What cusoms of early Filipinos are still practices at present are they still practical in keeping with modern times?

Our country is often referred to as a melting pot of different cultures. The reason may not be clearly stated but obviously it could be the lack of a certain culture that is free from foreign influences. Is it true that most of the Filipino culture that we acclaim as ours nowadays is mostly borrowed from foreign culture? There are many explanations to this problem. The objective of this paper is to briefly discuss the growth of our culture, cite examples using references on our history and archaeology, and arrive to a conclusion regarding the question of pure Filipino culture.First of all, I would like to define culture and why is it important to us. Culture simply means the beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior shared by a particular group of people. But culture isnt confined in this definition. To other people, it may mean their heritage, arts, folklores, etc. In my opinion, culture cannot be sufficiently defined but its main purpose is to give distinction to groups of people and therefore be passed on to every generation. This is important to us because it gives us our identity as Filipinos just like how our capital names give us our identity as a part of a family. However, culture isnt as simple as a family name. The periodization of our consciousness takes place in this. I have previously mentioned the lack of pure Filipino culture as well as a national culture. These two implies different scenarios but the previous is more serious in my opinion. Pure Filipino culture is a culture that wasnt influenced by any foreign culture at any extent. On the other hand, a national culture is a culture that is shared by all the people in the nation or in the country. The problem on this part is that we have a very diverse culture in which every region has a culture that is not practiced by the whole nation. This signifies our ³bayan´ type of consciousness. I believe that this is due to our vast number of indigenous and etno-linguistic groups. But personally, I dont regard this as a big problem because nowadays we adapt cultures within the nation. For instance, we read epics of the Bagobos, Maranaos, and others as part of the Philippine literature. And besides, the concept of a national culture or a dominant culture was once used by our American colonizers as a divisive strategy on us. The worse scenario is when we borrow the culture of other nations and consider it