[Discussion] Queen of the Orient
Click to viewAbove is a short documentary of the Manila under the Commonwealth, thereby beneath the American government. This was after the Philippine Revolution and just years before the Japanese finally invaded. This was considered the era in which the Philippines was the most stable, even one of the richest countries in the Orient. This just isn't something you see very often.
It is an admittedly Western perspective, and in some ways flawed, but it is very much enlightening to have seen Manila through someone else's (or perhaps a whole nation's) eyes.
Things have definitely changed since 1938.
There is the age old debate of just how much the Philippines has progressed as a country; how we've fallen from grace and how the mighty have fallen. How every year, we crumble just a bit more. How we're always heading downwards. How nothing we can do will change anything.
That's the type of thinking that will get us nowhere. There's the passing of the blame between the poor and the rich, while the middle classes flit between the two as if they aren't involved. There is never acceptance of fault, and while we're too busy wondering how we got this far, we could actually be doing something helpful. The rise of a nation is a group effort (though the group in question grows bigger and bigger by the minute, it's actually possible).
Honestly, I believe that if Manila was the Queen of the Orient once, we could do it again. Hell, the Philippines as a whole was the Pearl of the Orient; it wasn't even that long ago, when you consider it.
What do you think?