Being on the board and being held to a different standard from everyone else is such a strange experience. You’re expected to maintain a higher level of decorum — even when there’s no standard at all for people who are incredibly difficult. At the same time, you’re often treated like a servant, expected to respond to every whim or frustration of residents. And it’s not even a paid job — it’s a volunteer task.
It’s weird being held to a higher ethical and behavioral standard, getting mud slung at you, and yet not being treated as an equal. But that’s part of what makes community governance so complicated.
At the end of the day, the community has to self-enforce — to self-police and self-discipline. And really, who wants to be the neighbor who calls out another neighbor for being unfair, rude, or unethical? Still, if no one does it, things fall apart. Spreading misinformation, for example, isn’t just unhelpful — it’s unethical and a sign of poor character.
The people who need to step up are the ones who want a democratic community. Because those in positions of authority can’t act like they’re favoring one group over another; they’re expected to uphold that higher standard of fairness, even when it feels one-sided. That’s the irony — leadership means you get the least leeway, but the most responsibility.
Then you remember you’re in the Philippines — and you start reflecting on our history, and how other cultures long ago established clear ways to behave as a community. They’ve built traditions and protocols for resolving conflict, for showing respect, for maintaining order. But for us, we’re still learning.
We don’t really know how to act as peers — a byproduct of colonialism and imperialism. We haven’t fully learned how to address others the way we want to be addressed, or treat people the way we expect to be treated. Empathy isn’t automatic; it’s taught, practiced, and reinforced. Maybe what we’re doing now — experimenting with how to handle disagreements, how to communicate, how to resolve conflict — is part of building something new. A new layer of our culture and history that future communities might inherit and improve. And hopefully, something good sticks.
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