IN 1978, Václav Havel, a dissident, wrote an essay titled “The Power of the Powerless.” He later became president of both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. In that essay, he asked a simple question: How did the communist system sustain itself?
That essay rekindled an audience when Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed remorse over a rules-based international order that “middle-power countries” believed in. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Carney talked about “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality” where power “is submitted to no limits, no constraints.” Donald Trump had invaded Venezuela on Jan. 3, 2026, just a couple of weeks before Carney’s speech.
He adds:
“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must... There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.”
Havel’s answer to his question began with a greengrocer.
“Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite.’ He doesn’t believe it, no one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie.”
Carney theorizes that “the system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.”
There are parallels between a “rules-based” international order and a “rules-based” national order. At home, people live within a lie to get along. The power of Philippine politics, and the culture that buttresses it, comes not from knowing that a democratic government is built by and for the people, but from everyone’s willingness to act as if it were true.
Greed is addictive. When the top-level powers — the lions atop the food chain — get hooked into something that moves people like how a Nintendo stick controls a digital game, they submit to no limits, no constraints. They expect the middle-level powers and the powerless to go along, which is how a political dynasty works: There is a clique with an insatiable appetite for power and wealth, and below them is a multitude that anticipates the scraps to fall from the table whenever the lions are having a feast. Somehow, the trickling down of benefits, of butter being spread around the surface of the bun, has gained universal approval. For how else do we explain the misfits, clowns, traitors and those who bring to the table nothing but a middle or family name, being voted to office during every election?
We think we have a system that works for all. And we act as if what we think is true. We follow the rituals. We put the sign in our windows.
Starting at a young age, in every school where our grandchildren go through the cycle of life we ourselves had taken, up to the point we advance in age, in the hallowed halls of Congress, in the honorable sala of judges and in the majesty of Malacañang, we sing the “Lupang Hinirang” by which we pledge that where there is oppression, ours is the pleasure to die for the motherland.
We have countrymen fishing in our own waters, but driven away by armed enforcers of an alien government. No one sees the oppression, but not a few think aloud that waging a war would be suicidal. The wise warn that everyone can die, never mind the prospect that, finally, with casualties claimed across the board, there is equality between the rich and the poor. It is thus in the interest of the well-off, who have more to lose in life than those who struggle even in times of peace, not to see the oppression. Besides, the promise of joy in risking life for the motherland excites no one.
For civil servants, being a citizen demands a higher calling. Aside from the singing of the “Lupang Hinirang,” they recite “Panunumpa ng Kawani ng Gobyerno.” Part of the solemn declaration says:
“Magsasalita ako laban sa katiwalian at pagsasamantala; Hindi ko gagamitin ang aking panunungkulan Sa sarili kong kapakanan (I will expose irregularities [in the office]; I will not perform my official duties for my own benefit)...”
If people were not living within a lie, there would be no need for congressional investigations. State auditors, the Ombudsman and the Sandiganbayan would at best be superfluous. All we need is affirmation of shared values.
But values formation is tricky, too. Filipinos — Christians and Muslims alike — subscribe to the law of Moses. Yet we tolerate murder; we can even vote for known murderers. We live with thieves, and are fine losing money to corruption — the worst kind of theft. We engage with trolls, being cool to those who bear false witness against somebody’s neighbor and rationalize a world full of lies, anyway.
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