I’m pleased to share that the
Revised Edition of
Better People, Better Country:
A Psychological Blueprint for a New Philippines
is now available on Amazon!
This revised edition gave me an opportunity to revisit the book, refine several arguments, update references, and clarify some of the ideas at the heart of it.
Better People, Better Country challenges a familiar assumption: that if we want a better country, we simply need to produce better people.
The book takes a different view.
Rather than asking what is wrong with Filipinos, it asks what happens when people encounter particular systems, institutions, incentives, rules, and social environments. It argues that many of the behaviors we readily attribute to character may be better understood by examining the contexts in which those behaviors develop and persist.
This is neither an argument for moralism nor for structuralism. People matter, and structures matter—but neither can be adequately understood in isolation from the contexts in which they interact.
At its heart is a hopeful proposition: we do not have to wait for people to somehow become better before we can build a better country. We can create conditions that make better ways of living and working together more possible.
The Revised Edition is now available in Kindle and paperback editions on Amazon.
— Starfly Chua