Good food

PINOY KASI
Good food

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:09am (Mla time) 07/14/2006

Published on Page A13 of the July 14, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

IN a recent article published in Time magazine, former US President Bill Clinton reminisces about his childhood in Arkansas and the meals served at his uncle’s home that included “a ham or a roast, corn bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, lima beans, fruit pies and bottomless flagons of iced tea.”

Good food and the good life? Not quite. Clinton says those foods contributed to his problem with obesity that led to a close brush with death in 2004, when he had to undergo a quadruple bypass operation.

Clinton has now partnered with the American Heart Association in launching an ambitious project that aims “to stop the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity” in the United States by 2010.

Overweight, underweight

Where do we in the Philippines stand? The Food and Nutrition Research Institute’s 2003 National Nutrition Survey found that among 6- to 10-year-olds, 26 percent were underweight, 36 percent were short and 1 percent were overweight. Among 11- to 19-year-olds, 16 percent were underweight and 4 percent overweight.

To tackle these problems, we hold classes for mothers in health centers that include nutrition education. And in schools, health education includes some talk about nutrition. But I wonder how far nutrition education will go amid the bombardment of advertising and other marketing gimmicks from junk food manufacturers and fast-food chains.

Even worse, the Department of Health and the Department of Education are themselves becoming unwitting partners of these business interests. I was alerted to this problem recently, when I met with a group of municipal health officers, part of a joint project between Ateneo de Manila University’s Leaders for Health Project and the Department of Health’s Doctor to the Barrios program. These are doctors who serve some of the most impoverished and remote towns in the country.

All of them point to child undernutrition as a major problem in their towns and sadly, they also blame both the health department and education department for contributing to the problem. Their main peeve: the use of instant noodles in school feeding programs. These noodles not only have almost zero nutritional value, but also have unacceptably high levels of sodium, which could contribute to kidney problems and high blood pressure. Yet, the Department of Health puts its seal of approval on these products if they are “fortified” with vitamins. It’s a token move: the vitamin content just doesn’t offset the possible harm of these foods. Worse, public schools have been distributing these instant noodles to the children, which reinforces the misconception that is already widespread among Filipino homes: that such noodles are “good food.”

Trojan horses

The physicians told me that the Department of Education actually has an administrative order banning junk food from schools. Yet by distributing instant noodles in the schools, DepEd administrators are violating the same administrative order.

As for the other types of junk food—chips and candies and chicheria, as well as soft drinks—a quick tour of our schools, both public and private, and including my own beloved University of the Philippines, will show that the stuff continues to be sold in school canteens. Another problem would be all those fast-food joints strategically located near the schools.

My nutritionist friends will attest that some of the fast foods can be even more problematic than the usual junk foods sold in sari-sari stores. Even worse, these fast foods are expensive, draining the already meager budgets that parents have for their children’s schooling.

The distribution of instant noodles in school is like having a Trojan horse that brainwashes the children into the worst misconceptions possible about nutrition.

Walking time bombs

Let’s go back and look at some initiatives in other countries to reverse the tide of school malnutrition. Last September, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that sets limits on the fat and sugar content in foods sold in schools. To be approved for sale in schools, the food product has to have less than 4 grams of fat for every 100 calories. Moreover, no food product containing more than 400 calories can be sold. California also bans the sale of soft drinks in elementary and high schools. The fruit juices that can be sold will also have a limit on the amount of sweeteners.

In England, new regulations on school foods will also go into effect in September 2006. The ban is simple but wide in scope: schools will no longer be selling chocolates, crisps and fizzy drinks (translation for the last two terms: that’s chips and soft drinks). There will also be a crackdown on “substandard burgers and bangers” (I love these English slang words: those are hamburgers and sausages or hot dogs).

The British move came after TV chef-celebrity Jamie Oliver launched a campaign against junk food in schools. Oliver isn’t just working for a ban; he’s urging schools themselves to prepare better meals for the kids, using fresh and nutritious ingredients.

Back to Clinton. He’s fighting not just to ban junk foods but also to require higher standards for food in general. And in schools, he wants more exercise programs.

Can we afford such reforms? I think so. We need to review regulations on the production and marketing of foods, especially for children, including all those joint projects between government agencies and food companies.

The nutrition classes in health centers and schools should be intensified, but we have to teach by good example and modeling, making sure the students see teachers and administrators practice what they preach. We can’t just ban bad foods. We need to offer alternatives, and that means training school canteen concessionaires and the vendors outside the schools to serve low-cost but nutritious (and clean) foods?

Clinton has called American obese children “walking time bombs” because they will later pose a tremendous strain on the American health care system. Our “walking time bombs” are probably more serious as we deal with both obese and underweight children struggling later with health problems even as they become even more nutritionally illiterate parents than the ones we have today. I’m already seeing many of my students at UP having no nutritional sense at all: they can’t cook, and subsist on junk foods. Sometimes, they tell me, “Oh, I do buy food from restaurants.” But check around and you’ll find that those “turo-turo” and restaurants also use instant noodles, instant “arroz caldo” [chicken and rice porridge], instant junk.

Oh, but I fear we might have Filipino children growing up never knowing the joys of good food -- good as in nutritious, as well as good sensuously, sensually, “masarap” [delicious], “malinamnam” [delectable].

Two in one

PINOY KASI
Two in one

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:55am (Mla time) 07/12/2006

Published on Page A13 of the July 12, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

SOME OF MY FRIENDS HAVE COMPLAINED ABOUT THE length of my column, but I'm afraid there's little I can do here. I have to use my assigned space which as you can see goes lengthwise. Sometimes you'll find two Youngblood columns fitting in here, and on the other end of this spread, two main editorials. So I thought that for today, I'd experiment with a "two in one" column. That's two separate articles, but on topics that are related.

Many of my friends ask why I even bother to read the pastoral letters from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). Many Filipino Catholics don't, and yet I think it is important that we do read and reflect on the letters, for whatever wisdom we can glean to guide us through the maze of our times.

Last year, at the height of the Garci scandal, I felt our bishops' pastoral letter was strong enough to warn President Macapagal-Arroyo of a restless nation, even as it urged us Filipinos to restrain ourselves. I felt it was a wise letter, and so this year, I was looking forward to another statement on the political situation.

I'm realistic enough to recognize bishops are politicians, too, playing a game like chess. Our bishops have power (even Ms Arroyo recognizes that), but I'm afraid their latest pastoral statement, notwithstanding the title "Shepherding and Prophesying in Hope," offers little to the nation.

On the moves to impeach the President, the statement says: "We are not inclined at the present moment to favor the impeachment process as the means for establishing the truth," mainly fearing that it will be another "unproductive political exercise, dismaying every citizen, and deepening the citizen's negative perception of politicians."

On the electoral reforms, they simply ask the President to take heed of calls for the resignation of some Comelec officials. Our bishops say they will support Charter change only through a constitutional convention, and they told the press the 2007 elections should push through. (It's telling that the pastoral statement itself refers to the 1907 elections, a point to which I will return later.)

On extra-judicial killings, they nod their heads, yes, they're happening but there are also killings perpetrated by insurgents. That last point about killings by insurgents is valid, but the letter fails to recognize that the government, which wields so much power, has done nothing to address the assassinations of activists and journalists.

Our bishops seem to have saved their strongest words to attack what they claim to be a siege on the Filipino family: "We are deeply troubled by attempts to legislate or make as state policy ideas that tend to weaken or even destroy cherished religious values regarding the nature of life, the nature of marriage as union of man and woman, child bearing, the values formation of children, etc. . . We find them in pending bills about population, marriage and family, reproductive health, and sex education in schools."

Certainly, our bishops weren't referring to Ms Arroyo when they talked about the "state" here since the President has spoken out repeatedly against family planning and reproductive health, which will make Filipinos wonder: Have our bishops bartered the nation to save what they think is the Filipino family?

If our bishops truly care about the Filipino family, they would be supporting family planning and reproductive health programs in addition to vital political processes, the impeachment investigations included. Venting their ire on their own distorted perceptions of the reproductive health bill and sex education, they've lost sight of the real threats against the Filipino family, from the continuing massive export of Filipinos to the extra-judicial killings which have left literally thousands of orphans behind.

The CBCP statement comes through as cavalier, almost as if written in haste. The version I got, from the CBCP's website, is revealing in that it refers to the need to push through with the "1907" elections. Does that "lapse" speak of the time warp our bishops find themselves in, literally lost in another century?

'Tiis'
What is the nation to do without leaders, shepherds, prophets?

We could invoke the virtue, said to be propagated too by the Catholic Church, of pagtitiis, a mixture of patience and forbearance. It's been pushed mainly for women, who, abused and battered by their husbands, are counseled: "For the sake of the family, bear your cross" or "He's your husband, you have no choice but to make the best of the situation."

Our women have made an art of it, raising the children, running the family's affairs against all odds. There's strength, certainly, in pagtitiis and it's tempting to say the nation should see the suffering mother as a model, bearing with President Arroyo until 2010, or beyond. We hear that call constantly: "We have no choice."

But pagtitiis is not without its costs. It can be agonizing, sapping a nation of its will. To describe the dimensions of that pain, I thought of the Chinese word "ren," which is loosely translated into "patience" but actually comes closer to "pagtitiis." Curiously, ren is constructed from those words: the heart, and hanging over that heart, a knife. There's a cleft written across the knife to indicate restraint, but you can still feel the agony that comes with this Asian version of Damocles' sword.

Maybe tiis is stronger, the knife thrust in. Tiis is the feeling we have after we have been assaulted, again graphically described by another word, this time from slang, "tsugi", adopted from the "Tsug" in comic books used to describe a knife or a sword thrust with force into someone's body.

How should an assaulted, tsugi nation respond? We might want to learn from the Japanese, who have borrowed the Chinese word "ren" and combined it with another Chinese word which means "someone" or "a person."

When the Japanese borrow Chinese characters, they don't always use the same pronunciation and original meaning of the word. In Japanese then, the words for "agent" and "ren" produces "ninja." The original ninja were not assassins, as movies often depict them, instead, they were peasant warriors who could not become samurai. As their name implies, an effective ninja is someone who can be patient, who embodies pagtitiis but does so as part of a strategy.

It's an intriguing metamorphosis of meanings and should make us think: perhaps it's not a bad idea to be patient, to feel pain, if we have direction and discernment, guided by our moral compasses. If we need to hold back, to wait, let's do so like the ninja.

"Bastos"

PINOY KASI
‘Bastos’

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 06:48am (Mla time) 07/07/2006

Published on Page A13 of the July 7, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

SEVERAL years ago while conducting research on young adult Filipinos’ sexuality, I realized how important the word “bastos” was to young people.

When applied to sexual matters, “bastos” meant “lewd” and “obscene.” Quite often, the word would be used as a kind of blanket censorship that reinforced the culture of silence we have about sexuality. Sex in general was seen as bastos and therefore not suitable for conversations, at least not between elders and the young.

At another level, however, the term made sexual matters more alluring. Anyone knowledgeable about sex -- in theory or in practice -- would be called bastos in a tone that mixed a bit of mock contempt with grudging admiration.

The concept of bastos as lewdness tends to sidetrack a more important core meaning of the word, which is disrespect. “Binastos ako” means that someone has been disrespectful to us, and this can mean both sexual and non-sexual matters, and could be through words, deeds, or even a whole demeanor, as when a child gives that “dedma” [expressionless] posture in response to a parent’s sermon.

I think we need to move bastos away from a proscriptive, admonishing term toward one which emphasizes ethics, particularly respect for others. Let me cite two examples, from current events, to explain my point.

Bikini

Last Wednesday, July 5, was the 60th anniversary of the bikini. I always thought the name had something to do with its being a two-piece outfit (thus, “bi”) but it turns out its innovator, the French designer Louis Reard, had gotten the name from Bikini Atoll out in the South Pacific, where the United States had conducted its first nuclear tests in June 1946.

Reard’s bikini, made of three triangular patches of cloth held together with ties, was as earthshaking as the nuclear tests. Moralists and prudes quickly reacted. The bikini was banned in several countries and even by some French town mayors. Acceptance came slowly. A song made waves in 1960 with the title “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” and helped to boost sales. In 1962, Ursula Andress wore a bikini in the James Bond thriller “Dr. No.” And in 1964, the American magazine Sports Illustrated first used a bikini-clad model on its front cover.

Over time, the bikini has been analyzed and re-analyzed by social scientists for its social meanings. For some of the more feminist-oriented, the bikini represents the commodification of the female body, exposing as much skin as possible for male gratification. Paradoxically, the bikini can also be seen as an icon of sexual liberation, of women being able to expose themselves without fear of ostracism. There can be mixed feelings about this exposure, even from among women. Some see the bikini as having reinforced the premium on slimness; others (and I can testify to seeing this in Brazil) wouldn’t care less what their body shape is -- Coca-Cola-, apple- or pear-shaped -- using the bikini as a statement: “I’m proud of what my body is, even if it doesn’t conform to your standards.”

In the Philippines, the bikini hasn’t quite gained acceptance yet. Visit beaches used by the masses and you’ll find people not even using a one-piece suit; instead, they bathe in a blouse and short pants, apparently oblivious to the way a wet blouse may be even more provoking than a bikini.

The reluctance to use a bikini speaks not only of modesty but of body image, a fear that one might draw criticism for daring to use a bikini without the “k”, the “correct” proportions. I am told that the main buyers of magazines like FHM are women, curious to check, from the models in bikini, what men are looking for.

So, is the bikini bastos? Let’s save the possible answers for the end.

‘Lukayo’

The other case study I wanted to use was the recent two-week suspension by the Movie and Television Regulatory and Classification Board (MTRCB) of GMA Network’s “I-Witness” television program for featuring a documentary “Hindi Ito Bastos: Lolas with Phalluses.” The documentary featured Kalayaan town in the province of Quezon, where grandmothers dance with wooden penises to greet newlyweds. The MTRCB reprimanded “I-Witness” for featuring “frontal nudity” and “masturbation.” If they had been asked to render their opinion, and decision in Filipino, I think they would have claimed that “Hindi Ito Bastos” was bastos.

The MTRCB’s decision reflects a cruder definition of the word, a censorial term that sees anything sexual, including nudity, as lewd and obscene. The decision lacks a contextual understanding of how the dancing is so much part of local culture, one which has been done for many years, out in the streets. Howie Severino, the “I-witness” host, asked some Kalayaan residents if they thought the dances were bastos or not, and opinions were split, but even those who said they were bastos said it lightheartedly, with ill-disguised glee.

The dancing lolas remind us that popular Filipino culture is actually less conservative than we think. Kalayaan isn’t the only town that’s so comfortable with public displays of sexuality. One of my students many years ago compiled “green” loahan from another town in Quezon, songs about sexual anatomy and sexual acts that were sung, again by grandmothers and grandfathers, at wedding receptions. The list could go on and on, from the man in the barrel souvenirs of Baguio City to double-meaning pop songs.

It’s hard to trace the origins of practices like those of the dancing “lolas” [grandmothers]. There may be a pre-colonial fertility ritual aspect to all this. But I’m more inclined to see these as community “desensitization” exercises that help young people, especially newlyweds, to be more comfortable with sexual matters.

Questioning ‘bastos’

So, is the bikini bastos? If skin exposure is the criterion, then yes it is, but if it’s a matter of respect and disrespect, the answer becomes harder to come by. I would think it is bastos -- meaning disrespectful -- to deprive women of their autonomy, their right to choose what they want to wear to the beach. Are they bastos to people who may find the bikini too revealing? No, because people too have a choice not to look, and if they dare look and find the women stimulating, it’s their problem.

And the dancing lolas with phalluses, are they bastos? Taken in the context of community and of culture, I think not. In fact, what would be bastos is to go against the cultural norms of helping people to feel comfortable with sex. I’d go a step further and propose censorship itself is disrespectful, bastos, when it reads malice into a perfectly innocent aspect of culture. Censorship, too, is bastos when it deprives people of an understanding of their own culture.

I respect the prudes’ right to deny reality, to create their own fantasy sexless world, but I do resent it when they violate our right to view an aspect of our culture, to laugh and to marvel, and to come away understanding ourselves better.

Thinking American

Thinking American

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 02:05am (Mla time) 07/05/2006

Published on Page A13 of the July 5, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

SOME time back, I was talking with some people in an urban poor community when one young man interrupted to ask if I could translate an English word I had used: colony.

I was surprised by the question and fumbled for a split second, realizing we didn’t have a local term. Eventually, I explained the word as a place conquered and occupied (“sinakop”). To illustrate, I used the Philippines as an example, i.e., that we used to be first a colony of Spain and then of the United States.

I was in for an even greater surprise. The young man, who was in his early 20s, was incredulous. “We were occupied by the Americans?” he asked. “We were their colony?”

Lobotomized

This wasn’t a case of amnesia. We do have memories of our past, but they tend to be selective, and eclectic, a bit here, a bit there but without coherence. This young man was well aware of America; as with many other Filipinos, there is no lack of connections with that distant land with a grandaunt who had migrated many years ago to work as a nurse in New York, plus a smattering of relatives in the US Navy. He idolizes American culture, in terms of rap and popular music and Hollywood films, mainly of the “Terminator” and “Son of Chuckie” genre.

Perhaps what we’re seeing is something closer to what Benedict Anderson describes, in his book “The Specter of Comparisons” as “lobotomies.” It’s almost as if part of our brain has been removed, leaving us with a selective memory of our colonial past, as well as a selective sensory perception of the present.

Many younger Filipinos may not be aware that for some 20 years, we celebrated Independence Day on July 4, which was America’s own Independence Day and which was used, in 1946, to “grant” us independence. Rightly so, President Diosdado Macapagal moved Independence Day to June 12, traced back to the First Malolos Republic in 1898. But unintentionally, that move may have become part of our national lobotomy in the sense that many Filipinos are no longer as conscious of a long and difficult US colonial occupation and our long struggle to regain our independence.

Social engineering

We forget that the Philippines was in many ways America’s First Vietnam, First Afghanistan, First Iraq. We were one huge social laboratory where the United States tested military strategies, counter-insurgency -- and social engineering. American “benevolent assimilation” sought to re-create the Filipino in their image, and succeeded.

Today, we are known in the world for our desire to emulate America in everything from our culture to our economic policies and our politics. We think American, sometimes more so than Americans.

Which need not be a bad thing in itself. To some extent, many Filipinos did imbibe some of the United States’ most cherished values, including a respect for individual worth, freedom and dignity. These were the values that led to the American Revolution in the 18th century, and built the foundation for the American version of liberal democracy. The emphasis on independence and autonomy has sometimes led to an excessive aggressiveness, but more often these values have benefited the world in the way they unleashed innovation and creativity. It’s that ability to think laterally, to be ourselves and speak our minds, and not just an ability to speak English, that has so far given us an advantage in the world job market.

Fundamentalisms

Sadly, we live today in a world where religious fundamentalisms are taking over and threatening those values. On one hand, we see the Islamist variety that looks at America as nothing short of satanic, threatening local traditions and morality. But we forget that a Christian variety of religious fundamentalism is strongest in the American homeland. It is a fundamentalism that fears freedom from among its young, from women, from any group that speaks of rights.

What we see today is not a clash of Muslim and Christian civilizations but a competition of absolutist ideologies masquerading as religion. Whether of the Islamist or Christian variety, we find common threads in their contempt for so-called secularism. They preach a retreat into a world of absolutes, of black-and-white definitions, and of fighting “evil” (meaning anyone who disagrees with them) with violent force.

Even as we Filipinos continue to grapple with ideas of freedom and democracy, many are attracted by the allure of fundamentalisms. Because of our close ties to the United States, we are seduced by the American variation of fundamentalism, with all its bigotry and intolerance and simplistic notions of “right” and “wrong.” The scenes are all too similar, whether in the United States or in the Philippines: burning novels like “The Da Vinci Code” and attempting to ban the film, opposing sex education and family planning, growing censorship in the media, all in the name of Christianity.

The other America

Understanding where America came from and where it is today helps us understand why we are in the rut we are today.

I am sometimes described as “anti-American,” simply because I write against American militarism and the Religious Right. But my criticism comes precisely because I was trained, maybe too well, in an American tradition of liberalism. I had American teachers in high school, regularly went to the Thomas Jefferson Center, and spent several of my college years studying in the United States.

To this day, thanks to the Internet, I remain in touch with an America that I love. I read The New York Times daily and tune in most days to National Public Radio for its incisive commentaries on American politics, as well as its fare of American culture that reflects its growing demographic diversity. Unfortunately, all that is another America for many Filipinos.

I can’t help but invoke the metaphors of gender. Perhaps America tries too hard to recreate the Philippines and the world in its own male image, of GI Joe and Marlboro Man and imperial American ambassadors. (It isn’t coincidental that it was only this year, after more than a hundred years of Filipino-American relations, that Washington finally assigned a woman ambassador to the Philippines.)

Perhaps America would do well to explore how she might project a gentler side, an America brimming over with a love of a good life defined beyond strip malls and consumerism and reality TV shows, an America of justice and fairness.

We Filipinos have seen America in ways more intimate than many other people. That can be both a privilege and a burden. As we continue to seek our national identity, we will never really be too far from America, and yet will need to be courageous enough to maintain some distance, charting our destiny with a determined self-confidence that should do America proud.

Leaving it behind

Leaving it behind

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 11:48am (Mla time) 06/30/2006

Published on Page A15 of the June 30, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

“YOU can’t take it with you.” No matter how wealthy we are, we will all leave the world as we entered it: penniless.

So we try to console ourselves that at least we can leave the fruits of our labor to our children. But last Wednesday, I wrote about a trend toward “mega-philanthropy” where very rich American businessmen are leaving the bulk of their wealth to charity rather than to their children, and they’re doing this even before they die.

In particular, stock market investor Warren Buffett has been making headlines with his announcement that over the next five years, he’ll be donating 85 percent of his wealth to five foundations, mainly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That’s estimated to be worth some $37 billion.

I thought I should write a bit more about what’s going on, partly with the hope of convincing Filipinos, especially those who have done well in the United States, to think of philanthropies as well.

Eclipsing WHO

First, let me describe the implications of Buffett’s multibillion-dollar donations. His donation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could eventually increase that foundation’s assets to $60 billion. That’s greater than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of most countries in the world, including the Philippines. It’s also larger than the total official development assistance (ODA) of the European Union.

Even before Buffett’s donation, the American foundations’ financial clout has already been quite formidable. The Ford Foundation, which will now be the world’s second largest, has assets of $11.6 billion. Following closely is The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with assets running to $9.1 billion.

These American foundations have the power to determine the thrusts of health and education programs throughout the world. It’s projected that the Gates’ foundation could give as much as $3 billion next year to various projects. That’s double the total annual budget of the World Health Organization.

Sure, there are fears that the health programs will cater to what the donors want, and that some governments might end up becoming too dependent on these US foundations. By and large though, I’m optimistic that these foundations’ funds can help to get public health moving forward more rapidly.

Hard knocks

Last Wednesday, I wrote about how this mega-philanthropy actually continues a trend that grew out of American capitalism even in the 19th century. Early magnates, like Andrew Carnegie, believed that personal wealth should be shared and returned to the society that helped generate it in the first place.

Much of the mega-philanthropy today isn’t coming from the old rich. Instead, it’s coming from stock market investors like Buffett, and from Silicon Valley computer entrepreneurs like Bill Gates. They didn’t exactly move from rags to riches, but they did earn their money the hard way and chose to live fairly simply even after becoming so wealthy. Fortune magazine notes that Buffett still lives in a home he bought many years back for $30,000, eats hamburgers and quotes Mae West.

Note that Hollywood celebrities, whose wealth can compare easily with some of the very wealthy business people, seem to be cut from a different cloth. With a few exceptions, they’re not known to be particularly generous, beyond occasional guest appearances in charity concerts, for example. Perhaps it’s because the celebrities make their money quickly, and too easily, with many spending the money as quickly as they earn it.

It’s sad that Hollywood’s celebrities become society’s idols and role models, rather than the philanthropists who earn money through the school of hard knocks, and are only too willing to share their wealth.

‘Bakya’ to ‘bakya’

Back in 1986, Fortune magazine interviewed Buffett for an article titled, “Should you leave it all to the children?” He summarized his views with wit: “... A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.”

He reiterates those views in a more recent Fortune interview: “When your kids have all the advantages anyway -- in terms of how they grow up and the opportunities they have for education, including what they learn at home -- I would say it’s neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money.”

It’s also heartening to see the notion of fairness operating when Buffett describes “dynastic mega-wealth” or large inheritances as going against the idea of a meritocracy.

In all cultures, there are folk sayings warning about how children tend to waste the wealth of their frugal and hard-working ancestors. My favorite is an English proverb: “From clogs to clogs is only three generations.” Grandpa and grandma start out wearing “bakya” [wooden shoes], work hard to make money, but the grandchildren squander it to end up in “bakya” as well!

The Americans offer some models for us to rethink money. Many believe that one shouldn’t wait till they die before giving out some money to their children, and to charities.

I know we have a very different situation in the Philippines, where many people will be happy not to leave this world at least without any debts. Even the upper classes have well-founded anxieties about old age, given how savings can be wiped out by one illness.

But I’d still argue that a strong family should discuss what “enough” means for a good life. There’s only so much we need for ourselves and for our children. All too often, Asian parents cling to their money, which then leads to vicious inheritance squabbles, sometimes even when the parents are in the deathbed.

Parents who trust their children enough to help handle the family’s resources might find their money growing more efficiently -- and equitably. People who are raised in a family that instills an appreciation of the virtues of filial piety, generosity and simple lifestyle will safeguard the family’s resources and care for the elderly, even while sharing the resources through philanthropy.

To put mega-philanthropy in perspective, let me point out that last year, the 60 largest charitable donors in the United States gave $4.2 billion, only a small fraction of a staggering $260 billion that Americans, many from the middle class, gave to charities. Guided by a new ethic on money and wealth, a few thousand caring Filipinos could easily generate millions of pesos that can make a huge difference for our country’s health and education.

(Visit money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune for more information on mega-philanthropy in the United States.)