INTRODUCTION

This post will attempt to explain the differences in how Filipinos and Indonesians see ethnicity and the nature of the two societies. A couple of years ago I did some posts on the Philippines and Indonesia like TL: DR Reasons for the failure of the Philippines’s foreign policy,

The post will be organized as follows

1. LATITUDINAL VS LONGITUDINAL ARCHIPELAGIC STATE
2. AUSTRONESIAN CORE
   1. ETHNICITY AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
3. ETHNO-CULTURAL DIAGRAM
4. RELIGIOUS-CULTURAL LAYERS
5. MULTIPLE SOCIETIES VS MAINSTREAM FILIPINO SOCIETY
6. HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND SOCIETIES
7. BLOOD, LOCATION, AND CULTURE

Many, like Samuel Huntington's in his book Clash of Civilization (1996) label Indonesia as Islamic, and the Philippines as Western, but beyond these simple labels, people are left hanging. Little is done to describe the structure of the societies, how ethnic groups and religious minorities are organized. The four takeaways from this post are:

• Indonesia is a longitudinal archipelagic state-aligned by trade and a shared lingua franca. The Philippines is a latitudinal archipelagic state orientated loosely by trade with China, and later on, shared religion.
• In Maritime Southeast Asia, there are cultural layers, such as Sanskritization, Islam, and Christianity.
• The Indonesian state believes Indonesia consists of multiple societies. While most Filipinos and the Philippines state assume there is mainstream Filipino society.
• The Indonesian state defines ethnicity by blood and keeps detailed records of regions' ethnic composition. The Philippines' state doesn't keep such data.

This post will be the beginning of a series of posts I will do about Indonesia and the Philippines. The purpose of this particular post is to provide a very rough framework for looking at ethnicity, culture, and religion in Indonesia and the Philippines. I won't get into the "why", that will be for subsequent posts.

I decided to do this post, because Indonesia's importance to the Philippines is understated, and its importance will increase markedly after Indonesia moves its

Strange question, I know... but recently I accepted a gig where I play at a HKBP (Batak Christian Protestant Church) in Central Jakarta and it felt like I was in another world. I have very few Batak friends and sadly I know absolutely nothing about their culture, customs, etiquette, etc.

Reddit, please make me see the light, I don't want to be forever ignorant.

EDIT: I did learn from one of my friends that if you meet a girl/guy you like, but they happen to have the same marga, then it's like dating your own brother/sister no matter how distantly related you are.

Every day, we see threads that talk about why the Philippines is worse than <insert country here>, so let's try something different this time around. To Redditors based overseas, what are some things that the Philippines does better than your host country?

Here's an example: According to some comments on this thread, the Philippines seems to be doing a much better job at promoting gender equality in the workplace, unlike many other countries including the US. While there's still a lot that needs to be improved on, we seem to be on the right track in this regard.

https://sea.mashable.com/life/18900/philippines-bans-child-marriage-but-religious-leaders-argue-against-it

I can’t believe that people have no comprehension and don’t do their research at all. I’m really glad my school taught us martial law history and primary and secondary sources.

This doesn’t even have to be about politics. Most filipinos just lack comprehension. Education is so important my Fucking God.