The Divine Right of Stagnation

The Divine Right of Stagnation Nathaniel Branden wrote a chapter with a same title in The Virtue of Selfishness, which elucidates the philosophies of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Chapter 16 establishes that “life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action”1; that “there is no final, permanent ‘plateau’”1; and “passivity is not compatible with this state”1, which is capitalism. Jose Rizal, in 1890, wrote, in five instalments, the La Indolencia de los Filipinos for La Solidaridad. The Philippines then was in colonial capitalism. He precisely explained the alleged indolence of the Filipino people, which he defined as “little love for work, lack of activity”, from an historical, sociological, and political perspective. He asserted that the Spanish rule awakened and “magnified” the idleness in every Filipino worker. Syed Hussein Alatas termed this as “physiological indolence”2 in his book The Myth of the Lazy Native. The introduction of the Galleon trade, which demolished small and prior occupations of the people, appended by the forced labour for the ongoing Spanish conquest, complemented by anomalous systems of education and religion all made it possible for the people to conform to their leaders’ example of stagnation, according to Rizal. Alatas made the point that the claim of indolence was hardly indolence but rather just a reaction to suppressive conditions. Additionally, he mentioned another’s work for a “capitalist’s concept of indolence”2 and more importantly the conflict between the native and Spanish friars, which resulted to the Cavite Mutiny and the GomBurZa Martyrs. This ideological conflict for dominance in the priesthood as a factor in Rizal’s analysis was missing according to Alatas. Branden’s version of stagnation is driven by self-complacency in thought, described as the equivalent counterpart in the pastoral doctrine, which, by the argument of Alatas, launched the indolence accusation. Rizal, although indirectly, destroyed one of these two chains restraining our progress by revolting as a nation. Now, we are left to ourselves. Far into the future i.e. far enough that very few think about it, we will abolish our nations to build an infinitely tenable and non-stagnating civilization. 1Rand, A. (1964). The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. New York. Penguin Books USA Inc. 2Alatas, H.S. (1977). The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism. Retrieved from http://www.google.com.ph/books?id=vAwbP7a-nCcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false