Loose Sand or Rising Soil?
- The Filipino’s Search for a National Soul
On the 126th anniversary of Philippine independence, the nation pauses to celebrate its freedom. Flags wave proudly, speeches echo in city halls, and parades march with rehearsed precision. Yet beneath the surface of festivity lies a question that time and symbolism have never truly resolved: has the Filipino people grown into their freedom—or merely worn it like an inherited costume?
A century ago, in 1924, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen observed with brutal honesty that his people, despite their ancient civilization, lacked a national spirit. “They are just a heap of loose sand,” he said. A people divided, vulnerable, and carved up by outside forces. “Other men,” he lamented, “are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.” It was a chilling metaphor of a country consumed by others because it could not yet stand for itself.
Today, observers look at the Philippines and see troubling parallels. For all its modern trappings—the skyscrapers, digital infrastructure, and globalized lifestyle—the country remains haunted by old patterns. Power continues to serve entrenched elites; poverty lingers despite decades of development plans; and the national will, if not absent, remains easily fragmented by regionalism, patronage, and personal ambition.
Like China once was, the Philippines too often appears as an appendage to the interests of others—both local and foreign. Pretentious agreements are signed in glittering rooms, while unjust deals rob the nation quietly in the background. The majority of the population benefits little from the promises of trickle-down economics. Instead, they survive on the margins, in the shadow of a system where opportunity is too often inherited rather than earned.
To some, this is not a new observation. The early 20th-century writer Miguel Lucio Bustamante described the Filipino character in extremes: the simple farmer content with his carabao and land, and the educated man who, after schooling in Manila, returns to the province full of arrogance, only to bring misfortune upon his household. In both cases, what is absent is ambition for the nation—a larger purpose beyond self, family, or class.
Despite access to modern education, global networks, and democratic space, the Filipino often remains hesitant to build a cohesive national vision. There is pride in culture, but little unity in direction. Protests are loud but fleeting; elections are passionate but cyclical. The country exports its best labor to care for others abroad, while struggling to uplift its own.
To compare the Philippines to early 20th-century China may seem harsh—perhaps even accusatory. Yet such comparison is not meant to shame, but to awaken. Sun Yat Sen’s words were not a resignation but a call to transformation. China, after all, did not remain loose sand. Through immense hardship, ideological struggle, and a vision of collective destiny, it forged a new path, however contested or imperfect.
The Filipino question is therefore not one of capability, but of will. What binds the fisherman in Leyte to the student in Makati, the teacher in Bukidnon to the caregiver in Milan? Where is the national spirit—not as performance, but as daily commitment? What is the dream that unites, not just entertains?
Too often, it seems, the Filipino identity is reactive—proud in moments of crisis, loud in moments of scandal, but quiet in the long, hard work of nation-building. As a result, the country remains vulnerable to external manipulation, internal exploitation, and generational fatigue.
And so the central question endures—this Independence Day more than ever: Will the Filipino remain this way?
Will the people continue as a heap of loose sand—dispersed by every gust of scandal, every wave of imported influence, every political tide? Or will they, at last, become rising soil—solid, fertile, capable of holding a nation’s weight?
True independence is not merely declared. It is cultivated.
And the time to cultivate it is now.