But probably the more obvious reason was that our ancestors were just strongly defiant towards change and they did everything to ward off any intrusion that might effect change. They valued their independence so much as this came with the liberty to exercise economics, culture, spiritual beliefs and social practices accordingly without any alien interventions and influences. Some ‘’scholars” (emphasis on the quote and quote) have pointed out that this great resistance to change cost our forefathers the price of education and earlier development. But contrary to this biased belief, there existed a sophisticated civilization and communal living amongst the early highland inhabitants already. But this is another story (one that I believe should be rewritten properly in our history books). For purposes of discussion however, I wanted to look back into this attitude of abject opposition to change before and compare it with the way we deal with change nowadays.
I don’t have a lot of decades to speak of personally but I’ve always known our hometown Sagada as this quaint haven where everyone knows everyone else. A place where we lived richly and comfortably without worldly indulgences. It had always been like that and maybe in a way, I expect it to be that way forever. But times are changing. And with change come the unknown and the expectations. We are all too familiar with these huge modifications that are being introduced to our place—wider roads, taller establishments, a densely-populated town center, commercialization of this and that. Right before our very eyes, our place is being gradually (if not rapidly) urbanized. And knowing Sagada as it is and what it should be, it’s scary. This is the crucial and rather painful part as we can no longer delineate the margin between progress and self-destruction.
Change is inevitable and often times it comes with compromises. So some of us are quick to jump the gun and exhibit radical reactions to proposed infrastructural and systematic developments since we are aware of the risks these entail. We know what we want and we are scared if our expectations are failed. To which we’ve been mocked and chastised by others as stubborn people who remain unproductively conservative; grounded to the old, and blind and non-accepting to progress accordingly. But if we claim that we continue to live up to our ancestors’ strength, prudence and wisdom, we should be more than sound enough to know which is worth accepting and which is not. Let’s not be critical to which that brings promise and complacent to that which invokes otherwise.
Change is just if the changes entailed are for the common good and no vital aspects are being compromised. But if changes happen only to satisfy the elite few, then I can only imagine those change-intolerant forefathers of ours squirming in their graves.