PHILIPPINE URBANIZATION AND CHRISTIAN VALUES

EULALIO BAL TAZAR

Introduction

All third-world countries are in a process of moderniza tion, which implies industria lization and bureau cratization, and is carried on primarily in the city. For the success of modernization urbanization, the in-migration of peoples from the rural areas, and the creation of an urban consciousness are deemed necessary. Along with the wished-for beneficial effects of urbanization, however, there are such negative effects as the loosening of family ties and kinship and the weakening of local customs and of ethnic culture--all of which endanger identity and autonomy. This situation raises the question of whether identity and autonomy can be realized in an urban setting. Third-world countries are grappling with this problem and look toward the West for a solution. The paradox is that the youth culture and counterculture in America and western Europe are looking toward the third-world for models. As Peter Be rger notes, the clothing, aesthetic and religious expressions of the youth culture and counterculture have an Asian basis, and their political heroes are third-world revolutionaries.¹

Each third-world country must reflect on the problem of urbanization and values in the context of its own history and culture. This paper is a reflection on urbaniza tion and va lues in the Philippine context.

As an Asian country, the Phili ppines is unique in being the only predominantly Christian country in the Far East. Unlike European and North American countries, however, where there is a strict separation of Chu rch and State, the Church is very much involved in the public life of the country. This was demonstrated in the peaceful revolution of the ousting of former dictator Ferdinand Ma r cos, in which the Church was instrumental in the peaceful change of government. The Church would have been ineffective if the population had not believed in its authority and internalized Christian values. Therefore, when we discuss Philippine urbanization and values we need to see these, not only in the light of Philippine cultural values, but also in the light of enculturated Christian values. Does urbanization endanger or promote these values; how should urban life be structured so as to promote these values?

For ease of treatment we will unify Christian values under the rubric of the autonomous and liberated Christian. The question then becomes, does urbanization promote or inhibit the emergence and development of an autonomous Filipino Christian, or is Christianity anti-urban? To answer this we need a basic understanding of the concept of the autonomous Christian.

Let us discuss first the general Christian ideal of an autonomous person. Then, in the light of this general concept, we will consider what an autonomous Filipino Christian means.

The concept of an autonomous Christian depends on the kind of theology one espouses. If one accepts the Augustinian theology of two worlds, then one attains autonomy or freedom by an escape from this world into another. Life in this world becomes merely a time of patient waiting and acceptance of the vicissitudes and travails of life. The kind of historical structures we build are not important, for all these structures will pass away. To attain free dom and autonomy one must escape the historical in order to attain the eternal. In being thus anti-historical this view necessarily is being anti-urban, for it sees autonomy in terms of membership in the city of God, not the city of man. This other-worldly mentality has conditioned the traditional church attitude toward the socio-economic and political order. Because the church's goal is other-worldly it should not be involved in the socio-economic and political realms, but should remain neutral as to forms of government or economic systems.

According to Mary R. Holl nsteiner, director of the Institute of Philippine Culture in the Ateneo de Manila University, "the efforts of the Chur ch in the field of urban development have been few and often undertaken hesitantly, without full conviction."² Commenting on this point, Jose Bla n co, a Philippine Jesuit sociologist, notes the need for a change in our other-worldly thinking and orientation. Theology needs a new direction where Christian salvation is not merely a personal effort to save one's soul and rescuing it from the evils of this world. Faith, he notes, should direct us to grapple with socio-economic and political problems in the world.

This new theological direction towards the world has been outlined by Vatican II . Thus, in the document, The Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes), the vocation of all men is an integral one. (no. 57, also nos. 10, 11, 59, 61, 63, 64, 75, 91). By integral is meant that the whole man has but one calling. Gutie rrez notes that the "most immediate consequence of this viewpoint is that the frontiers between the life of faith and temporal works, between the Church and the world, become more fluid. In the words of Schil lebeeckx: "The boundaries between the Ch urch and mankind are fluid, not merely in the Church's direction, but also, it may be said, in the direction of mankind and the world." Some even ask if they are really two different things: "Is not the Church also world"? Me tz asks. "The Church is of the world; in a certain sense the Church is the world: the Church is not Non-World."³

Another important consequence of man's integral vocation according to Guti e rrez is that the

affirmation of the single vocation to salvation, beyond all distinctions, gives religious value in a completely new way to the action of man in history, Christian and non-Christian alike. The building of a just society has worth in terms of the Kingdom, or in more current phraseology, to participate in the process of liberation is already, in a certain sense, a salvific work."⁴

The autonomous Christian, then, is synonymous to an integrally liberated one. This means that the whole man, the socio-economic and political part of him and the theological or religious part together are liberated. Hence, according to the new theology the phenomenon of urbanization has a theological dimension, so that mere sociological methods of analysis will not reveal its full meaning and import.

The theological dimension of liberation means that in order to be fully autonomous one must be a member of a community whose principle of unity is love. The individual cannot be autonomous without a Thou: autonomy means freedom from one's aloneness and the full development of personality. It is the Thou that gives the I autonomy; only in a loving relation is the I freed from its isolation and able to grow as a person. The creative union of love is differentiated so that more complete being is in fuller union. The I, then, needs a community united by love as ground for full freedom, differentiation or individuation, and therefore, for autonomy there are two levels of Thou: the Divine Thou in whom ultimate liberation is to be achieved and the human Thou in and through whom we achieve partial liberation on earth. We are interested here in the notion of freedom and autonomy achieved through the I-Thou relationships of human beings.

The I-Thou notion of autonomy is lacking in the individualist notion of autonomy as enunciated by Isaiah Ber lin.

I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not any other men's acts of will. I wish to be . . . a doer--deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of . . . conceiving goals and policies of my own.⁵

If we were to structure a society to produce this kind of autonomous individual then we would have one like that which Adam Sm ith envisioned. It would be constituted of atomistic, acquisitive and egoistic individuals, each guided by unfettered self-interest in pursuit of their private ends, with conflict among them being resolved by an invisible hand. While a degree of autonomy is achieved in such a society, the I-Thou notion of autonomy cannot be attained in the public sphere.

Christian aut onomy implies that the individual be not reduced to an object or tool. Thus, it is an ally of individua lism in its struggle against the dehuman ization and depersonaliza tion of the individual by technological and bureaucratic instrumental rationality: the I cannot be reduced to an it. But having rescued its subjectivity the I cannot claim full autonomy. It must now attain the fullness of autonomy through union with the Thou--a community united by the principle of love.

What follows from the Christian notion of autonomy is that urban structures must be judged not only in terms of rescuing the I from objectivation, but also in terms of promoting an I-Thou relation. The question then is whether the city as a way of life and its various industrial and bureaucratic structures are conducive to integral liberation? This question brings us to a Christian approach to the city.

The city is an important concept in Christian thought, for the eternal city is the heavenly Jerusalem where all Christians hope to dwell.

The concept of city is used by one of the greatest Christian thinkers, St. Aug us tine, bishop of Hippo in Africa, to contrast the City of Man as ruled by egoism to the City of God as ruled by love. We are accustomed to seeing the city as a space outside of us in which we dwell. But in a deeper sense, the city is inside, a mental space or world. How we build our outside cities depends on how our internal city is constructed, structured and lived. External ecological space and its problems depend on internal ecological space.

To the question `Should we abandon the city of man?' the answer depends upon one's notion of autonomy. In a Platonic two-world perspective, the world above and the world below, we must abandon the city of man for the City of God. But in the world view of a single macrocosmic process of evolution the way to the City of God is through the city of man. To say this means simply that it is through history and its structures that we attain the City of God. The question then becomes, `Is the city an historical structure that leads to the City of God?' There are those who believe that it does not and therefore that we should flee the city and return to the country where strong family ties are preserved, closeness to nature is maintained and one's identity is rescued from the anonymity of the city by the purity of ethnic culture.

We believe, to the contrary, that the trend of cultural evolution and socializ ation is towards planetization and that the city is the prime carrier of this convergence. Convergence is not a totalitarian, but a pluralistic unity based on love.⁶ This may not be the actual outcome, but at least it is the Christian ideal and the pattern which Christians must use to bring about this ideal. E. A. Gutk ind suggests that we should see the city in the context of an expanding environment such as that described by Teilh ard, whom he describes as "one of the great thinkers and most optimistic visionaries of our age."⁷ He cites a statement of Teilhard, significant for our understanding of cities: "Are we not at every instance living the experience of a universe whose immensity, by the play of our senses and our reason, is gathered up more and more simply in each one of us?" This means, he says, "that the growth of the world's population and the improvement of communications have destroyed the old frontiers and united our world in spirit and in reality."⁸

With Teilhard de Chardin , we view the city as having the potentiality to be the agent for planetization and integral liberation. According to Teilhard de Chardin, the direction of evolution is towards convergence: atoms unifying to form molecules, mo1ecu1es congregating to form ce1ls, ce1ls associating to form brains producing persona1 centers of consciousness, and persons forming communities with a head or leader. From the biological stage, evolu tion has now become cultural, which means evolution in terms of mind or consciousness rather than of matter or body. For a new consciousness to be born, personal centers of consciousness must unite. The goal of the evolution of consciousness is planetary, such that the individual is no longer a citizen of a nation but a citizen of the world.

Given this scenario, the city becomes the prime agent of the planetary evolution of consciousness, for in it is concentrated economic energy in the process of industrialization. It is the nerve center for international economy, the place where intellectual energy is harnessed in universities, libraries and museums. Through mass communications and transportation, it is the processing center for the interaction of cultures and the linkage of the peoples of the world. It is the womb, as it were, for the growth of planetary consciousness.

Of course, modern cities do not conform to this ideal. They are anti-thetical to this goal, for they are places of depersonalization and alienation, high crime rates, slums, mental and physical sickness due to mental and physical pollution, etc. They are environments that foster and reward competitive attitudes which are anti-thetic to love and cooperation. However, despite these negative values, which hopefully can be remedied, the cities as historical phenomena are the structures most adapted for planetization.

Thus far we have considered the city in general in its relation to planetization and integral liberation. Now, let us focus on third-world cities in general and Philippine cities in particular.

Third-world cities are characterized as primate cities with a peripheral slum. By primate cities is meant "massively concentrated urban centers, abnorma11y large and complex and modern in relation to the countryside," differing qualitatively in cultural level and type from the hinterlands.⁹ These primate cities are the single center of "government, culture, and economic activity in each country."¹⁰

"The native or third-world urbanite," notes How son, "stands to his country cousin the way the European settler during the colonial period related to the natives."¹¹ The rural people go to the city not only for jobs and a better way of material life, but also with the intense desire to become urbanized. However, they rush to the city in such massive numbers, unprecedented in history, that they not only threaten the organization and services of the city, but, being psychologically and culturally ill-adapted to city life, they themselves become disoriented, alienated, manipulated and oppressed.

There is a debate as to whether in third-world countries, rural people are pushed or pulled into the city. The answer, it seems, is both. As Mary Holln stei ner notes, "migration to cities stems from the push factor of a stagnant countryside and the pull factor of anticipated opportunities in the city."¹² They are pulled into the city because of the hope for jobs, though the jobs available to them are mostly menial, that is, as domestics, in retailing, etc., for the industrial economy is not fu11y developed. They are pushed into the cities because of the drudgery of rural life and its lower level of material welfare.¹³

BECAUSE OF URBANI ZATION?

The following are generally agreed to be Philippine cultural values: close family ties and interpersonal relationships, friendliness (utang na loob), a reverence for nature which is considered sacred, playfulness and a carefree attitude towards life (bahala na), emotionality and religiosity. The city would seem to loosen family ties separating the in-migrant from his family in the barrio (village). Technological production and burea ucracy force him to think of himself as a component of the production process, thus fostering a componential and functionary mentality.¹⁴ This technological mentality invades the private sphere and also sunders his mystic oneness with nature, which begins to be seen as an object to be manipulated, exploited, even raped. These negative effects of urbani zation found in the West are, however, mitigated in third-world countries.

Bruner, who studied urbanization in North Sumatra, observed that "contrary to the traditional theory, we find in many Asian cities that society does not become secularized, the individual does not become isolated, kinship organizations do not break down, nor do social relationships in the urban environment become impersonal, superficial and utilitarian."¹⁵

Mary Hollns teiner supports this conclusion in her research. She notes that the new Filipino in-migrants are disillusioned with city life, being thrown into densely populated slums of the city and facing the reality of extremely limited access to power, participation and opportunity. Nevertheless, these lower income groups are not depersonalized or dehumanized, for they

find solace and security in the personalized, crowded neighborhood of cities. They even resist government and private efforts to change their lifestyle to a more ordered but depersonalized one. Squatter communities are notorious for trying to prevent their bodily transfer from inner city slums into more spacious suburban areas or neat high-rise housing. Apparently this is not the milieu they find conducive to a sense of security and well-being.¹⁶

Hollnsteiner adds that, for Filipino culture and for Malays, high-rises are depersonalizing, while in Hong Kong and Singapore dwellers seem to do all right. For Filipinos, though the slum shanties are sub-standard and poor, the pseudo-barrio setting provides a sense of community. This is not to say, she adds, that the shanty towns should not be improved, but that the personalized value should be built into them.¹⁷

Lillian Tra ger, visiting research associate at the Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University, and professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, notes that Filipino family ties are not weakened by urban migration. The reason is that migration is not an individual affair for the purpose of promoting the individual's own interests and goals; it is a family and household strategy for family maintenance and preservation. Exchanges of food and money between the rural and urban members "take place in a context of strong interpersonal ties."¹⁸

While the neighborhood peripheral slums are densely populated, the reason that depersonalization and a high crime rate do not occur may be due to some mediating groups that help the newly arrived in-migrant to fit in. F. William How ton notes five levels of these mediating groups seen as stages of urbanization:¹⁹

1. When the individual from the country comes to the city, he usually stays with relatives who live in the slums in stilt-shanties or stays with close friends from the home village. Thus, his immediate need of a "vi11age Gemeinschaft with its time-worn certainties of identity and obligation" are met.

2. The second stage is a wider grouping, still based on the kinship or quasi-kinship of those who come from the same village or tribe and/or who speak the same dialect. The important bond is that the members feel themselves to be brethren.

3. Once the individual gets to familiarize himself with his surrounding environment, he widens his association. He joins neighborhood clubs mostly for recreation and entertainment which are mostly illegal such as gambling, drinking, cockfighting, etc.

4. At this level, the individual joins clubs that cuts across neighborhood boundaries but are still communal in structure such as sports clubs, protective organizations, self-help and burial societies.

5. The fifth is founded on common interests that are economic and political rather than social, and the organization has become bureaucratic rather than communal.

We find these five levels verified in the Philippine situation. At the fourth level there is an effort by some sectors of the Chu rch to form basic Christian communities in which, through dialogue and discussion, the individuals in the slums become aware of the causes of their oppression and poverty. The church workers, however, are merely facilitators and catalysts, making the workers and urban poor the real agents of change for the "transformation of society characterized by equality, freedom, peace and justice, and where socio-economic life is reflected in self-reliant, self-governing and self-sustaining communities."²⁰

Karl M a rx speaks of the alien ation of the worker from his product and from his work. We will not consider these forms of alienation which have to do, not so much with technological production as such, but with the capitalistic arrangement of worker and employer. We will consider rather the alienation from oneself and loss of subjectivity arising from the process of technological production.

For productive efficiency, it is necessary to separate work from private life.²¹ Private life is usually associated with leisure, play, relaxation; public life with work, seriousness and goal-orientation. Enjoyment comes later as a fruit of one's work. Technological work is planned, organized and structured by the clock, the calendar. According to Be rger, youth culture sees this separation between work and leisure as repression, alienation, inauthenticity and therefore is opposed to the values of hard work, sobriety and saving for the morrow; it extols the virtues of hanging loose, turning on, giving no thought to the morrow. Between the two there is a reversal of values.²²

For Filipino culture, however, there is no separation between work and play. Human life is structured in terms of the now; thus life is to be enjoyed, the moment is to be savored in a Zen-like way. Work is not engaged in so as to enjoy its fruits after retirement. Because of this easy-going and carefree attitude towards life the Spaniards who colonized the Philippines spoke of the laziness of the Filipinos (la indolencia de los Filipinos).

The Filipino philosopher, Leonardo Mer cado, observes that:

The Filipino blends work with leisure. For instance, planting and harvesting is not purely work, for together with it go singing, drinking, and eating. For the fishermen who draw their nets, some of their companions roast the catch and drink tuba on the seashore. Working is more personalistic, and leisure is a part of it. The above-mentioned rural examples can also be applied in the city. Market vendors join work with the leisure of gossip and listening to the radio. And in the city, the office workers stress not pure work but the pleasure of camaraderie, i.e., the tendency of combining pleasure with work.²³

Mercado traces this intermingling of work and leisure to Philippine cultural values or, as he calls it, the Fi1ipino's world-view. This world-view is non-dualistic: the opposites, subject and object, are harmonized and this runs through his views on nature, man and God. For instance, he notes, "the nondualistic principle appears in the Filipino harmony-with-nature orientation. It leads consequently to a non-linear concept of time, space, causality. The same principle of non-dualism (or of harmony) also explains the Filipino's view on work and leisure."²⁴ M ercado contrasts this non-dualistic view of work and leisure with the western view:

In western-oriented factories and other business firms, the goal is producing more through efficiency. And specially with technological progress, work becomes more impersonal and man becomes a slave of his machines. The slogan goes: "Duty before pleasure." In other words, leisure is separate from work. . . . Only after retirement is he expected to fully enjoy life.²⁵

Thus, while the Filipino has imported the modern method of technological production and bureaucratic organization, he has adapted it to his world-view, thereby saving his cultural value of a non-dualistic view of human life and the integral unity of the private and public spheres.

Is cultural identity lost because of urbanization? Those in the rural areas have their ethnic cultures. When they migrate to the city they come into contact with popular (mass-media generated) culture.²⁶ Philippine popular culture has at least two clearly identifiable layers of cultural influence, the Spanish and the American, along with the Chinese, which is less discernible because of its deeper assimilation.²⁷

The interaction of ethnic cultures with popular culture need not mean a loss of ethnic identity as long as basic Christian communities help to mediate the process of inculturation, and thereby obviate the possibility of domination and manipulation by the dominant elite. There is, of course, the possibility that popular culture become the vehicle for bourg eois ide ology representing the interests of the wealthy; this could be presented as Filipino values as such and thus perpetuate colonialism. Certainly, in an over-all discussion of the autonomy of the individual and his society, this question must be addressed. But a capitalist system is not an intrinsic structure of urbanization/industrialization. While it can endanger Filipino Christian autonomy due to the class conflict of the wealthy and the poor, our concern is with the relation of urbanization as such to the autonomous Christian, not with the capitalist socio-economic and political system.

If popular culture were non-ideological, it would not be dominating or colonizing, but would broaden and enrich ethnic culture. In terms of the principle that union differentiates, ethnic culture would be differentiated. It would become more global and planetary, and thus able to create an individual that is more global and planetary in outlook. Popular culture, as the product of cultural interaction with western culture and with indigenous ethnic cultures, would provide a wealth of relationships and knowledge. By increasing, in turn, the individual's freedom of choice and self-determination, it would increase his or her autonomy.

We have presented here a partial and sketchy discussion of the relation of urbanization and Philippine values. We have not covered all aspects of urbanization in relation to values, nor all values in relation to urbanization. The discussion was selective.

Our attitude towards urbanization and its effect on Philippine values and Filipino identity and autonomy is positive; we are not anti-urban. The criticism about the slums, the poverty, the overcrowding, the increasing gap between the wealthy few and the many poor may not all be due to urbanization as such, but to the capitalist context in which urbanization is carried on. A careful analysis must first be made as to the causes of the evils in the city before one can take a position with respect to urbanization and values. Any recommendations for urban planning and new structures must, in the final analysis, be based on one's cultural definition of the autonomous person, for, to paraphrase Pl ato, the city is the individual writ large: as the individual, so the city.

University of the District of Columbia

Washington, D.C.

NOTES

1. Peter Be rger, The Homeless Mind (New York: Random House, l973), p. 200. 2. See her article, "The AECD: Its Implications for the Philippine Urban and Industrial Development," in Philippine Studies, 19 (1971), 13-24.

3. Gustavo Gu t ierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 72.

4. Ibid.

5. Quoted from Stephen Lu kes, Individualism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), p. 55.

6. Tei lhard de Chardin , The Future of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 234-35.

7. See his The Twilight of the Cities (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), p. 75.

8. Ibid.

9. F. William Ho w ton, "Cities, Slums, and Acculturative Process in the Developing Countries," in Urbanism, Urbanization, and Change, ed. Paul Mea dows and Ephraim H. Miz ruchi (2nd ed.; Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publ., Co., 1976), p. 408.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., p. 409.

12. Op. cit., p. 16.

13. Euiyoung H am, "Urbanization and Asian Lifestyles," in Meadows and Mizruchi, op. cit., p. 225.

14. These are terms used by Peter Be rger in his book, The Homeless Mind (New York: Random House, 1973).

15. Ephraim Mi zruchi, "Romanticism, Urbanism, and Small Town in Mass Society: An Exploratory Analysis," in Meadows and Mizruchi, op. cit., p. 242.

16. Op. cit., pp. 16-17.

17. Ibid., p. 17.

18. See her article, "Urban Migration and their Links with Home," in Philippine Studies, 29 (1981), p. 228.

19. Op. cit., pp. 411-12.

20. From a pamphlet, Basic Christian Community (Manila: Jesuit Apostolic Center, 1973), p. 1.

21. Berger, op. cit., p. 29.

22. Ibid., pp. 207-208.

23. See his article, "Notes on the Filipino Philosophy of Work and Leisure," in Philippine Studies, 22 (1974), p. 72.

24. Ibid., p. 71.

25. Ibid., p. 72.

26. Doreen G. Fer nandez, "Philippine Popular Culture: Dimensions and Directions," in Philippine Studies, 29 (1981), p. 26.

27. Ibid.