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LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 18 November 2007 Issue

As a branch of knowledge particularly in the field of linguistics, semantics has reference to the study of meaning.

Human expression is unique because communication is effectively done in the form of spoken and written words called language. Other living creatures merely rely on non-verbal expressions, gestures or even instincts which of course are also subsumed as other modes of human expression.

Like the human beings that they serve, languages live, die, move from place to place and change with time. Of these languages, English is perhaps the most dominant, extensive and widely-used globally.

This article attempts to look at the context of the English words home, love, politics, and happiness as they reflect or affect rightly or wrongly the Filipino thought.

A line in a popular song says that a “house is not a home”.  True enough because a home goes beyond the physical structure where people are sheltered. A home indicates ties, kinship or some degree of relationship. Thus, it is unacceptable, if not awkward, to say ‘go (to) house early’ in lieu of ‘go home early’. But when what is involved is severance of ties, the expression ‘get out of the home’ is never used. A house is not a home because they represent different polarities especially in the context of the Filipino culture where a family is deemed as an inviolable social institution.

Filipinos love to love. But many times they simply ‘fall in love’, inadvertently forgetting that there is a better option, to ‘grow in love’. Love is supposedly an affair of both the heart and the mind, for one without the other could be annihilating. The pursuit of love could understandably entail some personal sacrifice, burden or pain. For many Filipinos though, these tragedies define the unwarranted measure whether love is pure and true. But love should evoke a beautiful thought and a wonderful feeling. And perhaps the only way to do it is to make love evolve and develop as bits and pieces of cherished moments until it bears the fruit it rightly deserves. Growing in love requires a serious, conscious and mutual effort to make the relationship work. Falling in love accepts unilateral desperation as a matter of fact. No wonder, there seems to be so much bickering and strained relationships nowadays in Philippine society because Filipinos love to fall in love.

Criticisms in public governance are always viewed as “playing politics”.  Many Filipinos and observes view politics as the root cause of the country’s political, social and economic maladies.  But politics is not an evil.  As a concept, the word could either refer to the social relationship of the governed and those in power, or the study of political structures of the state, or the profession devoted to governance and political affairs, or the opinion the public holds with respect to political questions. Thus, politics intends to bridge and harmonize the gap between the government and the people towards the attainment of state goals and principles. Perhaps, the country needs more politics that it has now for public servants or functionaries to serve their constituency well without being insensitive to public opinion.

Some say that Filipinos are among the happiest people in the world despite the crisis and the difficulties that befall them.  In a sense this could be true because “to be happy” is not really dependent on material possessions or physical conditions. Happiness is a state or condition of mind. An individual could be among the poorest of the poor, or the most uneducated, or even terminally ill and still be happy. Happiness only demands acceptance and contentment at the barest level. Happiness should not be mistaken with pleasure normally represented by the usual trappings of life. The latter is temporary while the former is more or less permanent.

The whole point is for individuals to mean exactly what they think and say in what they do for verbal human expression to serve its purpose.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 6 May 2007 Issue

Edmund Burke, noted British political theorist in the eighteenth century, said: “Three Estates in Parliament; but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth estate more important far than they all.”

On this Burke’s Fourth Estate, British writer and historian, Thomas Carlyle, in his 1841 book On Heroes and Hero Worship further wrote: “It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, — very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority.”

The Fourth Estate refers to the public press, the generic term that adverts to journalists and media organizations obtaining and gathering information for public dissemination.

Historically, public press is not free.

Not long after the invention of the printing press, Pope Alexander VI issued a notice in 1501 that required printers to submit a copy of printed matters to church authorities before publication under pain of fines and excommunication.

In 1534, the English monarchy also issued a royal proclamation that required prepublication licensing, a form of censorship that became more inclined to suppress political criticisms than religious heresy. English poet John Milton opposed and attacked this policy of prior restraint in his 1644 work Areopagitica and called on parliament to suppress offensive publications only after their appearance if necessary. Although it took at least half a century before the licensing and censorship laws were abolished, Milton’s advocacy eventually became the cornerstone of present-day concept of press freedom.

In the United States, the development of press freedom that was later enshrined in its Constitution as the First Amendment is generally attributed to the celebrated seditious libel prosecution of New York journalist, John Peter Zenger, in 1735 for publishing political attacks on William Cosby, then governor of New York. His lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that contrary to established English law, there was no libel in publishing the truth. Zenger was acquitted.

Democracy would lose all its sense without the freedom of the press. To ensure that the press is free means empowering the people to be informed at all times on state and global affairs, to make informed judgment on matters that affect their lives as citizens and as a member of society, to keep government and their political leaders constantly accountable for their actions and performance, and to satisfy their insatiable desire for knowledge and quests for truth.

Whatever argument against press freedom in the context of bad, irresponsible or seditious press to justify prior restraint, censorship or control of mass media is an insult to human intelligence and discernment. No individual or group of individuals can lay exclusive claim or has even the monopoly to dictate what people should or should not know or substitute one’s judgment what should be or should not be expressed.  Every story, every content, every news would always stand and fall based on their merits because man is a rational being.

It is true that mass media is so powerful that it is also a convenient haven for propaganda, lies, fabrications, immorality or undue influence. It is for this reason that unscrupulous persons and institutions would exert every attempt and effort to control it because in the natural scheme of things in a free and vibrant press, they would be marginalized and lose altogether their malicious designs.

The world has yet to see a nation oppressed because of press freedom. But almost always histories of oppression start with the muscling of the Fourth Estate.

Those who are afraid of press freedom actually fear for themselves.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 22 April 2007 Issue

“At the age of 38, I decided to step out of the rat race of New York, join the Peace Corps and board a plane for Manila. This blog is dedicated to my adventures in the Philippines for the next two years. Wish me luck.” This is how Julia Campbell, an American Peace Corps volunteer whose dead body was found several days ago by rescuers in a remote village in Mountain Province, described herself when she started her blog in December 2004.

During the past couple of years, the growth of blogs in cyberspace has been remarkable and phenomenal. 

Leading blog tracker, Technorati, reported that as of March 2007 there are more than 70 million blogs in the blogosphere, a term originally coined jokingly, they say, by American blogger Brad L. Graham in 1999, which has reference to the community of bloggers. Technorati reported that there are at least 1.5 million blog posts each day and approximately 1.4 new blogs are created every second.

For those not in the know, a blog, an abbreviated version of the term “web log”, is an Internet-generated journal where the user may write, edit, and post entries, usually displayed in reverse chronological order, about practically anything from facts to fiction, from news to mere announcements, from commentaries or opinions to personal experiences and share them to the on-line community to view, read, link, or comment on. The term “web log” was coined by American blogger, Jorn Barger in 1997 while the short form “blog” was the idea of a certain Peter Merholz.

Blogs are actually the digital evolution of traditional journals and diaries, where people keep a running account of their personal lives. With the facility and convenience of the Internet to capture different media formats, several types of blogs were also born, like ‘photoblogs’ for photographs, ‘vlog’ for videos, ‘podcasting’ for audios, ‘moblog’ for those generated by mobile devices, ‘splogs’ for that pernicious spam blogs, ‘slogs’ for a slice or section of a regular business website, or a ‘blawgs’ for legal blogs.

From being a mere social network of personal and individual online journals and diaries more than a decade ago, the blogosphere is increasingly re-defining mass media, human interaction and global culture today.

Blogs have the capability of shaping and even influencing public opinions and events. Blogs are easy repository of desired information or even entertainment, in the same vein that they could be the root cause of conflict and antagonism. Some fortunate bloggers earn good money from their blogs through on-line advertisements or by publishing a ‘blook’, the term used for published books based on blogs.
 
It is not difficult to understand why blogs are consistently and aggressively becoming a very popular mode of human expression. There is no other form of public and mass media nowadays that could compete with blogs in terms of facilitating, propagating and pushing the exercise of freedom of speech and expression beyond the limits of costs, regulations and censorship.

Blogs are largely anarchic and generally beyond the ambit of prior restraint and the usual restrictions obtaining in mainstream mass media, although bloggers are certainly not immune from criminal liability or certain legal responsibilities by reason of their posts. Each blogger therefore becomes responsible for his or her acts in cyberspace.

On February 22, 2007, a court in Alexandria convicted an Egyptian blogger for insulting Islam and the Egyptian president on his writings in the Internet.

Former flight attendant Ellen Simonetti of North Carolina was fired by Delta Airlines for inappropriate entries in her blog that documented her personal life and experiences. In 2006, however, she successfully published a book about her blog entitled: “Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: The Queen of Sky Blog”.

Early this month, Malaysian Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin was quoted to have said that bloggers should not be exempt from the same controls as the mainstream media, and accused them of using lies to overthrow government.

Blogging is about human freedom.  And it would be here to stay and further revolutionize human expression.