A BOOK is palpable, tangible, printed on paper of varied weights, so durable you can bequeath it to your progeny. My late father, a poet and printer, often told me that words worth reading should see print and those who write must ensure that their words outlast them physically by at least a century.
You can read online erudite articles written by people advocating all kinds of causes meant to save us from global warming, genetically modified food, nuclear war, etc. yet an everlasting media format to store data does not exist. Nothing yet has really exceeded the capacity of a book to preserve information and survive. Besides, there are a lot of bogus postings on the internet.
However, there have been instances when books were destructive like the one entitled Mein Kampf authored by a certain German corporal. More often than not books do impart useful knowledge, and those that do not might end up as door stoppers.
We have a national hero who wrote a ton of essays, letters, journals, poems and published two novels that exposed injustices being committed on indios (like myself). Yet, we are a nation where literacy is declining because our citizens do not read, or is it a vicious circle? In more progressive nations, I see people reading most of the time. In European countries, for example, I have seen young men and women reading erudite magazines and books while basking in the sun in parks, or while waiting on subways or bus stations. In Japan, younger generations seem addicted to manga comics with dialogue encased in cartoon bubbles, at least they are reading. They particularly love reading while standing in crowded bullet trains. In Singapore, most people are seen reading from cellphones or tablets instead of printed material, I sometimes steal a glance on the object of their attention—more often than not they are reading about art, economics, history, and the financial news.
How I wish to see young Filipinos doing the same with their cellphones, instead of texting mindless messages back and forth to friends, or God forbid, falling prey to stalkers, human traffickers and scammers. Worst of all are those who sit around staring into hyperspace, as if meditating on the life cycle of the frog.
Could our lack of economic progress, or our penchant for shooting ourselves in the foot each time we are on the verge of economic recovery be attributed to our disdain for reading? By reading we get information, obtain sufficient discernment to choose the leaders we deserve, to spot political or religious charlatans, to see the lies behind their smiles, scan their intentions and detect the speciousness of their arguments. I am telling you, most of our present crop of politicians would not even dare run for public office if they are faced with a phalanx of thinking voters—a well-read voting population that can distinguish between truth and lies.
I know you have the internet and you can make progress navigating hundreds of reading materials in minutes. The internet does that for you. However, it also has its dangerous pitfalls. I read a magazine article a few months ago which described the Philippines as patient zero when it comes to false news. I also read that one of the ICC judges said that she had never seen such vituperative use of electronic platforms as in the Philippines.
The main problem, of course, is authorship. Fake news articles are bylined, but the names are usually fictitious; in Facebook pictures, they show the authors as Godzilla or Fred Flintstone.
There are times when government publications convey erroneous messages. Years ago, when I was deep in trial practice, I consulted the official website of the Official Gazette. Lawyers consult that website because in order for laws to be effective these must first be published in the Official Gazette; with a few exceptions (e.g. treaties). To my surprise, when I consulted the hard copy edition of the Official Gazette, there was a slight difference between the electronic version and the paper edition. The difference is difficult to spot, but lawyers know that misplaced commas can make a difference; it can mean additional loss or more profit for a corporate client.
I also heard someone say that words read from printed books and hard copies stay longer in the brain than words read electronically. When I made an experiment to prove his words, I found that it made practical sense, at least to me. Maybe it is because our brain relates the cellphones or computer images to what they see on television—something that should be seen and then discarded.
To go back to the subject of this essay. I wrote a book entitled Counting Filipinos. While writing it, I once again burrowed through tons of books and physical documents and tried to analyze the human events that they told. The title of the book was obtained from one of its 21 chapters.
Why Counting Filipinos? It is because the first thing colonizers do once they settle in conquered lands is to count. They count the metes and bounds, miles or kilometers of the territory. They count its structures, the silver or gold still subsisting in its treasury, even the trees in its forests. But, most of all they count its people, subjects of their empire, the souls they will purportedly save to justify their role as occupiers—their future taxpayers, servants, slaves, workers, administrators and soldiers who will help them keep what they have stolen through conquest and turn the subjugated land into a paradise for themselves.
In writing this essay, the author did not use Chat GPT or any form of artificial intelligence that would maim his ability to think.