If the Filipino finds himself different from all those peoples mentioned, despite all sorts of similarities, it can only be because there is a certain “hard core†of culture which makes him different, something a good deal more basic and permanent than a passport.The Filipino’s consciousness of the different way of life of other nations can only be explained by the existence of a standard with which he can compare it, namely, his own, the Filipino way of life.The positive proof of the existence of a Philippine culture shades almost imperceptibly into the identification and description of Philippine culture, at least in some of its principal outlines.For the positive proof, or, at any rate, one positive proof, we must appeal to our own experience.The family is the life-cell of the social organism and certainly there is a common pattern of family life among Filipinos. The almost universal protest against certain patterns of behavior among some of the younger generationâ€â€in their extreme manifestations, they are what is lumped under the general term “juvenile delinquency,†new and unfamiliar to the older generationâ€â€are an unmistakable sign that they jar the sensibilities of the rest of the population because they do not fit in with what has come to be considered the normal course of family life.Pakikisama, whose nearest English equivalent is the now rather stilted-sounding word “comradeshipâ€Ââ€â€not “fellowship†because it allows for a certain amount of insincerity, nor “public relations,†because it has an unmistakable ring of commercialism and both degrade the very conceptâ€â€is so much a part of Philippine social tradition that gang-ism has stolen its credentials and is thus all the more difficult to expel from our midst.The word “mabait,†which I hesitate to translate because of its complex connotations, but which is commonly and most infelicitously rendered “good,†magaan ang dugo, which cannot be translated at all; both are universally admired qualities inseparably connected with our social tradition.With these three instances, significant instances, pervading as they do our lives, I believe the case for the existence of a Philippine culture is sufficiently established.Now, what is Philippine culture?… One stream came from China, fairly constant and unchanging through the ages, the other from India, through Indonesia, modified by Indonesia in a very significant manner, since in Indonesia itself the influx of Indian culture had become Indonesian and yet continued to undergo influences that changed as India itself changed, from Brahmanism, to Buddhism to Islam.A Unique PeopleIt was these influences, which undoubtedly underwent modifications in the Philippines, which had already modified the original Malay way of life, which, assimilated in varying ways and degrees, constituted the way of life of these Islands, when the impact of the West was felt, an impact which has made us a people unique in the world.I say unique in the world, because we are of the East and the West, but not the East and not the West, we are of the North and the South and yet not the North nor the South: we are ourselves, Filipinos, through a beautiful and also unique process of assimilation of foreign influences to that we were originally.This process, imperfect as all human processes must be, has given us today’s Philippine culture, with a considerable degree of stability, necessary for a process of development and assimilation rather than disintegration, yet blessed with a degree of flexibility which alone can make further progress possibleâ€â€a culture rich in variety without irreducible or violently conflicting streams, so that we can agree to disagree, yet with an underlying unity which binds the whole fabric together, so that we are definitely one people, with the consciousness of a common national destiny.How to recognize this basic unity, in what it consists, and how to protect the necessary minimum of stability to enable us to deal with the modern world and its influences in such a way that the result is a healthily assimilative rather than disruptive and destructive, is a very serious problem with which we are faced.Our survival as a nation depends on our success in dealing with the problem.
