Walang Gulo: Peace and Order/Disorder
Richard Jonathan O. Taduran, Ph.D. | 2 October 2025
It often begins quietly. An employee files a complaint against an abusive boss — someone who bullies subordinates, takes credit for others’ work, or violates company policies. Instead of the superior being held accountable, the complainant finds colleagues pulling away. Conversations turn awkward, management urges everyone to “just move on,” and the offender carries on — sometimes even promoted — while the complainant is isolated and likely to resign. What matters is that the conflict has ended, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
What happens inside a workplace is not so different from what happens outside it. The instinct to avoid conflict runs deep, shaping how we deal with wrongdoing on a larger scale. In the Philippines, we are not accustomed to “law and order.” What we typically hear from government and security officials is “peace and order.” That phrasing helps explain why accountability so often slips through our fingers.
“Peace and Order”
Well before and during martial law, the Marcos administration institutionalized “peace and order” through bodies like the Peace and Order Coordinating Council. Martial law was framed as a remedy for national “disorder,” accompanied by curfews, arrests, censorship, and other controls.
Culturally, kapayapaan means more than the absence of riots or noise; it means the absence of conflict — walang gulo. Jeepneys blare, vendors call out, neighbors sing karaoke — and we still call that peace. Our collectivist values prize pakikisama and harmony, so we smooth things over rather than let disputes drag out. Barangays urge reconciliation, HR asks for quiet settlements, families say forgive and move on. Not because justice has been served — but because gulo is intolerable. It means breaking the peace and going against everyone — nakakahiya.
Biological anthropology helps explain this reflex. Frans de Waal (1990) observed that chimpanzees and bonobos reconcile after aggression through grooming or sharing — adaptive behaviors that preserve group cohesion. Humans extend these mechanisms into rituals, laws, and norms. Our preference for walang gulo reflects this inheritance, but here it often tips into silence even when accountability is necessary.
This also shapes institutions. Law enforcement seeks to restore harmony swiftly, to prevent escalation and get back to normal. The cost is real: people stop seeking accountability because it prolongs conflict. Filing a case, standing firm, or pushing back feels like rocking the boat — often as a one-person army. People know right from wrong, but most would rather whisper than confront.
The Real Disorder
This reflex allows a deeper disorder to thrive quietly. Consider the ongoing flood control scandal — alleged billions lost to anomalous projects. In the PDAF scam of 2013, ghost NGOs siphoned public funds for years; convictions trickled in while many co-accused were freed on technicalities. Or the NBN-ZTE scandal: a whistleblower risked his life to expose irregularities; the deal was cancelled, yet years later key figures were acquitted.
This is the pattern: scandal erupts, headlines dominate, then everything fades into silence. As Garrido (2025) notes, corruption has long been met with “tolerance” — investigations abound, cases are filed, yet prosecutions rarely succeed and high-level officials usually walk free. The public learns that those who speak up are punished while those who keep their heads down survive. Gossip circulates on what “really happened,” but formal accountability is avoided.
In such an environment, whistleblowing is not simply a legal risk — it is a social one. To expose corruption is to disturb the harmony others would rather preserve; the safer choice is silence.
De Waal also shows that peacemaking is costly even in primate societies: third parties who mediate risk retaliation but keep groups intact. In human societies, whistleblowers play that role. But unlike chimpanzees who reconcile with grooming, we must rely on law and institutions. When those fail, silence replaces justice — and what appears to be peace is disorder in disguise.
Corruption and impunity are the real disorders because they hollow out institutions while the surface stays calm. Dark-triad personalities (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) exploit systems, shielded by our preference for peace over confrontation. Manipulation thrives; accountability withers.
The forensic scientist in me sees the irony clearly: by preferring peace and order over confrontation, we create the conditions for the very disorders we fear. The wrongdoers win, again and again.
Disturbing the Peace
Corruption and other high crimes rarely explode in chaos; they happen quietly, behind closed doors, in the absence of open conflict. “Peace” becomes their shield. Real peace, however, is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice — not a fragile calm that hides lawlessness, but a state where accountability is upheld and trust can take root.
As Jordan Peterson (2006) argues, peace is not passive; it lives in the tension between order and chaos and requires courage to confront what is wrong. True peace is forged through engagement, not avoidance.
Justice cannot be achieved without confrontation. Speaking up means disturbing the peace that enables corruption to persist. It means insisting on accountability even if it is nakakahiya. No one is above the law; “law and order” must take precedence over “peace and order.”
We may shy away from conflict, but sometimes it is the only path to what is right. To fight for justice is to challenge the harmony that protects corruption. To disturb the peace is, paradoxically, the only way to make peace real.