nstp proj

I prefer black and white colored pictures over beautifully-colored ones. A picture portrayed using a fine mixture of shades and colors, for me at least, prevents the perceiver to appreciate more what the picture offers. The interesting fusion of colors may provide a new and interesting perception to the painting, but it does not present wholly the message of the painting.

In the Philippine history, we were fine portraits of interesting cultures. We were living a way-of-life we could have been proud of. The white Philippine canvass was painted with a black ink that shouts individuality, beliefs, personality and a different culture. We were who we should have been. We could have been unique, we could have been different, we could have been interesting and we could have been ourselves. But thanks to the American, Spanish, Japanese and other countries’ influences, we are now the same as the rest of the globe. We are now just another state following what we were taught to as – “the right and only way of living”.
It is as if our canvass was being colored by a complicated fusion of colors. Our way of life disappeared. The supposedly different drawing was being colored just like kindergarteners do. No space was left unshaded, every inch of our cultural sketch was being overpowered by the colors of other countries. Moreover, the sad fact about this is: the coloring happened without the Filipinos noticing it, the Filipino people took concern years too late of the transformation.
The foreigners were successful in claiming themselves triumphant in giving us a “way-of-life”. HA! They were successful alright, successful in making us live like they do. But they weren’t to blame, the Filipinos, in one way or another, allowed the transformation to happen. Our grasp to our old customs were so weak that with few dictions of faith, we easily let go. Even now, we are still in the process of transformation, and our society is not doing ANYTHING to prevent it.

Our simple, fine and complete black and white sketch was ruined by the presence of colors. The colonizers may have given us the lifestyle we have now. But the fact remains that we had our own, but they erased it and developed their own. The Spanish, American, European lifestyles are not the only lifestyles, we had our own, but our grip to it was not strong enough.