Media reports that the SWS latest surveys show that unemployment in the Philippines is increasing with the latest survey reporting 29.4% or 11.7 million Filipinos without jobs. They defined unemployment as being without a job and looking for a job. The survey showed that 13% of those unemployed had lost their jobs, 12% had resigned from their jobs and 5% were new graduates and first time job seekers.
This, to me, is a startling statistic! Especially now since I am currently reviewing and editing a reprint of the book that Jun and I wrote and published in the early 1970’s entitled: 101 Money Making Ideas from the Philippines Through Creative Honest Work. Some 15,000 copies were printed and it was sold out. We are pleased that many of the ideas presented in the book we have seen being implemented.
In the first chapter we introduced the Ideology of Creative Honest Work as the solution to unemployment, family survival in a competitive milieu, and living a life worthy of human dignity. This ideology remains to be very relevant today. I will share a few thoughts from the book.
In the current domestic and global milieu, only creative people can survive, and much more, progress. These highly competitive times have no place for complacent, parasitic and lazy people. In an era when problems come with uncharacteristic novelty, only the innovative and resourceful can face the issues with competence and expected success. And yet creative work alone is not enough.
Our society is concerned not only with what was done, but how it was done. A great and stable nation is concerned with the performance as well as the methodology, the physical as well as the spiritual. The Machiavellian dictum that the end justifies the means has yet to gain acceptance as it is generally conceded that the means conditions the end.
To be appreciated, work must be honest and upright. Dishonest labor is a morally bankrupt act that deserves only scorn and contempt. We can make money in many ways but it is only through creative, honest work that we can claim our place in society, hold our heads high, and say to the whole world, “This is what I have done and I am rightfully proud of it.”
Every one of us has a purpose for being on this earth. We are made in the image of God. God is known as the Creator, He made heaven and earth and all that abounds therein. There is a saying, “What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.” He gave us the world to live in; it is up to us, to you and me, to use what is given us creatively, honestly and productively.
One of the most important resources in our country is our people. Our natural resources shrink in significance beside this overwhelming number of people. As a resource, then, we must train ourselves and our children how to be creative, how to search out new uses for old things, how to find usefulness in apparent uselessness. There is no problem that cannot be solved. There is no field of human endeavor that does not stand to benefit from creative, honest work.
Therefore it should not really matter if one is employed or not. If employed, we should be creative, honest workers in our workplace. If unemployed, then we should open our eyes and check out the many creative, honest, money-making opportunities around us. The wealth of our land lies in us, as individuals, as members of our communities, as citizens of our country. Unemployment is not an option. Creative, honest work is definitely the better alternative and the best option for us.
