I’ve heard people say they’ve grown tired of following the news because, once you’ve read enough of it, all that follows is the same.
You’ve got your new rubouts, your recently exposed duplicitous government officials, your Catholic bishops with something new to condemn, your showbiz scandals hot off the press—and once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. The details are different but the story’s the same.
What makes the news cycle all the more tiresome is that, with such a poor justice system in the country, genuine resolution to these stories is rare. Another factor commonly cited is our short-term, selective social memory. Filipinos tire of the story and it drops off the radar to be forgotten entirely.
I’d like to examine the origins of that social memory, and to understand how a culture remembers, a good place to start would be its stories. Memory, after all, is inextricable from narrative.
In a class on intangible heritage with Dr. Alvin Yapan, we discussed that, from a Western literary perspective, our oral literature seems absolutely ludicrous—shrieking fruits, flying betel nuts and all. Apart from such hyperbolic story elements, the texts themselves are highly reliant on repetition and ritual, so each performance is different and works as its own version of the story. Thus, the narratives are constantly evolving.
To “make sense” of the work, we need to understand that the indigenous Filipino rationality is directed by what anthropologist Renato Rosaldo calls the “cultural force of emotions”—a rationality founded on affect rather than logic. Thus, each performance of oral literature is an attempt to create a sensation rather than convey a clear, linear narrative. From this perspective, the hyperbole, variations and endless repetition cease to be absurd.
Given this rich oral tradition (and possibly a residual disdain for written documents), how do Filipinos remember? Does our memory consist of recurring sensations? Do we unconsciously play back the same historical events with the same archetypal characters, with different names, places and circumstances?
History seems to unfold in this ritual of repetition. Why don’t we seem to progress? Why do we seem to choose the same kinds of leaders?
Other social factors withstanding, perhaps it’s not that we’re forgetful but that we really are looking for the same narratives with the same key players. It might be this cultural force of emotions, in part, that drives necropolitics, political dynasties, systems of patronage and even our thirst for People Power revolutions.
Because our focus is on that cyclical repetition rather than resolution, we don’t find our satisfaction in some cathartic denouement, but in the fresh retelling of the story we already know so well.
While this fails to account for other elements, the Filipino psyche could be a place to start to solve the problem of memory, or to ask whether it’s a problem at all.
Do we iron out a linear narrative to propel ourselves forward? Or do we continue this remembrance in recurrences in the hope that the story gets better somehow the next time around?
