The power of context

Life in the Philippines is public. Privacy seems to decline proportionally to an increasing poverty level. The more deprived the area, the less privacy there is. Daily chores like washing, bathing, cooking, sleeping and chit chat move onto the streets, in front of the shacks. Verbal or physical arguments are no exemption. For most parts I’m trying to keep out of any dispute I encounter. However, when children are involved my Western-shaped concept of treating children is challenged.


More than once have I observed adults disciplining children in public. Mostly by slapping them with sticks, shoes or their bare hands. The fact that the whole neighborhood is watching doesn’t seem to pose a problem.

This is what strikes me. Dare raising your hand against a child in public in any Western country and you surely face a lot of trouble. (I’m stressing public here. I know children are being hit and even abused in Western countries as well. But there seems to be a sense of shame so it’s done behind closed doors. That of course, doesn’t change the fact of violence against children being a serious matter.)

Obviously, there is a different understanding of the right or wrong to use force against minors. I observed a similar behavior in Cambodia. Whoever is older, taller, stronger displays this superiority by going for the younger, smaller, weaker.

If I see a child in the streets, a puppy or even a kidden—a creature that might not be able to fend for itself—my inbred “mother instinct” takes over screaming “protect”!

So, what is the right thing to do? Interfere? Turn a blind eye? What proved to work in my encounters is to stop and stare them down. Just as the guy’s hand moved over to get the stick our eyes met and he reconsidered. Why? Because I’m white? Because somebody did stare after all? Who knows.

Knowing my staring prevented that 3 year old boy from being slapped does not leave me with a sense of heroism. It rather triggered that puzzling question how much our environment influences our human instincts which I always believed are the same across the continents. I guess that is what Malcolm Gladwell in his book “The Tipping Point” describes as the ‘power of context’.