Awakening of the Shallow

I know this is kind of late already but I still want to point my views and reaction to the article we were asked to read in class entitled, "Why we are shallow?" by F Sionil Jose (you can read it here). This blog post is long overdue but I just came around with what I thought of the article.

There were obviously lots of things that were said in the article and most of those things were about how shallow Filipinos are. Overall, I am one with the author when he points out that Filipinos, compared to other nationalities are really shallow when it comes to different fields in life. I may have noticed this specific kind of behavior from the Filipinos before but the word that describes it just dawned upon me. The world "shallow" means of little depth. I'm really obsessed with usage of words and I think the word kinds of reflect what Filipinos really are, of little depth. In Filipino, the word that I think would be equal to shallow is babaw. We often hear phrases like "ang babaw naman ng kaligayahan mo" or "ang babaw mo naman". Well, I think the former phrase is something positive for the Filipinos since it basically means contentment and appreciation in little or not-so significant things although its still connected to what the author of the article wants to point out: Filipinos are mababaw. A minor portion of the population is in the category of intellectually wise and of course, a major part of the population falls into the opposite of it. I don't want to sound like an elitist but I think most of the Filipinos are really shallow. A good example, which was also stated in the article, is the content of the Philippine media. I totally agree with the author when he expressed that there is no quality information, or even entertainment, in the Philippines. When you open the television and watch the nightly news, there is no really good information that you can get from it. When you hear news of some woman stabbed by the husband or some traffic accident in the highway, you ask yourself, what can you get from it? It would probably warn the people about what could happen but I don't see the necessity of such news especially when it takes up much time of the nightly news. How about updating the people on the economic crisis? Everybody is affected by it. Or assessment of proposed laws in the Philippines? I guess the Philippine media is really run by powerful people who just want to have high ratings and earn money. We don't get anything from that kind of news! I especially felt like throwing up when I saw on news about the wedding of this particular politician with another politician slash TV host. I was like, "What, really? Who gives a damn?" This is why we Filipinos continue to be shallow because the media molds us and tells us that this kind of news is really important, which really isn't. I also was overridden by immense emotions when the author talked about the Philippine TV shows not having Palanca award winners writing it. EXACTLY! Why can't we show really good quality TV shows in the Philippines? Instead, what do we have? Rip offs from Hollywood shows. They even remake Korean teleseryes! There are really good writers who can write really good storylines but they are not noticed. If every Filipino can notice what's terribly wrong with their standards now, I think we could see more quality shows on Philippine TV.

I hope we all could understand what the author said: "knowledge is not wisdom". I hope we could all realize that knowledge is different from wisdom and the mere acquisition of information can do little than acquiring wisdom and understanding. I hope all Filipinos, especially the masa, who are easily molded by the media, can break free from the strings that made them puppets by the media businessmen. Lastly, I hope we could all read the article by F Sionil Jose so we could be awakened from our shallowness just like I did.  

GLOBDEV renovation

I would wish to inform readers of this blog that the succeeding posts will be dedicated for my blog entries for my GLOBDEV subject, which I am taking this 3rd term. I'm trying to recycle this blog since it already served its purpose for my EUROCIR subject and I don't want to go into the fuss of creating another blog. I think both subjects are somewhat similar because they tackle global issues in general. I thought that it should be said. I'm kind of enthusiastic with this blog renovation. I can't wait to write blog entries again. This activity is a good exercise for my writing skills and I'm so game right now. I'm just stating this in case you missed my eagerness.

OUT!