Cultural Change, Dissent and Medieval Science

                     The connection of ideas of the title of the forum conducted by Dr. Jovi Miroy, cultural changes which is the effect of dissent and dissent originating from the medieval sciences, is already profound. As defined, medieval science is systematic, organized and heavily philosophical in which it involves ‘scientia’ or ‘going beyond faith’ and is distinguished from ‘doxa’ which means ‘opinion’. It has two goals: to understand change and change itself. Now, I will base my paper to my fellow Filipinos. According to Dr. Miroy, we don’t have cultural change contexts in which we only have contexts for behavioral changes. I agree. Many of our traditions, practices and beliefs didn’t come from us but rather from Western societies which influenced the way Filipinos in the Middle and Ancient times lived. For example, based from the article that I’ve read in Wikipedia and my knowledge from the articles that my professor gives in Kas 1 last semester, the Philippines was first settled by Melanesians, after them the Austronesians or more specifically, Malayo – Polynesians then came the Spaniards followed by the Americans and lastly, the Japanese. All of these countries had left a great impact on the traditional way of life and culture of the Filipinos. Up until now, our way of life still depends to these foreign countries that continues to prosper more specifically the U.S.A. while we, Filipinos, are way 100 steps behind on innovation. So why did I come up to the idea between the Filipinos and the medieval sciences? Simple. Change. A change of our system politically, socially, economically, spiritually, all of which constitutes the cultural aspects of our nationality. But before that, let me discuss further my observations regarding the way of life of many Filipinos at present times. Various situations wherein we fail to acquire prosperity is because of the different bad habits that we practice like crab mentality or lack of creativity resulting to having no originality which is very common to us Filipinos. Another factor is laziness. Also, nepotism is common to us Filipinos. An example of this habit is, ‘a well-connected passenger gets the airport’s special lane while hard-working OFWs sweat it out on a long line.’ What then is the cause of this bad habits? Some may say technology but for me it is the colonization of our country. But how can one resolve this problems among the Filipinos? The title of the forum. First, we need to have our context for our Cultural Ways and Traditions so as to uphold the strength of our unity and consciousness as Filipinos to the fullest and to create a society that have innovative and creative thinkers leading to a prosperous country of ours. Second, Dissent pertaining to the practices politically, socially with technology, economically and spiritually as that of the Church’s beliefs and traditions in which many of these practices are abused by people nowadays. And lastly, application of the methods of the Medieval Sciences, in which it is a form of science that is very helpful plus it has clear and distinct ideas providing demonstration. It’s goal mainly was to understand nature\change in nature so as to bring about change itself. That is, a shift in life models and a shift in paradigms is what we need, what Filipinos need to understand the problem we are having.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_Philippines

http://www.pinoy-ofw.com/news/10228-negative-values-of-filipinos.html

http://wronggrammargod.tumblr.com/post/10034313462/17-bad-habits-attitudes-of-filipinos-that-need-to