Origins of the Mass Man, Or Why I Don't Give a Shit About the Masa

The political plight of the middle class Filipino is to always get berated; berated by the disconnected elite for not loving the dumbest of their ideas (i.e. the "family planning" people) on one hand, and berated by the self-entitled, grievance-mongering masses (or at least, their self-appointed representatives) on the other. While I find both of them contemptible, for this one, my guns are focused on the latter.

I came upon this article from the First Things blog entitled "The Mass Man", by Joseph Bottum, a former editor from the Weekly Standard and current editor for First Things. Here, the author recalls the work of a Spanish intellectual named José Ortega y Gasset, who lived from 1883 to 1955. Here are some excerpts from the article, in case you don't want to click the link.

"There’s a reason Ortega is remembered for his 1929 book, The Revolt of the Masses. He authored many other works, including History as a System, The Origin of Philosophy, The Dehumanization of Art, and The Mission of the University. But he remains, more than any author I can think of, remembered as the author of a single idea, the one he put forth in his Revolt of the Masses.

Ortega’s accomplishment in that book was to identify a new sociological species: mass man. As The Revolt of the Masses explains, the mass man is not just an ordinary man, and he is not associated with any particular class. He is, rather, a product of European historical development, a kind of human being born for the first time in the nineteenth century."

While one might take issue with the claim of European origin, it is not hard to see that even our own masa here takes its conception from European ideas, the most notable being Marxism. Why do you think all those rabid party lists of the Filipino Mass Man spout out Marxist cliches? The non-masa everyman that I admire knows the value of hard work, not Marxist ideological entitlement. Unfortunately, the masa owes its very being to the ideological forces that made the concept of the masa possible.

"The description Ortega gives is not particularly enjoyable. The mass man lives without any discipline, and—as Ortega remembers from Goethe—“to live as one pleases is plebian.” The mass man “possesses no quality of excellence.” He demands more and more, as if it were his natural right, without realizing that what he wants was the privilege of a tiny group only a century ago. He does not understand that technological wonders are the product of an intricate cultural process for which he should be grateful. “What before would have been considered one of fortune’s gifts, inspiring humble gratitude toward destiny, was converted into a right, not to be grateful for, but to be incited on,” The Revolt of the Masses insists."

The description Ortega gives of the Mass Man is spot on for the Filipino masa. The Mass Man does as he pleases. Who do you think spray paints all those senseless gang signs in moronic fonts you find along the sides of EDSA? Spoiled little rich kids with too much allowance? I'll bet those "Bawal Umihi Dito" signs were not meant for  the middle class pedestrians. Then there is the lack of quality of excellence. Take a look at our movies. How many bad movies do we have to make just to please the masa? Even the indie movies that purport to make us sympathize with the Mass Man are mostly so much trash. I recall reading somewhere that sexual taboos are "burgis", and that sexual libertinism is part of the wisdom of the masses. That demented Filipino entry to Cannes, "Serbis", is certainly an embodiment of that mentality. Along with that piece of shit, you can attach a whole train of fuck-a-ton movies geared towards celebrating the apparent sexual depravity of the Mass Man. Let's not even get into those "novelty songs" specifically geared for the Mass Man's poorly-cultured ear. A whole body of cultural "achievement" from and for the masa, and yet so few culturally edifying artifacts among them.

Then, there's that sense of entitlement, turning hard-earned priveleges to be thankful for into rights to be incited on. Sure, the elite are responsible for the most recent attempts at inventing stupid rights to supercede what ought to be priveleges. (The most egregious example is the invented "right" to marriage, following the heels of "reproductive rights".) However, this trend started when the Mass Man suddenly got it into his head that he ought to have the right to be as rich as those who've managed to make more than he. This is behind all that loud shouting at corporations, government, and whomever else they can blame other than themselves. They give poor people with actual grievances a bad name. Heck, they've given the culture that housed them a bad name.

"Mass man, fortified by an array of rights, is in charge of historical destiny.

The danger of that fact, however, lies in mass man’s lack of even a rudimentary understanding of culture. Here Ortega draws a critical distinction between civilization and culture. Civilization is the sum of the technical and technological tools that make life as we know it possible*. And culture is that civilization’s underpinnings—the set of ideas, motives, and religious truths that gave birth to civilization."

* To this, I'd add artifacts. -Me

There are Filipinos from all walks of life who understand this distinction of culture and civilization deep in their bones. I am reminded, for example, of OFW's who, in foreign lands, keep such traditions as the Pasyon and the Senakulo in foreign parishes, for those traditions embody the heart of a culture, their culture. They implicitly know that it is not the civilization that makes them, rather, it is culture. Culture coursing through man holds up the shaky house of civilization, for fallen man is not, by virtue of fallen nature, naturally civilized.

But then, there is Mass Man, coasting on the tails of culture, and yet constantly mocking it as either outmoded, "colonial mentality", or most comically, as "burgis". They would call Filipino Christian religious ideas old and irrelevant, dismiss centuries of cultural absorption as shallow and oppressive, and malign the Filipino middle class (just mention "ilustrado" to the likes of Constantino) as hypocrites. And yet here they come, telling us to hail "Monster Mom", "Urduja", "Live Show", "Serbis", "Bathhouse", "Twilight Dancers", "The Spaghetti Song", "Sex Bomb Dancers" and that creature known as Kris Aquino as triumphs of genuine Filipino "culture". I suspect their sense of irony was unceremoniously killed as well, dumped in the same ditch they left their sense of culture in. And after all that, here comes Akbayan and Ako...err...Bayan Muna demanding I give them respect and bow to their gravitas whilst I vote for legislation to give them and their client, Mass Man, more stuff they've  thought they've earned. And so I say to the Masa and its enablers: Fuck you all.

PS:
Does all this mean I hate poor people? Far from it. There are such people out there who appreciate hard work, and are often the ones to lift themselves up with their own two hands. I admire such people, for they triumph without the entitlement, and feel no need to turn every single grievance into a right. So, there is a distinction. To paraphrase Chris Rock, on one hand you have poor people, and on the other hand, you have the masa, just as on one hand you have black people, and on the other hand, you have n*ggers.

The ironic part is that some of the loudest, if not the loudest, voices  among the masa are not even poor. This segment is composed of a bunch of elite and middle class socialist posers who often have never had blue collar jobs in their lives. (A lot of them are tenured academics, "entertainers", or professional activists.) I am reminded of that sad, pathetic old woman who was singing the praises to the choir after PETA's first showing of "Noli at Fili: Dos Mil" (a rather execrable piece of shallow writing backed by nice production values). This elite poser was wistfully recalling her first swear word at some protest march, before beating into all our heads that logging was bad and we had to worship Gaia and shit, just before being picked up by some gas-guzzling SUV. I think she used to be an actress. Blech.