Recently, I almost figured in a head-on collision with a car that was driving the wrong way. It wouldn't have been a high-speed collision; I was simply going through the drive-thru at KFC along Banawe, rounding the corner to the payment window when a vehicle that had entered the pathway clearly marked "Exit Only" abruptly emerged and almost hit me. Seething, I moved to get down and give the driver a piece of my mind, when my wife calmed me down. Our food, as it turned out, would take a while to prepare so I had to park the car, whereupon my wife took the opportunity to get down and talk to the owners of the car, who weren't even patrons of KFC but who, in fact, walked into a nearby bank.
She came out of the bank, and narrated that she had very politely pointed out to them that they had driven the wrong way and had almost caused an accident. The couple were all apologies, with the lone exception of the wife offering the explanation that a kid hawking tint (of which there are many along Banawe) had told them they could go in there, thereby bestowing on him some form of authority. Confronted with what they'd done, though, they knew they were wrong and straight-up apologized, without self-righteous posturing or deflection. Nope, they just plain old apologized, though I suppose it helped that my wife introduced herself as a lawyer. All's well that ends well, and while I would have personally liked to have seen the look on the couple's face, I was satisfied with my wife's recollection of events, and with the knowledge that these people had felt shame for what they had done. They had no doubt known they were in the wrong, but I think they simply thought they could get away with it, and that no one would call them out. It was utterly gratifying that someone did.
That's what's sorely lacking these days in many sectors of society: a sense of shame.
We haven't yet devolved to the point where we can no longer tell right from wrong. That'll take a while, really, considering we are a nation of laws several years in the making, not to mention we are a nation chock full of religions, whether it's Roman Catholicism, Islam, or even our indigenous, pre-colonial belief systems. It'll take a while for us to discard hundreds of years of indoctrination, though it appears we're well on our way towards doing exactly that. One thing that could and should keep us from getting there is a healthy sense of accountability, which, on a more primal level, means a healthy sense of shame.
Even without the burden of punishment, we should be able appreciate which of our actions can upset the system that is supposed to work for our collective benefit and we should be able to feel bad about doing them. Theoretically, the prospect of feeling shame, apart from the prospect of suffering punishment, should be enough to prevent us from doing wrong, and for some of us, it is enough. For that man and his wife who almost drove right into us, it was enough.
Perhaps it's worth noting, though, that rather than confront the man with proverbial guns blazing, my wife spoke civilly, with a matter-of-fact and authoritative tone. Based on my experience, I suspect that anything more confrontational would have provoked an argument, and the man and his wife, however clearly in the wrong, would not have backed down. It's impossible to say, really, but what matters is that the best possible outcome happened: the man who had done wrong felt shame. He didn't owe us money, given that no damage had been done, but he needed to be confronted with the fact that he was in the wrong, and, more importantly, to feel it, which he did.
"Walang hiya" isn't just a popular idiom; it's a deeply disturbing state of mind which has gripped far too many people today. It denotes the absolute inability to even fathom the consequences of doing something completely wrong, or mind-numbingly stupid, which is the only way to describe that driver's actions that day as well as so...many...things that we see happening around us every day. The ability to feel shame (and I mean real, honest-to-God shame not the bastardized "hiya" that passes for shame in this country, which usually involves sweeping wrongdoing under the rug) is the beginning of contrition, and the end of wrongdoing.
So it filled me with some hope to encounter at least ONE person in this country, who, when caught being a complete, incontrovertible ***hole, was capable of feeling shame.
I choose to believe that there is still hope for the rest of us.
Well, most of the rest of us, anyway...
