Are we a nation of strangers?

It is said that a Nation is a community of strangers.

While it remains true that each and every citizen within our Nation may never come to fully get to know each other on a deeper, personal level, we are not a community of strangers. That is my argument.

The one Nation that is ours is a community of communities.

Life here is a gift and a right possessed by both individuals as well as communities.

As individuals here live lives distinct, so do our communities live also.

As individuals have rights, so do our communities possess rights distinct also.


And while it is true that as citizens it is impossible for everybody here in the Nation to connect to each other in stronger, more personal bonds of friendships - each of our communities, we may be assured, know each other. Think about it.

We are individuals within a community of individuals who are themselves individuals within a community of individual communities all of whom fall into the one fold - the Nation.

Interdependent human community.

The strength of our kin and kith ties are all bound up and embraced within a system of "weak ties". This may only become apparent if we dismiss the thought that we are a "nation of strangers" and attempt to understand the life and reality of our national communities.

We, the people, are all - in the Nation - at the very least, "civic acquaintances" - known to each other at the very least, through the life and reality of our particular communities.  

These communities may be tribal, religious, economic or other cause-specific affiliations, private as well as public of whose foundation is inherently our political community and its subdivisions - from barangay, city, province and their particular regions also. 

Each these communities represent us - reflecting many of the things we commonly understand as human beings. As each of our personal "acquaintances" may be developed into full-fledged friendships - so too may the (formal) connections between communities within the Nation be deepened, through the workings of the Republic, to incorporate stronger (informal) bonds and therefore, more effective relationships. 

This I believe is the reason for their many different Leagues and Councils. As an aspect of the term I use - Executive Coherence, this specific dimension is the horizontal dimension - horizontal coherence.

---<--@

Thoughts on the City Community

First of all, let us recognize the life of a City community with a separate peace, apart from the peace that we must together as one Republic accord to each other also as human persons and individual citizens. 

Let us love and regard the being of a City community as if it were a single person - born with a similar nature it shares with other Cities in our Republic as well as unique characters special to each one.

At the heart of every City is a promise. 

This promise is directly related to an old Chinese saying, "to get rich, build roads first."

When I reflect on this proverb, I am reminded of our Cities; that the orderliness and efficiency of their roads are a direct reflection of their health and well-being.

For our Cities are where our people work. Our Cities build together the national wealth. 

Self-interest is not the rule in any City community.


Wealth is the rule. 

People may come to be greedy. But a well-established City community prospers only in liberality.

For a City is never build. It is envisioned. 

Problems do not manage a City, it subdues its nature. Greed subverts its character and promise.

The City Executive is a manager of the City wealth. He or she must deal everyday with a restless kind of wealth, seeking always to break new ground and conquer hitherto unknown boundaries.  

He or she is not a manager of problems. The Mayor wisely envisions his or her City, manages its wealth, and the problems, whenever they shall arise, are managed by it. 

Sheer momentum of prosperity will repel most of it. 

Therefore, if one seeks to see into the heart of a City, bring it better wealth.

That each City may consistently be a realization of itself - shared by all.

Taken the right way, this is always true.

The way through a Mayor's heart is through his or her City. 

Right now, I am of the belief that our traffic problems are managing us. We are not managing it. It is essential that our City Executives come together in behalf of their communities and work it out... 

Envision it. 

I know we can. I believe it.

---<--@

Political Wisdom

Our politics these days seem only to confound and confuse... people say - kakainis na, kakasawa na, masyado nang madumi.

Is there really such a thing as "political wisdom"?

This is what I think -

Political wisdom is not seated in the mind of an individual. It is a virtue of a political community.

It is like military intelligence that some people say is an oxymoron - a self-contradictory term.

Some minds tend to accept the term and its attributions as if springing from individual (personal) virtue, take the worst possible example of military or political leadership, and apply it as a failure of the whole organism.

Military intelligence has nothing to do with personal intelligence quotients as some people like to think.

It has everything to do with intelligence as a function of command. Will and Outcome are what it serves and manages not brains and smarts.

A superior commander with clarity of intent guides his or her intelligence to accomplish a given mission in a manner that preserves unit initiative and in a way that preserves the advantage to overall strategy.

A political leader likewise retains to him or herself what is personal and will freely seek to augment it as necessary through his or her political community - with the broadest political community being that of the national community.

The national whole in the context of the State is a body politic.

It would behoove us as the Filipino citizenry to work to demystify the politics of our own Republic.

The civic exercise of the political is a primary power and responsibility of the Filipino electorate. We must have a sense of the political - of what serves the better interest of our communities in the public sphere and we must duly represent them - through officials after our own hearts. 

The civic exercise of political authority reaches its summit whenever we vote.

It is not our politics to forever participate in its distractions in the government of the State. Some of these distractions are necessary but some shall be extraneous... we shall leave this matter for another time as a matter for platform politics.

Suffice it to say, we through our democratic interactions in the State, enlighten each other in the nation, in a sense. And from this humble enlightening, we become wise in all our ways as a body politic.

It is political to simply know what is fair unto other human beings - and to apply it as a citizen for the good of thy own neighbor is civic virtue.

Things like personal wisdom plays a vital part - but on its own, or tainted by the vice of intellectual pride - a good leader stands to gain nothing from the mind of a community

If

one should think the self to be a constellation
- in and of itself -
capable of accurately navigating the heavens
above the soul of the nation
on its own.

For

The Republic Sky is like the sky above our heads...
it shares of itself freely, is meant to be shared,
and therefore, must be shared.
---<--@