“Nepo-Babies” and Noblesse Oblige
Insult has been added to injury as a drenched nation outraged at the blatant theft of taxpayer money now turns its attention towards the children of those who have gained from this breach of public trust. Discourses on privilege have once again come to the fore as the sheer callousness of those ‘nepo-babies’ among us sends ripples through the stagnant floodwaters of our republic.
But of course, these are not mere exceptions. We cannot deny that the children of advantage (myself included) have long benefitted from the moral failings (and maybe even crimes) of family members and society as such. Many among us are indignant in the face of such corruption, but by birth we are indeed partakers in the same hypocrisy—in our own little ways that we excuse before ourselves. The following observations, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt as coming from a hypocrite.
The callousness observable among many young elite Filipinos (often referred to as nepo-babies) can be traced to the loss of a sense of duty among those who have been born into a life of wealth and easy comfort. This sense of duty is twofold: it is a duty to one’s own person, and a duty to the common good. It is from this twofold duty that certain rights flow forth: the right to participate in political life being one of them.
This is founded on the following reflection made by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum: “Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others” (n. 22).
The first aspect of this duty, namely, towards self, seems perplexing. Don’t we care too much about ourselves? On the contrary, we reject our duty towards our own selves by refusing to use our resources to develop ourselves fully as persons. Instead, we choose to engage in a life of self-indulgence, fulfilling the basest passions of our body with reckless abandon.
It is true that many of us make it into foreign universities. But this does not necessarily translate into the holistic formation necessary for a good life. The same goes for private schools, many of which (even the Catholic ones!) have become hotbeds for drugs and degeneracy. We pay too little attention to virtue as such, whether intellectual or moral.
I would go so far even as to say that we tend to hate ourselves. It would be rare to come across a child of advantage who is truly happy. Luxurious comfort tends to distract people from achieving true happiness insofar as it gives their bodies more power over their souls. But only the soul—the will—can move someone towards his (or her) true happiness.
But one cannot love others if one does not first love himself, and so our unwillingness to love ourselves truly (by actually forming ourselves properly) obviously bleeds towards our unwillingness to make authentic contributions to the common good. We can list a million examples of this, but I would like to focus on just one: culture.
Like it or not, culture is greatly shaped by the social authorities, i.e., the elite. In this world of social media it has become easier for the elite to build a mass-culture out of emerging social networks. Hence, mass-culture is not the expression of a people, but rather the expression of the elite-driven consumerism of deracinated individuals. (This has been well-understood by Popes Pius XII and Pope Francis in their discourses on the people vs. the masses.)
On the other hand, many rich kids are aimless and rootless at the same time. They hate the traditions of their ancestors while remaining alienated from the experiences of the lower classes. We cannot be surprised, therefore, that “culture” for many of them consists in nothing more than Instagram likes, tacky fast-fashion brands, and bland corporate lingo. They have now become victims of the slop that they feed to the masses.
Indeed, the loss of a sense of duty towards the common good (as mentioned before) stems from the loss of a sense of duty towards perfecting one’s own nature. We are not a society of aristocrats, in the authentic sense of the term. We have become one of perpetual parvenus—regardless of whether or not their families have been rich for several generations. (Cf. P.C. de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites).
But nonetheless we are (unworthy) bearers of those duties incumbent upon us on account of our fortune. And we must carry them out, lest another rightly takes our place. But more than that, our failure to fulfil our duties—towards our own selves and towards the common good—shall render us accountable to the Eternal Judge who does not bow before wealth or power.
And—God forbid—there will be hell to pay. Lord, have mercy.
Daniel Tyler Chua is the founder and president of the Collegium Perulae Orientis. He is also a contributor to the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Sentinel PH.
