The Tagalog Revolutionary Spirit
and its Impact on Philippine History
All essays published before July 2022 are considered obsolete. Please wait for the upcoming book.
A great lake stood before the woman staring over yonder, a carabao horn breastplate hugging her body. They had fallen upon the natives, put them to work in manual labor and lowly crafts. These had men for leaders, women caring for houses. They owned land and property a man, their leaders only guiding and directing, never controlling. A fanciful notion. Yet her people knew better, needed to show others how great it was to live their way.
She turned to some noise nearby. Just the captive men building new huts and new roads, a great town by the lake. Further behind them, a tall mountain stood strong. Maybe one day they would even name it after her. For all she did to spread their radical message of love.
As a Kapampángan growing up 40 years ago, we never knew about "Talangka (Crab) mentality" till we entered school and learned about Filipino values in Social Studies and Values Education. The Kapampángans are a confrontational people. What we Kapampángans have then was Singkáragul Taklâ (The biggest shit contest) or Singkákátas Imî (The highest piss contest) where we try to outdo everyone else openly rather than pull them down secretly. We identify Talangka mentality as the defect of the peace-loving and non-confrontational Tagalogs instead. They don't like open confrontation and therefore quietly resort to this tactic. "Values Education" in this country replaces our traditional indigenous values and weakness with Tagalog values and weakness. If you talk to Kapampángans in the riverbanks who grew up with the Talangkâ though, they will tell you that the "Talangkâ Mentality" as described in Philippine textbooks is nonsense. The Talangkâ actually pull each other up out of a basket rather than pull each other down. Whoever came up with that on Philippine Social Studies textbooks have never actually observed the Talangkâ in a basket.
Mike Pangilinan
Culture, Race, and Ethnos
Eugene M. Jones writes at length how the Pharisaic Jews’ rejection of Christ as Logos (the natural order and reason of the universe at large) led to their entropic culture and institutions. Hence Jewish matriarchy, Jewish argumentativeness, stereotypical Jewish greed, and other Jewish cultural hallmarks imitate the choleric and the woman at large.
Of course, while the Jews are especially marked out for their rejection of Christ, entropic cultures exist everywhere. Before the Indo-Europeans came, Old Europe paid host to the Gravettians, Magdalenians, and other peaceful, non-confrontational, and matriarchal cultures. Old Europe in many ways resembles modernity:
The modern is “nothing new”: it is the return of a very ancient subjection and brokenness under new branding, promoted by new concepts and justifications. If you want to see our future look to Europe as it existed before 1600 BC, or much of the world as it was until recently and still is… the communal life of the longhouse with its young men dominated and broken by the old and sclerotic, by the matriarchs, the blob and yeast mode in human life overtaking and subjecting all higher aspiration… It is no different if they use the doxies of Reason and Logos to cart us off to this life.
The Indo-Europeans, bolstered by the chariot and their ability to digest lactose, ensured that no matriarchy would rule in Europe for millennia after pouring in. The Old European elite was replaced by an Indo-European one, and the Old Europeans admixed with the newcomers. Mass migrations themselves are a fact of history, with the Mongol invasions arguably being the last mass migration event in Eurasia before the Westphalian order. The Austronesian migrations brought a consistent cultural patterns around the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Hence we must tackle the age-old issue of race, ethnos, and civitas.
As Medieval writers emphasize, race doesn’t involve phenotype alone. It refers to a sum of geographically determined biological factors, including temperament. Hence the Indian IT and engineer stereotype already existed in Medieval times, as Saint Albert the Great points out in his On the Nature of Things:
“Everything generated in a place,” argues Albert, “derives its natural properties from that place.” This “everything” includes the mental and physical properties of human beings. Heat and cold are especially formative: Indians are good at mathematics and magic, because a little heat leads to mental subtlety.
Bartlett, R. (2001). Medieval and modern concepts of race and ethnicity. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 31(1), 39-56.
Medieval writers themselves distinguished between different races in an ethnos. The Scottish people had the Germanic-speaking lowlanders and Gaelic-speaking highlanders, their respective environments affecting their temperaments and the way that they interact with their received Scottish culture. We already tackled question of ethnos and civitas in a previous article, so we will skip it.
Race being a question of environmental adaptation, the Medievals knew that after a few generations one race transplanted somewhere else could inevitably change, similar to modern epigenetics where mutations and natural selection determine what environments genetically near peoples could live in. The telos of race being simple environmental adaptation, race isn’t necessarily a set property, although changes would still take generations. The original Indo-Europeans have disperesed into their own peoples, each with physical variations as suiting their environment. For example, the red hair mutation exists across Eurasia (including parts of China) because of old Indo-European admixture from days past. Blonde hair was a prehistoric Siberan mutation that eventually spread into Northern Indo-Europeans from admixture. In modern times, however, I would say that race-mixing should be discouraged among the masses for two pragmatic reasons:
The Westphalian Order has made traditional community and family its target, with race-mixing and cultural uniformity good tools to advance atomization.
Mass migration is being encouraged to advance past nationalist into globalist atomization, and no better way exists to remove perceptions of differences than to remove physical differences.
Controls on race-mixing can be lifted once leftovers from atomization disappear, and people have stable conceptions of race, ethnos, and civitas again.
Austronesian Traces
Now from this tangent, we can turn our eyes back to the Austronesian case. From their home in Fujian province, the Austronesians settled on Taiwan, then migrated into Southeast Asia, Oceania, and even eventually Madagascar. Other than language, these peoples shared a pattern of cultural relics:
pottery,
jade/imitation jade jewelry,
outirgger-type boats,
stilt houses,
warrior tattoos,
dorsal slit circumcision (where no foreskin is removed),
collectivism, and
matriarchy.
Rice farming, a later innovation, also spread following initial Austronesian migrations. Some Austronesians even made their way to Kyushu in Japan, where they made contact with the Yayoi people, and figured into early Japanese history as the Hayato and Kumaso peoples. The Austronesian line continues today, with peoples still practicing old customs on top of foreign influences like Islam and Catholicism.
However, a few races managed to break the Austronesian pattern. The Maori were once a typical Polynesian tribe until they landed on New Zealand. For example, they completely abandoned dorsal slit circumcision and thought it shameful:
Circumcision, or rather superincision… was performed throughout Polynesia… It was such a general custom that the [superincised man] was treated with ridicule. It is strange that though the custom must have prevailed in central Polynesia before the Maori ancestors left, they did not continue it in New Zealand.
Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), The Coming of the Maori, p 354
The Maori also started valuing males over females, with female infanticide common, and female slaves preferred for their docility.
The Maori’s environment shaped not only their customs and practices. Today, the average Maori man stands at 175.5 centimeters, or 5 feet and 9.1 inches, only a little shorter than the average American man [From Average heights and weights - Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand]. For reference, the average Maori woman weighed stands at 162.5 centimetres. Compare this to the average Filipino man’s height at 5 feet and 4.2 inches in 2013. Of course, relics from Austronesian culture still made their way. Shame, instead of guilt, still ensured societal cohesion. Strict societal codes with a formal name (tikanga) governed much of life. Collectivism still held.
In another example of Austronesians breaking the trend, Bornean migrants to Madagascar from somewhere in Indonesia then intermixed with the local Bantu. The Malagasy themselves form one ethnos with multiple races in them on a spectrum from almost pure Bantu to almost pure Austronesian. Local environmental adaptations of course shaped them too, with the extremes of highland Austronesians and coastal Bantu sharing similar ethnic customs and language while having their own practices and character. Of course, Austronesian commonalities dominate, with long-grained rice being the main food, dorsal-slit circumcision practiced, and matriarchy practiced, among others.
Austronesian culture also made its mark on Philippine societies, manifesting in some commonalities. Matriarchy and collectivism merged with rigid (sometimes Hindu-influenced) caste systems to dominate societies and polities. Dorsal-slit circumcision persists into modernity despite the Spanish banning the practice. Outrigger-style boats became vessels for war and trade, the karakoa and balangay being only two examples. Of course, regional variations persisted, including how rigid the caste system was, how much social mobility was possible, what kind of outrigger boats were favored, and so on. However, like the Maori, the Kapampangans broke from this mold and set about a unique society with institutions differing from other groups. Their millennium-long enmity with the Tagalog people plays an important role in shaping Philippine history.
The Tagalog Migrations
Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone, that of the state. In each man’s absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master, the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: Its Nature and the History of its Growth, Chapter 9: Power, Assailant of the Social Order, in Book 4: The State as Permanent Revolution.
In his book, Jones writes that “Out of one hundred Jews, five may be radicals, but out of ten radicals, five are likely to be Jewish”. Normal Jewish people have the same needs and problems as most of humanity, but their culture remains prime breeding ground for more zealous Jews to spread their entropy.
For Tagalogs, however, one can count on more than five or even fifty out of a hundred accelerating the universe’s heat death from how entropy seeps the life and energy from everyone around them. One could say the same for the historical Japanese, or Neo-Confucian influenced parts of Chinese and Korean history, or the Javanese who treasure soy food, but they lie beyond our scope.
Ever since precolonial times, the Tagalog people have practiced matriarchy:
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 aristocracy, 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
Beyond marriage customs, promiscuity was encouraged. A woman was not considered a proper one till a man had deflowered her, with specially hired men often doing the deed. Virginity was seen as impure, and a form of female circumcision was practiced. 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, were not as rampant in precolonial Visayas for the Tagalogs loved large families. Affairs with future sisters-in-law were regular premarital occurrences. Polyandry - having multiple husbands - was encouraged, with polygamy practiced only among Muslim Tagalogs.
Even the Tagalog creation myth reflects matriarchy. Instead of the Indo-European Sky Father and Earth Mother, we see a feminine Sky giving birth to a piece of bamboo through her mouth, with the masculine Sea being only accessory to the Creation. Note that the bamboo came to be after the Sky threw rocks at her husband after a bird egged her to do so. Already we see the typical domineering Tagalog wife at play.
The bamboo was planted into land by a hermaphrodite deity Lakapati, whom the Tagalogs prayed to for their fields’ protection. From there came a brother and sister, the first humans. The rest of humanity came from their union, starting with a boy (Buo) and a girl (Samar). These two children also married, birthing the female earth Luplupan and the male rivers Pandawan who would marry for their daughter Lindol and son Anod to animate the earth and waters.
The Tagalogs organized themselves around women leaders titled Daya. These ginoo and their managerial bureaucrat maginoo husbands smothered their subjects in a nanny-like way. The bayan, or Tagalog community, revolved around them centrally managing everyone else. The bayan sees its lands handed out from the top, with property always subject to the leadership’s taking. Only they could approve building houses or holding feasts in red-tape ridden bureaucratic manner. Access to Fisheries, market duties, and waterways all fall to them. In Managerial fashion, they blanket apply tribal codes and laws without prudence. The leadership themselves needed to follow intricate protocol and etiquette, like consulting a traditional legalist when making decisions, holding feasts now and then, and officiating every house built. These were absolute tyrants, called poon by their subjects. The Spanish themselves felt disgust at them:
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.
Subject to the leadership were their servant retinues, the maharlika. This class came from the leadership’s illegitimate children along with freed serfs and slaves. The maharlika owe service and allegiance to the leadership, whether through agricultural work, military service, seafaring, or just by being a sworn man, or katunguhan. Even the maharlika have to render obeisance to the leadership and cover their mouths while talking to them, among other social protocols. One wonders why the Spanish called them free, or libres, with how little freedom they really had. William Scott discusses them:
Their franchise depends upon competence to enter into client-patron relationships, not upon birthright; that is, if they are not in debt to anybody, they are free to make such contracts, both as client, and as creditors to debtors or master to slaves. They enjoy agricultural rights to a portion of the barangay land, both to use and bequeath, and to harvest without paying any tribute. Although contractual relations vary and appear to include tribute in some cases, their patrons are basically their lords, not their landlords. Their normal obligation is agricultural labor worked off in groups when summoned for planting or harvesting, but they may also be liable to work fisheries, accompany expeditions, or row boats. And, like members of the Third Estate, they can be called out for irregular services like supporting feasts or building houses.
Scott, W. H. (1980). Filipino class structure in the sixteenth century. Philippine Studies, 142-175.
Perhaps out of Visayan memory, or from Kapampangan influence, the maharlika who worked in farms were called timawa.
Even below the already oppressed maharlika were the aliping namamahay (household servant; literally alipin in one’s house) and aliping sagigilid (chattel slave, literally alipin by the house’s margins). The former were mere serfs and peons who could work their way out of debt, and were not treated as chattel. This class itself could own chattel slaves. The latter were completely at the mercy of their owners and masters. One could write pages at what protocol and etiquette these had to follow.
As one can see, matriarchal tyranny marks Tagalog culture and institutions, along with an intricate protocol that everyone must show each other, and especially those above. The Tagalogs organized their society for providing maximum leisure and pleisure as long as everyone followed the rules and followed the right processes - sundan ang mga patakaran at idaan sa tamang paraan.
They are very fond of play, for they believe that it is a restful way in which to gain much, and it is very suitable to their laziness and lack of energy. Therefore, an Indian would rather lie stretched out in his house than gain the greatest wage. On this account, when he gets a peso he stays at home without working, until it is all eaten up or drunk up, for it all amounts to the same thing. This is the reason why they are so poor, in comparison with the Sangleys and mestizos, who live in abundance, for they know how to seek and work. Egestatem operata est manus remissa. (Proverbs X, verse 4.)
Gaspar de San Agustin, in correspondence
Thus the Tagalogs call the father ang haligi ng tahanan - “the walls and pillars of the house”. The mother they call ang ilaw ng tahanan - “the light of the house”. The perverted reversal of active and passive manifests: the father keeps a passive, accessory role, his relation to the family internal. The mother takes an active role, actively guiding the household, her relation to the family external. Tagalog men’s effeminacy and Tagalog women’s unnatural masculinity are rooted in the Tagalog family’s very foundation.
Capping all these was the Tagalog emphasis on hiya - shame and social standing. This concept is simply oversocialization millennia before Kaczynski thought of it:
Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.
Industrial Society and its Future, Paragraph 24
The oldest Tagalog linguistic variant lies in Marinduque, where one can find many archaic linguistic traits before Kapampangan and Central Luzon in general influenced later speakers. The Tagalog urhiemat itself, however, lies somewhere near Leyte. R David Zorc writes thus concerning Tagalog ethnogenesis:
The most probable single locus for early Tagalog development and emigration would be Southern Leyte, but more widely the eastern Visayan region or northeastern Mindanao… The Hiligaynons are also reported to have come from Leyte, and Tagalog appears to have a special affiliation to Hiligaynon. The sound system of old Tagalog is virtually identical to that reported for inland dialects of Waray, and must have been the same for old Hiligaynon.
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.
Around AD 800, a mass migration event happened with the Tagalogs leaving the Visayas for Marinduque. For now, we don’t know why this happened. However, the migration first took hold in Marinduque, where archaeology shows a rich prehistory. However, we don’t know if these artifacts are in any way related to Tagalog habitation. Either way, the Tagalog migration progressed fast, for barely a century later, Tagalogs were already burying their dead in Tayabas.
Brother Andrew Gonzalez reveals from conversation with Zorc how fast the migration must have happened: the Tagalog language rapidly loaned words from Kapampangan:
The replacement of PSP *hulas ‘sweat, perspiration’ by an earlier loan *pawes (Kapampangan pawas, Tagalog pawis), indicates the way Kapampangan once had penetrated in to the basic vocabulary of Tagalog. Many other loans indicate the dominance of professions by Kapampangan speakers ( karáyom ‘needle’ from
*ka-daRum for ‘tailoring’, dayami ‘rice straw’ from * daRami for ‘agriculture’, katám from *keTen for ‘carpenter’s plainer’, darak from *de(dak ‘powdered food from husk of rice’ for ‘agriculture’). Hence, Tagalogs have been enormously dependent upon the Kapampangans until they established themselves in Southern Luzon; this only makes sense for an incoming social group.Gonzalez, A. (2005). Contemporary Filipino (Tagalog) and Kapampangan: Two Philippine languages in contact. Current Issues in Philippine Linguistics and Anthropology: Parangal kay Lawrence A. Reid/Ed. by H. Liao and CR Galvez Rubino. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL Philippines, 93-114.
Barely any more information about the migration can be gleaned from traditional research and sources. Mythology, however, presents a pressing case for a violent invasion into Luzon.
The Battle for Pampanga River
The modern world is no different in this regard from any wretched tribal society. I'm sure that Europe prior to the Bronze Age, before the Indo-Europeans came, was
similar to modern Europe. People lived in communal longhouses and were likely browbeaten and ruled by obese mammies who instilled in them socialism and feminism. Most of those so-called males of the longhouse age were probably similar to the modern leftist "herb" who doesn't lift. Which is why those societies were so easily conquered. The left realizes they look weak and lame—because they are. They know they have nothing to offer youth but submission and lectures.
Tagalog migration would spread rapidly into Luzon, taking captive scores of hunter-gatherers and putting them into manual labor to sustain the Tagalog way of life. As they reached what we now call Laguna de Bay (the lake of the town of Ba-i), they established a great bayan whose links reached as far as China, with the Chinese calling them Ma-i. The natives spoke proto-Central Luzon, ancestor to Kapampangan, Sambal, and Hatang Kayi. Speakers of the last language came from lowland hunter gatherers frantically escaping the invasion, retreating into the mountains and mixing with the local Aeta. Thus we see them, the Remontado Agta, having mixed lowland and Aeta features.
As the myth goes, the migration moved past modern-day Bulacan and started making ready into Pampanga. However, a stroke of Divine Providence would stop them.
The Kapampangan chief god, Apung Sucu/Sinucuan, has conflicting origins. Some accounts call him the son of the creator weaver goddess Mangatia (her name derived from man ati ia - she who is). Others say that Sinucuan himself was the creator. Whatever the myth, an intriguing narrative stands out in one version of the tale. Here, Apung Sucu came upon the proto-Central Luzons and ruled over them. He introduced concepts of agriculture, metallurgy, woodworking, markets, property, and warfare. These marked the Kapampangans’ transition from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer culture to a sedentary, agriculturan one. These same manual crafts made a great impact on Tagalog linguistics, as Zorc explains above. If Apung Sucu is based on a real figure, he couldn’t have arrived too far before the Tagalog migrations, as the narrative claims that he lead resistance against an invasion.
The story goes on to explain that strange folk from the south started trespassing on proto-Kapampangan property and taking the fruits of Kapampangan labor. The natives obviously fought back, and started a skirmish which they won. Furious, the strangers claimed that they would return with their Dayang Makiling leading an army.
This section shows striking similarities with what we have discussed. The Tagalogs cared little about property rights, and their leaders took what they pleased and gave to their favorites. They practiced redistribution, and relied on a womanly leadership to direct their society. Thus a few nosey Tagalogs entered private property and cut down trees, picked fruits, harvested crops all for their own gain. The first intruders into Kapampangan land would not be the last, not for centuries.
The intruders made good on their promise, and went upstream the Pampanga River to impose their will onto Pampanga. The essence of the friend-enemy distinction is that any interest group needs to exert military might and force to assert itself if it will survive. The following events showed that the ancient Kapampangans knew the distinction.
Apung Sucu led his forces near the base of Mt Alaya and did battle with the invaders. The narrative says that he used supernatural might to lift two boulders into the river, making the downstream water reverse flow and wash away the invaders. In reality, this may be popular imagination corrupting memory of the battle - the Kapampangan forces being the boulders, and the Tagalog invaders being the reversing flow. Whatever the case, the Tagalog invaders lost decisively, and their migration had ended.
However, the narrative ends with an interesting point. Allegedly, Apung Sucu pursued Dayang Makiling and offered her peace in exchange for marriage. Because of his total victory, Makiling changed Sucu’s name into Sinucuan, meaning “he whom others surrendered to”. This point poses great ramifications. In Catholic theology, only those with authority can name their subjects - thus parents name their children, and God changed Abram’s name into Abraham, and one should not name his guardian angel. The legend of Makiling changing Sucu’s name, and Sucu accepting, could see implications a thousand years hence.
In the time since the migration, Makiling herself would pass into legend, then become deified into Diyan Masalanta: the goddess of storms and natural disaster. The Kapampangans and Tagalogs kept an uneasy peace, with marriage alliances happening now and again.
A Declining Elite
Pareto as well as Gaetano Mosca recognized that an elite or ruling class composed of only one or a few dominant social forces is likely to represent a danger to social and political groups outside the elite… The elite of the soft managerial regime closely resembles the kind of contracted, monolithic social force that Mosca discussed. Unlike the aristocratic and bourgeois elites of the past, the soft managerial elite bases its social dominance almost entirely on the single social force of modern managerial and technical skills.
Samuel Francis, Leviathan and its Enemies, Chapter 9
When the Spanish came to the Philippines, they initially kept and fostered native institutions, except for chattel slavery and personal debt peonage. Kapampangan ones kept stable over the first two centuries - including personal debt peonage as we shall later discuss. John Larkin, taking from Fr Plascencia, notes three broad social classes. First was the nobility, or mangapiya in Kapampangan, with a single chief leading the balen, or Kapampangan political community. The chief lead planting and harvesting, and also lead military campaigns outside the balen. He also served as judge for cases not involving himself, with nobles from other balen serving as his tribunal when accused to prevent nepotist decision.
The chief’s and nobility’s powers in general were defined by the traditional Kapampangan code. He could not broach his alotted powers, and someone virtuous or ambitious enough could replace him or any noble.
The freemen, or timaua, did anything they wanted granted that they paid yearly dues and fees to the chieftain. Otherwise, they could engage in commerce, work crafts and trades, farm their land, or even enlist in the chieftain’s military campaigns. Unlike the Tagalog maharlika, these timaua were truly free for they had no material or bodily restraints on them. They practiced liberty as choosing good and rejecting evil.
No chattel slavery existed in Pampanga late in precolonial times, with only a class of indebted peons below the timaua. Larkin uses the Tagalog term alipin, itself an ancient loan from Kapampangan. The indebted class itself resembled the Tagalog aliping namamahay, although it is better called the ipus (servant) class in Kapampangan. This institution remained in Pampanga until the mid-17th century under pressure from the Kapampangan control over rice and food supply to Manila, and also to strengthen Spanish cooperation with the nation.
The Kapampangans’ cultural nobility was repeatedly noted by Spanish authors. Fr Gaspar de San Agustin assesses their character thus:
They are very different [from the other Filipino groups]; 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 [drunkenness and laziness] (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 Castillians of these same Indians.
Letter from Gaspar de San Augustin, O.S.A., Manila, 1720, B&R, XL, 252.
Father Diego Bergano, notable Spanish linguist in Kapampangan, wrote the following lines in his phrasebook:
Sagán ya, pablásâng indió ya, paqui Capampáñgan ya, magmatápang ya. Paqui Tagálog ya, nun é talaralit, talatérac ya.
To be Indio is to be lazy, to be Kapampangan is to be brave. If Tagalogs aren’t singing, they are dancing.
Father Diego Bergano, Spanish-Kapampangan Phrasebook
Beyond culture and character, the Kapampangans’ military prowess went uncontested for centuries. Fr Casimiro Diaz writes about fear from a sudden Kapampangan rebellion:
The first who decided to try fortune by experience were the Pampangos, the most warlike and prominent people of these islands, and near to Manila. [Their rebellion was] all the worse because these people had been trained in the military art in our own schools, in the fortified posts of Ternate, Zamboanga, Joló, Caraga, and other places, where their valor was well known; but it needed the shelter of ours, and therefore it was said that one Spaniard and three Pampangos were equal to four Spaniards.
Capping all these was sunu - the Kapampangan refusal to cooperate willy-nilly, to keep doing what others want one to stop doing to provoke one’s rivals more, and to openly challenge one’s enemies out in the open without passive-aggression. The closest Kapampangan translation for hiya, dine, refers more to shyness than the Tagalog societal concept. If used to refer to shame, it is used jokingly and taken as non-offensive, while to Tagalogs being called walang hiya - having no shame, or alang dine in Kapampangan - is one of the most griveous offenses one could commit. Patriarchy and relative individualism also mark out Kapampangan culture from other Austronesian groups. Rothbard himself would have few qualms about Kapampangan society and institutions:
There are, and would be, a myriad of private clubs of all sorts. It is usually assumed that club decisions are made on the basis of one vote per member, but that is generally untrue. Undoubtedly, the best-run and most pleasant clubs are those run by a small, self-perpetuating oligarchy of the ablest and most interested, a system most pleasant for the rank-and-file nonvoting member as well as for the elite. If I am a rank-and-file member of, say a chess club, why should I worry about voting if I am satisfied with the way the club is run? And if I am interested in running things, I would probably be asked to join the ruling elite by the grateful oligarchy, always on the lookout for energetic members. And finally, if I am unhappy about the way the club is run, I can readily quit and join another club, or even form one of my own. That, of course, is one of the great virtues of [a society of voluntary association], whether we are considering a chess club or [a neighborhood community].
However, this was not to last with the Kapampangan nobility. Over time, Pampanga’s prosperity encouraged rent-seeking behavior among them, for further work became marginally inefficient in face of economic profits. With mestizos and natives both providing manpower, the nobility could also just pay off people to do work for them - or even just coerce them sometimes. Larkin quotes Governor General José Basco y Vargas complaining about the Kapampangan nobility:
The picture of a lethargic native elite was confirmed by Basco in 1784:
And, as the backward state of agriculture in Filipinas proceeds also from the fact that, notwithstanding there are many industrious, laborious and charitable persons in the villages, there are also many others in whom sloth and idleness reign—for instance, many chiefs and their sons, and the heads of barangay;... all these caring only to subjugate the common people by compelling them to work without pay in their fields, and trying to exempt themselves from common labor [polo] and from the other burdens to which those who pay tribute are subject…
The mestizos were thriving at the expense of a tradition-bound class that could not or would not cope with the new economy.
Larkin, J. A. (1972). Pampangans. University of California Press. Chapter 3: Transition.
Coincident with the nobility’s decline came an upsurge of Tagalog culture among them. Throughout the 19th Century, Pampanga faced economic turmoil amid inequality as cash crops dominated production. The nobility preferred learning Tagalog and socializing with Tagalogs instead of managing their homeland:
In terms of culture, social orientation, and wealth, the gap between the elite and the lower class widened. The former, through their knowledge of Spanish and Tagalog, associated with members of the colonial establishment and with upper-class Filipinos from other areas. The latter almost never spoke any language but Capampangan and did not participate in any of the life outside the province. The large stone houses with European furnishings and the nipa hut almost bare of furniture respectively identified the landlord and his tenants.
Larkin, J. A. (1972). Pampangans. University of California Press. Chapter 4: Crash Crop Society.
In fact, the Kapampangan elite and even noveau riche would become indistinguishable from urbanite Tagalogs:
The use of Spanish, however, provided only one indication of the growing urbanity of the upper class. Many of the group spoke Tagalog and associated with Tagalog caciques in and around Manila. In the Noli, Rizal commented on the fact that a number of prominent Pampangans traveled as far as Laguna Province to attend a town fiesta. MacMicking, Palgrave, and Sawyer all noted that the Pampangans and urban-oriented Tagalogs differed little in either manners or appearance.
Larkin, J. A. (1972). Pampangans. University of California Press. Chapter 4: Crash Crop Society.
One particular family from Bacolor represents a typical case of Tagalized nobility at Pampanga’s expense:
The Liongson family of Bacolor belonged to the same stratum. They possessed substantial agricultural lands and sent one of their members, Francisco, to study in Madrid. His training conferred upon him added prestige and he too enjoyed free associations with the Tagalog elite of his generation. The Liongsons and Arnedo Cruz can propely be called ilustrados for they represented the pinnacle of native society. The term has sometimes been used to describe the principalia in general, but it most properly belongs to those families which claimed preeminence beyond a single region." Land wealth, education, and broad social contacts differentiated the nineteenth century ilustrado from the rest of the principalia.
Larkin, J. A. (1972). Pampangans. University of California Press. Chapter 4: Crash Crop Society.
Note that the balen of Bacolor became the first defecting town for the First Republic once all hope outside Pampanga seemed lost, and Francisco Liongson himself joined the Revolution at its outbreak. The nobility’s support for the Katipunan and the First Republic is no surprise when one considers its long decline in character through the 19th century brought by good times making weak men. The Second Law of Archotropism made its mark, and the nobility threw away even pretensions of guiding the Kapampangans in favor of power and prestige.
The Revolutionary Establishment
Mass production requires not only homogeneous goods and services but also homogeneous consumers, who cannot vary in their tastes, values, and patterns of consumption, and who must consume if the planning of the corporations is to be effective. The moral formula of managerialism is [therefore] a justification of mass, the legitimization of immediate gratification of appetites and desires, and the rejection of frugality, thrift, and the postponement of gratification. Mass advertising serves to articulate an ethic of hedonism, and modern credit devices and the manipulation of aggregate demand serve to encourage patterns of hedonistic behavior in the mass population.
Samuel Francis, Leviathan and its Enemies
It is during the Revolution that Entropic Tagalog culture made its longest lasting mark. The envious, revolutionary spirit became other cultures’ bane. Here resumed the long-wanted goal of conquest against other Austronesian tribes much better in character and culture. Hence the Katipunan declared its goal to be assimilation and homogenization of all Philippine tribes under the Tagalog belt:
The objective pursued by this association is noble and worthy; to unite the inner being and thoughts of the Tagalogs through binding pledge, so that through this unity they may gain the strength to destroy the dense shroud that benights the mind and to discover the Path of the mind and to discover the Path of Reason and Enlightenment. The word Tagalog means all those born in this archipelago; therefore, though Visayan, Ilocano, Pampango, etc., they are all Tagalogs.
Emilio Jacinto, Primer to the Katipunan
The Katipunan’s founder, Andres Bonifacio, came from a well-off family who got him through private school, joined the ranks of a multinational corporations, and got rich through his sidegig of selling fans and canes. He is the typical millennial professional transplanted a century before. Leading a revolution of the professional-managerial class must have appealed to the Tagalog Bonifacio, his ancestors having practiced a half-baked version of it centuries ago. To that end he started a club not unlike ad hoc Facebook pages and Discord servers for young midwits. He collected the burgeoning professional-managerial class, fed them oversocialized lies, and took advantage of the temporary professional-managerial overproduction to win them over.
These flights of fancy unfortunately broke out of urbanite professional-managerial containment. The rural nobility and professionals heard whispers of this club and joined it. In time even the Tagalog working class did. It is no coincidence that Tagalogs are overrepresented in the Revolution, other than by starting it. The twin battles of Binakayan and Dalahican recorded 100,000 rebel fighters, a good chunk of the 1.5 million Tagalogs alive at that time. Even the tiny town of Pateros saw 20,000 rebels rise to remove the Spanish local government. The Tagalog War really was a revolution, for it destroyed the old order of traditional Filipino family and community, then replaced it with the Tagalog one, Old Europe’s longhouse manifest thousands of years and miles away.
A Tagalog-led revolution would always lead to a Managerial bureaucracy forming, for Tagalog institutions have always been managerial and bureaucratic. Their revolutionary spirit trumps the Jewish one in all aspects barring the Jews’ public and stubborn rejection of Christ, this being the only fact marking out the Jews as special in history. Yet typological analogs exist throughout history, and the Tagalogs so happened to be one of them. Bonifacio himself envied better commanders and leaders among the Katipunan, and sought to take power by force after being pushed aside. Even his loyal Magdiwang faction in Cavite could no longer justify his acts, top members pressuring Aguinaldo to have him executed instead of exiling him to Guam.
The Revolution itself came from envy. Jose Rizal envied the Dominicans’ intelligence and vast lands, letting his brother bribe a judge just to let their family keep their home without paying rents. Bonifacio envied the Spanish for their rule over the Philippines. Envy for betters thus marks Tagalog society. The proud-nail mentality ensures conformity among a docile, woman-lead populace. Indeed, one may see the Tagalog slur of dugong aso as envy. So-called Kapampangan “boastfulness” in fact is just Tagalog collectivism and conformity picking on the more individualist Kapampangans. This envy manifests as entropy, with the Tagalogs wishing a sterile, clean existence free from hurt or pain, only to be in one uniform blob without insecurity or fear. Envy makes them want to have women be in charge directing affairs from on high. Envy makes them want bureaucracy managing the peace. Envy makes them want the Leviathan monopoly of violence to unchain man from traditional family and society, and instead thrust him into the arena as “free”. 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.
Tagalog culture's attractiveness for the Establishment surely stems from the Tagalogs' entropic worldview. Tagalogs have projected their own impropriety on the rest of the ethnic tribes in an attempt to impose conformity and uniformity, to be safe from fear and pain, to be free from having to change and improve oneself, to impose their own views and opinions on others as snooty urbanite professionals do. Tagalog songs, Tagalog literature, Tagalog heroes thus became "national" songs, literature, and heroes. Everyone must live in love, peace, and harmony, guided by the right process: ang tamang paraan.
The Managerial Republic
Owen Lynch suggested some years ago that the name of the Philippines be changed to Bayan and accordingly, its citizens would be known as bayani [a pun on the Tagalog bayani, meaning hero]. An intriguing idea, but I think a bigger change than most would be comfortable with. Instead, what if the title of the country is changed to Bayan ng Pilipinas [bayan of the Philippines]? To the rest of the world, the nation would be known as the Republic of the Philippines, but here in our own language, Bayan ng Pilipinas. Bayan has the flexibility to refer not only to location—the archipelago, but the people as well. And, one day, we could aspire to say to one another, “Tayo’y mga bayani ng Bayan ng Pilipinas” [we are the heroes/bayani of the bayan of the Philippines].
Woods, D. L. (2005). From Wilderness to Nation: the Evolution of Bayan.
Since the Managerial Revolution’s atomization of the Filipino, we have seen its bitter fruits grow the most among the Tagalogs. 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. Old Europe’s longhouse politics came back with a bitter vengeance, with Tagalog and Tagalized women at their strongest point since precolonial times. The managerial matriarchy has truly returned to rule and browbeat young men, breaking them into mindless, obedient drones for the right process: ang tamang paraan. A uniform, homogenous blob has successfully overrun most of the Philippine Islands. The ginoong babae and their maginoo have come back as female corporate executives and their male lackeys, female bureaucrats and politicians and their male assistants playing central planner to the whole country. The Filipinos shall own nothing, live in a pod, and be completely happy for they have followed the right process: ang tamang paraan.
In his analysis of the Cathedral, Curtis Yarvin posits that 21st century liberal 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. This has been the Tagalog goal since their first migration, and has been achieved after the Revolution.
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. Thus the enmity between the Tagalog and the Kapampangan can be summarized as the dialectical conflict between hiya and sunu.
Yarvin’s idea provides a neat summary of the telos of Tagalog culture. To achieve these four wants, Tagalog culture necessitates a managerial bureaucracy. Hence Ferdinand Marcos not only instituted Tagalog in the 1973 Constitution as National Language, but gave it a new name to further the illusion of a “Filipino” identity. Marcos’s technocratic ideal kept up the illusion for a while, till his Keynesian mismanagement and quantitative easing led the professional-managerial and working classes to unite for the first and only time in all of Philippine history. Ironically, Marcos succeeded in attaining one nation, one spirit by being overthrown rather than by direct action. Of course, the new Establishment was only a facade, and kept all the inner workings from Marcos’s time. The professional-managerial class was still the dominant elite in Philippine society, with the working class none the wiser. Tagalog culture had finally completely and utterly succeeded, atomizing the Filipino as just the Filipino.
However, this new order now stands to crumble. Erap’s reign proved to be the final break in the temporary class alliance. Erap was popular among the working class, and the professional-managerial class felt their position become threatened. The nonsensical circus of an impeachment trial abruptly led to urbanites massing in EDSA and removing the populist president. The working classes themselves gathered in EDSA a few months after. Water cannons and bullets greeted their assault on Malacanang. Thus, the Tagalog Revolutionary Spirit has been taken up by the urbanite professional-managerial class as a whole.
Despite being the Establishment’s pick, Gloria Arroyo found herself entangled in too many scandals to remain in good company. The professional-managerial class rallied hard against her, for letting her remain in power would be proof that EDSA 2 was a mistake and EDSA 3 was legitimate. They brought in Noynoy after her, and the professional-managerial class prospered while the working class suffered. The latter, disenfranchised for almost two decades, worked with a bitter Arroyo to bring their final revenge on the professional-managerial class by voting in Duterte. The professional-managerial class ranted and rambled about the people’s ignorance and stupidty. They spoke good and deep Tagalog against the provincials and even the urbanite working class. Their targets, speaking local languages or not understanding their register of Tagalog, simply kept doing what they did. The Kapampangan spirit, by being struck down, has ironically become much more powerful than what the Establishment could ever imagine. The Filipino - including the Tagalog - working class has ironically kept to sunu much more than urbanite Kapampangans have. The dialectical conflict between hiya and sunu, the enmity between Tagalog and Kapampangan, has been taken up by the conflict between the Filipino professional-managerial and working classes.
As of writing, the degenerate menace from Naga has been soundly defeated by working class unity against standard urbanites. Bongbong Marcos awaits inauguration, and stands to end this chapter of Philippine History. The Tagalog Revolutionary Spirit rests in the professional-managerial class, biding time to strike once more. It ensures cohesion with oversocialized hiya. The working class keeps to sunu, and hopes for the best. The former’s focus is busy, giving ample time and opportunity for a local Dissident Right vanguard to truly rise and begin making inroads with the latter. A new counter-elite, filled with bright, virtuous men - and no women - shall replace and defeat the Manila-sponsored Establishment ruling the Philippines today.
War drums sounded past the horizon. The man standing before the great river looked behind to his troops. Weeks of training, drills, tactics. He and they all agreed to a bastardized version of the native language. Helped with orders, helped with learning the situation.
And most of all, it helped them all know who was friend, and who was foe.
The invaders would come fast, they all knew how fast they had gone through the swamps. This battle would decide whether the man’s new homeland itself would become a swamp in face of the horde now in his sight.
He turned to his officers, shouted in his native language, and shots flew into the horde. Many fell, yet the charge continued. He looked to his left. The river had been dammed, and the water now receded enough that the horde could pass through unoppposed.
He told his forces to retreat, and let the enemy pass half their troops through. They did as they were told, and he that the natives called Sucu after his company watched as destiny unfolded.
Nice.
You'd probably like the new book from Chivalry Guild, "Chivalry: An Ideal Whose Time Has Come Again." He's also at the intersection of Catholic orthodoxy and BAP.