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"..Habang may tatsulok,
at sila ang nasa tuktok,
hindi matatapos itong gulo.."
The song Tatsulok by Bamboo is one of the songs that rings true to a lot of Filipinos. He did not create the idea, but he is one of the most influential to put the idea forward. In fact, this idea is pretty common to most, if not all, of capitalist societies.
Let us explore the inner workings of this ideology and see if it is truly good for us.
The Good: Compassion and Justice
The tatsulok ideology is born out of compassion to the poor. We recognize the failings of a capitalistic society where we know how the richer gets richer, the poorer gets poorer.
We all know the story of a stereotypical Filipino child born out of poverty, having a hard time navigating the society towards success. "You have to spend money to earn money" mantra acts like a gatekeeper that prevents Filipinos getting a life they dream of.
Besides that, we do understand too that justice seems elusive to those who did not win the lottery of life. Justice seems to be askew towards those who have more, and not always to those who are right.
Tatsulok is a prevailing thought that reflects our compassion and value for justice, and the inner desire to make things right. Some Filipinos have carried the view that life is just a "survival of the fittest", which is heartbreaking. The tatsulok ideology exists to defy that.
The Bad: Baliktarin ang Tatsulok
One prescription of the ideology is inverting the triangle.
The idea is to give the poor more power, and the rich with less. The problem of this resulting in it not being widely accepted by societies as a whole, is that: it eerily ressembles the philosophy of Marx-Engel's Das Kapital. Arguably, it is probably exactly what it is."Totoy, kumilos ka, baliktarin ang tatsulok
Tulad ng dukha, nailagay mo sa tuktok"
In application, the "ideal" society starts ressembling or becomes a communist or socialist society. Historically speaking, we know how this ideology took form in Maoist China, Chavez's Venezuela, and a few more. As far as we can tell, Marxism has never had a success in bringing a better society, or at least better than our current system.
Inverting the triangle might sound like a good idea at first, because it seems like perfecting the values of true democracy, but like Plato once quoted,
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty." -Plato
Doesn't history also kinda say the same thing?
The Ugly : Envy
As mentioned in "the good", the two angles that created the tatsulok ideology are compassion and justice. Taking shape in a triangle, there is a third angle that we must also understand: envy.
There are a lot of bad actors who subscribe to this ideology, not because they are compassionate to the poor, or wants justice, but because of envy towards people higher up in the heirarchy. When these people refer to the rich, they are referring to all people richer than them. The tatsulok ideology has made a platform or a guise, for these bad actors to justify their crab mentality.
We have seen this too many times to even notice anymore. Politician using the ideology to sabotage their opponent's integrity. Common people invalidating the success of someone rich, "..so, therefore his riches were ill-gotten."
Further aggreviated by social media culture where everyone displays their seemingly perfect lives, while the viewer just marinates in envy.
Having said all that, it is difficult to not acknowledge the good things the tatsulok ideology represents. Considering everything, should we keep this ideology as a nation? If so, what should we change about it? Or maybe we just have not understood how to use it correctly...
What do you think?
I am a little confused if this post fits correctly on this section or in politics, but i strongly believe that politics is shaped by belief so I thought this forum section would be more proper.
Anyway, like always,
thank you for reading.
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