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 are in the philippines and you reflect on all the history and all the other cultures and how they have already long established how to behave as a community – the protocols of settling matters and the precedent and practices.
You dont know how to act as Peers – an artifact of colonialism and imperialism – and we dont know how to address others the way we are expected to be addressed and treated. That empathy really is a taught thing. Probably what practices and conflict resolutions you are using and experimenting on is probably the NEW experiment of our culture and history. And then we will be experimenting until something good hopefully sticks.
Leave a Reply