We All Have Freedom – Freewill  

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Nowadays, children and teens are not fond of playing outdoor games. As technology advances and more gadgets are invented, youngsters would prefer to play with all of these alone. Not all them are knowledgeable that long playing hours have health risks. Besides, it could also affect their social life as they are not able to make friends because they spend most of their time with computers. Moreover, along the improvement of technology is the improvement of communication.  We are now able to know what is happening around the world through media. And media has a direct effect to us.

Looking for an article about western culture, I saw an article entitled,“Benefitsof Western Culture”. Tomazinho Cardozo, its writer, was generally saying that western culture was beneficial in correcting some wrong beliefs special on the culture of Indians. He said it because of the accusation of the elders in India that the culture of westerners ruins the life of youngsters at present time. Obviously, he strongly disagrees with this. It was clear that since the generation today are so hook of about everything western, so the tendency to copy the way of living and the way of thinking of westerners are high. To support his statements, he emphasized that people from west were the people who brought advancements in the world. We all know that these advancements corrected the wrong beliefs that we have before. “Therefore let us not blindly target the Western culture for all the evils that raise its ugly heads in our society. It is the people who have to accept or reject cultural aspects of any culture to be adapted to our way of life. Thus there is an urgent need to strengthen the foundation of values system in the lives of our younger generation so that they are capable of accepting the positive aspects and rejecting the negative aspects of any foreign culture. Hence let us not blame the Western culture for all the adverse happenings in our society,“said by Cardozo as his concluding statement. I agree with him because all of the cultures can cause harmful effect if misused or misunderstand. Besides, it is about our decisions that will make or break our lives. 

Everything is relative. We can always see a good side or a bad side in anything based on what perspective we will look in too. However, we must have no right to pursue other people to believe or to think the way we want. Everyone have a freedom- freewill. 

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Unity of Cultures  

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Yes or no? Agree or disagree? True or false? How do come up with your decisions? What things do you consider? Most of the time deciding is difficult. As people become open minded now in different things, many things must consider. In a bit, people nowadays know the theory of relativism. It means a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them. Since then, many people’s point of view in everything becomes relative on everything, including how to consider corruption.
As I search for articles in the web, I saw a work of John Hooker entitled,” A Cross-Cultural View of Corruption”. He affirms that corruption is to complex to define and consider. Although we live in the same planet, it is too big for us to have same beliefs and for us to have same things to value. So here, he offered to make a standard in considering corruption in a certain place. His analyzation was further explained in the subtopics he gave. The subtopics are: Relationships vs. Rules, When Norms Differ and When Norms are Violated. For the first subtopic, he explained that west has rule-base culture while east has relationship-base culture. Moreover, westerners trust the system while the easterners trust more their family. Next, the second subtopic explains that what is corrupt in west may be acceptable elsewhere and what is acceptable in west may be corrupt elsewhere. Then the third and last is clarifying that as people from west base on rules and the people from east base on relationship, westerners respect rules as they respect the people around them and while for easterners, the small voice inside everyone is much important. Rules and conscience guide the people on their daily living. Lastly at the end, he stated what he truly believes in as he said,” Cultures with very different values have coexisted alongside one another for eons, often in a peaceful and mutually beneficial way. Rather than fight corruption by trying to standardize behavior worldwide, it seems best to allow each cultural system to evolve organically in its own direction and work out its own problems, with enough interaction to exchange goods and ideas, but not so much as to create interference and dysfunction. Cultural diversity, no less than ecological diversity, is good for the planet.” I strongly agree on his statement because I believe that easterners and westerners cannot solve the problems in their country regarding corruption if all of us continue the endless talk about corruption. Besides I know that knowing the culture of a certain place is where we can find the solutions of our problems.
                We are all very different with each other but we can help each other to know more. Knowing who we are; knowing our strengths and weaknesses could help us think how we will fight to he battle we face everyday. By knowing ourselves, it could take us to our victory.

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Two Different People Living In Same Planet  

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We are always better than someone but there is also someone who is always better than us. Moreover, we won’t settle where we so we idolize the people who we think are superior to us. Besides, there is a big possibility we might copy the traits and doings of the person we look up to as well. I came up with this idea as what east most likely think about west way of life.
 I saw the photo representation of the latest corruption perception index. I observed that there are also many countries in the west and this interests me. On the World Wide Web, I come across to an article in europeanvoice.com entitled: Corruption,a disease shared by east and west. It talked about how western nations influence other nations which admire them in different ways. Little by little, to meet the standards of westerns was aimed by the inferior countries. Furthermore, it emphasized that corruption is all over west. People were blinded by the outlook to the western people and mostly because most countries in west are wealthy so corruption is not noticeable, they can easily deal with it. Finally, it declared some points that people must take note,” The picture is not uniform. Some ‘eastern' countries (such as Estonia) are a lot more honest than some of the ‘western' ones. And within countries, the level of corruption varies too. I am yet to be favourably impressed by the conduct of nationalised industries, natural-resource ministries and licence-rich bits of local government anywhere in the region. But the outlines of the problem are similar everywhere. The state lacks the clout to reward the people who serve it honestly, and to punish those who cheat it. Creating a critical mass of honest officials is hard: as Lenin said, cadres decide everything. Western Europe can cope with corruption because it is already rich. Sleaze is a brake on growth, but not a fatal.” We are all in same condition but we are in different situation. Since, each country has different culture and economic status we all experience corruption but its effect are not same to each place. The only thing we can do is to fight corruption through our deeds.
Countries in the west and east are mostly opposites of each other in many things. Although they differ, they are same with each other when we talk about corruption. Since everyone is corrupt in their own little way, everyone is sinner as to be corrupt is to be greedy.

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Small things can be big  

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News about corruption is not new to me. Being under an administration that’s eager to stop or at least lessen the corruption, these events are usual. However, I think there is something wrong. I notice that high ranked officials are the only investigated, impeached, convicted and kicked out to their positions. How about those who are at the local government? To feed my curiosity, I search about how was corruption at local positions. 

I was shocked on what I found out.  I read Mayors top list of officials facing corruption cases by Michael Punongbayan. It was about the number of cases filed against certain branch of the government to the Office of the Ombudsman. It turned out that city and municipal mayors topped the list with 2,075 cases about the anti-graft. The list was followed by different departments, bureau, commissions and agencies. Precisely, mayors are too many and if every one of them is corrupt, it will be a very big problem. As he said, “City and municipal mayors topped the list of government officials with the most number of cases filed against them before the Office of the Ombudsman last year.” means that we must not only focus who are on top, the high ranked officials. Diminutive or immense type of corruption is still a corruption.

Big things are from little things so we must not overlook small time corruptions. This issue will not be resolve if we are only catching the big crocodiles because time will come that the small ones will be as big as others.

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But still we're moving forward  

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For the past few years, cases related to corruption in the country gains too much attention. Philippines, being one of the most corrupt nations in the world, was the main reason for this. I know Aquino’s administration is very determined to solve this issue.  Then I wonder, about the changes that Aquino did and the results of his actions to the past term which was known where immense corruption issues happened. 

I need an answer. I browsed the internet and found some article regarding on where is the Philippines today in the surveys about corruption. I read Philippines remains one of most corrupt countries—survey by Leila B. Salaverria, one of the articles on the broadsheet Philippine Inquirer.  She confirmed that our country’s rank in the corruption survey improved but still, in worst place. During the administration preceded by the current president, Philippines was at 134th,  in 2011 was at 129th both out of 178 countries and in 2012 placed 105th over 176 countries.   The immediate actions of Aquino caused all of the change and helped change public perception in the country. She said that urgent passing of Information Bill, impeachment cases, enactment of a whistle-blower protection law and a law on campaign finance reform to regulate campaign contributions and the adoption of a comprehensive anti-corruption program are concrete examples of his work. “The leading economies must lead by example and that they should see to it that their institutions are fully transparent and their leaders held accountable,” she quote. It was clear that anti-corruption programs are meaningless if the people implementing won’t change. 

If we want something, we must want it badly. Changes are result of actions. Undeniably, people have direct effect to change. It’s time to be responsible to every actions we do and every words that our mouth utters for it can cause bad or ideal changes. 

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Unchanging Key for Change to Ever-changing World  

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        In one of my Values Education class, we once discussed a topic about workplace values. My professor said, international companies that are here in the Philippines have one policy that some local companies don’t have. It is about receiving gifts at the office. Then I realized that in some Asian custom, there is nothing wrong with giving a gift to an official who has been particularly helpful to a certain person. But in Western cultures, such an act would be a bribe.
  
             Mystified, I searched about this in the internet. I looked through many articles but commentary of Frank J. Narvan some how answered my questions. His work, Defining Values, Morals, and Ethics, discussed the relationships of the three and how they differ in different places. He pointed out that the basis of values is the fundamental belief that a certain place has. Just like values as the root of morals. Having these two can enable us to make a standard in evaluating ethics. He even said that, “And of course we have ethical dilemmas, where the choice is not between what we believe to be right and what we believe to be wrong, but between competing rights.,”. We must be open-minded every time, for we meet different people everyday. As we do this, we practice learning. It is a life-time process so we must not settle for the knowledge that we have, for we don’t know what is truly right. Knowing many things will enable us to see things in different perspectives. I discern that it will help us greatly in deciding our standards and stand.

  
Values differ. It might be alright for some but not with others. Therefore, knowledge is the key in understanding things like the differences we all have. Because in this way we will know how to respect others.  Don’t stop learning. Don’t be fool and don’t stay fool. 

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