles. Ditto for the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans, and many more. Of special mention, among others, would be South Korea, a nation of determined citizens who struggled for over 60 years after World War II to become a First World nation after decades of deprivation--and is still putting its darndest efforts into reuniting with North Korea. Taiwan is currently fighting to remain independent from what they perceive as an "imperialist" China. Israel is struggling to defend its "Promised Land" from the influence of its Islamic neighbors.

You don't have to think too hard to understand that many nations are already driven by what each would perceive to be its purpose!

Which brings us back to the question: What is the Philippines supposed to be, then? If we Pinoys don't have a solid answer to that, then we are all doomed. If we believe that individual lives without a purpose--whether it be God or any other objective worthy of pursuing--is meaningless, how much more meaningless is the existence of a whole nation without a sense of what it is supposed to reach for? What then is there reason to continue living as a nation, and not simply dissolve into a nonentity?

There's this absurd fact that our preamble has dozens more words than the US's ( their preamble doesn't even have the words "Almighty God" in it ). It must mean, then, that we seek to do more than what the US has sought. Which could be taken to mean that, should the Republic of the Philippines achieve what its true purpose is ( well, whatever that may be ), we would in all probability be infinitely greater than the greatest nation on earth at this time! Now isn't that a thought!

Then again, we can't deny that Pinoys generally love what the US has! Talk to the average Pinoy on the street, and chances are he or she will readily exchange their soul to be able to live in the US. It's no surprise. It can be thought of as the same situation one encounters in any simple class of students. If the world community could be reduced to the population of a class of students, each country representing one student, the US would most certainly garner the most envy. Mr. Uncle Sam would be the undisputed leader of the student body, garnering all the academic awards and scholarships. In second place would be Mr. Nippon. In third place would be a tie up between Mr. Germany, Mr. China, and Mr. England, perhaps.

Now, Pinoys don't generally like haphazardly performing students, even those in their families. Pinoys prefer to like students who excel. And yet, in this master class of the world's countries, the Philippines would not be an excellent student. In fact, Mr. Philippines might be one of those brooding, introverted urchins who rarely participates in class discussions. In other words, whatever we are, Mr. Philippines would be an inconsequential member of the student body.

Would we ever be passionate enough to transform from unremarkable performer to the stellar? Our fellow "students" certainly are trying to do so. The US is certainly the top dog in this "master class", but who's stopping the others from trying to occupy its place?

Don't we Pinoys like to be like the US? Then, perhaps inside all of those abstruse terms in our preamble, there lies the core and meaning of aspiring to be the best democracy in the world. The US has been able to do this with less words.

If our purpose as a nation is not to be the top dog...then what is? Could a statement of purpose saying that "The Philippines' purpose is to become the best democracy in the world" be as broad and infinite in scope as saying "The Purpose of our lives is God"? Then maybe someone should write a book about it.

Or write a different kind of book, something that spells our real purpose as a Pinoy nation for what it must really be. Otherwise, we could be just fooling ourselves into thinking that a Pinoy nation exists, after all.