Chap­ter 2

Review of Related Lit­er­a­ture and Studies

This chap­ter con­sists of four sec­tions. The first sec­tion deals with Holis­tic Rela­tion­al­ity as a broad the­o­ret­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion of this study which is pri­mar­ily, but not exclu­sively, based on Fuellenbach’s Life Giv­ing Rela­tion­ships. It explores the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag both at its locus and con­text. Rela­tion­al­ity refers to four­fold rela­tion­al­ity, namely to God, to one­self, to neigh­bors and to cre­ation. Holis­tic refers to every posi­tion of truth which rep­re­sents just one part of a larger truth. The sec­ond sec­tion presents the five dis­tinct but mutu­ally inter­re­lated assump­tions under­pin­ning this study namely: a sys­tem the­ory, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary educa­tive research, ethics across the cur­ricu­lum, eco-justice edu­ca­tion and finally, the par­tic­i­pa­tory trans­for­ma­tive task. The last two sec­tions are the review of related lit­er­a­ture and the review of related stud­ies. The present study cross-referenced to the works of pur­posely selected authors, namely Braudis, 2006; Cairns, J., 2003; Capra, 1981; de Guia, 2005; de Leon, 2007; Eći­mović, 2009; Fuel­len­bach, 1998; Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001; Hornedo, 2009; Ingles, 2006; and Bene­dict XVI, 2009. The fol­low­ing cat­e­gories, cosmic-anthropological ori­en­ta­tion, holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity and ped­a­gog­i­cal via­bil­ity are drawn from the works of these authors. It is through the lens of these three per­spec­tives and direc­tions that the present study is car­ried out. With­out seek­ing to pre­empt the out­come of the study, they serve as a par­tic­u­lar frame of ref­er­ence to look for­ward with antic­i­pa­tion of some­thing new that may emerge from the inter­pre­ta­tion of the nakakaluwag lived-experiences. In the third sec­tion are valu­able related lit­er­a­tures based on the for­go­ing three inter­de­pen­dent per­spec­tives. In the fourth sec­tion, the related stud­ies on other Fil­ipino val­ues are pre­sented but on nakakaluwag  no study is avail­able to date. The study cross-referenced to the works of, namely, Clarke, Mair, Morales, Black, & Sevilleja, 1999; Laborte, 2006; Ingles, 2006; Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001 and Naga­hama, 2006. The detailed out­line of all the sec­tions and sub-sections of this chap­ter is as follow:

Chap­ter 2: Review of Related Lit­er­a­ture and Studies

The­o­ret­i­cal Ori­en­ta­tion: Holis­tic Relationality      

Assump­tions of the Study

1. A Sys­tem Theory

2. Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Educa­tive Research

3. Ethics Across the Curriculum

4. Eco-justice Education

5. Par­tic­i­pa­tory Trans­for­ma­tive Task

Review of Related Literature

1. Cosmic-Anthropological Orientation

1.1 Nakakaluwag or Nakalu­luwag as a Word

1.2 Nakakaluwag as Socio-Economic Status

1.3 Nakakaluwag as a Fil­ipino Value

1.4 Nakakaluwag as Cosmic-Anthropologically Oriented

2. Holis­tic Relationality

2.1 Rela­tion­al­ity as Holis­tic Life-Giving

2.1.1 Rela­tion­al­ity with Fel­low Human Beings

2.1.2 Rela­tion­al­ity with Themselves

2.1.3 Rela­tion­al­ity with Nature

2.1.4 Rela­tion­al­ity with the Tran­scen­dence [God]

2.2 Rela­tion­al­ity as Holis­tic Time

2.2.1 Rela­tion­al­ity as Cul­tur­ally Rooted and Sit­u­ated Study

2.2.2 Rela­tion­al­ity in Asian Traditions

2.2.3 Rela­tion­al­ity in the Fil­ipino Character

2.2.4 Rela­tion­al­ity as Prece­dent of Identity

2.2.5 Rela­tion­al­ity as Future-Oriented

2.3 Rela­tion­al­ity as Holis­tic Space

2.3.1 Rela­tion­al­ity in the Con­text of Cre­ative Liv­ing Principle

2.3.2 Rela­tion­al­ity as Human and Non-Human

2.3.3 Rela­tion­al­ity as Human Capac­ity for God

3. Ped­a­gog­i­cal Viability

3.1 Top-down Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach.

3.2 Bottom-Up Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach.

3.3 Middle-In Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach.

Review of Related Studies

1. Clarke, Mair, Morales, Black, & Sevilleja, 1999;

2. Laborte, 2006;

3. Ingles, 2006;

4. Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001;

5. Naga­hama, 2006

 

Trans­la­tions of Nakakaluwag

Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Study

The­o­ret­i­cal Ori­en­ta­tion: Holis­tic Rela­tion­al­ity      

Holis­tic Rela­tion­al­ity is pri­mar­ily, but not exclu­sively, based on Fuellenbach’s Life-Giving Rela­tion­ships, which, for the pur­pose of the study, offers itself as a pos­si­ble broad frame­work to take a sec­ond look at the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag at its locus and con­text. This frame­work forms both the con­cep­tual ratio­nale and basis of this study, which inte­grates var­ied but related per­spec­tives into a cohe­sive approach.

By virtue of the writer’s edu­ca­tional train­ing, expe­ri­ences and his cur­rent aca­d­e­mic jour­ney in the Applied Cos­mic Anthro­pol­ogy (ACA) Pro­gram of Asian Social Insti­tute (ASI), this study prefers inte­gra­tive approach and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research for it draws a lot but not exclu­sively on the prin­ci­ples of rela­tion­al­ity derived through Eco­log­i­cal, Philosophical/Theological, Bib­li­cal, Eth­i­cal, Ped­a­gog­i­cal and Cosmic-Anthropological start­ing points, resources and perspectives.

The writer fur­ther elu­ci­dates in the sub­se­quent dis­cus­sion these prin­ci­ples of rela­tion­al­ity, also referred to as Life-Giving Rela­tion­ships, which he re-named and here­inafter referred to as Holis­tic Rela­tion­al­ity. The basic notion of ‘rela­tion­al­ity’ is referred to as the essen­tial rela­tions that extend in four direc­tions or four­fold rela­tion­al­ity, namely to God, to one­self, to neigh­bors (both referred to an indi­vid­ual and indi­vid­u­als who are part and par­cel of a soci­ety) and to cre­ation as a whole, while the basic notion of ‘holis­tic’ is referred to every posi­tion of truth that we hold, which rep­re­sents just one part of a larger truth (Koukl as cited in Ingles, 2006). Like­wise, the writer also bor­rows Arthur Koestler’s ‘holon’ to refer to “any entity that is itself a whole and simul­ta­ne­ously a part of some other whole” (Mairesse as cited in Ingles, 2006, p. 32).  

Assump­tions of the Study

The fol­low­ing are the five (5) dis­tinct, but mutu­ally inter­re­lated assump­tions under­pin­ning this study:

 1. A Sys­tem The­ory. Applied Cos­mic Anthro­pol­ogy (ACA) Pro­gram of Asian Social Insti­tute (ASI) is being con­fronted by diver­gent views and in par­tic­u­lar by the issues and con­cerns on sus­tain­able liv­ing. The writer through ACA and by virtue of the prin­ci­ples it upholds, sub­scribes to a value and “a sys­tem the­ory that looks at the world in terms of the inter­re­lat­ed­ness and inter­de­pen­dence of all phe­nom­ena, and in this frame­work an inte­grated whole whose prop­er­ties can­not be reduced to those of its parts is called a sys­tem” (Capra, 1981, p. 43). This same frame­work is shap­ing the way we look at the world. And hav­ing an open mind to diver­gent views appears not as easy as it seems for it con­sid­ers strik­ing a bal­ance and requires respect­ing all possibilities.

In his inten­tion to present a bal­ance rela­tion between these two seem­ingly diverse views, the sys­tems the­ory and ancient Chi­nese thought, Rhee (1997) con­tends in the fol­low­ing words:

It is sug­gested that the basic ele­ments of the East­ern world­view are also those of the world­view emerg­ing from mod­ern physics. In East­ern thought the notions of unity, inter­re­la­tion of all phe­nom­ena and the intrin­si­cally dynamic nature of the uni­verse are para­mount. The fur­ther we pen­e­trate into the sub­mi­cro­scopic world, the more we real­ize how the mod­ern physi­cist, like the East­ern mys­tic, has come to see the world as a sys­tem of insep­a­ra­ble, inter­act­ing and ever-moving com­po­nents, with man as an inte­gral part of this sys­tem (par. 8).

2. Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Educa­tive Research. In a report enti­tled, ‘Trans­dici­pli­nary Research (TRD) and Sus­tain­abil­ity,’ Dr Karen Cronin (2008) defines dis­ci­plines in the fol­low­ing words:

Dis­ci­plines are con­sti­tuted by defined aca­d­e­mic research meth­ods and objects of study. They include frames of ref­er­ence, method­olog­i­cal approaches, top­ics, the­o­ret­i­cal canons and tech­nolo­gies. Dis­ci­plines can also be seen as ‘sub cul­tures’ with their own lan­guage, con­cepts, tools and cre­den­tialed prac­ti­tion­ers (Petts et al as cited in Cronin, 2008, p. 3).

Cronin (2008) not only defines but also dis­tin­guishes from each other the fol­low­ing three research approaches, namely Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary, Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and Transdisciplinary:

Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary research occurs when a range of dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines are assem­bled for a research task. [It] jux­ta­poses rather than com­bines sep­a­rate dis­ci­pli­nary per­spec­tives, adding a breadth of knowl­edge, infor­ma­tion and meth­ods. Work is done inde­pen­dently fol­low­ing sep­a­rate per­spec­tives (Klein as cited in Cronin, 2008, p. 3). [In Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research instead of] oper­at­ing in par­al­lel, it involves a syn­the­sis of knowl­edge, in which under­stand­ings change in response to the per­spec­tives of oth­ers. The aim is to seek coher­ence between the knowl­edges pro­duced by dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines (Petts et al as cited in Cronin, 2008, p. 3). [Trans­dis­ci­pli­nary research (TDR) does not only] inte­grate across dis­ci­plines but includes a set of approaches that can gen­er­ate new, com­pre­hen­sive knowl­edge and an over­ar­ch­ing syn­the­sis (Klein as cited in Cronin, 2008, p. 3).

Dif­fer­ent fields of dis­ci­plines must be inter­re­lated and inter­de­pen­dent. This study tries to be inter­dis­ci­pli­nary in approach by har­mo­niz­ing and bal­anc­ing the field of Ecol­ogy (Phys­i­cal Sci­ence), Philosophy/Theology and Pedagogy/Education (Arts and Human­i­ties) in the dis­cus­sion through­out the paper. Nobody can do Eco­log­i­cal The­ol­ogy or Ethics with­out ade­quate sci­en­tific under­stand­ing (Nash as cited in Hes­sel, 1996).

3. Ethics Across the Cur­ricu­lum. It is impos­si­ble to achieve sus­tain­able liv­ing with­out holis­tic and all embrac­ing ethics and an appro­pri­ate edu­ca­tion for life. Nakakaluwag is a con­crete cul­tural fea­ture and an exam­ple of a Fil­ipino value that con­tributes to the global ethic [uni­ver­sal value] for sus­tain­able liv­ing. The chal­lenge now is how to artic­u­late and teach this value for sus­tain­able liv­ing into lessons within learn­ing and teach­ing con­text across the curriculum.

In an inter­view with Janine M. Benyus, which was posted in Michael Prager’s blog, she, by giv­ing a bit of her biologist’s wis­dom, defines life in the fol­low­ing words: “Life cre­ates con­di­tions con­ducive to life” (Prager, 2008). Unfor­tu­nately, Kauf­man (2001) keenly observed today that:

It was becom­ing evi­dent that we humans were attain­ing the power to destroy the very con­di­tions that made our lives (and much other life as well) pos­si­ble; and the notion that God would save us from our­selves, as we pur­sued this self-destructive project, became increas­ingly implau­si­ble (par. 3).

Human beings have the capac­ity to either cre­ate or destroy life through their own work, and their capac­ity to live either sus­tain­ably or unsus­tain­ably is pri­mar­ily an eth­i­cal ques­tion, which requires an eth­i­cal response. Today, the prob­lems on soci­ety, econ­omy, envi­ron­ment and cul­ture must be addressed by edu­ca­tion, by learn­ing and teach­ing the eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples, val­ues and prac­tices of liv­ing sus­tain­ably, and par­tic­u­larly the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag.  As Cairns, J. (2003) noted, Kung claims that, “Earth can and should be held together by ethics.” The writer believes from the very start that there is a need in gen­eral to restruc­ture edu­ca­tion, and in par­tic­u­lar in the area of reli­gious stud­ies or the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion to asses and uti­lize a wider range of learn­ing meth­ods and the­o­ries to renew cre­ation and seek eco-justice, to achieve eco­log­i­cal integrity and social equity together (Hes­sel, 1996).

4. Eco-justice Edu­ca­tion. When you bring these two val­ues together into the hyphen­ated word eco-justice then we affirm the emer­gence of con­struc­tive human responses that con­cen­trate on the link between eco­log­i­cal health and social jus­tice (Hes­sel, 1996). Ronald Engel defines the term eco-justice to mean “the kind of human activ­ity that nour­ishes and per­pet­u­ates the his­tor­i­cal ful­fill­ment of the whole com­mu­nity of life on Earth” It also means devel­op­ing as an ade­quate eco­log­i­cal ethic to inter­act with a social ethic—both as the­o­log­i­cally rooted (Hes­sel, 1996, p.10). Accord­ing to Hes­sel (1996) eco-justice occurs wher­ever human beings receive enough sus­te­nance and build enough com­mu­nity to live har­mo­niously with God, to achieve equity among humans, and to appre­ci­ate the rest of cre­ation for its own sake and not sim­ply as use­ful to human­ity (p. 12). This very descrip­tion is iden­ti­cal with the prin­ci­ples of holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity (Fuel­len­bach, 1998).

In this con­text and in the midst of var­ied the­o­ries on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment that pro­lif­er­ate today, it is but right to make ACA as the back­bone and frame of ref­er­ence for a par­tic­i­pa­tory research towards a trans­for­ma­tive ped­a­gogy for sus­tain­able liv­ing by embrac­ing and adopt­ing a praxis-oriented eco-justice edu­ca­tion. Why eco-justice? Because as Tobin (2007) claims, “Envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion is not a dilemma to be addressed sep­a­rately from mat­ters of human dig­nity and jus­tice, but rather as directly anal­o­gous to and even inter­wo­ven among them” (p. 3). Eco-justice edu­ca­tion should invite deeper reflec­tion, inves­ti­ga­tion, rela­tion, and analy­sis. (Spencer as cited in Hes­sel, 1996, p. 210–211). Eco-justice edu­ca­tion should lead our reflec­tion to adopt a holis­tic frame­work, look­ing at the world in terms of rela­tion­ships and inte­gra­tion, tran­scend­ing our mech­a­nis­tic and reduc­tion­ist views with holis­tic and eco­log­i­cal views in order to par­tic­i­pate in the cur­rent cul­tural trans­for­ma­tion (Capra, 1981, pp. 48–49, 97 & 266).

5. Par­tic­i­pa­tory Trans­for­ma­tive Task. It is an urgent call to iden­tify an appro­pri­ate par­tic­i­pa­tory process that involves peo­ple actively. The absence of active con­tri­bu­tion of all of them in find­ing real solu­tions to today’s glob­ally urgent eco­log­i­cal and eth­i­cal crises demands that we should enable com­mu­ni­ties to take an active role to become eco­log­i­cally respon­si­ble and just, despite the fact that “the task of achiev­ing global sus­tain­able devel­op­ment go well beyond any­thing one coun­try or even a group of coun­tries can accom­plish alone” (Corell & Susskind, 2000). Since nobody can do it alone, the writer opines that he must take the ini­tia­tive to be retooled [re-educated] first before he enables him­self to help­ing oth­ers and even­tu­ally seeks also the help from his col­leagues and stu­dents to face the chal­lenges together to become and cre­ate an eco­log­i­cally respon­si­ble and just school-based com­mu­nity, where peo­ple even in dif­fer­ent fields must col­lab­o­rate (Ruether as cited in Hes­sel, 1996). The task to restore the envi­ron­ment and fos­ter social jus­tice is a col­lec­tive task and all of us have to search and find indi­vid­u­als with enthu­si­asm, pas­sion and com­mit­ment to seek for a trans­for­ma­tion towards a sus­tained future. These are the indi­vid­u­als who are either already-retooled as cos­mol­o­gists, anthro­pol­o­gists or cos­mic anthro­pol­o­gists and those who are still will­ing to be retooled for life for this global task.

Review of Related Literature          

1. Cosmic-Anthropological Orientation

1.1 Nakakaluwag or Nakalu­luwag as a Word. The word nakakaluwag is a deriv­a­tive from the Taga­log word luwag or maluwag, which also means maluwang, maal­wan, maali­walas; mag­in­hawa ang espasyo; malawak, malaki ang sakop; nasasak­lawan ang lahat (Gaboy, 2010). The term maluwag is syn­ony­mous to twenty four (24) Eng­lish words: spa­cious, ample, big, bound­less, broad, com­fort­able, end­less, enor­mous, expan­sive, extended, gen­er­ous, great, huge, immense, infi­nite, large, lim­it­less, roomy, siz­able, spacey, vast, volu­mi­nous, wide, and wide­spread (Dictionary.com, 2010).

‘The Fil­ipino Self-Learning Mod­ule’ on a topic enti­tled, ‘Modyul 2 Heo­grapiya ng Asya Salita Ayon sa Tindi ng Ipina­ha­hayag Tek­stong Argu­men­ta­tiv’ teaches the dif­fer­ent mean­ings and the var­ied usage of the fol­low­ing words: maluwang, maluwag and malawak. The exam­ple sen­tences below show how they are used in dif­fer­ent con­texts. Ang maluwang ay ginagamit sa mga bagay na isi­nusuot tulad ng damit, medyas, sap­atos, kami­son at iba pa. (The word maluwang is used to those things that are worn like clothes, pair of socks, pair of shoes, pet­ti­coat and more.) For exam­ple, Maluwang sa kanya ang damit na binili ng ina. (The dress that the mother bought for her is loose.) Ang maluwag naman ay ginagamit sa paglalarawan ng espasyo ng isang lugar. (The word maluwag is used to describe how spa­cious a place is.) For exam­ple, Maluwag ang silid na ito para sa ating tatlo. (The room is spa­cious for the three of us.) Ang malawak ay ginagamit naman sa laki ng sukat ng isang pook o lugar. Maaari ring gamitin sa paglalarawan ng taong may katan­gian ng pagig­ing mau­nawain. (The word malawak is used this time in terms of how big the size of a place or a ter­ri­tory. It can also be used to describe a per­son with char­ac­ter­is­tic of being con­sid­er­ate.) For exam­ple, Malawak ang kani­lang lupain sa lalaw­igan kaya kilala roon ang kani­lang angkan. Malawak ang kanyang pang-unawa kaya naman igi­na­galang siya ng lahat. (The area of their land prop­erty in the province is so huge that is why their clan is well known. He is a broad-minded per­son that is why he is respected by all) (Project ease fil­ipino self-learning mod­ule, 2009).

Based on the guide­lines set by Gabay Tungkol sa Ispel­ing, Bok­ab­u­laryo at Balar­i­lang Pilipino, the fol­low­ing rules are applied here. Between the two given vari­ants namely ipakikita and ipa­pakita, both of them is cor­rect. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, the first syl­la­ble of the root word is repeated. In some words, what is repeated is the last syl­la­ble of the pre­fix. Both meth­ods are acceptable.

For exam­ple, for the first one:  kita is the root word; ipa is the pre­fix; ki, which is the first syl­la­ble of the root word kita is repeated. Thus, ipa + kikita = ipakikita. And for the sec­ond one:  kita is the root word; pa, which is the last syl­la­ble of the pre­fix ipa is repeated. Thus, ipapa + kita = ipa­pakita.

In the case of the word nakakaluwag, for the first one:  luwag is the root word; naka is the pre­fix; lu, which is the first syl­la­ble of the root word luwag is repeated. Thus, naka + luluwag = nakalu­luwag. And for the sec­ond one:  luwag is the root word; ka, which is the last syl­la­ble of the pre­fix naka is repeated. Thus, nakaka + luwag = nakakaluwag. Between the two vari­ants namely, nakalu­luwag and nakakaluwag, the sec­ond one is pre­ferred by the writer to be used through­out this study (Gabay tungkol sa ispel­ing, bok­ab­u­laryo at balar­i­lang pilipino, 2008).

1.2 Nakakaluwag as Socio-Economic Sta­tus. Accord­ing to the two stud­ies men­tioned above (refer­ring to both the Bontoc’s and Ilo­cos Norte’s stud­ies), the deno­ta­tive mean­ing of nakakaluwag indi­cates the notion of belong­ing­ness to the rich eco­nomic strata or sta­tus of soci­ety or being better-off.

1.3 Nakakaluwag as a Fil­ipino Value. The writer’s ini­tial study and find­ings men­tioned above had ini­tially addressed the ques­tion on how the nakakaluwag as Fil­ipino value con­tributes to a sus­tain­able world­view and global ethic.[1]

1.4 Nakakaluwag as Cosmic-Anthropologically Ori­ented. Cos­mic view implies a cos­mic viewer— the anthro­pos— who views and knows real­ity in a given sit­u­a­tion. Human being who assesses her/his place in the uni­verse is and always a situated-viewer or sit­u­ated knower. In an essay on ‘The Cos­mic Per­spec­tive,’ Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson (2007) claims that what we are all made up of reveals our identity:

Want to know what we’re made of? —The chem­i­cal ele­ments of the uni­verse are forged in the fires of high-mass stars that end their lives in stu­pen­dous explo­sions, enrich­ing their host galax­ies with the chem­i­cal arse­nal of life as we know it. The result? The four most com­mon chem­i­cally active ele­ments in the uni­verse— hydro­gen, oxy­gen, car­bon, and nitro­gen— are the four most com­mon ele­ments of life on Earth. [Thus] we are not sim­ply in the uni­verse. The uni­verse is in us (par. 29).

He also argues that knowl­edge implies the right action, say­ing that:

The cos­mic per­spec­tive flows from fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge. But it’s more than just what you know. It’s also about hav­ing the wis­dom and insight to apply that knowl­edge to assess­ing our place in the Uni­verse (par. 35).

He then offers sev­eral attrib­utes of the cos­mic per­spec­tive, and one of which is say­ing, that:the cos­mic per­spec­tive [does not only embrace] our genetic kin­ship with all life on Earth but also val­ues our chem­i­cal kin­ship with any yet-to-be dis­cov­ered life in the uni­verse, as well as our atomic kin­ship with the uni­verse itself (Tyson, 2007, par. 35).

The above dis­cus­sions undoubt­edly imply rela­tion­al­ity, and bor­row­ing Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan’s state­ment, rela­tion­ships pre­cede and define one’s iden­tity. In the same argu­ment, Tyson’s view on kin­ship like­wise pre­cedes one’s cos­mic iden­tity. This cos­mic ori­en­ta­tion pre­sup­poses the iden­tity of a cos­mic viewer and assumes the anthro­po­log­i­cal view by virtue of the same viewer— the anthro­pos.  From Tyson’s cos­mic per­spec­tive, three insep­a­ra­ble but dis­tinct key con­cepts can be derived, namely, the cos­mos, the anthro­pos and the applied-knowledge. Thus, his cos­mic per­spec­tive on these key con­cepts is sim­ply an affir­ma­tion of applied cosmic-anthropological ori­en­ta­tion. Where is the place then of the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag in this cosmic-anthropological per­spec­tive? Tyson (2007) finds a place for Fil­ipinos in this vast uni­verse (malawak na sansinukob) by explaining:

[I] think of peo­ple not as the mas­ters of space and time but as par­tic­i­pants in a great cos­mic chain of being, with a direct genetic link across species both liv­ing and extinct, extend­ing back nearly 4 bil­lion years to the ear­li­est single-celled organ­isms on Earth  (par. 17) —Again and again across the cen­turies, cos­mic dis­cov­er­ies have demoted our self-image. Earth was once assumed to be astro­nom­i­cally unique, until astronomers learned that Earth is just another planet orbit­ing the Sun. Then we pre­sumed the Sun was unique, until we learned that the count­less stars of the night sky are suns them­selves. Then we pre­sumed our galaxy, the Milky Way, was the entire known uni­verse, until we estab­lished that the count­less fuzzy things in the sky are other galax­ies, dot­ting the land­scape of our known uni­verse (par. 33).

The Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag is not only a wide locus where it made man­i­fest a global ethic [uni­ver­sal val­ues] and a sus­tain­able world­view of real­ity as inte­grated whole, it is fun­da­men­tally the con­di­tion for holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity, a cir­cle of com­pas­sion con­ducive to a free and secured life. As con­text of holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity, the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag in cosmic-anthropological per­spec­tive is best described in Einstein’s words[2]:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Uni­verse,” a part lim­ited in time and space. He expe­ri­ences him­self, his thoughts and feel­ings as some­thing sep­a­rated from the rest a kind of opti­cal delu­sion of his con­scious­ness. This delu­sion is a kind of prison for us, restrict­ing us to our per­sonal desires and to affec­tion for a few per­sons near­est to us. Our task must be to free our­selves from this prison by widen­ing our cir­cle of com­pas­sion to embrace all liv­ing crea­tures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this com­pletely, but the striv­ing for such achieve­ment is in itself a part of the lib­er­a­tion and a foun­da­tion for inner secu­rity (Bhaneja, 2005, p. 7.)

2. Holis­tic Rela­tion­al­ity[3]

2.1 Rela­tion­al­ity as Holis­tic Life-Giving. “[C]reation and redemp­tion, Christ and the cos­mos, human­ity [to one­self and to neigh­bor] and the nat­ural world are inti­mately related, and these rela­tion­ships are the frame within which the con­tem­po­rary envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis is seen” (WCC Inter-Orthodox Con­sul­ta­tion, 2009). It is also from the same rela­tion­al­ity frame that the topic under inves­ti­ga­tion in this study is explored. But to make a really seri­ous effort to explore and find a real solu­tion in response to these eco­log­i­cal and eth­i­cal crises, we must be dri­ven by our most fun­da­men­tal com­mit­ment and con­vic­tion to work for the pro­mo­tion of jus­tice, which is rooted in Jesus Christ’s com­mand to seek the King­dom: “But seek first the King­dom (of God) and his right­eous­ness (jus­tice), and all these things will be given you besides” (New Amer­i­can Stan­dard Bible, Matthew 6:33). Accord­ing to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. (1973) action for jus­tice and lib­er­a­tion from oppres­sion can­not be sep­a­rated from seek­ing the King­dom. To seek and pro­claim the King­dom implies a ratio­nal and benev­o­lent use of nature, a use that is respect­ful of its pur­pose and des­tiny and is mind­ful of the needs of the present and future gen­er­a­tions. To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injus­tice. To heal this wounded home, it is not enough to sim­ply be sorry for the injus­tice being done. “Just as the cos­mos itself can be rup­tured and torn apart by injus­tice, it can be healed by all human efforts to bring jus­tice back to human rela­tion­ships to earth, air, fire, water and one another” (Schreck, 2003).

In the New Tes­ta­ment (NT), Paul describes the King­dom of God as, “…not a mat­ter of food and drink, but of right­eous­ness (jus­tice), peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (New Amer­i­can Bible, Romans 14:17).” In the Old Tes­ta­ment (OT), the Hebraic Covenant The­ol­ogy best trans­lates jus­tice con­cept as “Right-Relations” or even bet­ter as “Life-Giving Rela­tion­ships” (Fuel­len­bach, 1998). This “Life-Giving Rela­tion­ships” as value can be asso­ci­ated with the con­cepts of har­mony, whole­ness, car­ing, com­pas­sion, rec­i­p­ro­cal regard, and mutual val­u­a­tion of intrin­sic worth (Acorn, 2004). Accord­ing to Fuel­len­bach (1998) to be just means human beings should live in life-giving rela­tion­ships in the fol­low­ing holis­tic essen­tial rela­tions in four direc­tions or the four­fold rela­tion­al­ity: (1) with their fel­low human beings, (2) with them­selves, (3) with nature (cre­ation) and (4) ulti­mately with God (p. 195).

In an essay, ‘Eco­jus­tice at the Cen­ter of the Church’s Mis­sion,’ Ruether (2000) calls this eco­log­i­cal the­ol­ogy as covenan­tal type which draws strongly from Hebrew Scrip­ture and claims that the Bible as the pri­mary source of eco­log­i­cal the­ol­ogy. She fur­ther explains:

In the covenan­tal tra­di­tion we find the basis for a moral rela­tion to nature and to one another that man­dates pat­terns of right rela­tion, enshrin­ing these right rela­tions in law as the final guar­an­tee against abuse (par. 8). When humans repent and return to fidelity to God, then jus­tice and har­mony will reign, not only in the city, but in the rela­tions between humans and ani­mals, the heav­ens and the earth. The heav­ens will rain sweet water, and the har­vests will come up abun­dantly (par. 13). The basic insight of the Bib­li­cal covenan­tal tra­di­tion that we have to trans­late right rela­tion into an ethic, which finds guar­an­tees in law, is an essen­tial ele­ment in build­ing an eco­log­i­cal world order (par. 27).

In a paper, ‘Val­ues Edu­ca­tion in the Social Sci­ences,’ Flo­rentino Hornedo (2009) speaks of jus­tice in that same Fuellenbach’s four­fold rela­tion­al­ity, and explains them in greater detail:

Jus­tice is mean­ing­ful in terms of the rela­tion­ships man has and cre­ates (1) between him­self and other humans and human insti­tu­tions, (2) between him­self and nature, (3) between him­self and him­self, and (4) between him­self and the Tran­scen­dent (par. 74).

2.1.1 Rela­tion­al­ity with Fel­low Human Beings. Hornedo (2009) claims that doing jus­tice is to rec­og­nize the value and rights of the indi­vid­u­als and to give them their due:

Nutri­tion if they are hun­gry, cloth­ing if they are naked, med­i­cine if they are sick, edu­ca­tion if they are igno­rant, deliv­er­ance from bondage if they are oppressed, and so forth. The recog­ni­tion of the rights of oth­ers means the proper ren­der­ing to them of that to which they have a right…. —But most impor­tantly, the rights of oth­ers is to be read as one’s oblig­a­tion towards them: they have rights pre­cisely because I have oblig­a­tions (par. 75).

Hornedo (2009) expands human beings rela­tions with their fel­low human beings to include insti­tu­tions, unfor­tu­nately he observes that:

Rebels against the gov­ern­ment fre­quently have been ele­vated to the sta­tus of folk heroes while the law enforcers are shown as bungling, ter­ror­is­tic, and cor­rupt. This is an indi­ca­tion of an anar­chis­tic atti­tude, a fail­ure to relate to the largest nat­ural insti­tu­tion —the gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies (par. 76).

2.1.2 Rela­tion­al­ity with Them­selves. It is jus­tice to self and to soci­ety, Hornedo (2009) claims to care for one’s devel­op­ment per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally. It is injus­tice to fail to value peo­ples’ poten­tials and grow up to become bur­dens both to them­selves and to soci­ety. Thus, every school child ought to know these facts to moti­vate her/him towards growth and to make her/him per­se­veres to learn and know more (par. 79).

2.1.3 Rela­tion­al­ity with Nature. Doing jus­tice with nature, Hornedo (2009) argues involves the pro­mo­tion of the benef­i­cence of nature for mankind. He argues that it is unjust to soci­ety to resort to hasty aggres­sion upon nature that plagues man in the form of short­ages of nat­ural resources. What is just in deal­ing with nature is the prov­i­dent use of nat­ural resources for the sus­te­nance of society’s neces­si­ties (Hornedo, 2009, par. 28).

2.1.4 Rela­tion­al­ity with the Tran­scen­dence [God]. The rela­tion­ship of man with Tran­scen­dence Hornedo (2009) con­tends is rec­og­nized legally under the pro­vi­sion of law assur­ing free­dom of belief and reli­gious expres­sion. He pro­poses that “val­ues edu­ca­tion needs to con­front squarely the devel­op­ing reli­gious con­scious­ness of learn­ers, espe­cially their growth towards tol­er­ance and the pos­i­tive appre­ci­a­tion of the reli­gious cul­ture of other peo­ple” (par. 80).

Naga­hama (2006) speaks of Mak­abayan, an inte­grated learn­ing sub­ject in the Philip­pines val­ues edu­ca­tion that stems from the Peo­ple Power Rev­o­lu­tion in 1986, whose teach­ing method is referred to as a Holis­tic and Inte­grated Approach who con­tends that Mak­abayan as a prac­ti­cal study helps Fil­ipinos become: Mak­abayan (Love for Coun­try), Makatao (Love for Human­ity), Makaka­likasan (Love for nature) and Maka-Diyos (Love for God) (p. 5).[4]

2.2 Rela­tion­al­ity as Holis­tic Time

2.2.1 Rela­tion­al­ity as Cul­tur­ally Rooted and Sit­u­ated Study. The study incor­po­rates the fol­low­ing:  First, it includes the writer’s ini­tial find­ings on the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag as the locus and con­text of the prin­ci­ple of rela­tion­al­ity. This study is a Fil­ipino con­tri­bu­tion to a sus­tain­able world­view and global ethic that affirms Fil­ipinos’ vision of liv­ing peace­fully and in har­mony with each other and with respect for life and dig­nity. Sec­ond, it con­sid­ers the Fil­ipino indige­nous con­struct reflec­tive of the rela­tional char­ac­ter or the rela­tion­al­ity in the Fil­ipino char­ac­ter which refers to these two (2) Fil­ipino val­ues: (1) the pakikipagkapwa (the prin­ci­ple of Fil­ipino rela­tion­al­ity) and (2) the kapwa (the core of the Fil­ipino per­son­hood). And finally, The bayani­han (rela­tion­al­ity) spirit embod­ies these Fil­ipino prin­ci­ple and core reflec­tive of the ancient Fil­ipinos who had been sail­ing together as one balangay/barangay (boat). It is an accom­pa­ni­ment where ancient Fil­ipinos come along­side in a cos­mic jour­ney, mov­ing for­ward and together towards life and beyond.

Sol­heim (2006) claims that barangay or balan­gay (mean­ing boat) was a word known by the first Spaniards to come to the Philip­pines.  Pigafetta, meet­ing with the chief of Limaswa, found out that balangay was also used for the small­est polit­i­cal unit of Taga­log soci­ety (Sol­heim, 2006, p.7). Accord­ing to Sol­heim (2006), an elderly infor­mant on Itbayat of the Batanes Islands told Dr. Man­ga­has that one of the words for boat (vanua) also means home­land. Its cog­nate words vanua, banua, benoa, and fanua all denote the con­cept of vil­lage, port, town, house, land, coun­try, cos­mos, and even boat (Vitales, 2005 as cited in Sol­heim, 2006).

Accord­ing to Abr­era (2007) one impor­tant con­cept of this (spir­i­tual) boat jour­ney is abay, which refers to the boats trav­el­ing together. In Bikol, it means to travel with sev­eral boats as com­pan­ions, in the Visayas, it refers to boats sail­ing together, and in Taga­log it sig­ni­fies accom­pa­ny­ing a per­son (p. 10).

In March 1964, Vic­tor Decalan, Hans Kas­ten and vol­un­teer work­ers from the United States Peace Corps came upon the “find of the cen­tury” in the Tabon Cave Com­plex (in Lipuun Point, Que­zon, Palawan), a unique bur­ial jar with a cover fea­tur­ing a “ship-of-the-dead” [boat-of-the-dead] motif. It has hence­forth been called the “Manung­gul Jar”[5] and declared a Philip­pine National Trea­sure (Valdes, 2004, par. 16).

Chua (2007) declares that the Manung­gul bur­ial jar is unique in all respects, which dates back to the late Neolithic Period at around 710 B.C. (p. 1). This sec­ondary bur­ial jar is clas­si­fied as funer­ary pot­tery. The form of the jar’s body is full, rem­i­nis­cent of the womb, and incised with curvi­lin­ear scroll designs like the waves of the sea. Its lid is adorned with the image of a small ship [boat] with two pas­sen­gers (Braudis, 2005, p. 14). The two pas­sen­gers each were wear­ing a head­band, which until today is used for the prepa­ra­tion of the dead among some eth­nic [indige­nous] groups in the Philip­pines (Fox as cited in Braudis, 2005). Abr­era (2007) argues that the con­cept of the abay (com­pan­ion) explains why there are to be com­pan­ions for the dead, who will help and serve him in the after­life (p. 10). It is wor­thy of note that the boat­man is the abay, who is steer­ing rather than pad­dling the ship [boat], and the dead is the front fig­ure, whose hands are folded across the chest, a wide­spread prac­tice [in the Philip­pines] when arrang­ing the corpse (Fox as cited in Braudis, p. 17). Thus, abay refers to the fol­low­ing: boats sail­ing together; a per­son who accom­pa­nies another in a jour­ney; the soul of another that would accom­pany the dead to the after­life (Abr­era , 2007, p. 12).

Fox (as cited in Braudis, 2005) claims that ves­sel [jar] pro­vides a clear exam­ple of a cul­tural link between the archae­o­log­i­cal past and the ethno­graphic present. Jocano (1998) adds that our pre­his­toric past embod­ies the wis­dom of our ances­tors, i.e., their estab­lished pat­tern of thoughts, feel­ings, actions, and aspi­ra­tions (1998, p. 21). Abr­era (2007) fur­ther explains that the hero’s boat, Gady­ong in the epic San­dayo of the Sub­anon of Zam­boanga has its own mind, which explains why the boat atop the Manung­gul bur­ial jar has a face at the prow, where one can see the eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Like­wise, the prow of the lipa or house­boats in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi are called sam­pong (face). It reflects a belief that even inan­i­mate objects, plants and ani­mals have souls. Abr­era (2007) also clar­i­fies that since these objects have souls they can accom­pany the dead on her/his jour­ney and be brought over to the after­life. Thus, the dead of the ancient Fil­ipinos is never alone on her/his journey.

Jocano (1998) appeals that we need to change our pre­his­toric per­spec­tive in the Philip­pines, in the face of new evi­dence to firmly estab­lish our cul­tural roots and national iden­tity as a peo­ple within Fil­ipino grounds or ever appre­ci­ate the long his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment of our cul­tural her­itage (p. 55). As Chua (2006) puts it, the Manung­gul bur­ial jar is a tes­ta­ment of our his­tory and cul­ture, an embod­i­ment of our expe­ri­ence and aspi­ra­tions as a peo­ple and how we must look at our­selves —Maka-Diyos, Maka-tao, Makaka­likasan at Mak­a­bansa. It is also a vision for a new gen­er­a­tion of Fil­ipinos who will once more take the ancient balang­hay as a peo­ple (pp. 3–4).

The Philip­pine bangka accord­ing to Abr­era (2007) comes from the Aus­trone­sian baŋka which means boat, a term also found in Indone­sia and the Melane­sian islands such as Fiji and Samoa (p. 1). For Sol­heim (2006), this balan­gay (boat) or barangay is referred to as a small­est polit­i­cal unit, and vanua (another term for balan­gay) is referred to as home­land and even cos­mos. Though Abr­era (2007) used fre­quently the term bangka, she never missed men­tion­ing balan­gays (boat) as she refers to the old­est ones that were dis­cov­ered in Butuan[6] (p. 9). For her the bangka [balan­gay] is a boat that trans­ported souls to the after­life and that same boat had a soul of its own (Abr­era, 2007, p. 12).

To the writer’s mind, the ancient Fil­ipinos are peo­ple sail­ing together as one balangay/barangay/bangka (boat), and that they accom­pany one another [in bayani­han spirit] in a cos­mic (cos­mos = vanua/bangka/balangay) jour­ney of life and beyond (after­life). Jocano (1998) insists that we have to go back to pre­his­toric times to know how our cul­ture devel­oped to appre­ci­ate our cul­tural her­itage as a peo­ple and rekin­dle the Fil­ipino diwa (spirit) [bayani­han spirit] to guide us along the path­ways of the 21^st cen­tury (p. 19). The writer bor­rows the words of Jose Rizal to remind us of the impor­tance of pre­his­tory to our nation­hood: “Ang hindi lumin­gon sa pinan­galin­gan ay hindi makakarat­ing sa paro­roo­nan.” [Free trans­la­tion] “They who do not learn the lessons from the past can­not reach their intended des­ti­na­tion” (as cited in Jocano, 1998, p. 22).  Two impor­tant lessons can be ini­tially drawn from the above dis­cus­sion, first, (1) that today’s rela­tion­al­ity in the Fil­ipino char­ac­ter is cul­tur­ally rooted in the pre­his­toric past and sec­ond, (2) that the wis­dom of our ances­tors are embod­ied in this rela­tion­al­ity, there­fore, the Fil­ipinos’ bayani­han (rela­tion­al­ity) spirit lives on.

2.2.2 Rela­tion­al­ity in Asian Tra­di­tions. Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) claim that “indige­nous psy­chol­o­gists argue that there is a need to develop con­cep­tual frame­works and method­olo­gies rooted in Asian cul­tures.” This is due to the fact that much of West­ern psy­chol­ogy is inap­plic­a­ble in Asia, includ­ing the bias toward indi­vid­u­al­ism in West­ern the­o­ries (p. 927). Based on rela­tional con­cep­tions, Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) recon­struct self­hood informed by Asian tra­di­tions by con­fin­ing the analy­sis to indi­g­e­niza­tion rooted in four Asian intel­lec­tual tra­di­tions, Con­fu­cian­ism, Dao­ism (Tao­ism), Bud­dhism, and Hin­duism (p. 926). As the dom­i­nant tra­di­tion in China, Japan, and Korea, Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) attest that Con­fu­cian­ism is, above all, an ethic gov­ern­ing human rela­tion­ships (p. 932). This means that self-cultivation toward lead­ing a proper life is achieved through har­mo­niz­ing one’s rela­tion­ships with oth­ers (Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001).

The writer finds par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant to the issues explored in the paper the above descrip­tion of an inter­de­pen­dent indi­vid­ual as self-in-relations whose rela­tional iden­tity is defined and deter­mined by rela­tion­al­ity. In a sim­i­lar vein, this study looks fur­ther at the sig­nif­i­cance of a life lived in a holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity with oth­ers, includ­ing one’s rela­tion­ships with the self, the cre­ation and God.

2.2.3 Rela­tion­al­ity in the Fil­ipino Char­ac­ter. In 2005, Kat­rina Müller de Guia pub­lished a book enti­tled, ‘Kapwa: The Self in the Other,’ where she schol­arly explored on the value kapwa, the shared Self of Fil­ipino per­son­hood. The Ger­man writer clearly artic­u­lated a per­son­hood the­ory pro­posed by Vir­gilio Enriquez, the “Ama ng Sikolo­hiyang Pilipino” (Father of Fil­ipino Psychology):

He called atten­tion to the fact that the Philip­pine lan­guage pro­vided a com­mon­place term that implied the exten­sion of the Self to the other. This word was kapwa, a con­cept that com­bined the Self and the Other. From this lin­guis­tic fact, Enriquez con­cluded that shar­ing the Self was a com­mon trait among Fil­ipinos. He pos­tu­lated that kapwa made up the core of the Fil­ipino per­son­al­ity which should be called per­son­hood (pagkatao) rather that a per­son­al­ity (de Guia, 2005, p. 7).

In an essay, Pakikipagkapwa, Gue­vara (2005) bor­rowed Enriquez’ def­i­n­i­tion of kapwa as the “unity of the self and oth­ers, the recog­ni­tion of shared iden­tity.” de Guia (2005) affirms this shared Self as she fur­ther writes that kapwa is:

widely used when address­ing another with the inten­tion of estab­lish­ing con­nec­tion. It reflects a view­point that beholds the essen­tial human­ity rec­og­niz­able in every­one, there­fore link­ing (includ­ing) peo­ple rather than sep­a­rat­ing (exclud­ing) them from each other” (p. 8).

For Gue­vara (2005), pakikipagkapwa goes beyond the goal of estab­lish­ing con­nec­tion. Fol­low­ing the line of think­ing of Mark Johnson’s empa­thetic [moral] imag­i­na­tion, claims that, pakikipagkapwa is to par­tic­i­pate empha­thet­i­cally in another’s experience:

[U]nless we can put our­selves in the place of another, unless we can enlarge our own expe­ri­ence through an imag­i­na­tive encounter with the expe­ri­ence of oth­ers, unless we can let our own val­ues and ideals be called into ques­tion from var­i­ous points of view, we can­not be morally sen­si­tive.” Pakikipagkapwa… reaches to the other in his oth­er­ness. [Her/]His [Filipino’s] empa­thy is grounded in [her/]his abil­ity to imag­ine what it would be like to be in the other’s shoes.… Social rela­tions for the Fil­ipino are eth­i­cal rela­tions. It is within the social rela­tions, in the light of the kapwa of the other that the Fil­ipino bases his eth­i­cal deci­sions.… Pakikipagkapwa… does not mean that the self has fully grasped or is capa­ble of grasp­ing the expe­ri­ence of the other. …the other is not the self and the self is not the other (Gue­vara, 2005, pars. 31, 39–40).

The writer finds the sig­nif­i­cance to the frame of ref­er­ence used in this study both de Guia’s posi­tion on the per­son­hood the­ory of Enriquez and Cairns, J.’s stance on the com­pre­hen­sive ethics of Kung, which are all con­verg­ing in Guevara’s pre­sen­ta­tion on the emphatic moral imag­i­na­tion of John­son.  The writer rec­og­nizes in the three authors the ori­gin and source of eth­i­cal deci­sion, which man­i­fest how rela­tion­al­ity in the Fil­ipino shared Self (fel­low being) and the encom­pass­ing respect for human­ity serve as basis for estab­lish­ing a com­mon ground nec­es­sary for a sus­tain­able liv­ing. Undoubt­edly, the crit­i­cal role of ethics is at work through pakikipagkapwa. How­ever, the writer in view of holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity has the inten­tion from the very begin­ning to include moral sen­si­tiv­ity in one’s rela­tion­ships with non-human and see­ing its appli­ca­tion beyond human relationships.

2.2.4 Rela­tion­al­ity as Prece­dent of Iden­tity. Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) describe rela­tional iden­tity as per­sonal iden­tity defined by a person’s sig­nif­i­cant inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships. Rela­tional selves are con­strued as inter­de­pen­dent, not inde­pen­dent from one another, as in indi­vid­u­al­ism (p. 933). On empir­i­cal, con­cep­tual and eth­i­cal grounds, Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) have pointed out between “self as rela­tion­ship” and “self-in-relations” their reser­va­tions about the con­struc­tion of the first one, because it reduces the self to a rela­tion­ship, thus becom­ing relationship-tyranny that suf­fo­cates indi­vid­u­al­ity (p. 935). Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) fur­ther explain that, the rela­tional self is intensely aware of the social pres­ence of oth­ers as inte­gral to the emer­gence of self­hood. Thus, in terms of phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, self and oth­ers are con­jointly dif­fer­en­ti­ated from the rest of phe­nom­e­nal world to form the self-in-relation-with-others (p. 933).

2.2.5 Rela­tion­al­ity as Future-Oriented. For the sur­vival and redemp­tion of humankind, Timi Eći­mović (2009) in his paper, ‘Phi­los­o­phy of Sus­tain­able Future,’ pro­poses a solu­tion and a vision:

The sus­tain­able future or har­mony of global soci­ety with the Nature of the Planet Earth, and its coex­is­tence with other crea­tures in nature as a part of the Earth’s bios­phere is the solu­tion, to the best of our knowl­edge, which should be adopted as the vision for our sur­vival. We need a soci­ety wide global approach, and not the dilu­tion of scarce finan­cial means, for it is impos­si­ble to buy the sur­vival of mankind with a finan­cial approach how­ever great (Eći­mović, 2009, p. 12).

Human beings must learn how to “tran­scend from sus­tain­able devel­op­ment to sus­tain­able future as con­cept, pol­icy, tech­nique that is needed for the sur­vival of mankind” (Eći­mović, 2009, p. 12). Eći­mović (2009) asserts that it is nec­es­sary to intro­duce the con­cept of a sus­tain­able future of humankind to attain har­mony with our envi­ron­ment and nature, since present soci­ety has lost touch with nature (p. 12). To oper­a­tional­ize this soci­ety wide global approach, Eći­mović (2009) begins it with the cre­ation of a descrip­tion of sus­tain­able future:

It is per­ti­nent at this point to pro­vide a short descrip­tion of “sus­tain­able future”: Sus­tain­able future of mankind is har­mony of the humankind system/civilization with sys­tem of nature/biosphere of the planet Earth. It is a short descrip­tion of a very com­pli­cated and com­plex con­cept of present global human soci­ety and its basis – the bios­phere of the Planet Earth. We believe that all good work of count­less indi­vid­u­als towards achiev­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment should now be reori­ented to the more com­plex con­cept of achiev­ing a “sus­tain­able future” (p. 13).

Eći­mović (2009) argues that, “[N]atural sys­tem works on con­tents and under the rules of inter­de­pen­dences, inter­ac­tions and co-operation rela­tions…” (p. 12). At the end of his paper, Eći­mović (2009) rec­om­mends to enforce ethics, includ­ing val­ues that “should assist as to tran­scend to a sus­tain­able future of planet Earth’s human global com­mu­nity” (p. 12).

2.3 Rela­tion­al­ity as Holis­tic Space

2.3.1 Rela­tion­al­ity in the Con­text of Cre­ative Liv­ing Prin­ci­ple. In a paper on ‘Hiyang,’ pre­sented at a Con­fer­ence on Holis­tic Heal­ing at the Mother Earth Heal­ing Cen­ter in Chicago, U.S.A., Prof. Felipe M. de Leon, Jr. de Leon (2007) cap­tures this view of moral sen­si­tiv­ity or empa­thy for oth­ers in the fol­low­ing words:

[I]n Philip­pine cul­ture, there is an under­ly­ing belief in the psy­chic unity of all of cre­ation… [that] we all exist within a cos­mic matrix of being at the deep­est cen­ter of which is a cre­ative liv­ing prin­ci­ple…. [—This inner­most sacred core is] per­me­ated by a divine essence that seeks ful­fill­ment [cre­atively and the inter­de­pen­dence of all that exist. It affirms the cel­e­bra­tive shar­ing, and together they pro­duce] “a cul­ture that is highly cre­ative in inter­per­sonal rela­tions.… [—No won­der,] there is no con­cept of the ‘other’ in the other per­son. The ‘other’ (kapwa) is also your­self. This makes Fil­ipinos a highly rela­tional [peo­ple] (pars. 1–2, 4).

2.3.2 Rela­tion­al­ity as Human and Non-Human. Since “the resilience of the com­mu­nity of life and the well-being of human­ity depend upon pre­serv­ing a healthy bios­phere with all its eco­log­i­cal sys­tems, a rich vari­ety of plants and ani­mals, fer­tile soils, pure waters, and clean air,[7]” then it shows that rela­tion­al­ity is “cen­tral to the uni­verse, not lit­tle bits of mat­ter but how mat­ter inter­re­lates. At the sub-atomic level of being now we are told that every­thing is every­thing else. Per­haps for most peo­ple this seems like a strange con­cept. But for the Fil­ipino, rooted in the sense of pakikipagkapwa, this makes sense” (Braudis, 2006).

To pro­ceed with the­ory build­ing, Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan (2001) claim that in Fil­ipino Psy­chol­ogy (Sikolo­hiyang Pilipino) the intel­lec­tual tools used are indige­nous con­structs that reflect the rela­tional char­ac­ter of human existence:

Enriquez (as cited in Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001) iden­ti­fies kapwa (fel­low being) as the “core value of the Fil­ipino per­son­al­ity.” Unlike the Eng­lish word other, kapwa is not used in oppo­si­tion to the self and does not rec­og­nize the self as a sep­a­rate iden­tity. Rather, kapwa is the unity of self and oth­ers, and hence implies a shared iden­tity or inner self. From this arises the sense of fel­low being that under­lies Fil­ipino social inter­ac­tion (pp. 927–928).

Pakikipagkapwa is “accept­ing and deal­ing with the other per­son as an equal (Gue­vara, 2005). In pakikipagkapwa, “one arrives at the level where the kapwa (other) is sar­ili na rin (one­self)” (Ibita, 2005). Pakikipagkapwa-tao is a sense that we are so inti­mately con­nected that my very soul pen­e­trates yours and mine. This con­cept has its appli­ca­tion beyond human rela­tion­ships which includes rela­tion­ships with the plants, with the ani­mals, with the sea (Braudis, 2006).

Mer­cado (1994) noted that such rela­tion­ships with nature (kalikasan) are con­sid­ered by the Fil­ipinos as some­thing to be in har­mony with. By bor­row­ing Hornedo’s words, he explained it further:

The tra­di­tional Fil­ipino lived with nature. The forests and rivers were his ‘broth­ers.’ Their preser­va­tion and con­ser­va­tion was his life. Their destruc­tion, his destruc­tion. He had lore to teach his soci­ety this fact. When he told his chil­dren the divine beings pro­hib­ited the des­e­cra­tion of the for­est, he was speak­ing with the author­ity of life and in the name of life, not of money (Mer­cado, 1994, par. 7).

Hornedo claims (as cited in Mer­cado, 1994) that for a tra­di­tional Fil­ipino preser­va­tion and con­ser­va­tion of nature would mean his own preser­va­tion and con­ser­va­tion, and their destruc­tion, his destruc­tion. His state­ment echoes with Bene­dict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) in his his encycli­cal Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate (Char­ity in Truth): The dete­ri­o­ra­tion of nature is in fact closely con­nected to the cul­ture that shapes human coex­is­tence: when “human ecol­ogy” is respected within soci­ety, envi­ron­men­tal ecol­ogy also ben­e­fits (2009, n. 51).  “Expe­ri­ence shows that dis­re­gards for the envi­ron­ment always harms human coex­is­tence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evi­dent that there is an insep­a­ra­ble link between peace with cre­ation and peace among men” (Bene­dict XVI, World Day of Peace Mes­sage 2007, n.8).  Ryan[8] (n.d.) writes that Bene­dict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) has authored another chap­ter [about peace, human rights and eco­nomic jus­tice] in this rich tra­di­tion through his encycli­cal Car­i­tas in Veritate.

Since his encycli­cal is much too com­pre­hen­sive to sum­ma­rize in a brief reflec­tion; three themes have been iden­ti­fied and con­sid­ered rel­e­vant to our con­tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion, namely (1) Catholics should be com­mit­ted to the mate­r­ial and spir­i­tual wel­fare of all peo­ple, (2) Eco­nom­ics needs ethics and (3) There is an intrin­sic rela­tion­ship between human and envi­ron­men­tal ecology.

More­over, in his Encycli­cal Let­ter Cen­tes­imus Annus, Pope John Paul II (as cited in Bene­dict XVI, World Day of Peace Mes­sage 2007, No. 8) wrote: “Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the orig­i­nal good pur­pose for which it was given to him, but man too is God’s gift to man. He must there­fore respect the nat­ural and moral struc­ture with which he has been endowed.” By respond­ing to this charge, entrusted to them by the Cre­ator, men and women can join in bring­ing about a world of peace. Along­side the ecol­ogy of nature, there exists what can be called a “human” ecol­ogy, which in turn demands a “social” ecology.”

Expound­ing upon this third theme above, Ryan (n.d.) says that Bene­dict XVI pro­ceeds to argue that Catholic teach­ing on respect for human life at every stage and on con­cern for the envi­ron­ment are mutu­ally related. Bene­dict XVI affirms that an essen­tial dimen­sion of social jus­tice is care for cre­ation, God’s first gift to the human fam­ily. As he puts it: “The envi­ron­ment is God’s gift to every­one, and in our use of it we have a respon­si­bil­ity towards the poor, towards future gen­er­a­tions and towards human­ity as a whole” (as cited in Ryan, n.d., n. 48).

Ryan (n.d.) is con­vinced that when there is a lack of respect for the right to life, nat­ural death and other dimen­sions of human dig­nity, “the con­science of soci­ety ends up los­ing the con­cept of human ecol­ogy and, along with it, that of envi­ron­men­tal ecol­ogy” (n. 51). Berry (1996) even insists then that any dam­age that we did to the outer world of nature would be a dam­age to our own inner life. The dev­as­ta­tion of the envi­ron­ment was some­thing more than dam­age to our phys­i­cal being; it was also a soul-damage, a ruin within.

2.3.3 Rela­tion­al­ity as Human Capac­ity for God. In an essay, ‘Per­sons as Gifts: Under­stand­ing Inter­de­pen­dence through Pope John Paul II’s Anthro­pol­ogy,’ Lee, S. (2009) clearly cap­tures in the fol­low­ing state­ments the mean­ing of rela­tion­al­ity in the con­text of the Catholic Teach­ing on the Trinity:

[T]he Trini­tar­ian God is a trin­ity of Per­sons pre­cisely because of the Godhead’s intrin­sic rela­tion­al­ity. The term “sub­stance” (or “essence”, “nature”) is used to des­ig­nate God in His one-ness, that is, His unity; the term “Per­son” (or hyposta­sis) is used to des­ig­nate the real dis­tinc­tion between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; while the term “rela­tion” des­ig­nates that this dis­tinc­tion lies explic­itly in the rela­tion­ship between them (CCC no. 252). In other words, the Being (ens) of the God­head is one (unum) in essence (res); but simul­ta­ne­ously, God is also a trin­ity of Per­sons in virtue of the sub­stan­tial rela­tions (pp. 326–327).

In sup­port of the above teach­ing, an arti­cle on ‘Trini­tar­ian Virtues of Rela­tion­al­ity,’ Lee, E. (2009) claims that:

[S]ome Chris­t­ian virtue ethi­cists have pointed to the Trin­ity as a model for human rela­tion­al­ity, these dis­cus­sions have tended to be cur­sory. Because God is a com­mu­nity of per­sons in lov­ing rela­tion­ship, the argu­ment goes, we believe that to be cre­ated in the image of God is for us also to be essen­tially social and rela­tional (pp. 1–2).

Car­di­nal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Bene­dict XVI) (1995) affirms this con­vic­tion in his book, ‘In the Begin­ning: A Catholic Under­stand­ing of the Story of Cre­ation and the Fall’:

To be the image of God implies rela­tion­al­ity. It is the dynamic that sets the  human being in motion toward the totally Other. Hence it means the capac­ity for rela­tion­ship; it is the human capac­ity for God. Human beings are, as a con­se­quence, most pro­foundly human when they step out of them­selves and become capa­ble of address­ing God on famil­iar terms (pp. 47–48).

In an arti­cle enti­tled ‘Recov­er­ing the Sacred Mys­tery: How to con­nect Liturgy and Life,’ Richard R. Gail­lardetz (1997) con­tends that, “the trin­ity is about the divine move­ment toward us in love and God’s desire to draw us into life-giving rela­tion­ship.” He declares that, “There is no self-contained, divine indi­vid­ual resid­ing in heaven far away from us; there is sim­ply a dynamic move­ment of divine love which is God” (Gail­lardetz, 1997). Suc­cinctly, he cap­tures this divine and dynamic move­ment in the fol­low­ing words:

Con­ceiv­ing the tri­une life of God as a divine move­ment toward us in love points toward the essen­tial insight of Trini­tar­ian doc­trine, namely, that God’s very being, what it is for God to be, is lov­ing, life-giving rela­tion­al­ity. God does not just have a love rela­tion­ship with us; God is lov­ing rela­tion­al­ity (Gail­lardetz, 1997, p.12).

Like­wise, the Faith and Order of the World Coun­cil of Churches The­o­log­i­cal Con­sul­ta­tion (Oslo, Nor­way, April 27–30, 2005) with the theme, ‘Real­iz­ing Mutu­al­ity and Inter­de­pen­dence in A World of Diverse Iden­ti­ties,’ made a clear state­ment not only on the rea­son of who, but also on why human beings are cre­ated by God: “The affir­ma­tion that human beings are cre­ated in the image of God not only has onto­log­i­cal but also func­tional impli­ca­tions. We are cre­ated to be in rela­tion­ship with God, self, oth­ers and cre­ation” (p. 10).

3. Ped­a­gog­i­cal Via­bil­ity. The fol­low­ing con­cep­tual dis­tinc­tion is clearly defined between the oppo­site approaches (the top-down and bottom-up), but only for the pur­pose of find­ing in the future the most viable com­mon ped­a­gog­i­cal ground that would facil­i­tate the pos­si­bil­ity of syn­the­siz­ing these two paths that may yield sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion in liv­ing sus­tain­ably. Accord­ing to Cairns, J. (2003) “the strate­gies start­ing at the high­est sys­tem level are referred to as top-down, and the strate­gies designed for com­po­nents, local or regional, are referred to as bottom-up.” The writer expanded Cairns, J.’s mean­ing and pro­vided the fol­low­ing def­i­n­i­tions: On the one hand, the top-down approach is referred to as all the sig­nif­i­cant efforts that estab­lish com­mon stan­dards in help­ing meet the global need to move toward sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. These global stan­dards are cre­ated by con­sen­sus, defined, approved and main­tained by a rec­og­nized inter­na­tional body com­posed of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from mem­ber nations, includ­ing but not lim­ited to inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions, inter­na­tional non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach, which the writer con­sid­ered as compassion-driven and community-sustaining in its ori­en­ta­tion, is referred to as the groups’ and indi­vid­u­als’ ini­tia­tives engaged in orga­niz­ing from the bottom-up and assum­ing the respon­si­bil­ity toward liv­ing sus­tain­ably and sav­ing the Earth from its irrepara­ble damage.

3.1 Top–down Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach. The Earth Char­ter[9] (EC) is an eth­i­cal frame­work for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment (SD), a clear prod­uct of top-down global con­sen­sus approach. EC, as a global strat­egy for sus­tain­abil­ity, presents to the peo­ples of Earth a state­ment of com­mon eth­i­cal val­ues, which calls them to heed and assume a share of respon­si­bil­ity to the Earth and to each other and chal­lenges them to trans­late these prin­ci­ples into con­crete prac­tice. EC as endorsed by thou­sands of orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als world­wide declares that “we urgently need a shared vision of basic val­ues to pro­vide an eth­i­cal foun­da­tion for the emerg­ing world com­mu­nity.[10]” As the peo­ples of Earth, we affirmed EC’s inter­de­pen­dent prin­ci­ples for a sus­tain­able way of life for, it also “pro­vides crit­i­cal con­tent for devel­op­ment of cur­ric­ula with the edu­ca­tional aim of teach­ing val­ues and prin­ci­ples for sus­tain­able liv­ing” (Mackey 2001 as cited in Clugston, Calder & Cor­co­ran, 2002).

With indus­trial and tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment in the last three cen­turies, the lifestyles, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, pro­duc­tion sys­tems and con­sump­tion changed rapidly chang­ing the com­mu­nity of life on Earth, thus United Nations (UN), as an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion employ­ing a top-down global con­sen­sus approach sees that edu­ca­tion will help cre­ate and sus­tain a viable and equi­table future for humans and all forms of life on the planet:

Edu­ca­tion has been iden­ti­fied as an impor­tant social strat­egy for the real­iza­tion of a sus­tain­able future. Edu­ca­tion for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (ESD) rec­og­nizes that it is impos­si­ble to achieve sus­tain­able devel­op­ment with­out appro­pri­ate edu­ca­tion, train­ing and pub­lic aware­ness for all sec­tors of soci­ety. In Decem­ber 2002, the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly declared 2005–2014 a Decade of Edu­ca­tion for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (DESD), sig­nal­ing global com­mit­ment to ESD (Edu­ca­tion and the search for a sus­tain­able future, 2009).

In the Philip­pines, the Repub­lic Act No. 9512, as another prod­uct of top-down approach, also known as National Envi­ron­men­tal Aware­ness and Edu­ca­tion Act of 2008,[11] declares:

Con­sis­tent with the pol­icy of the State to pro­tect and advance the right of the peo­ple to a bal­anced and health­ful ecol­ogy in accord with the rhythm and har­mony of nature,… the state shall pro­mote national aware­ness on… the impor­tance of eco­log­i­cal bal­ance towards sus­tained national devel­op­ment. [All inden­ti­fied rel­e­vant agen­cies shall[12]] inte­grate envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion in its school cur­ric­ula at all lev­els, whether pub­lic or pri­vate… [includ­ing the respon­si­bil­ity accorded to] the cit­i­zenry to the envi­ron­ment and the value of con­ser­va­tion, pro­tec­tion and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of nat­ural resources and the envi­ron­ment in the con­text of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment (S. 2–3).

3.2 Bottom-Up Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach. Ahead of his time, Pargman estab­lished in 1972 the Save the Earth Foun­da­tion as a non-profit pub­lic ben­e­fit cor­po­ra­tion ded­i­cated to the expan­sion of envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness in our soci­ety. Its over­all objec­tive is to enhance the qual­ity of our global envi­ron­ment and under­stand­ing of the effects our way of life will have on the long-term health of the planet. Since 1988, the Save the Earth Foun­da­tion has raised pub­lic aware­ness of envi­ron­men­tal issues by fund­ing research and edu­ca­tion pro­grams at col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. Research grants from the Save the Earth Foun­da­tion will help slow — and ulti­mately reverse — our planet’s dete­ri­o­ra­tion. In his offi­cial web­site, www.savetheearth.org, Pargman (2003) recalls:

In the early 1970’s I began to real­ize the devel­op­ing trends of mankind were result­ing in the poi­son­ing of our earth. Late in 1972, my thoughts cen­tered around moti­vat­ing other peo­ple to help stop this destruc­tion. My vision soon became focused on Save the Earth, “a mes­sage to help cre­ate a higher level of envi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness among peo­ple” (par. 1).

After the 1990 earth­quake that struck the north­ern Philip­pines city of Baguio, Sis­ter Ann Braudis, MM, (Mary­knoll NGO rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the United Nations, a U.S.-based Mary­knoll Office of Global Con­cerns: Peace, Social Jus­tice and the Integrity of Cre­ation) envi­sioned a way for Fil­ipinos to pro­tect its envi­ron­ment. Her vision found its expres­sion in the Mary­knoll Eco­log­i­cal Sanc­tu­ary (MES) which artic­u­lates a new under­stand­ing of what it means to live sus­tain­ably on Earth. (Mis­sion­ers, 2010). For fif­teen years, she served as Direc­tor of MES (from 1990 until 2005) guid­ing its growth into a well-known edu­ca­tion cen­ter for stu­dents of all ages, turn­ing the once con­vent school into a now trail-blazing eco­log­i­cal sanc­tu­ary (Car­iño, 2009). Sis­ter Ann Braudis (2006) has pointed out that “in these mod­ern times we rec­og­nize that all things are inter­con­nected. If we cut down the for­est, the rain will destroy the soil. If the soil is destroyed there will be no plants. If there are no plants, there will be no food. The inter­con­nec­tion through­out the uni­verse is called the Integrity of Cre­ation (p. 7).

The envi­ron­men­tal film enti­tled, Home[13], affirms Sr. Ann Braudis’ obser­va­tion as Glenn Close, an Amer­i­can actress (in English-language ver­sion), nar­rates that “the engine of life is link­age. Every­thing is linked. Noth­ing is self-sufficient. Water and air are insep­a­ra­ble, united in life and for our life on Earth. Shar­ing is every­thing” (Arthus-Bertrand, 2009). Home, a visu­ally aston­ish­ing por­trait of the Earth, is an envi­ron­men­tal film pro­duced and directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a French pho­tog­ra­pher, jour­nal­ist, reporter and envi­ron­men­tal­ist. Nar­rated by Close, Home tells that every­thing is linked. The film has com­pan­ion books, ‘Home: A Hymn to the Planet and Human­ity,’ and ‘Home: Edu­ca­tion, A Teach­ing Tool to Enhance Under­stand­ing.’ They all deal with the state of our planet with all their alarm­ing facts on var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal, polit­i­cal and social prob­lems, and includ­ing the chal­lenges and con­se­quences that human­ity will have to face if they do not pro­tect it. Hop­ing that his efforts will inspire peo­ple to act, since we are liv­ing in excep­tional times Arthus-Bertrand (2009) admits that his film has been con­ceived because the urgency to act now is com­pelling. And sci­en­tists are telling us that we have ten years to change the way we live, to reverse the trend, to avert the deple­tion of nat­ural resources and the cat­a­strophic evo­lu­tion of the Earth’s climate.

Accord­ing to Ramirez (2009) life has been get­ting more and more prob­lem­atic. Enu­mer­at­ing the many press­ing issues fac­ing the world today and the many faces of poverty in the coun­try, she rea­sons that the weak­en­ing of life-support sys­tems is due to the degra­da­tion of the envi­ron­ment and the future of our chil­dren is being threat­ened.  Thus there is the ever press­ing issue of sus­tain­abil­ity (p.17).  In 2006, tak­ing off from the vision of Dr. Sixto K. Roxas’ Ecosystem-based Community-centered Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Orga­ni­za­tion and Man­age­ment (ECSOM), ASI artic­u­lates this vision through Co-creating Sus­tain­able Biore­gional Com­mu­ni­ties (CSB­Com) as an inte­grat­ing pro­gram that pro­motes mean­ing­ful life and liveli­hood that is rooted in spir­i­tu­al­ity and rich­ness of our cul­ture and nature (Yap, 2007).

3.3 Middle-In Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach. Since this study seeks a viable com­mon ped­a­gog­i­cal ground that will inte­grate the top-down and bottom-up approaches, the writer finds that the middle-in approach may facil­i­tate and accom­mo­date the con­ver­gence of all these approaches. Hornedo (2009) pro­poses and describes how val­ues, in gen­eral, are being passed on by soci­ety to the peo­ple; how val­ues edu­ca­tion in schools, in par­tic­u­lar, should inte­grate cog­ni­tive and affec­tive learn­ing; how social jus­tice becomes the cen­ter­piece of Philip­pine val­ues edu­ca­tion due to the his­toric events and their social con­text;  and finally how social jus­tice becomes mean­ing­ful in terms of the rela­tion­ships [rela­tion­al­ity] man has and cre­ates with human [other ] and human insti­tu­tions, with nature, with him­self and with the Tran­scen­dent [God] (par. 74).

Edu­ca­tion is one of the many func­tions cre­ated by soci­ety and to assure its sur­vival it has to main­tain its func­tions. In the fol­low­ing words, Hornedo (2009) explains encul­tur­a­tion as one edu­ca­tional func­tion in the society:

The term [encul­tur­a­tion] was intro­duced into social sci­ence by M.J. Her­skovits in 1948. He saw peo­ple as born with biologically-inherited mech­a­nisms whose man­i­fes­ta­tions they must ‘trans­form or con­trol in con­for­mity with their society’s way of life,’ or “con­vert … to socially accept­able forms of cul­tural con­duct.” Encul­tur­a­tion, sim­pli­fied for clarity’s sake, means the process whereby a cul­tural com­mu­nity trans­mits its val­ues and mores to its young (pars. 5–6).

In that same area of edu­ca­tion, he fur­ther artic­u­lates in the fol­low­ing state­ments the above ideas and shows how val­ues in a given soci­ety are defin­ing one’s iden­tity and the soci­ety itself:

In edu­ca­tion, encul­tur­a­tion man­i­fests itself in the con­tent and pro­ce­dures of ped­a­gogy. Through the con­tent, the per­son becomes more and more knowl­edge­able in the val­ues and cus­toms of his own peo­ple; through the pro­ce­dures, he dis­cov­ers that his progress is mea­sured by his achieve­ment in the skills and per­spec­tives which pro­mote the well-being and aspi­ra­tions of his soci­ety. His com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, for exam­ple, are mea­sured in terms of how effec­tively he is able to com­mu­ni­cate with his own peo­ple. Thus, the val­ues of his soci­ety become the mea­sure of his achieve­ment and recog­ni­tion (Hornedo, 2009, par. 9).

How­ever, Hornedo (2009) crit­i­cizes the tra­di­tional meth­ods in Philip­pine schools and high­lights the rel­e­vance of expo­sure, immer­sion and reflec­tion below:

The usual meth­ods in Philip­pine schools—largely due to the lack of imag­i­na­tion on the part of many edu­ca­tors and due prin­ci­pally to the life­less bureau­cra­ti­za­tion and min­i­mal­ism of the system—are lec­tures and dis­cus­sions in class, and some lab­o­ra­tory work. The result is a great amount of cog­ni­tive learn­ing and a min­i­mum of affec­tive learn­ing. (Val­ues edu­ca­tion is pro­foundly affec­tive!) The social sci­ence class­room can ben­e­fit greatly from the meth­ods of expo­sure and immer­sion and the reflec­tive ele­ment that pro­ce­du­rally fol­lows such exer­cises (par. 41).

To enhance greater fidelity to val­ues, Hornedo (2009) sug­gests that “it is impor­tant to iden­tify the cen­tral value-concerns which are seen to have been cen­trally posi­tioned in the con­scious­ness of those nation­als who were in a posi­tion to con­tribute the most vis­i­ble and effec­tive input into national events” (par. 55). In the late 18th cen­tury, Hornedo (2009) claims that the Fil­ipino clergy demanded full recog­ni­tion and respect for dignity.

The claim was against what in prac­tice was Span­ish racism jus­ti­fied by a plethora of accu­sa­tions such as immoral­ity, incom­pe­tence, and so forth, some of which the Iberi­ans claimed to be con­gen­i­tal to the Indio and there­fore beyond rem­edy. (Hornedo, 2009, par. 55–56).

Another val­ues being demanded, Hornedo (2009) con­tin­ues is the polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence, which is the only way to attain dig­nity. How­ever this is not suf­fi­cient, for “inde­pen­dence had no real sub­stance unless the nation had enough mate­r­ial sus­te­nance to feed, clothe, house, edu­cate, med­icate, and in any way cul­ti­vate and pro­mote the life of Fil­ipinos” (Hornedo, 2009, par. 64). Hornedo (2009) noted that while the val­ues of eco­nomic devel­op­ment with­out dig­nity and inde­pen­dence would be illu­sory, “Mar­cos came to be con­vinced that it was not only devel­op­ment that the nation needed, but some form of social jus­tice” (par. 68). Unfor­tu­nately, since Mar­cos took the author­i­tar­ian road by impos­ing mar­tial law, the social jus­tice value was:

[B]andied about and given much lip ser­vice, but still there was no clear evi­dence of suc­cess in that direc­tion, eco­nom­i­cally or morally. Those who dis­liked mar­tial law most were among the most desirous to see every Mar­cos move fail utterly, and so it came to pass. But the national theme of social jus­tice did not pass and as Mar­cos fell more deeply into fail­ure, the need for social jus­tice become more acute (Hornedo, 2009, par. 71).

In a par­tic­u­lar way proper to the Philip­pine con­text, themes of jus­tice and all these val­ues, namely:  (1) full recog­ni­tion and respect for dig­nity and pro­tec­tion of human rights, (2) polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence, (3) eco­nomic devel­op­ment and (4) social jus­tice are all, Hornedo (2009) pro­poses, “can be adapted for class­room learn­ing and for pro­grams of out-of-class edu­ca­tion con­tex­tu­al­ized in the Philip­pine set­ting” (par. 81).

Review of Related Studies   

Table 3. These four inde­pen­dent stud­ies res­onate with the four­fold relationality

 

1. In Bontoc’s study enti­tled, ‘Small-scale Farm­ers and Genetics-based Tech­nol­ogy in Philip­pine Aqua­cul­ture,’ it has divided and cat­e­go­rized the com­mu­nity into three income or wealth groups: nakakarao (the poor­est), sapat (the mid­dle) and nakakaluwag (the upper/rich). This report shows that nakakaluwag (one of the three terms used to cat­e­go­rize the dif­fer­ent socio-economic strata or sta­tus) is referred to those who belong to the rich strata or sta­tus, either the fish­pond own­ers or those who have large land­hold­ings in such par­tic­u­lar munic­i­pal­ity stud­ied (Clarke, Mair, Morales, Black, & Sevilleja as cited in Ingles, 2006, p. 34).

2. In Ilo­cos Norte’s study enti­tled ‘Multi-scale Land Use Analy­sis for Agri­cul­tural Pol­icy Assess­ment: A Model-based Study in Ilo­cos Norte Province,’ it used mahi­rap (poor), karani­wan (mid­dle), and nakakaluwag (rich). In this same study nakakaluwag is referred to those who “can afford to use alter­na­tive agri­cul­tural tech­nolo­gies, have a farm size of 2.54 hectares and/or own­ing almost 1 hectare of farm land, and have higher income from crop activ­i­ties (Laborte as cited in Ingles, 2006). In both stud­ies above, the writer observes that the term or con­cept nakakaluwag is used as a cat­e­gory for socio-economic status.

The above two stud­ies applied the deno­ta­tive mean­ing of the term nakakaluwag per­tain­ing to the socio-economic pro­file of the mem­bers of the com­mu­nity prob­a­bly not con­cerned with the sub­tleties and nuances of its meaning.

3. Based on the writer’s ini­tial study enti­tled ‘Nakakaluwag: An Affir­ma­tion of A Vision of Per­sons Liv­ing in Peace­ful Har­mony and with Respect for Life and Dig­nity: Towards A Fil­ipino Con­tri­bu­tion to A Sus­tain­able World­view and Global Ethic’ his ini­tial find­ings shows that the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag is beyond socio-economic sta­tus cat­e­gory. In this study, it made man­i­fest the val­ues of pakiki­ra­may (the going out of one’s way in order to share the sor­row of oth­ers in times of crises), pag­ma­malasakit (gen­uine car­ing effort) and pakikipagkapwa-tao (hav­ing a regard for the dig­nity and being of others).

The writer believes that these are the prin­ci­ples that under­pin the Fil­ipino global ethic which rec­og­nizes, respects, and pro­tects the human dig­nity and equal worth of per­sons. The same expe­ri­ences also made man­i­fest the value buhay (life) or mabuhay (sur­vive) as the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ple behind the Fil­ipino sus­tain­able world­view of real­ity as inte­grated whole, not com­part­men­tal­ized; as con­tin­uum, not frag­mented. It is no won­der for the Fil­ipino that love of God and love of one’s fel­low human beings are insep­a­ra­ble. S/he believes that the fun­da­men­tal unity of the fam­ily even extends to human fam­ily of the world and envi­sions a life that is lived together in mag­in­hawang buhay (peace­ful har­mony) (Ingles, 2006).

4. The cross-cultural study enti­tled ‘Indi­g­e­niza­tion and Beyond: Method­olog­i­cal Rela­tion­al­ism in the Study of Per­son­al­ity Across Cul­tural Tra­di­tions’ claims that the gen­er­a­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal knowl­edge is cul­ture depen­dent. Indige­nous psy­cholo­gies [like Sikolo­hiyang Pilipino (Fil­ipino Psy­chol­ogy)] go fur­ther and insist on view­ing a tar­get group from the natives’ own stand­point. It says that rela­tion­ships pre­cede sit­u­a­tions in the study of per­son­al­ity and social behav­ior. Per­son­al­ity is defined as the sum total of com­mon attrib­utes man­i­fest in a person’s behav­ior directly or indi­rectly observed across inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships. Towards the end of the study, con­fronting the self-other demar­ca­tion under­ly­ing West­ern the­o­ries leads to the con­struc­tion of self-in-relations (Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001, p. 926).

The writer observes in this study of indige­nous con­structs reflects the rela­tional [rela­tion­al­ity] char­ac­ter of human exis­tence: Unlike the Eng­lish word other, kapwa is not used in oppo­si­tion to the self and does not rec­og­nize the self as a sep­a­rate iden­tity. Rather, kapwa is the unity of self and oth­ers, and hence implies a shared iden­tity or inner self. From this arises the sense of fel­low being that under­lies Fil­ipino social inter­ac­tion (Ho, Peng, Lai, & Chan, 2001, pp. 927–928).

5. The study by Naga­hama (2006) enti­tled ‘Mak­ing Dia­logue Among Dif­fer­ent Reli­gions: An Analy­sis of Val­ues Edu­ca­tion under the Inte­grated Learn­ing Sub­ject in the Philip­pines’ speaks of Mak­abayan (Love for the coun­try), the new inte­grated learn­ing sub­ject for the val­ues edu­ca­tion of the Philip­pines that stems from the Peo­ple Power Rev­o­lu­tion in 1986 (EDSA I). It is expected that the val­ues edu­ca­tion inte­grated in other sub­jects will stim­u­late stu­dents’ holis­tic human devel­op­ment. The study exam­ines the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing dia­logue among reli­gions [Catholics and the Mus­lim] through val­ues education.

The writer sees in this study reflec­tive of the indige­nous con­struct of rela­tion­al­ity of the pre­vi­ous study men­tioned above. Mak­abayan as a prac­ti­cal study helps develop in the Fil­ipinos their national iden­tity as healthy indi­vid­u­als who take upon them­selves their rights and duties not only as stu­dents but as mem­bers of the com­mu­nity and as patri­otic cit­i­zens of this coun­try. It is very inter­est­ing to note that the very four­fold aim of this inte­grated learn­ing sub­ject Mak­abayan res­onates with (see table 3) Fuellenbach’s four­fold rela­tion­al­ity (with their fel­low human beings, with them­selves, with nature/creation and ulti­mately with God), which  is the basis of for­ma­tion of every Fil­ipino (stu­dent) to become: Mak­abayan (Love for Coun­try), Makatao (Love for Human­ity), Makaka­likasan (Love for nature) and Maka-Diyos (Love for God) (Naga­hama, 2006, p. 5). Ramirez (2009) affirms this say­ing, “for the first time [dur­ing the Peo­ple Power Rev­o­lu­tion] we Fil­ipinos expe­ri­enced being Pro-God (Maka-Diyos). Pro-People (Maka-Tao), and Pro-Country (Maka-Bayan).  Later [it] added still one cat­e­gory, Pro-Nature (Maka-Kalikasan). These inte­grated val­ues could lead the peo­ple to an expe­ri­ence of real com­mu­nity, a Heaven on Earth” (p. 21).

Trans­la­tions of Nakakaluwag

Table 4 shows the trans­la­tions of Nakakaluwag/Nakakaluwag sa Buhay into Top Twelve (12) Lan­guages of the Philip­pines. These lan­guages are: Taga­log, Cebuano, Ilocano/Ilokano, Hiligaynon/Ilonggo, Pampangan/Kapampangan, North­ern Bicol, Pan­gasi­nan, Maguin­danao, Tausug, Maranao, Kinaray-a and South­ern Bicol. The first col­umn with the head­ing: ‘Trans­la­tions of Nakakaluwag/ Nakalu­luwag sa Buhay’ con­tains all the trans­la­tions the term Nakakaluwag/ Nakalu­luwag sa Buhay. The sec­ond col­umn with the head­ing: ‘Lan­guage’ con­sists of the Top Twelve (12) Lan­guages of the Philip­pines as listed above. The third col­umn with the head­ing: ‘Pop­u­la­tion’[14] indi­cates the num­ber of the known speak­ers of these liv­ing lan­guages. The last col­umn with the head­ing: ‘Ref­er­ences’ sim­ply tells who the native speak­ers and who the sources are of these dif­fer­ent trans­la­tions of the term and con­cept:  Nakakaluwag/ Nakalu­luwag sa Buhay.

Table 4. Trans­la­tions of Nakakaluwag into Top 12 Lan­guages of the Philippines

 

Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Study

The writer has found quite a num­ber of valu­able related lit­er­a­tures that deal with and dis­cuss these three inter­de­pen­dent per­spec­tives, namely cosmic-anthropological in ori­en­ta­tion, holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity and ped­a­gog­i­cal via­bil­ity. Among them, the writer con­sid­ers the work of Hornedo (2009) on ‘Val­ues Edu­ca­tion in the Social Sci­ences,’ as a break­through for it res­onates with Fuellenbach’s four­fold rela­tion­al­ity (1998, p. 195) in a par­tic­u­lar way proper to the Philip­pine con­text and at the same time facil­i­tates and accom­mo­dates the con­ver­gence of Cairns’ top-down and bottom-up approaches (2003) through Hornedo’s con­crete middle-in approach in val­ues [ethics] edu­ca­tion by inte­grat­ing both the cog­ni­tive and affec­tive learn­ing and mak­ing rela­tion­ships [rela­tion­al­ity] mean­ing­ful (2009, par. 74).

The writer also sur­veyed most of the stud­ies related to the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag and observed that although they res­onate with the four­fold rela­tion­al­ity, they are basi­cally lim­ited to socio-economic pro­fil­ing, dealt with what under­lies Fil­ipino social inter­ac­tion and focused on the indige­nous con­struct of rela­tion­al­ity. To date there is no spe­cific study avail­able on the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag, except for the writer’s ini­tial work titled, ‘Nakakaluwag: An Affir­ma­tion of A Vision of Per­sons Liv­ing in Peace­ful Har­mony and with Respect for Life and Dig­nity’ (Ingles, 2006).

Since the value nakakaluwag is a unique Fil­ipino cul­tural fea­ture that con­tributes to the global ethic [uni­ver­sal value] and inte­grates with prac­tices of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, thus, the writer intends to search fur­ther and dig deeper through hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry from the shared-beliefs and shared-practices among the four­teen (14) pur­posely selected Co-Rs through their own nakakaluwag lived-experiences on how this Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag har­mo­nizes with sus­tain­able rela­tion­ships [rela­tion­al­ity] and derives from which an indige­nous prin­ci­ple of ethical-pedagogy that is essen­tial in mak­ing per­sonal and com­mu­nal deci­sion on a day to day basis to live sus­tain­ably and even­tu­ally to pro­pose con­crete and authen­tic ini­tia­tives that are life-sustaining and life-giving in the pur­suit of jus­tice, peace and integrity of creation.