Entropy in the Tagalog Worldview
Why the Establishment chose Tagalog Culture and Institutions to be Dominant
Editor’s note: except for the prologue, this article has been completely superseded by a latter one:
Preface: Entropy Reconsidered
Entropy is... often erroneously referred to as the 'state of disorder' of a system. Qualitatively, entropy is simply a measure how much the energy of atoms and molecules become more spread out in a process and can be defined in terms of statistical probabilities of a system or in terms of the other thermodynamic quantities.
Entropy. (2020, August 16). Retrieved from https://chem.libretexts.org/@go/page/1942
Curtis Yarvin popularized the idea of Leftism as Entropy: a chaotic force leading to society's destruction. He purports Progressive ideas, including egalitarianism, liberal democracy, feminism, etc to destabilize order in society. The Left's rationale is to turn lead into gold: solve et coagula, as Traditional Catholics call it. Humanity, imperfect and fallen, is exalted to reach Heaven through scientific progress, through fine-tuned calibration. To counteract this, Yarvin proposes absolutism and neocameralism: a single chief executive beholden to a populace. Like a CEO, he answers to the populace's demands while exercising full power over the body politic. This iron hand would keep order in society, while ensuring accountability.
Yet as the quote above shows, entropy is not chaos. As reality shows, the Left wants chaos the least. Entropy is the increasing lack of activity, of movement, till the dynamic process reaches equilibrium. This is the Left's true goal: a static order, no motion, no hierarchies, no divisions, no property, no markets. Indeed, Yarvin's proposal hearkens more to a Communist Politburo theoretically accountable to the people. Instead of economic matters, a neocameral leadership would micromanage disputes and cases and enforcement. Yarvin fell to the popular thought of Communism and Capitalism as diametric opposites, while claiming to be above the dichotomy by imposing a neo-medieval order. In fact, this reasoning comes from Marxian historical materialism.
Historical materialism posits that from primitive communism, economic institutions evolved in a series of command economies. Karl Marx borrowed this idea from Adam Smith, whose invisible hand concept refers to this passage:
The rich ... consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
We can rephrase the highlighted passage like so:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution.
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
Command economies inevitably lead to disaster, for no government can gather all the information required. Of course, the Leftist logos pleads to advances in big data and statistics to let governments play God. Pure matter, however, is aimless and formless. Statistical models cannot replicate concrete reality's complexity without human guidance. Aristotle knew that reality and being necessitates doing - to be is to do, and a subject's identity is its being-at-work: a moment's completion of motion. To remain existent is being-at-work-staying-itself: to remain in some active condition persistently towards some end. Life is a dynamic process, with no equilibrium till death. Homeostasis requires full action of each body's organs, not stasis. As such, spontaneous order occurs once members of the body work together in one unified telos, or damla in Kapampangan.
The body politic is the product of spontaneous order. Individuals and families join together to defend their interests as a group. Their affairs are separate from others unless a matter concerns them both. Aristotle thus proposes a political regime - combination of oligarchy and democracy - to rule realms and domains. These same political regimes act with no outside interference. Medieval times, while subscribing to Neoplatonist Metaphysics, worked this practical ideal more than any time throughout history. Yarvin errs in rejecting spontaneous order as modernity's solution, for artificial constructs like limited-liability corporations, centralized states, and dictators would never see light of day in Medieval times.
In medieval times, free cities, universities, mercantile associations, large estates, etc. developed their own systems of governance as more or less closed (private) economies (households or associations of households). They did so under the protection of the Church. The Church was as eager to stop the centralizing drift toward “the absoluteness of political power and the worship of the might of the mighty” as kings and monarchs were eager to promote it. In addition, the Church’s insistence on the natural law kept those “private systems” compatible with each other as to basic principles and prevented them from turning into separate collections of special-interest privileges. To use a market analogy, the Church oversaw the integrity of the market system without interfering in the internal ordering of individual households or associations of households, at least in so far as they did not threaten to take over the market by forcefully eliminating the independence of other households or to subvert the authority of the principles of natural law.
As such, the Scholastics upheld insurrection against tyranny, private armsbearing, and tyrannicide, all within proper reason and prudence. Absolute force and power were foreign concepts to Medieval Western and Central Europe. Luther's Reformation, touted by Yarvin to be a force for disorder, actually aided Early Modern states gain absolute control.
When the delicate balances of customary rights and obligations were disturbed, a new class of politicians and lawyers emerged. Politicians were experts at brokering deals between the ruling elite or its officers and wealthy subjects (cities, landowners, entrepreneurs, traders, adventurers, pirates). Lawyers, trained at the universities in the formal techniques of the Roman Law, were experts at exploiting the weaknesses of the unwritten customary laws in confrontations with formally attested documents, especially those issued by or attributed to one or other king, duke or city government.
The lawyers were always eager to prompt rulers, parliaments and courts of law to favor the class interests of their clients by downplaying their largely unwritten customary duties and obligations as owners of large estates and highlighting their usually well-documented property rights to the estates they had bought (often at bargain prices, because many estates had been ruined or vacated in the plagues and wars that devastated the continent between the mid-14th and the mid-17th century). In this way, the lawyers invented “absolute rights”, i.e. rights without obligations, other than those which were owed to the monarch. Such rights could be fitted easily into the conceptual schemes of the academic Roman Law.
Just as the Roman paterfamilias was supposed to have had absolute rights over his household against everybody else, except against the Emperor, just so the modern owner's estate should be supposed his absolute right, subject only to the State's authority. Politicians and lawyers came to dominate in what remained of the medieval representative
The so-called Protestant Reformation added the notion that everything that had to do with the Catholic Church was part of a past that could not be forgotten soon enough. It was not a
reformation so much as it was a cultural revolution. Specifically in its early Lutheran manifestation, the Reformation extended man's biological individuality into the spheres of his spiritual and intellectual life, and from there, into all his economic, social, political and cultural
activities. The extension made the laws of physical force the only Laws of Nature. By implication, only modern empirical “natural science” could constitute the human conscience
(“knowledge shared in common”). Everything else was contingent and incidental, merely subjective or conventional fluff. Elaborated in the Enlightenment, those implications rose to prominence in the scientistic and technocratic cults of the 19th and the 20th century.
Absolute monarchs like Louis XIII expanded their power by appointing allies in the merchant class to govern formerly autonomous areas. The customary parliaments, hailed by Machiavelli as preserving social order, lost their powers to an increasingly bureaucratic elite. The Protestant wrecking of the social order culminated in the Peace of Westphalia, when centralized states became a reality. Dictators and absolute monarchs shielding humans from their imperfections in fact comes from Enlightenment thinking:
Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, the older libertarian liberalism got buried under an avalanche of liberationism, fed by enthusiasts from all over the political spectrum, eventually even within the Catholic Church. Libertarianism stands for man's capacity as a person to free his will, his thinking and his conscience from error and sin by conscientiously seeking truth in all things — the medieval conception of free will. In contrast, liberationism stands for the State's (or organized society's) capacity to shield individuals from the consequences of their imperfections, errors and sins. By the end of the century, one could well ask “Who needs old-style rights, freedoms and liberties, when everybody has ‘human rights’, i.e. desires that the State will try to satisfy, if it has the means to do so and deems them politically correct?” Liberationism goes back, on the one hand, to late-medieval, early-modern millenarian movements that sought to create the Kingdom of God (the New Jerusalem of the Bible's Book of Revelation) here on Earth, and on the other hand, to 18th- and 19th-century socialist proposals to undo history and to re-form human society on entirely new foundations.
Hence, not only does the managerial welfare state find its roots in Enlightenment Liberationism. Limited-liability corporations, absolute monarchs, dictators, and micromanaging human authorities all find their origins in the Enlightenment. Yarvin's desire to institute absolute chief executives will only worsen the Enlightenment's effects - unless this is the so-called Dark Enlightenment he seeks.
The Tagalog Connection
Despite all post-war Philippine presidents (except Estrada) not being Tagalogs, they have only spread Tagalog culture and language. As we have discussed previously, the Manila establishment's institution of a welfare state suits the collective elite's interests. However, closer examination of Tagalog culture and society gives further answers.
Before Spanish times, Tagalog society was organized in a strict caste system. Juan de Plascencia records four castes: a managerial, non-productive caste of maginoo, a warrior caste of maharlika, a serf caste of aliping namamahay, and chattel slaves called aliping sa gigilid. Only the maginoo caste was truly free: maharlika needed to render agricultural or military service, aliping namamahay needed to pay tribute to their masters. Caste mobility was virtually nonexistent, although alipin of both types may pay to become maharlika, also called timawa from Kapampangan influence for they were more free than alipin.
This organization descended from the Visayan caste system. Indeed, the Tagalogs had come from the Southern Visayas near Mindanao before migrating northwards to Marinduque and Luzon. The Visayans organized themselves into datu, timawa, horo-han, oripun. Unlike the Tagalogs, however, the datu and timawa had almost fraternal relations. Indeed, Plascencia records Tagalog maginoo acting paternalistically to their maharlika: holding feasts and banquets for their benefit before going into battle. Visayan datu and timawa, however, acted more like a Germanic comitatus. A timawa retinue and their datu watched each other's back, tasted the other's wine for poison, checked on each other's relatives, and so on. Serf horo-han served military service only, becoming timawa through loyal service. Chattel uripon were treated as the lowest of society. Tagalog society thus saw a shift in the warrior caste being relegated to soldiers and farmers, while Visayan warriors fought and farmed in their own right without obligation. Scott notes that both datu and timawa were non-productive castes for society at large, uripon performing most of the work.
Tagalog society presents a clear contrast with Kapampangan society. Ruling Guinu had rights and obligations to enforce custom and judge cases: nothing more. Guinu were elected by popular acclamation, and hereditary succession was not guaranteed. Larkin notes that other than these duties, guinu and freemen timawa were little different. Both groups needed to work their land or craft goods for sale, and timawa tributes were required only once a year as taxes. Guinu could also lead war parties of timawa who enlist. Chattel slavery was virtually non-existent, with the ipus servants an exact equivalent to European serfdom. Much important to the Kapampangans was catimawan: libertas in the Medieval sense. Indeed, the Tagalog word kalayaan was a neologism coined from layaw: to spoil the body with concupiscence. Kapampangan concepts of property, markets, production, and consumption were rather advanced for Southeast Asia. Furthermore, Kapampangan society saw that timawa receive fair trial from a council. Guinu could be tried only by guinu from other villages to prevent familial and kinship ties from imposing bias.
Tagalog culture's attractiveness for the Manila establishment surely stems from the Tagalogs' entropic worldview. Tagalogs are a non-confrontational people, who prefer peace with neighbors. Arguments and quarrels stem from non-conformity, as the inaccurately named crab mentality shows: the proud nail in Tagalog cultures is hammered down. Indeed, Kapampangans along the Pampanga River know that crabs, when placed in a bucket, aid each other in getting out. Tagalogs have projected their own impropriety on the rest of the ethnic tribes in an attempt to impose conformity and uniformity. Tagalog songs, Tagalog literature, Tagalog heroes are now imposed as "national" songs, literature, and heroes. This trait has been recorded from Spanish times:
They act tyrannically one toward another. Consequently, the Indian who has some power from the Spaniard is insolent and intolerable among them—so much so that, in the midst of their ingratitude, some of them recognize it, although very few of them. Yet it is a fact that, if the Spaniards had not come to these islands, the Indians would have been destroyed; for, like fish, the greater would have swallowed the lesser, in accordance with the tyranny which they exercised in their paganism.
This proud-nail mentality inhibits enterprise and business among Tagalogs. The collective traditionally obeys the whims of a woman-leader, or dayang. Tagalog matriarchy has been a noted fact in history:
The major aim of a Tagalog marriage was to provide the wife with a groom rather than a groom with a wife. In other words, Tagalog society was organized for women, men being necessary accessories. This is contained in the terms [for state of engagement and state of marriage] both derived from the root "female"... Moreoever, in the case of the aristocarcy, the wife being a ginoo "dame, noble lady" by marriage the groom became a maginoo "lord, a man having a dame". This ancient status of the wife is somehow reflected in modern Tagalog by the term maybahay "wife, having a house".
Jean-Paul Potet, Ancient Beliefs and Customs of the Tagalogs pp 80--81
While men still led Tagalog society, women held it together, and often informed their spouses' policies. Indeed, the male maginoo acted more as bureaucrats and managers for their wives and concubines. Tagalog society encouraged drunkenness, promiscuity, and affairs. Abortion and infanticide, while practiced, was not as rampant in precolonial Visayas for the Tagalogs loved large families. Indeed, affairs with future sisters-in-law were regular premarital occurrences.
Kapampangan society was not as licentious. Quoting Gaspar de San Agustin,
The Pampangos can be exempted from this rule, for they are very temperate in this wretched habit [of drunkenness], as well as in all the other things which we have mentioned. They are very different: for they are truthful, and love their honor; are very brave, and inclined to work; and are more civil, and of better customs. In regard to the vices here mentioned (for they are, in the last analysis, Indians like the rest), they keep them more out of sight and covered. In all things the Pampangos have a nobleness of mind that makes them the Castilians of these same Indians. Consequently, that people must be distinguished from the rest in its character, in all that we have said.
Kapampangan nobleness speaks for itself in historical records: Kapampangans garrisoned Spanish outposts as far as Cebu and the Ladrones. Kapampangan arquebusiers fought against the Dutch. Kapampangan dragoons and infantry formed the vanguard against British aggression. Kapampangans formed a unique officer corps in the East Indies forces. Kapampangan nobility entered the Spanish peerage. Kapampangan students went to Spain for studies.
The Kapampangan-Tagalog divide has existed from prehistory, as previously discussed. Thus when Apung Sucu led his forces against the Tagalog navy under Dayang Makiling, one could discern Providence playing Maxwell's Demon: entropy was reversed, and the Kapampangan way of life persisted. Indeed, one may see the Tagalog slur of dugong aso as envy. Kapampangan boastfulness may be Tagalog collectivism and conformity picking on the individualist Kapampangans. We thus turn to another product of envy, which has ecclesiastical condemnation:
To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.
Envy for better peers marks Tagalog society. The proud-nail mentality ensures conformity among a docile, woman-lead populace. Megacorporations and bureaucratic regimes mark Tagalog lands, with free enterprise and markets dead in the water. Freedom of voluntary association dies, and one must be a "Filipino", or an "Atenean", or a "Lasallian", or a "UP Fighter", or the proud tool of whatever corporation, or the proud graduate of whatever school. Kapampangan businessmen remain successful, with or without government backing through limited liability or kickbacks. Kapampangan enterprises dominate Pampanga and Tarlac, with the odd outsider store here and there - most probably in Clark, Angeles, or San Fernando. Kapampangans see disaster and tragedy as a challenge, and learn from their mistakes to improve themselves. A Tagalog sees progress as walking backwards while looking backwards. If Mount Makiling erupted, Tagalog lands would remain desolate for decades. Meanwhile, Pampanga recovered practically overnight from Mount Pinatubo with little government support. Kapampangans whom Tagalogs berate as muck farmers have grown rich through agribusiness and sheer diligence. What more for the technically skilled Kapampangans?
Ultracalvinism as Tagalog State Religion
Curtis Yarvin posits that 21st century democracies hold Ultracalvinism as their state religion. Although a theoretical concept with no self-proclaimed adherents, the Ultracalvinist framework provides a good study on Tagalog society. We list each main point as Yarvin states below, and follow up with a comparison on Tagalog culture.
First, ultracalvinists believe in the universal brotherhood of man. As an Ideal (an undefined universal) this might be called Equality. (“All men and women are born equal.”) If we wanted to attach an “ism” to this, we could call it fraternalism.
The Tagalogs hold to equality among them within Tagalog society, and among them and other ethnic groups. Conformity and collectivism, the proud nail mentality, and non-confrontationalism outside of proud nails are blatant displays of this fact. Tagalog matriarchy is only one manifestation of this, for man's natural strengths are equalized and redistributed by placing them on woman's feet.
Second, ultracalvinists believe in the futility of violence. The corresponding ideal is of course Peace. (“Violence only causes more violence.”) This is well-known as pacifism.
Tagalogs abhor confrontation (again, outside of nailing down proud nails) and use of violence to solve problems. Violent cinema and video games were anathema to Tagalogs, although youths exposed to Western media have changed stances on this point.
Third, ultracalvinists believe in the fair distribution of goods. The ideal is Social Justice, which is a fine name as long as we remember that it has nothing to do with justice in the dictionary sense of the word, that is, the accurate application of the law. (“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”) To avoid hot-button words, we will ride on a name and call this belief Rawlsianism.
As women historically lead Tagalog societies, so too would society look like a household run by a smothering mother. Tagalogs inherently support redistribution, envying their betters such as Kapampangans. Tagalog support for strongmen and for progressive stances seem at odds unless one knows of Ultracalvinism. Unquestioned managerial elites use progressive policies as prolefeed while civil liberties erode away.
Fourth, ultracalvinists believe in the managed society. The ideal is Community, and a community by definition is led by benevolent experts, or public servants. (“Public servants should be professional and socially responsible.”) After their counterparts east of the Himalaya, we can call this belief mandarism.
Entropy seeks stasis and security. Tagalogs would rather work for a corporation or bureaucracy than strike on their own as a sole proprietorship or independent contractor. Kapampangans bear all the risk of their investments, and pay or profit accordingly. Tagalogs, however, would have their cake and eat it too, and will use any trick to offload risk on their actions.
As one sees, Ultracalvinism is the de facto state religion for Tagalogs. In fact, Philippine Catholicism at the hierarchy's level remains greatly influenced by Tagalog culture and society. A sharp turn to liberation theology, support for the nouvelle theologie, a greater emphasis on social justice than proper, orthodox catechism emerged from Tagalog cultural and societal hegemony over the Philippines. Kapampangan clergy, who used to fill the ranks of Jesuits and Augustinians, have unfortunately imitated their Tagalog counterparts in some aspects. We thus request prayer and penance for Kapampangan clergy and religious that they may return to their proper path.
The Tagalog vision of entropy sees them dominating the Archipelago de San Lazaro through the myth of a united Filipino people. Tagalog matriarchy, conformity, and collectivism have all reappeared as Feminism and Democratic Revolution from the Center. We Kapampangans need to fight these foreign values to preserve our way of life.
Further Historical Reading
Flannery, K. P. (2016). Battlefield diplomacy and empire-building in the Indo-Pacific world during the Seven Years’ War. Itinerario, 40(3), 467-488.
Larkin, J. A. (1972). Pampangans. University of California Press.
Mallari, J. C. (2009). King Sinukwan Mythology and the Kapampangan Psyche. Coolabah, (3), 227-234.
Mawson, S. (2016). Philippine Indios in the service of empire: Indigenous soldiers and contingent loyalty, 1600–1700. Ethnohistory, 63(2), 381-413.
Newson, L. A. (2009). Conquest and pestilence in the early Spanish Philippines. University of Hawaii Press.
Poter, J.-P. G. (2018). Ancient beliefs and customs of the Tagalogs. Lulu. com.
Scott, W. H. (1979). Class structure in the unhispanized Philippines. Philippine Studies, pages 137–159.
Zorc, R. D. P. (1993). The prehistory and origin of the Tagalog people. Language—A doorway between human cultures: Tributes to Dr. Otto Chr. Dahl on his ninetieth birthday, 201-211.