By listening to locals and capturing the nuances of the term, Bulloch explains how development as kalamboan is intertwined with local ideals of self, standard of living and civic life.
Onstage, he added, "we all are not only free, but pushed to test our ideals of self, gender expression, and sexuality, even if those tests continue to confirm what we already know".
Masculine ideals of self-reliance, stoicism, sexual promiscuity and dominance over women do not lend themselves to emotional vulnerability.
But inequality taken to extremes can overwhelm conservative ideals of self-reliance, limited government and national unity.
They live in those urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state over the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit.
Where whites find a facile absolution in this argument, black people find a simple solution to the miasma of racism, one rooted in the American ideals of self-reliance and determination.
Thereafter, maintenance of the lines drawn on the map by the British and French has required a level of enforcement and dictatorial rule at odds with the ideals of self-determination and democracy.
Most of them not only smack of Victorian ideals of self-improvement, but are basically activities adults made you do when you were a child so they could get you out of the way for a few hours.
Mirroring The Iliad in a modern setting lets him make the point that the lofty ideals of self-styled "soldiers of destiny" are liable to fizzle out in petty grudges ("bogman score-settling", as Achill puts it).
There is also the question of whether talking to one's senators, much less yelling at them, will make much of a difference anyway, a pessimistic thought on a day celebrating the ideals of self-government.
This is an India that itself was dreaming, wrapped up in Gandhian ideals of self-sufficiency and simplicity, ignoring the tsunami of change that would not strike until the 1991 economic liberalisation.
