Most of us are truly just armchair Filipinos, talking and theorizing about the Philippines - what best to do with it, who should lead, what best language to speak and write in it, how to live in it - as if we’ve seen it thoroughly and enough to utter large proclamations about it. But many of us have not even been outside our own regions enough to warrant such proclamations, and fewer still have even been in the Visayas and Mindanao. Almost no one finds the time to read the history of these places, the same way that no one has the time to read the history of their own towns. And even if they want to, no such histories may exist. We would rather travel abroad, live abroad, than face our own demons. Perhaps, even more importantly, almost no one of us even question the very validity of a concept as disconcerting as the Philippines.