I’m going to speak plainly and provocatively, in my own voice, about the speech I gave at Caux Palace in Switzerland in July 2000 and the bold idea that followed.
I stood in a place drenched with history, a hall where leaders and visionaries once gathered to rearm not weapons but hearts. I spoke about a Philippines that was slipping behind its neighbors, trapped by poverty, inequality, and a value system that seemed designed to excuse away responsibility. I didn’t mince words because I believed then and I believe now that the stakes are existential: character is the soil in which a nation grows or withers.
I said that the Philippines’ problems aren’t only about debt, unemployment, or resources. They’re rooted in a deeper disease, how people think about themselves in relation to the whole. I described a value system that, instead of lifting a nation, drags it down: apathy, a double standard of morality tuned to what others will think, a personal code that collapses when there’s no police tape or camera watching, and a hunger for quick fixes rather than steady, honest work. I pointed to backward religiosity that measures faith by externals, rituals, paraphernalia, rather than the inner transformation that actually compels life to be lived with integrity and courage.
I argued that real development begins not with policy alone but with people, specifically with the inner life of individuals. The claim was blunt: if the nation is to rise, the rise must start inside each Filipino. We needed to overhaul and reshape the value system from the roots up, not just tinker at the edges. True national progress, I said, would emerge only from the development of character: discipline, diligence, a genuine concern for the common good, and the kind of work ethic that says, “whatever thy hands find to do, do it with your whole heart.” I called for a higher standard of morality, a personal accountability before God and country, and a real desire for social unity that flows from loving one’s neighbor as oneself.
I spoke about how the recent elections had laid bare a cultural hinge point: educated voters were astonished to see entertainers sweeping the vote, because the culture’s deepest currents had shifted toward celebrity, distraction, and surface-level appeal. If entertainment and media become the most influential shapers of our daily lives, then we’re handing the reins to a force that may not share the courageous, long-term vision our nation needs. I warned that our cultural depth was at risk, that a dominant governing force, whether overt or passive, had allowed entertainment to become the nation’s de facto teacher and conscience.
That urgent diagnosis led to a bold proposal: to create Transformative Entertainment, Arts & Media -TEAM. Not just as a group or a policy brief, but as a movement, an organized effort to harness the power of culture for conscience, character, and collective well-being. The aim was simple in its audacity: reorient the entertainment ecosystem so it reinforces integrity, service, and real human flourishing; to cultivate voices and platforms that model a robust, compassionate, community-centered life; to fuse artistry with accountability; to turn popular culture into a classroom where people learn to care, to dream responsibly, and to act with the common good in sight.
If I’m provocative here, it’s because I believe the stakes are high and the moment is critical. A nation’s future isn’t sealed by markets or treaties alone; it’s shaped by the daily choices of its people, choices about honesty when no one is watching, about perseverance when the work is hard, about generosity in the face of scarcity, about unity in the presence of difference. The Filipino character, the national spirit, isn’t a fixed destiny, it’s a work-in-progress that can be remade.
So I called for action that would meet the moment: a conscious, collective effort to reform a culture from the inside out, starting with individuals who decide to rise not for themselves alone but for something larger than themselves. TEAM would be a beacon, a reminder that entertainment, arts, and media can be a transformative force when guided by a clear moral imagination, a commitment to truth, and a steadfast orientation toward the common good.
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