Monday, January 14, 2008: The Theory Confirmed	Return to Journal TOC >>
So far, the evidence is weighing heavily in favor of the theory that the Philippines today really is like the 1970s in the U.S., if we’d had the internet, and not just because all of the women have long straight hair and wear miniskirts or styled jeans. Seriously, there’s a sense of idealism here that we’ve lost in the U.S. but I remember from when I was a kid: a sense that while things may be bad or unequal or corrupt in some fundamental way, that people could work to change those things. Government may be seen as corrupt here, but it isn’t seen as wholly a tool of the rich, and people have recent evidence of their power to change government for the better. There’s a real sense of growth and almost revolutionary change here: the country is very polluted in places, but there’s a thriving environmental movement making real progress here, not fighting a rearguard action like in the U.S. The government has pretty much joined forces (and in fact is now helping lead) the environmental surge, setting up more than 100 “green courts” to enforce environmental infractions, encouraging farmers to plant carbon trapping crops to fight greenhouse gases, and so on.
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