Seeing the forests not just the trees

One 60-year-old man who killed himself after being publicly shamed over corruption accusations could have been saved. In another life—under a just and decent system—he would have remained a dedicated engineer helping build safe, dignified public works. Instead, he became one of countless casualties of a culture of malfeasance so normalized that guilt and shame become unbearable burdens.

There is also Levy, 25, in and out of jail for drug charges. Once a promising band leader, he grew up in a chaotic household after his parents separated and took on new partners who struggled to raise children who could not finish school. Some constantly got into trouble; all were trapped in poverty’s undertow. In his barangay, the captain is notorious for sabong, gambling openly and freely talked about in the corner store—yet he won another term. Like many places, the community has its share of good men and women, but just as many who serve as bad examples, creating a moral climate where wrongdoing is tolerated as long as you win.

Jose, a poor farmer from Bula, Camarines Sur, continues to drown in onerous loans from farming land that is not his own. His story is not merely his; it is the shared narrative of millions of small farmers and fisherfolk who keep the nation fed yet cannot reliably feed their own families.

Around them, piles of garbage line the streets, visible reminders of daily deterioration. But as Nay Virgie says, the garbage in Congress is worse. The real rot lies in institutions meant to uphold the public trust but which too often reward impunity. For the younger generation, these powerful figures are not mere irritants—they are dangerous role models. They teach that corruption is a path, not a crime; that public office is a prize, not a responsibility.

People grow like their environment. They can be nurtured into compassion and civic responsibility—or shaped into indifference, greed, and survivalism by the warped systems around them. Well-governed communities bring out the best in people. Poorly governed ones mass-produce the tragedies we keep repeating.

Our larger environment—social, economic, political—molds every citizen long before individual choices even take shape. Yet our leaders, decade after decade, fail to grasp this basic truth. If only they learned to see the whole rather than the convenient part—to see the forests, not just the trees—our national life would be unimaginably better. But this remains a wishful list, almost like reaching for the moon.

Since time immemorial, the Philippines has been captive to a bourgeois, elitist model of governance—a mindset formed in privilege, focused on personal gains rather than the ecosystem of interdependent parts that make a nation work. This narrow, fragmented thinking produces leaders who obsess over ribbon-cuttings and piecemeal projects while ignoring the deeper structural rot that keeps us stuck: corruption, wastage, inequality, underdevelopment, and a state that cannot protect its own people.

“Seeing the forest, not just the trees” is an idiom urging us to take the long view rather than get lost in isolated details. Applied to governance, it is a call to understand systems, root causes, and long-term consequences. It means looking beyond perks, dynastic preservation, or fleeting popularity. It requires connecting the dots: Why are young people falling into crime? Why do communities tolerate corrupt leaders? Why does a 60-year-old public servant lose all hope?

Why do families collapse under pressure? Why does garbage accumulate—not just on streets, but in our institutions?

Yet our national vision has been deliberately narrowed. A populace trained to focus on the nearest tree is easier to distract and govern poorly. We fixate on scandals but ignore the systems that produce them. We punish individuals but never repair the structures that drive them to desperation.

Consider coastal development. Leaders parade a port, a fish landing center, a reclamation plan—each hailed as “progress.” Meanwhile, rivers choke in plastics, flooding worsens, and public works crumble under corruption. Rarely do officials examine how these projects interact with ecosystems, livelihoods, disaster risk, or long-term resilience. Development becomes a patchwork of isolated decisions, not a coherent strategy for coastal life and survival.

Nations do not collapse because of one bad tree. They collapse when the entire forest is misgoverned and wasted away for generations.

The Philippines has no shortage of good, honest citizens. But they are trapped in systems that reward small thinking and punish long-term vision. The tragedies of the engineer, of Levy, of every struggling Filipino are not isolated failures. They are the predictable outcomes of the environment we built—and corrupt dynastic leadership we allowed.

The country we live in today is the forest we grew. The real question is not whether our leaders can see the trees, but whether they still remember the forest—and whether they have the courage to save it. Here, the problem is systemic, deep-rooted, and demands nothing less than radical change.