Why is decolonization and indigenization important to Filipinos today? One of the reasons is that it helps Filipinos become more integrated in their own cultural identity. It also helps them become strengthened as a collective of people who are of the archipelago called the Philippines or whose ancestry hails from there. Why do Filipinos have some sort of cultural identity crisis? Maybe this can help you find answers:
Skip to the complete book list and details. Click this text>>Summary version below (without book titles):
When an imperial power comes and colonizes indigenous people, takes away their culture and language and teaches native people to become eurocentric and to look down upon their own kind… a human sickness sets in that is called colonial mentality. This is a systemic and traumatic kind of educational and programming of minds. It is a set of dysfunctional human beings, with a superiority complex, teaching with brutal methods, another set of human beings how to have an inferiority complex and how to be innately dysfunctional as a human being.
This dysfunction, this colonial mentality and colonizers mentality can be cured.
How to find healing?
First, get very angry. The first book listed here will help you do that and is called The Forbidden Book for a reason. Who among the U.S. imperial forces want the little people, among those they colonized and in their own country, to understand the demented thinking they have that justifies their colonization of people who seek their own independence and ways of life? The illusions that people project upon us, that belittle and limit us, that we unconsciously agreed to uphold, can be shattered.
Next, figure out that this whole Life thing and how people think is all a Game of sorts.
Next, find ways to rid yourself of programmed thinking that you unconsciously began to subscribe to throughout your life. Aha! That’s the catch—it takes years to deprogram. But a personal practice of meditation and self-reflection can help you achieve that.
Return to your roots.
Unsubscribe from belief systems that were constructed to benefit one people and take away from another.
Find healing, wholeness, Clarity.
This booklist includes titles such as:
- Forbidden Book, by Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, Helen Toribio
- Waking Up In Time: Finding Inner Peace In Times of Accelerating Change by Peter Russell
- Coming Full Circle, by Leny Strobel
- If Life is a Game These are the Rules by Chérie Carter-Scott
- How to See Yourself as You Really Are… by by Dalai Lama
January 29, 2014 at 9:25 pm
Why are indigenous people always hung up on this so called “colonial mentalty”, does this word really have any validity or just an EXCUSE for some race who seems to be having a hard time UNDERSTANDING and HACKING it in the real world? Why are certain races who are not indigenous to certain islands who have become a country, go there, occupy, without any romanticization of their “own” culture just goes there and improves and paves way for improvement, thereby improving the lot of these indigenous culture, through science, medicine, modernization, etc. etc. and leave the indigenous person scowering for some EXCUSE as to why his/her indigenous culture has not really made better the lives of his kind? Why is it that even a child of normal intelligence cannot fail to see this simple dynamics? And so the indigenous culture is scowering for some EXCUSE as to why he/ she remains STAGNANT as it is. And so he/she comes up with some lame excuse, calling it—-“Colonial mentality”???? It seems laughable isn’t it??? There is a saying…….”Eithe you have it or you don’t”. I think INSTEAD of you guys always BLAMING outside forces for your own shortcomings, maybe it would be wise if you look into your own genes or culture, as to why you remain the way you are. AND DON’T BLAME OTHER PEOPLE FOR YOUR OWN STUPIDITY, by INVENTING name such as “Colonial Mentalty”. This is really a product of low level intelligence. And other Filipinos are NOt remiss in noticing this. so instead of BLAMING other people—BLAME YOURSELVES!!!!!Remember any body can have a culture…or subculture….even if you look into the mammalian kingdom. This is a natural fact of life. THE REAL QUESTION IS…IS YOUR CULTURE SUPERIOR ENOUGH TO CULTIVATE INTELLIGENCE THAT FOSTERS CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT INTO THE LOT OF LIVES OF THE MEMEBERS OF THAT RACE/COMMUNITY. Or is it an inferior culture that does not foster IMPROVEMENT into the COLLECTIVE LIVES of that particular race or community. Bec. anybody can form some “exotic dance” steps/ complete with costume and all and say…yes, that is you culture. Any homo sapien can do that. The REAL QUESTION is, is your CULTURE –SUPERIOR enough to understand the real DYNAMICS of the world as to afford your members the constant SEARCH for IMPROVEMENTS collectively, be they COLLECTIVE-FINANCE, COLLECTIVE-REPUTATION/IMAGE, COLLECTIVE ACHIEVEMENTS which are done by INDIVIDUALS who have ACHIEVED and happen to be a member of your community/race? EXCUSES, EXCUSES, EXCUSES,,,but the real reasons as to why you REMAIN the way you are—you’re having a hard time understanding????The word “colonial mentality” was invented by IDIOTS who can neither look inside their souls and their culture and having the courage and intelligence to say…” THIS IS OUR SHORTCOMING, AND IT NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED”!!!!!
January 30, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Hi Andres, thanks for sharing your view point. I read it. I read it 3 times. I get your anger and frustration. I hear disgust, impatience and repulsion. I appreciate the fact that you are not attacking me per se, but rather abstracts that you are rejecting.
Just because someone has different opinions from you, different experiences than you doesn’t mean that person is an idiot. To call another person an idiot is either a form of dismissal or a verbal form of violence or both.
The motto of imperialism is “divide and conquer.”
First it will be ideas that separate people. Then it will be words of divisiveness. Can you see the programming?
Because if you don’t then next it will be actions of violence against one another.
Turning on your own people—get it? That’s exactly what DIVIDE AND CONQUER means. That’s what colonization and what colonial mentality is. Get it?
By the tone of your comments I think you are taking this post about healing from “colonial mentality” as a total rejection of modern technology, systems or solutions. This discussion of “colonial mentality” does not mean that at all.
This post, is about healing self-hate and fragmentation caused by the perception of one’s self as inferior to the colonizer in any way.
This whole blog, is about mixing the best of the old and the new.
Healing colonial mentality and then interweaving indigenous beliefs and culture along with modern innovation, new ways of seeing the world and solving problems is the goal. Sometimes indigenous beliefs, such as the belief that everything is connected is a new way of looking at existence too.
What are the real problems of colonial mentality that you believe are figments of imagination? Aren’t these problems real: repulsion with one’s own culture, race and heritage? self-hate of one’s language, color and facial features? disgust with one’s fellow Filipinos? Arrogance that comes with being westernized and “modern”. A romance with western culture that causes one to look down on non-westernized or modernized people as inferior and therefore unworthy of justice and equality, and worthy of exploitation, is in fact a concrete form of imperialism and equality.
I hope you noticed that the booklist identifies a problem, recognized by colonized nations around the world, AND IS ALSO SOLUTIONS-ORIENTED.
Please read the booklist and give us your feedback about the solutions that could come about, outlined by the contents of the books that are included in the list. Do you think applying content like that in our daily lives might work? I would like to hear from you on that, too.
Needing to battle others on such things is problematic, don’t you think? The need to enforce oneself or beliefs over another as superior and another inferior is divisive, isn’t it?
Don’t you think that an inferiority complex about one’s own culture is a psychological problem? The fact that anyone would think that the culture of the empire is superior is a form of programming. Watch one of the most popuplar sci-fi movie series and it is a modern-day myth about false power—the Empire is false power. The rebels, the radicals are seeking authentic power.
You didn’t really need to post your comment 5 times. One is enough to post and share.
So let’s talk about being solutions-oriented.
How can you do that? How can I?
Salamat!
May 3, 2014 at 11:39 pm
From “Shamans, Spirituality, and Cultural Revitalization,” p. 4-5, here is how indigenous practices can still be effective and relevant and how having colonial mentality can cause a people to reject that which is valuable within their own culture or heritage: “My study of healing and creative processes sparked through spiritual transformation encompasses many gradations of private and public shamanic practices. I have confirmed in numerous conversations and observations the “classic” model of spirit initiation. This occurs when future shamanic healers begin their practices by healing themselves through personal revelation, often but not only through altered states of consciousness states. It involves frequently traumatic shamanic experience of spirit negotiation through suffering, dismemberment, and its transcendence. Well known in the ethnographic literature, it can stimulate a “radical empathy” that brings results….Repeat visits and continuity of care are built into such systematic and creative practices. But the language and thought in which these are embedded often seem alien or irrational to Western skeptics used to deriding “beliefs” as “superstitions”.