The very existence of the Philippines is itself the biggest anti-intellectual movement of the 21st century.
Philippines is a country whose average IQ counts to just 86 points which means dull-minded and mentally disinterested. It is thus not surprising that most Filipinos engage in anti-intellectual discourses, and therefore perceive intelligence as a negative characteristic. However, as a nation, they always take it to the next level.
As an example, students who were studying and who achieved their Alma Mater from the main campus of the University of the Philippines — the nation’s flagship educational institution — in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, are known to be intellectual champions, boasting some of the highest percentile rates in nearly every national professional bar, board and qualification exams. And yet these people are also the target of constant harassment by the Philippine Army, due mostly to their perception that every person who got out of the university is due to join the country’s leftist organizations or worse even the rebel New People’s Army which is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, a group declared terrorist by the United States and its allies. That perception is fueled by the fact that many of the students and graduates of that university, most of them intellectuals, engage in social activism to raise social awareness on what is wrong with the Philippines as a nation. In the Philippines, activism is nearly equivalent to leftist terrorism with no consideration on parameters and specifications on how activism was actually done. The University has always championed intellectual discourse in search for a solution for the national ills of the country, but it is also due to this reason that students and alumni engage in activism which is the reason why they earn the unwanted attention of the nation’s military. Such things are not only limited to the University of the Philippines though — nearly every premier tertiary institution in the country is subject to such harassment.
The worst thing on these kind of incidents though is that most of the populace seem to enjoy it all. Content on living in a feudal society, they would be more than happy to see intellectuals summarily executed, or worse — if they are women — raped and then slain, sometimes even buried anywhere unknown by the majority with no traces with the state institutions covering up for it. This has never been more true than to the elderly who enjoyed the “glory days” of the past Marcos regime and professionals who despise professions similar to social work (hence why a few people work on that field due to the stigma, therefore mental health and social welfare in the country is probably the worst in the world); all these people are from the middle class, who form the majority of the country’s population. But they are also joined by the lower classes living in squalor — they thought that brawn alone can achieve affluence and brain is of no significant use in a world that revolves around money and capitalism; it is why they rely on a forlorn hope that working menial jobs such as selling vegetables and meat with a little help of last-two sweepstaking in the belief that it brings more money and a good life is much better than spending money on a college for four or so years. Altogether, they join as one single national anti-intellectual spectrum bent on bashing anyone who offers intellectual discourse, let alone who gives facts from either the legal code or even science and mathematics.
Elderly people always feel and claim that they have the supreme authority over the younger generation, without ever thinking that the world is changing and so were the new methods of practicing professionalism and more so the newly-acquired knowledge that modern science has offered since the turn of the 21st century. Hence, they should to the younger ones: “Wala kang alam!” (You know nothing!), “Wala kang disiplina!” (You are indisciplined!) or even “Papatayin kitang hayop ka kapag di ka tumigil!” (I’ll have you killed if you won’t stop!). Their false sense of authority is why modern methods are always stigmatized, thus the Philippines continue to be left behind by its neighbors in many aspects including economics and science.
A Philippine senator, right, just lost an argument with a University of the Philippines student, left. The senator then freaked out and screamed that the student “knows nothing”. Can one even imagine, a higher-ranking political official losing a debate to a student? Senator dela Rosa goes berserk over student leader’s Sanchez remark
Probably the worst of all is the fact that Filipinos celebrate ignorance. They are proud having voted thieves, sexual predators and movie actors without prior experience in political methods into office, and are bizarrely extremely vocal on the support of such politicians. They remember catchphrases from everyday television and films rather than facts and formulas from educational textbooks, even just historical textbooks, responding in a local tongue such as “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I’m just dumb. I’m afraid I’m getting a nosebleed or something. I just can’t handle all this knowledge you’re giving me” in an awfully sarcastic rebuttal. Any intellectual who introduces knowledge to others might be even subject to death threats and intimidation on social media. Some anti-intellectuals even use the excuse that, as a Catholic country, it was a sin to be born with so much intelligence that it condemns the whole country into a perpetual curse, e.g. the cause of deadly typhoons that hit the country, numerous deadly earthquakes & tsunamis etc., as they believed.
In the Philippines, intellectuals don’t have a place in the society. They are portrayed locally as socially villainous and taboo. One can’t find any similar case such as this in the rest of eastern Asia, not even the United States where flat-earthers, conspiracy theorists and televangelists fanatically cling on to their self-made opinions because at least in there intelligence especially when in regards to science intellectuals are all the more respected.
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