tag - a label associated with something for the purpose of identification; "semantic tags were attached in order to identify different meanings of the word" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&defl=en&q=define:TAGS&sa=X&ei=nIOkTPaTC4qsvgPcg_n0DA&ved=0CBIQkAE)
Nick Joaquin, in his disturbingly astonishing “Culture and History”, berated the Filipino’s pitiful culture of rural, small-scale and simple, attributing it, in reference, to the Filipino authors' miserable failure to flourish in the field of theses and treatises, hopelessly limited, and perhaps content, to petty successes in terse poetry and anecdotal prose or short stories. Joaquin's observation may be as accurate as it is searing.
But, in this digital age where the internet reigns supreme, humanity has come full circle, cherishing precisely what Joaquin disdained. The era of scrutiny, disquisition and expansive reasoning to explain the world and its phenomena is past. Today is the era of essentiality and distillatory thought, of deconstruction to find meaning in the world and its phenomena. Intricate concepts and ideas then worth books are now largely compacted and labeled as –isms, not even a sheet's worth in summary; and blogs, for example, to be eye-catching needs be terse, pithy, brief, short and sweet; and its tags inviting.
While Joaquin's tribulation is sober and no small matter, Shakespeare might've snickered, quipping from Hamlet that “brevity is the soul of wit”.
Raul S. Grapilon
Entry No. 15
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