Normalized Hallucination: A Politics of Relations

This paper introduces Tayo Philosophy as a new political theory arising from the diagnosis of a global pathology: the normalized hallucination of Western political thought—stories so often repeated they are mistaken for reality itself. Tracing that arc from Plato to the geopolitical gridlock of 2026, we show how the Philippines—exporting its people, performing democracy while dynasties rule, erasing relation in the West Philippine Sea—is not an exception but a diagnosis. Through these three crises, Tayo emerges as a new political theory because it identifies a new cosmological ground (Sakto), a new political subject (tayo), a new political problem (narrative failure), a new political capacity (hiya as somatic feedback), and a new political practice (Isig-ka-ingon as co-narration). Its concepts are not a system to impose but invitations to recognize what we have always already been: a plurality, a co-narration, a people whose stories constitute the world.