Filipinos and the third boat

There are two types of boats. The boat that easily catches water and sinks and the other which is also permeable but unsinkable. We could say that the latter is a resilient vessel, much preferable, and has commendable features because it can withstand tumult. Its ability to float in an unsteady water, which makes it stand out from the rest, shows how well-carpentered its parts are. The second boat is us, Filipinos. However, it doesn’t imply that the boat’s meritorious features exempt holding accountable of those people who sent and left it in the midst of an unfriendly weather.

Resilience is real and can rightfully take its credit. But it is not enough to recover from damage, not every time. Of course, we should not deny the efforts of common Filipinos to rise above struggle by adopting resilience. Our government also has been too resilient that they have overlooked the hard-to-recover crises. This is the negative type of resilience, always

leading to complacency resulting to severe damage.

According to Premuzic and Lusk's “The Dark Side of Resilience”, too much resilience can hinder leadership effectiveness. Overused strengths become weaknesses. A cup that overflows with water does not end up being full but is likely to spill a third of its content. Therefore, we have had enough of resilience. We do not want another resilient community salvaged by crises. It’s time for us to evolve, to change the term, to shift to an all-weather word and let it be the standard— antifragility.

Professor Taleb defined antifragility on his book, “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, as ‘a property of systems that increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures’. Taleb has likened antifragility to Hydra, a Greek mythological creature that possessed numerous heads. When one head is cut off, two more will grow back, replacing the lost one.

Antifragility is the missing and the third boat in the example. While a resilient boat doesn’t get affected by water and stays the same boat, the ‘antifragile’ boat open its sail when lashed by winds and tested by rogue waves. Antifragility is becoming better after getting compromised while resilience only resists harm.

Although resilience has saved us many times, (from) the major landslides, strong earthquakes, COVID-19 pandemic and violent storms, which all dampened our progress should be enough nightmares to wake us up in bed. Our government's ability to cope with the traumatic events that paralyze our country annually is volatile, flimsy, and fragile. The problem here is not the pandemic nor the natural calamities that knock on our doors in an ungodly hour. It is our government that is too focused on the aftermath. We always act when we already feel the calm after the storm but we haven’t taken advantage of the calm that precedes it. As a result, we become caught up in the middle. The reality is that crises are recurrent. Therefore, our disaster skills and preparedness should not remain transitory.

Consider ‘Project NOAH’ or the Nationwide Operational Assessments of Hazards as example, it was the government’s flagship disaster risk reduction and management in the country but instead of making concerted efforts to strengthen our barricade to wide-scale hazardous effects, we defunded it in 2017 due to the “lack of funds”. Years later, we crushed Alcoy's mountains and stacked tons of dolomite sand in Manila Bay as response to making Filipinos sane in the face of adversity. In 2019, we didn’t close our borders to Chinese refugees for not wanting our diplomatic ties with China to go sour. We were empathic to aliens but remained apathetic to our own citizens. Thanks to the highly anticipated resilience, we entered the top 20 in the world-wide ranking of COVID-19 infections and bagged the 2nd place in the whole of Southeast Asia.

Today, we have almost half a million recorded infections. On the other hand, China, our dearest friend, had continued exploiting our national resources in Homonhon Island, April this year despite quarantine. China absolutely found immunity to crises and became antifragile. Now, they bar entry of non-Chinese nationals on their soil as a token of our friendship.

To put everything in simplistic terms, resilience means responding to the aftermath by forming relief efforts and sending aid to crises victims while antifragility means constructing solid pre-disaster plans and securing communities in order to aid possible crises victims. We are not looking for invincible leaders but leaders who can foreshadow crises by listening to science and hearing people’s outcry. By this, our government would not need to ‘swim in floodwaters’ to save the country.

Premuzic and Lusk even said, “Leadership pipelines are corroded with resilient leaders who were nominated as high-potentials but have no genuine talent for leadership”. While we laud the resilience of Filipinos, we have to start derailing from its concept. We have to build a better pipeline that doesn’t clog over time. We have to be like the third boat that uses its sail instead of resisting the storm. Becoming better Filipinos depends on the quality of the government. One can determine the strength of a building by the kind of engineers who built it.

Cartoon by Dannalie Degamo