Question: Explore the Tenets of Sikolohiyang Pilipino and explain how they are relevant to our current realities in the Philippines. Also, investigate the role of psychology and psychologists in addressing the problems in developing countries.
“Ikaw ba’y nalulungkot? Ikaw ba’y nag-iisa? Walang kaibigan… Walang kasama… Ikaw ba’y nalilito? Pag-iisip mo’y nagugulo? Sa buhay ng tao… Sa takbo ng buhay mo… Ikaw ba’y isang mayaman O ika’y isang mahirap lang? Sino sa inyong dalawa ang mas nahihirapan?
Masdan mo ang mga bata, masdan mo ang mga bata. Ikaw ba’y walang nakikita, sa takbo ng buhay nila? Masdan mo ang mga bata ang buhay ay hawak nila. Masdan mo ang mga bata, ang sagot, iyong makikita.” – Asin “Masdan mo ang mga bata”
Sikolohiyang Pilipino aims to deconstruct the Filipino mind’s way of thinking.
That way of thinking that for many years has continued to plague our perception of ourselves. This mindset of placing our hopes and dreams at the mercy of knowledge borrowed from our colonizers in the form of education and language should be rectified. Sikolohiyang Pilipino existed because of the need to understand our nature as a people with a common history and experience. Yet Sikolohiyang Pilipino does not intentionally go against the fount of knowledge gained from psychology reared from the west. In fact it is continuing its thrust in understanding humans in context to their culture and environment. For if psychology’s aim is to cure the mentally disordered individual and the emotionally scarred person, how much nobler and proud would it be to help a people deprived of their right to identity and suffers tremendous inferiority?
We are a race that needs to be assessed and given therapy for the rape and plunder of our cultural well-being by our colonizers. Another contention raised by Sikolohiyang Pilipino is our means to educating our people. It is sad to note that learning becomes limited to the classroom while in fact there is much knowledge to be gained outside of the walls of a University. Our methods of inquiry are never understood by the indigenous mind. They cannot pass the exams designed for the English speaking student. Not to mention that our masses are set aside in the decision makings in the Government. They do not understand the Law which is their birthright as a citizen. Knowledge and Power is relegated only to the most fortunate Filipinos who have the privilege to a University whose society has given a limit to service and the promulgation of knowledge.
But are they really fortunate? Are these Filipinos worthy to have a diploma and to earn the credits required by the University and eventually land an eight-hour job at the expense of his/her Identity as a Filipino?
Year after year we produce graduates that are neither appreciative nor excited of their culture and heritage. Isn’t it surprising that we have come to be an able marketable dumping ground of foreign countries for their products, while we are not able to create our own industries? It is a chain reaction that follows, our media looks up to foreign telenovelas, our diet looks up to fast-food chains, our clothing becomes a mediocre copy of what is in fashion from the west, our music becomes a bastardized echo of MTV, even the way we eat, where it is considered rude to not use the famed fork and spoon. Especially the way we look at our women, family, children, the third sex and the Church.
The Filipino legends “Bernardo Carpio and Lam-ang” being unheard of by our children instead exchanged for the “Voltes Five” of Japan and “Power Rangers” of the US. Many Filipinos brutally murdered by the hundreds outside of the country working as domestic helpers and entertainers while the Filipinos left here who can’t afford to go out of the country becomes a ready “mail-order bride” for the flesh hungry foreigner.
Not only is our people maimed, tortured and raped intellectually, we were also tamed and made ready as objects of manipulation for foreigners even ourselves.
These and much more are what the “Sikolohistang Pinoy” observed. He/she has tried time and again to help ameliorate the conditions of his/her country by the use of what he/she learned in the laboratory and the classroom. However time and again he/she failed. Fortunately a number of psychologists woke up, and doubted their methods in addressing the problems of their country.
Such is the role of psychologists and the legacy of psychology as a science and art. The discipline becomes a partisan science and instead of observing from the sidelines psychologists become a part of the immersed whole. For they realize that in understanding the human mind it is best to experience what they are trying to study. The results may vary but the active role of the psychologist becomes a predominant source of ideas as complex as a microscopic axiom of the brain. Sikolohiyang Pilipino is a by-product of a consciousness deprived of the chance to think in its own. The relevance of the concept is as important as a means to the survival of our race. It is a step further for psychology as a whole and an irritating canker for those who plan to maintain the status-quo for their selfish-ends.
This answers the definite role of psychology and psychologists in addressing the problems of developing countries. (In our case a more maldeveloping one.) For as psychology as a discipline recognized the capacity of that country to grow and ameliorated, the psychologists as a person becomes the harbinger of dissent. This in itself is enough if only to stir critical thinking to the developing country and its constituents in being able to help itself and live harmoniously among the countries of the world.
For in the end it is not we that shall outlive the concepts of psychology or Sikolohiyang Pilipino.
It is our children.
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what are the solutions made about this problems and issues?????