If you will ask a fifteen year old student if he can tell you more about Mornia online or his latest favorite movie, expect to get full reviews from him. But in the middle of your conversation, if you ask about his favorite Filipino author or who Conrado de Quiros is, don’t expect too much great answers. We Filipinos are merely creatures who can sit in front of the television all day, play online games, watch soap operas, etc. Well, to exactly nail my point, we are not READERS.
Filipino readers are dead. Writers suffer. Fresh creative writing graduates do not have a choice but to forget that they could ever write or publish a best selling book because they have finally understood that they would be killed and that writers must no longer exist. How many publishing companies actually survive the business aside from those that are producing textbooks for grade school and high school students? When you visit a bookstore, you see all that properly arranged books in the shelves from Aristophanes to Genoveva Edrosa Matute, authors with exceptional minds. But you do not see a soul examining the books, browsing the pages, or getting drowned by words. Young minds are somewhat allergic to read academic and imaginative works, they are more in touch with games and other forms of media. Only a few people today can clearly discuss Niccolo Machiavelli’s “the Prince,” understand the creative process of Butch Dalisay or completely give a stand on the world of philosophy citing great philosophers from a book she or he has read. The Philippines is producing merely online players, celebrity fans, shoppers, etc. That’s why I dare not blame the president if we are suffering. Our brain cells are dead, we have stopped reading, and eventually, we have completely stopped thinking.
Newspaper companies have a tight competition with the media. So as their last resort to keep their companies open, they sensationalize their news and commit syntactical errors in their headlines. With such mistake, we face another problem in the development of our English literacy. Out from the fact that newspapers have a great influence in understanding the English language, there is basically a good reason to feel threatened. But only a few have clearly identified the errors, one explanation is that they do not actually read.
Statistically speaking, there is a declining percentage of readers and writers all over the country. They are the readers who could have exercised their intellect by reading other people’s minds in books. They are the writers who could have been given the opportunity to share knowledge and educate the young minds. We have empty stomachs, we have empty brains, and sooner or later, every part of us is empty.
If this fact goes on a few more years from now, then it must be reasonable enough to ban all creative writing courses, journalism, etc in colleges and universities so for the writers to stop being rejected by the public, to finally forget writing and move on. This is an epidemic that is slowly killing the readership in the Philippine scenario.
I am writing to express my deepest sympathy to other writers who once thought that writing is your responsibility of sharing your creative process and how you view and keep viewing the world. We are writers who will soon become another secret society. I am writing to those who refuse to read. May you have mercy on your empty souls and you will soon resurrect the idea of writing and save the deaths of other aspiring writers so for you to become a reader. But I do not expect a reply from you anymore. Like those other writers before me, I am even dead.
Tags: outsource article writing, writers
November 20th, 2008 at 3:15 am
I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! With the new technology and the continous evolution and new development in TV, Radio, mobile technology, online gaming and the massive influence of the WWW(World Wide Web) or commonly known as the internet, people in the world, especially in Pinas would rather surf, chat or play games online than to read a book or even write a sentence (take note! just a sentence not a paragraph) unless its a homework or project in school.
I guess writers wont have a job if there are no readers. My view about journalism in the Philippines, its a lot easier to write nowadays than before and with the internet, it is a lot safer for writers to write. But then again, newspapers can’t compete with the TV, Radio and internet, before they can print the news its already been heard over the radio, watched on TV or already posted over the internet.
It still wont hurt if every kids in our country will be taught to read more, because I remember aside from textbooks, there are no extra books given to elementary students, even high school if ‘Florante’t Laura’, ‘Noli Me Tangere’ and ‘El Filibusterismo’ were not mandatory to read, I dont think we’ll even know they exist. And if only every kids will be given an opportunity to finish college, and learn not to be greedy,our country will be one of the richest country in the world.
I hope now that we have the internet, writers will be encourage to write more. But like I said the bottomline is “If there are no readers, there wont be any writer.”, do you agree?
-e!
November 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
But you do not see a soul examining the books, browsing the pages, or getting drowned by words. — hasty generalization. you may have not seen me examine those books.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:10 am
nice to know that you still read those types of books. Kudos for you.
December 4th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
“Filipino readers are dead.”
I don’t think we’re reading this if we’re dead.
Many claims you have there are quite painful. Not because they strike a core but because most of them are haphazard generalizations.
I won’t put it as “forgetting” for fresh graduates. Giving up the dream of seeing your name (as a writer) in the cover of a book is more likely to happen to “older” graduates. You are right that there are a lot of complications in getting published and readership is just one of them.