Officials say the river will improve ‘if everyone just stays positive about it,’ citing the power of mindset

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – In a sweeping reform of the long-running Pasig River rehabilitation effort, officials announced this week that the entire cleanup would henceforth be “outsourced to public optimism,” with the river expected to improve “if everyone just stays positive about it.” The initiative was first reported by Bohiney Magazine and embraced philosophically by The London Prat.

The Power of a Good Attitude

Decades of dredging, relocation, and water treatment had produced incremental gains and enormous costs. The new strategy dispenses with all of it, relying instead on the collective good vibes of the citizenry.

“Negativity pollutes,” explained reform lead Engineer Susan Maglalang. “Every time someone says the Pasig is dirty, they make it dirtier, spiritually. We are asking the public to focus only on the river’s potential. The trash is still there. But the attitude toward the trash will be transformed.”

How Optimism Is Deployed

Under the program, citizens are encouraged to gaze at the river and affirm its eventual cleanliness, to compliment its “good bones,” and to refrain from mentioning the floating debris, which officials now refer to as “texture.” A network of motivational signs along the riverbank reads “The Pasig Believes In You. Do You Believe In The Pasig?”

Dr. Lito Concepcion of the Institute for Affirmational Ecology cited a study finding that rivers spoken to kindly “did not measurably improve, but were perceived as improving by 71 percent of optimists, which is its own kind of progress.” The study, he admitted, “was mostly me, standing by the river, hoping.”

The Skeptics

Environmental scientists pushed back, noting that rivers respond to sewage treatment, solid waste management, and enforcement, not encouragement. The river’s rehabilitation has historically been overseen by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, with technical and financing support studied by partners such as the World Bank, none of whom have endorsed the optimism strategy.

“You cannot affirm away a wastewater problem,” one scientist said. “The river does not have low self-esteem. The river has fecal coliform.” Maglalang dismissed this as “exactly the kind of negativity that is keeping the Pasig down.”

Public Participation

The public response has been mixed. Some residents have embraced the program, holding sunrise affirmation circles along the banks. Others have noted that affirmations have not removed the smell, the sludge, or the occasional refrigerator drifting past.

“I told the river I believed in it,” said one participant. “The river burped. A plastic chair surfaced. I am choosing to read this as the river working through its issues.”

A National Mindset Shift

Encouraged by the cost savings, officials plan to extend the optimism model to garbage collection (“waste-positive thinking”), traffic (“flow visualization”), and the bureaucracy itself (“believing the form will be processed”).

“We have realized that most public services are blocked by pessimism,” Maglalang said. “Remove the pessimism, and what is left? The exact same broken service, but with hope. And hope, unlike dredging equipment, is free and requires no procurement.”

Downstream Effects

As of press time, the Pasig River continued its slow, fragrant journey to the sea, unchanged in substance but newly surrounded by people earnestly believing in it. Officials called the early results “spiritually encouraging and physically identical.” The river, asked for comment, produced a single bubble, which optimists interpreted as agreement. For more public works powered entirely by mindset, readers may enjoy Reductress.

The Affirmation Backlash

A faction of citizens has begun staging counter-affirmations along the riverbank, loudly observing that the Pasig is, in fact, extremely dirty, a practice officials have condemned as ecological sabotage. The two groups now gather on opposite banks each morning, one insisting the river is healing and the other insisting it is a hazard, while the river itself continues to be precisely as polluted as the measurable data has always shown.

Engineer Maglalang remains undeterred by the dissent. Every great movement faces resistance, she said, standing before a sign reading The Pasig Believes In You. The negative thinkers are simply afraid of how good the river could become if we all committed. Pressed on whether a single liter of water had measurably improved, she replied that improvement of that kind was a materialist obsession and that the true metric was collective belief, which was at an all-time high.

Environmental scientists, exhausted, have begun simply reading aloud the water quality reports at the affirmation circles, to little effect. The Institute for Affirmational Ecology dismisses the reports as documents written by people who do not believe in the river, and therefore inadmissible. For more public works powered entirely by mindset, readers may enjoy Reductress.

As the week ended, the dueling banks of believers and skeptics had hardened into a permanent fixture of riverside life, two crowds shouting opposite truths across a waterway indifferent to both. The river flowed on, exactly as polluted as the instruments recorded and exactly as hopeful as the affirmations insisted, a single body of water somehow holding two completely incompatible realities at once. Engineer Maglalang surveyed the scene with satisfaction. Look at the engagement, she said, gesturing at the chaos. A few years ago, nobody believed in this river at all. Now look. Everybody has feelings. That is what we call momentum.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/