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Beneficial Qualities of Filipinas
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Why do foreigners love Filipinos?
toddly
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Why do foreigners love Filipinos?
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I can only speak for myself, a white American man who married a Filipina more than 16 years ago, after meeting on-line and spending about 4 years getting to know her and getting immigration paperwork to get her to America. What told me she was right for me was that when I asked what she wanted from a man she gave me such a short list. 1) love her, 2) take care of her, 3) have a small family with her! After talking to hundreds of American women and learning that there was simply no way of meeting even a portion of their wants, like putting too many key words into Google Search, I began to search in other countries. It was when I began to look at Filipinos that my eyes were opened. The women I met there were (every one) nicer than any American woman I had ever met. And I was born and raised in America. Since our first meeting in the Philippines, I have never felt anything but utter respect for her, her family, her cultural values, and a very deep and unfathomable love for her. Since she arrived, I have met far too many Filipinos to even begin to count. There are a huge number of them living here in the US, scattered across the country. I think Foreigners Love Filipinos because they have an almost perfect culture. Pick up a book titled ‘Culture Shock: The Philippines’. It captures a good number of cultural differences between the American and Philippine cultures, things you really ought to know if you want to be a friend to a Filipino, and surely if you want to marry one. One cultural value they have is they feel extremely humiliated if someone criticizes (or applauds) them in public. NEVER do that to a Filipino! And there are others, but I will let you read the book if you really want to know. The point is, their culture (for the most part) is genuinely good. Family comes first, and respect is very important (for example, the Kuya — eldest boy — in the family is responsible for all younger siblings when the parents are not around, and they take the responsibility quite seriously. Correspondingly, the younger siblings have respect for their Kuya, unlike here in America), and respect has been codified so its display toward certain individuals is proscribed and followed. ‘Manu Po’ while bringing the hand of an elder person to the younger’s forehead is such a beautiful expression of that respect they feel toward one another. There are good reasons that their culture developed the way it has, including their recent (400 year) history of having first been colonized by Spain (the well known discoverer Magellan was killed by a certain warrior named Lapu-Lapu as Ferdinand and his troops entered the Visayan region of the country), then by America after winning the Spanish-American war in 1898 (the Philippines, then thought to be a ‘spoil of war,’ the entering Americans had to fight a brutal war against Filipinos before dominating the Filipino population, because, sadly, a man named Aguinaldo had led an insurrection against Spanish rule almost to its success just as the Americans came in to take over), then the Japanese took the Philippines from the Americans at the beginning of World War II, then the Americans retook the Philippines from the Japanese at the end of World War II, then America finally agreed to set the Philippines free (pretty much) in about 1948, after restructuring their society, modeling their government after America’s own Democratic government, including a constitution, forming schools resembling the public schools in America, causing English to be taught to all Filipinos, giving birth to the Filipino built Jeepney, the iconic ‘taxi-like’ public conveyance resembling the jeep that was literally everywhere in the Philippines during WWII. Again, another of the sadnesses, I must report that the one thing most easily recognized as particularly Filipino, the Jeepney is soon to be disappeared, by governmental edict. The Spanish brought Catholicism. Even today that is the largest religion there, by far, so Catholic thought and Catholic doctrine has deeply affected the Filipino psyche. A good example is the size of their families. Despite the fact that the Philippines is still today a fairly poor country, for the most part, birth control is not dispensed freely, and sex is many times and many ways a ‘bad word’. How Catholic! However, they still have managed to produce very large families, which has led to the continuation of poverty. Despite all that, the Philippines is currently a rising star in Southeast Asia. Every indicator is on the upswing! Their economy can be seen growing, year by year. I am amazed each time I go back to see what changes have occurred in my wife’s home city, Davao City, also home to the current President Rodrigo Deuterte, an unconventional but beloved leader who is knitting together business alliances with China and Russia, even as their ties to America have been lessened. All those influences combined show up in the current Filipino culture, one of the best you can find the world over. I offer one last remark that seems to me might be the single most important contributor to their strongly moral cultural values. This is the fact that Spain, when they conquered the Philippines, did not kill off the many different native Filipino tribes who then lived there like the Spanish ‘conquistadors’ did in central and south America during the colonization of those regions of the world. And there are many tribes today that were living there back then. The number of indigenous tribes must be over one hundred, scattered over the more than 7,000 islands that exist on that archipelago. “The Philippines is a culturally diverse country with an estimated 14- 17 million Indigenous Peoples (IPs) belonging to 110 ethno-linguistic groups. “ taken from Fast Facts: Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines | UNDP in Philippines http://www.ph.undp.org/content/philippines/en/home/library/democratic…/FastFacts-IPs.html That seems small in comparison to the total population of the Philippines, well over 100 million people, not counting all of the overseas foreign workers (OSWs) who pump in a large fraction of the country’s GDP from money they make abroad. Some of the jobs they do ‘overseas’: nurses (best nurses on the planet), sailors (especially cooks), domestic workers, agricultural workers, care givers, and on it goes. My point is this, unlike what transpired in America respecting the indigenous tribes found living there by the colonizers (and there were millions upon millions of them living in North America at the time of colonization ), namely they were roughly eliminated, while the Spanish, although they used Filipinos as slaves, did not purge the land of its indigenous peoples as they colonized. What that means today is that descendants of all those tribes can today be found still living there in the Philippines, or they have become overseas workers (OSWs). And that means that there is a huge diversity of peoples who populate the Philippines and are found living around the world today. They may mostly look alike, but they come from a large number of original tribes. The genetic diversity of the Philippines is awesome!! Consequently, Filipinos, by and large, are extraordinarily clever people, clever in the direction of ‘inventive’. The only reason they haven’t done as well as other cultures (causing them to be classified as ‘third world’) is because they were artificially held back by people who have dominated them and extracted their toil and their country’s minerals for almost 400 years before learning to govern themselves, then just as soon as they got their democracy going, outside influences helped put Ferdinand Marcos in power as a dictator, LENDING him TONS OF MONEY to run his country with, a fraction of which Marcos put directly into his own bank accounts, and those of his friends, leaving the entire Filipino population owning the debt then owed to bankers and associates located outside the country. As a nation of peoples over a long period of time, they have been sucked dry by vultures who set them up for failure. Still, after all of this, another common cultural value they all share is the smile, along with friendliness and happiness. Anyone who visits the Philippines for the very first time will DEFINITELY come away having seen so many people smiling through whatever comes their way that they will believe Filipinos to be the friendliest people on earth. And maybe they are? All their strengths, like their strength of character, combine to make them more easily lovable than the fellow men of whatever foreigners may happen by their way. My wife is just like all those Filipinos I have been talking about. She is the sweetest, the most caring, the hardest working, the most lovable person I have ever met. As a first generation immigrant, she has done quite well here in America, excelling in her work as a nurse now involved in clinical trials. One characteristic that definitely distinguishes her is her lovability. From her first nursing assignment on, almost every patient she has come in contact with wants to take her home with them. They latch onto her immediately because she is so friendly, cheerful, and hardworking, not to mention her beauty. She is so lovable that she can say things to people (in fun) that I might try to say but would definitely end up in trouble because I simply do not have the bubbly attitude she has. All that is why I have spent my last several hours trying to explain some of why I personally believe Filipinos are so lovable. I hope by writing this I can display the respect and love I hold for my dear Filipina wife.
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Truth can hurt. I've read many interesting answers here. Some are rosy n some deep. Such variety is due of course to the variety of life experiences of the writers n partly bc this is such a poorly phrased question. We see that frequently. Asking a question that assumes a mass generalization, or in this case, Two! You're generalizing that all foreigners n all Filipinos are the same. It's an effort to make distinguishments like I do, but the laziness shown by 99% of people discussing other people is tragic. So I'll put in some effort n hopefully dispell some commonly held beliefs. If you want to ask the simplistic broad question of why Filipinos are so likeable, although I hope most are, I believe it's bc Filipinos are extremely talented at showing positive energy n attitude to strangers, partly due to their incredibly strong commitment to “saving face”. I have a unique n very different perspective on Filipinos born n raised in Luzon, Philippines n their culture than anyone I've met or read here. I've extensive experience n relations with Filipinos of many backgrounds for >35 years, but will narrow it down to just the aforementioned. It's critical to distinguish between Filipinos born n raised on the Philippines' main island of Luzon from the long-term OFWs, those who've spent many years abroad, those on islands, those in the south, particularly Mindanao, the ultra-religious n the non religious, the young n the old, etc. I'd also go out on a limb here n say that there are significant differences between the majority of the young women n men. I believe the answer is, quite simply, “foreigners” love “Filipinos” because they don't know them intimately. Filipinos aren't good, or bad. They're just people. Non-Filipinos who speak of them as though they're such loving, happy, wonderful people, simply haven't integrated into the culture, Within the country. Now again, I'm not speaking of all Filipinos. To be sure, as an American, I came to believe that Filipinos we're innovative, clever, hard-working n very dedicated to family. Of the immigrants, I still very much believe that. (Though the younger generation's struggling a bit to earn that rep.) If I hadn’t lived there, never integrated into the Filipino society there, in Metro Manila, n hadn't married a Pinay, I would've continued believing that. Unfortunately, the bulk of my learning came from hard lessons while conducting an embezzlement scheme investigation in Quezon City for ~22 months from 2009–2015. A credit cooperative connected to a Filipino NGO was wiped out of ~$2 million by it's CEO, his family n friends, the cooperative’s BOD members n their family n friends. Tragically, many of the culprits were friends of ours for decades. I won't get into the investigation, but the outcome was a devastasting lesson in cultural differences n the depth of corruption in the entire society. I lead the investigation attempting to find out who did what n how much was stolen, on behalf of 1000s of Filipino victims, mostly hard-working low n middle incomers n small groups. I found them all. After only a handful of completed cases, the new BOD I'd created legally reformed the coop (of course with the help of the federal oversight agency), essentially hijacking it. They ended the investigation, made a resolution to ban all foreigners from having any connection with the new Coop, took over the account with the recovered monies, n insisted that the dozens of crooks I'd found will be left alone ('God will handle them', 'it's not Chrisitan to pursue criminals', ‘you foreigners should stay out of our business's, n more nonsense) n no more monies will be recovered. They then prevented any members, old or new, from learning anything about the embezzlement or what they did. I had several relationships with Filipinos since the 80s, Filipino friends, some very close for many years, n married a Filipino almost 15 years ago. We lived there for a total of ~3 yrs since '09. Your phrasing does beg the question of whether you were referring to Westerners pursuing love: Consider that 10s of 1000s of foreigners have been actively seeking out Filipinos for marriage for decades. Then ask yourself- how many of them are women? How many non-Filipino women have Filipino husbands? How many websites are for Filipino men seeking Western wives n how many sites are dedicated to Western men seeking Filipino wives? Would we look at that trend n see love? Do the limited statistics reveal “foreigners” “loving” Filipinos, or foreign Men, unhappy with women in their own culture, seeking women who are poor n desperate?