MANILA — This manifesto expresses what is hoped to be the start of a continuing discourse on nationalism and a national consciousness. It seeks to provide a springboard for awareness and identification of ourselves in the light of our place in the family of nations throughout the whole world. Others who may be moved to contribute to this discourse are most welcome, so that this manifesto may grow toward a fuller and even more meaningful core of a modern Filipino philosophy – expressed succinctly and simply, to let everyone understand it, believe in it, and finally, live it. This is just the beginning, and it may not have captured everything that should be included; nonetheless, it is now laid on the table and shared with everyone.
We are Filipino. We are one among the many nations of humankind. We came onto the islands, in this our archipelago, from beyond the mists of time and space — consigned long ago to oblivion.
We peopled our new homeland in various persuasions, according to the providence of Mother Nature and vicissitudes of human development through time.
But without having come yet to experience unity as one country, our Fatherland was discovered and conquered by another people from across the oceans, the Castilians who also brought the Christian faith and western civilization.
Our indigenous oriental civilization, fractious and with a mixed culture of Islamic and other native faiths, was forever changed. We slowly came to awaken to our own enlightenment and realization of our true potentials — to eventually become free and self-determining, a Republic.
Our ethnic divisions, however, have remained as a fundamental hallmark of our nationhood.
Our economy and politics — a unique blend of the legacy from our fettered past and our interactions with the larger world community in the modern era — have molded our society into what its state of development is now…
We are Filipino. We are still shaping ourselves continually into the new citizens of the whole wide world, as members of the greater civilization called mankind.
While governments maintain the physical boundaries, beliefs and laws that separate peoples and countries, we, however, are all connected in our humanity, our mortality, and in one ultimate destiny as inhabitants of planet Earth.
Our common aspirations of a peaceful and dignified human existence that nurtures our intelligence and inquisitiveness, and elevates our spirituality and consciousness, actually unify our great diversity of perspectives and attitudes — if we can only set aside petty politics and idiosyncrasies, personal agendas or even vendettas.
If we Filipinos are to be truly joined with the rest of mankind in moving forward to that ultimate destiny as one world, one Earth, we have to be totally united in one belief and praxis:
We are Filipino!
