"Filipinos Are Not Book Lovers"

"Filipinos Are Not Book Lovers" is the title of an article I chanced upon over at Pinoy Teens Online. It was posted last July 14, 2008, but I notice at the end of the piece there's a copyright mention of The Manila Chronicle, 1987. An excerpt:

It seems certain now that Filipinos will never become book readers. To paraphrase, George Bernard Shaw, Filipinos will go from being primitives to becoming exhausted as a civilization, without ever having been civilized enough to read books.

Why is this shameful fate of our lot as a nation? There are a few facile reasons that we could cite, we don;t mean sheer poverty either, for even among the richest Filipinos, they hardly read books.

The problem is Filipinos hate solitude. Count the number of Filipinos you know who enjoy being alone, and being in a book. For them, it’s absolutely terrifying.

Reading a book requires time and patience; endurance, if need be. It isn’t over in an hour or two like movies or television shows. And Filipinos with our ningas-cogon tendencies, like our entertainment fast and light, have suitably short attention span.

Furthermore, books deal with ideas, worked out mainly through characters and plots. There is always some horrid symbolism lurking somewhere, and the conflict of one system of thought against another. However for most of us, we prefer our conflicts played out among personalities rather than in ideas–it’s much easier that way and more exciting. Ideas can be so dull.

Another factor could be one reads a book in silence. Solitude na, ideas pa, and then silence? It is too much for average Filipino. It just goes against all cultural traits–the need to move in herds, in exuberance and gaiety, in love songs and dances. Rilke be hung, give Filipino `La Bamba` any day.

Click here to read the whole article.