When the ordinary Filipina mother sends her child to school on Monday morning, she has the quiet conviction that three forces will determine the character of this child: The home, the school and the church.
She believes that – if you could measure the impact of these three forces, by vector analysis – you would come out with the character of her child at graduation.
But, right now, there is a force playing upon our children which is stronger than the home, stronger than the school, stronger than the church, stronger than all three put together.
It is media!
Media is the wildest experiment ever unleashed on mortal man, with no foreknowledge of what it would do to us. It is the strongest education force in the world.
The home, the school, and the church teach through intellect and will. The object of the intellect is truth. The school teaches the truth. If you give that truth back in the examination, you pass. . . . . If you do not give it back in the examination, you fail.
The church teaches will power. When you know that a thing is right, you do it because it is right. When you know a thing is wrong, you do not do it, because it is wrong.
Neither the church, nor the school, ever ask you how you feel!
The model is the saint – Lorenzo Ruiz hanging upside down, over a sulfur pit, for three days. He saw what he should do, and he did it. . . . To the housewife, this means: no matter how hard your life is, with your mean, ugly, disagreeable husband - hang on!
The wife looks at Lorenzo Ruiz and thinks: “The sulfur pit was only three days. . . . With me, it will be 30 years. . . . 30 years is harder than three days!”
Media teaches through emotion, through feeling! The battle cry is: “I can feel it!” . . . . “You can not beat the feeling!”. . . . And when you feel it, “Just do it!”
The church and school teach that love is in the will. Media has taken that word and has made it mean: “feeling!” And when love, feeling, takes over – you forget the rules. You forget intellect and will. You live by emotion.
No one in media, or course will admit that he is a teacher. The media man says: “I am not a teacherˆ I’m a producer! I’m in business! My show has a rating of 37! I am making money!
The media woman says: “I am not a teacher! I am a script writer! I am just portraying life as it is! I am giving people what they want to see!”
The young man going into the studio says: “I am not a teacher! I’m a light man!” . . . “My business is sound!”. . . . “I’m a set designer”. . . . “I’m an actor!”
But they are the strongest teaching team on the face of the earth. They are teaching our children that they can live on emotion.
And this is a lie. I challenge you to find me any person, anywhere on this earth, who can live on emotion. The school, the church, and the home are right: we must build our lives on intellect and will. We can not live on feeling.
But media has put its finger on a nerve. It is true that feelings are of tremendous importance.
I knew a doctor who was a paraplegic. He was good looking, competent, and only 42 years old. He poured kerosene all over his house, and burned himself to death, deliberately. He did not do this with intellect and will. He did this because he was depressed! Depression is an emotion. This doctor went to schools for 20 years. He never had a class in emotion.
A wife walks out on her husband. She does not do this because of any lesson she learned from the nuns in the convent school. She does this because she saw her husband with another girl, and she is hurt, ashamed, humiliated, angry, resentful. She walks out in emotion! . . . Yesterday her children had a home. Today the home has dissolved. . . . It is the most terrible thing that could happen to a family. . . . And it did not happen through intellect and will. It happened because of emotion!
I think that we, who are in media, must realize that we are teachers. We are responsible for what we teach. We will have to answer for it, before God, when we die. But being a teacher is the noblest thing in all the world! Others work in stone, or steel. They sell soap. They build automobiles. They grow rice. They work with numbers. . . . The teacher shapes and fashions the mind, the heart, the will. . . . Teaching is a bridge between soul and soul.
We, who are in media, have a job to do. It is this. We must see that the things our Lord said in the gospel are not only true, and good, but beautiful! We must portray this beauty on stage, on the movie screen, over the radio, on television, on the billboards, in the newspapers, everywhere.
We must convince the ordinary Filipino, the man in the street, that when his little daughter, three years old, kisses him goodnight before she goes to bed – the permanent, all-consuming love of this child for her Daddy is infinitely more beautiful than the passing, sensual affection of the querida.
We must teach him that life is a gift, that love is a gift, that loyalty to one woman is the secret of happiness. We must teach him to see in the streets of the city, in the common man, in the ordinary woman – the beauty of God.