The Indolence of the Filipinos In this essay of Rizal, he observed the behaviors of the Filipinos past and present in his time. He said that the indolence is the effect of the backwardness and troubles of experienced by the country. In the start of his essay he said that the hot climate is a reasonable predisposition for indolence. By this he means that the Europeans have a cold climate thus they need to move around more to compensate with their climate, they also make more food for storage in case a calamity strikes, and that produces more work. The Spaniards labeled us as bums and lazy people because they are egocentric.
That clearly doesn’t show that we are lazy. It simply shows that we are contented with our way of living. Carrying on with the essay, Rizal said that an illness will worsen if the wrong treatment is given. Before, early Filipinos were already carrying out trades; they were into agriculture and mining. That shows that we are hardworking and independent group of people. We have a society that is clearly showing off progress. When the Spaniards arrived they criticize our way of living. That eventually led to changing the Filipino culture. So what makes our country not achieve progress’sadly, we have a misfortune past.
When the Spaniards arrived, the frequent wars, insurrections, and invasions have brought disorder to the communities, thus resulting to chaos and destruction. Filipino men have been brought to different countries to fight wars for Spain, force labor was implemented to ship yards and natives move to mountains because of the abuses the Spaniards has brought to them. That caused resulted to decrease in Filipino population, neglect of farms and trauma. Trade has declined, because of pirate attacks and the many restrictions imposed by the government, which gives no aid for crops and farmers.
This and the abuse suffered by farmers have caused many to abandon the fields. Businesses were monopolized by government officials, discrimination in education against natives, red tape and bribery operate, and gambling was tolerated by the government. This situation is compounded by the Church’s wrong doctrine which holds that the rich will not go to heaven, thus engendering a wrong attitude toward work. This notion of work makes the Filipino people think that the poorer you are the higher the chance of you getting to heaven.
That makes the Filipinos do less work and thus making them ignorant and lazy. In this we see that the natives have poor education, unfair opportunities and discrimination of races. They think that they are an inferior race that they submit to the foreign culture and imitate it. Rizal said that for the Filipinos to progress they must have education and liberty. Filipinos are lazy yes, but we were once a progressing race. Let us be united and be what we are again. Education is the foundation; unity is the push we need to globally competitive.
