2.2 · One of us, or not one of us

BeginnerDuration ~11 min readTools One request you actually need from a Philippine institution

The big idea: a Philippine institution is not running two moralities, one for insiders and one for everyone else. It is running one protocol with two branches, and which branch you get depends entirely on which category the person deciding has already filed you under.

The analogy

Every production you have ever worked on had two documents.

There is the call sheet. It is written down, it is distributed to everybody, and it is the version of the day that could be shown to an insurer. Times, locations, who is needed when. If you are on the call sheet, you have been told what the production wants you to know.

And there is the group chat. Nobody circulates it. Nobody explains how you get added. But the schedule actually moves in there, hours before the revised call sheet goes out, and the decision about whether Tuesday gets cancelled is made in there by six people, one of whom is not even on the crew list.

Nobody in that chat is doing anything dishonest. They are not hiding the production from you. It is simply that the call sheet is what you give to people you are working with, and the chat is what happens between people who are in it together, and those are two different relationships with two different rules.

You have been on both sides of this. You know exactly how different the same production feels depending on which document you are living in. Hold that, because a Philippine government office runs on the same two documents, and the second one is invisible from the queue.

How it works

Filipino social life sorts people into two categories before it does anything else.

Ibang-tao means outsider. Not enemy, not stranger in the cold sense. Simply: not one of us, yet. Hindi ibang-tao means one of us. The literal construction is worth noticing, because it is a negation. You are not-an-outsider. There is no separate positive word for the inside, only the cancellation of the outside.

Enriquez mapped eight levels of interaction between the two, and the map is graded rather than binary. Five levels sit inside the outsider category: pakikitungo, civility. Pakikisalamuha, mixing. Pakikilahok, joining in. Pakikibagay, conforming. Pakikisama, adjusting. Three sit inside the other: pakikipagpalagayang-loob, mutual trust. Pakikisangkot, getting involved. Pakikiisa, oneness.

Look at where pakikisama lands. The value everyone points at as the essence of Filipino agreeableness is the last stop before the border, and it is still on the outside. Going along with the group is what you do with people who have not let you in.

You have felt the crossing. The moment a producer stops calling you “sir” and starts calling you “pare” is not casualness. It is a category change, and everything you are allowed to ask for changes with it.

Now put that protocol behind a counter, and say the ugly part first, because you have watched it happen.

Two people arrive at the same office on the same morning with the same application. One is done in twenty minutes because the clerk’s compadre is his wife’s brother. The other is told to come back Thursday, and on Thursday the signatory is out. That is real. It cost the second man his day and possibly his permit, and no amount of understanding hands it back to him.

Here is what is producing it. The clerk is not switching between an honest self and a corrupt one. He is running one protocol with two branches. Rules are what you give to ibang-tao, because rules are the correct and respectful way to treat someone you are not in it with. Favours are what you give hindi ibang-tao, because a person who is one of us is not a case to be processed. Both branches feel morally correct to the man executing them, and the second one feels like plain decency rather than a lapse. He is also, as you saw in Level 1, sitting in an office descended from one designed to be paid by the people it governed, so the machinery was never built to reward him for the first branch anyway.

The glue is utang na loob. A debt inside the self. Mary Racelis Hollnsteiner gave it its first systematic treatment in 1961 and put her finger on the mechanism: because it comes from a service rendered rather than a transaction, “quantification is impossible.” No figure exists, so no settlement exists. It cannot be paid off, and that is the design rather than the flaw. A debt with a number attached closes and the relationship ends. A debt without one keeps the relationship permanently open, which is precisely what you want in a village with no insurance, no bank and no functioning court.

Then somebody scales it to a national budget. A politician pays for your father’s hospital bill. Nothing is signed. Twenty years later your family still votes for his son, and it does not feel like corruption to you, because it is not experienced as a bribe. It is experienced as being a decent person toward somebody who was decent first.

Enriquez, for the record, disliked the word “debt” here and preferred gratitude and solidarity, arguing that the debt reading is the colonial reading. The course carries both, because the two readings predict the same behaviour and disagree only about what to call it.

A second Filipino scholar arrives at the same place by another road. F. Landa Jocano threw out the whole tradition of listing Filipino values and said the right unit is pamantayan, standard, with three linked parts: halaga, what is held to be worth something, asal, behaviour and its meaning, and diwa, the collective sentiment underneath. His structural move is the one that matters: he distinguished a foreign model of the Filipino value system from an indigenous one, and argued that most of what gets published is the foreign model wearing local vocabulary. Two scholars, two disciplines, one conclusion, which is worth more than either of them saying it alone.

Last, the part that connects this to the office in Lesson 1.2. Under Spain, a Filipino generally needed the favour of an official or a friar to obtain a post or improve his standing, which is where the padrino system comes from. Alongside it came compadrazgo, the imported Catholic ritual of co-parenthood, which turned baptism and marriage sponsorship into a durable kinship claim. So the colony installed both halves of one machine: an office that made a sponsor necessary, and a sacrament that let you manufacture relatives on demand.

Which is why “may kakilala ka ba sa LTO?” is not a joke. It is a rational first question in a system where the informal queue is faster than the formal one.

The pattern

Rules are for ibang-tao. Favours are for hindi ibang-tao. One protocol, two branches, and the person running it feels correct on both. Eight graded levels sit between the categories, and pakikisama, the famous one, is still on the outside. Utang na loob is the glue, and it holds because it cannot be quantified and therefore cannot be closed. To predict how any Philippine institution will treat a request, do not ask what the rules say. Ask which category the person deciding has already filed the applicant under.

The receipts (evidence, if you want it)

• This lesson is explainer-led. No verified free video exists for the eight levels or for utang na loob as a scholarly object. Two of the three primary sources below are free, and the third is named as a moat.
• The eight levels, free to borrow. Virgilio G. Enriquez (1992), From Colonial to Liberation Psychology: The Philippine Experience, University of the Philippines Press. https://archive.org/details/fromcolonialtoli0000enri . The sequence: pakikitungo (civility), pakikisalamuha (mixing), pakikilahok (joining), pakikibagay (conforming) and pakikisama (adjusting) within ibang-tao; then pakikipagpalagayang-loob (mutual trust), pakikisangkot (getting involved) and pakikiisa (oneness) within hindi ibang-tao. Summarised in Rogelia Pe-Pua and Elizabeth Protacio-Marcelino (2000), “Sikolohiyang Pilipino: A legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez,” Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 3(1), 49 to 71, free PDF: https://www.indigenouspsych.org/Members/Pe-Pua,%20Rogelia/PePua_Marcelino_2000.pdf .
• Utang na loob, free PDF, and the source of the load-bearing quotation. Mary Racelis Hollnsteiner (1961), “Reciprocity in the Lowland Philippines,” Philippine Studies, 9(3), 387 to 413. https://archium.ateneo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2927&context=phstudies . Hollnsteiner: “Every Filipino is expected to possess utang na loob; that is, he should be aware of his obligations to those from whom he receives favors and should repay them in any acceptable manner.” Because the obligation stems from a service rendered, she writes, “quantification is impossible.” Free.
• Enriquez’s correction to Hollnsteiner. He reclassified utang na loob as an accommodative surface value and preferred “gratitude and solidarity” over “debt,” on the argument that the debt reading is the colonial reading. Pe-Pua and Protacio-Marcelino (2000), same free PDF.
• The second Filipino voice, and the moat. F. Landa Jocano (1997), Filipino Value System: A Cultural Definition, Anthropology of the Filipino People Series Vol. 4, Punlad Research House, Manila, ISBN 9716220049, based on fieldwork conducted between 1988 and 1995. Catalog record: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003269124 . Paid and library-only, and no free full-text substitute was found. The course teaches Jocano’s structural move, the split between the exogenous and indigenous models of the Filipino value system, and the three parts of pamantayan, and does not quote him beyond what the research base verified. Philippine university libraries hold it. Before any Jocano line is spoken on camera, the book gets read.
• The padrino system and compadrazgo. Global Informality Project, “Padrino System (Philippines)”: https://www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Padrino_System_%28Philippines%29 . Free. This is a reference-work entry rather than a monograph, and the course treats it as such: it is used for the origin and the definition, not for any claim about prevalence. The Spanish-period origin, that a Filipino generally needed the favour of an official or a friar to obtain a post, is consistent with the office described in Lesson 1.2 and its Blair and Robertson sources.
• What is deliberately not claimed. No figure for how often Philippine offices are processed by favour rather than by rule, because no such figure exists in the research base. No claim that the ibang-tao protocol is unique to the Philippines. And no claim that understanding the protocol excuses any particular decision, which is a moral question and not a research finding.
• Coming later. The two-branch prediction card, one sheet with the eight levels and the two-column prediction test, is planned as a printable download in the materials pass. It is not built yet, so there is no button here rather than a button that goes nowhere. The Practice page carries the Level 2 capstone brief in the meantime.

Your one move

Pick one thing you currently need from a Philippine institution or a large Philippine company. A permit, a clearance, a payment, a booking, a piece of paper somebody keeps not sending.

Three lines in your notes.

1. Where you actually stand. Name the person who decides it, and which of the eight levels you are at with that person. Pakikitungo, plain civility, is a perfectly honest answer and it is where most of us are with most institutions.
2. What the other branch gets. Write what somebody filed as hindi ibang-tao would get on the same request. Not what you imagine, what you have actually seen happen. If you have never seen it, write that instead, and note that this is one of the things the system is designed not to show you.
3. The switch. One sentence on what would have to be true for the formal queue to beat the informal one for this specific request. A deadline with a penalty. A published tracking number. A person whose job depends on the number of days.

Thirty minutes. Done when all three lines exist and the third one names a mechanism rather than a virtue.

Want to go further?

Do line three again for the same request, but write it as something you could actually build rather than something the state would have to pass. That is the difference between a complaint and a specification, and it is the exercise Level 4 turns into a memo.

The needle: the office in Lesson 1.2 was designed so that access ran through a person rather than through a process. What you have just learned is the human protocol that grew around that design and made it liveable. The protocol is not the crime. It is what people built to survive an office that was never going to serve them, and it will keep being the fastest route until something else is faster.

Terms introduced

Terms introduced in this lesson

• Ibang-tao
• Hindi ibang-tao
• The eight levels of interaction
• Utang na loob
• Pamantayan (halaga, asal, diwa)
• Compadrazgo
• Padrino system

Each term links to the glossary, where it is defined by the way you just used it.

Check

Check yourself

1. Two people walk into the same office on the same morning with the same application. One is processed in twenty minutes, one is told to come back Thursday. Using ibang-tao and hindi ibang-tao, what has actually happened?

   One clerk is corrupt and the other is not, and the office needs a stricter code of conductNothing structural. Queues are slow everywhere and the difference is coincidenceThe second applicant failed to build rapport, which is a skill he could learnOne applicant was inside the category the clerk was already using, and got the branch of the protocol that runs on favour. The other was outside it and got the branch that runs on rules. The clerk applied one protocol twice, not two moralities

2. Why can utang na loob not be paid off?

   Because it is created by a service rendered rather than by a transaction, so there is no figure to settle against. Hollnsteiner put it plainly: quantification is impossible. An open balance is what keeps the relationship alive, which is the design rather than a defectBecause Filipino culture forbids refusing a favour, so the debt keeps being renewed against your willBecause the amounts involved are usually far larger than the recipient can ever repayBecause repayment is prohibited until the person who gave the favour asks for it, and most never ask

3. The padrino system and the compadrazgo ritual are taught together in this lesson rather than separately. What is the connection the course is making?

   Neither is Spanish in origin. Both are pre-colonial and were merely renamed under SpainThey are two names for the same practice, one Spanish and one Filipino, and the course uses whichever fits the sentenceCompadrazgo was an attempt by the Church to abolish the padrino system, and it failedThe colony installed both halves of one machine. Spanish administration made a sponsor necessary to obtain a post, and the imported Catholic co-parenthood ritual supplied a legal way to manufacture kin, so a stranger could be converted into family and then into access

4. Jocano rejected the whole tradition of listing Filipino values and proposed pamantayan instead. Why does the course carry him alongside Enriquez rather than picking one?

   Because the course could not decide between them and presents both so the learner can chooseBecause Jocano is easier to obtain, so his version is the one learners can checkTwo Filipino scholars in two different disciplines reached the same conclusion by different routes, that a list of Filipino values compiled from outside describes symptoms rather than causes. Independent agreement is worth more than either account aloneBecause Jocano corrected Enriquez on kapwa, and the later account supersedes the earlier one

Check answers

You can move on when you can… use the ibang-tao and hindi ibang-tao distinction to predict how a Philippine institution will treat two different people with the same request, and explain why utang na loob cannot be paid off.

Mark this lesson complete

Go deeper

• Next up: 2.3 · Why a decent person sells a vote, which takes the mechanism you just learned and follows it out of the barangay and into a national budget, with the numbers attached.
• The Culture research map carries the eight levels, the utang na loob material and the padrino entry in full, with every citation and every gap named. Part 1 is where they sit.
• Hollnsteiner’s 1961 paper is free and short, and it is the oldest systematic treatment of utang na loob in the literature. Read it and notice how much of what she describes has not moved.
• Back to 1.2 · The office that was paid by the people it governed if you want the administrative half of this lesson. The padrino system is what grew on top of that office, and the two are the same story told from opposite ends.