From: godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY)
Subject: Re: World Series Smoking Gun?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:23:00 GMT

In article <1a2uboINNq6l@agate.berkeley.edu>, mgb@ocf.berkeley.edu (M.G. Bertulfo)      writes...
>grtorlba@sumax.seattleu.edu (George Torralba) writes:
>>In article <25SEP199220095917@sscvx1.ssc.gov> godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov
>>(LAURENCE GODFREY) writes: 

>I would have to agree with George that we really shouldn't take one "part"
>of a whole and generalize it's qualities to that whole--in this case we
>are talking about Filipinos.
> 
I wasn't, I was simply stating a fact - nothing more, nothing less.

>There are a few things that Laurence may want to reconsider. First of all,
>having visted and travelled "a great deal in Asia" you must have a working
>knowledge of the Philippines' colonial past (with the United States and with
>Spain). Second, you must also know that the Philippines is one of the seven
>poorest nations in the world. Having this knowledge about the Philippines'
>political/historical/economic context, then, may help you reassess your
>apparent shock at the "densities of dishonesty and aggressive crookedness"
>that you "encountered" in the Philippines. Chaos has often been the result
>when imperial/colonial powers have culturally and politically restructured
>what are now known as "third world" nations. What I'm strongly suggesting
>is that what you called "dishonesty", etc. while extremely chaotic, is the
>result of the Philippines' colonial past and current economic state.
> 
>Also, I wanted to take a moment to talk a bit about tourism and the authority
>it seems to afford those who have toured "other countries". (This is NOT a
>direct response to you Laurence, who said he lived thorughout Asia, 
>but rather a tangent of my own that I think
>is pertinent to the discussion of assessing and making value judgements about
>whole cultures.) As tourists, we (myself included) gain a small insight into
>the lives of the peoples who actually live in the countries we visit. What 
>outsiders view as dishonesty or agressive crookedness may be the peoples'
>way of surviving very harsh conditions. We need to understand the conditions
>against which the people struggle before judging them. Dishonesty to some may
>be resourcefulness/survival for others.
> 
>m.g. bertulfo
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

I know the reasons why the Philippines is the way it is, as i said earlier
my wife is a Filipina.  She, however, is living testament to the fact that
it is possible to survive in Manila WITHOUT becoming dishonest.  I would
make two points in answer to your posting above:

1.  Stealing, cheating and exploiting others who do you no harm is not,
in my opinion, excusable nor justifiable.  Stealing, cheating and 
exploiting one's compatriots who may be just as poor or poorer still
than oneself is, in my opinion, contemptible.

2.  The worst crookedness in the Philippines is found not amongst the poor,
who are indeed struggling to survive, but amongst the rich businessmen and
politicians.  It is also very much more than common amongst law enforcement
officers and the executive and judiciary as a whole.

There is a tendency, particularly in the US, to jump on anyone who makes an
observation of any critical sort about a group of people, because s/he
is generalising.  Firstly, thiscriticism is never applied when the person
makes a nice generalisation eg. "Americans are generous", "Japanese are
polite" etc., only when there is a negative content.  Secondly, there is
nothing wrong in extrapolating from a sample of people to a population as
a whole - in physics and science as a whole this is a perfectly valid
statistical process.  A generalisation is not automatically invalid by
virtue of the fact that it is a gerneralisation, it is only invalid
if the sampling is flawed.  And of course if I say " Japanese people
are polite" then it doesn't mean that every single Japanese is always
polite in every possible circumstance, not would anyone try to interpret
it that way.  Thirdly, and lastly, I was not, in this instance, making a
generalisation in any case.

Laurence