There is a tree.
Someone may find it beautiful. Another may complain that its roots are breaking the pavement. A child sees something to climb. Someone else knows only that birds gather there in the afternoon. We can disagree about all these things.
But before we can disagree about the tree, there must first be a tree.
The physical world gives us this luxury. We can walk toward it, touch the bark, stand beneath its branches. Reality can correct us. Most of what we know, however, does not stand within reach. Someone tells me there is another tree beyond the hill. I cannot see it. Now something stands between myself and reality: another person.
We did not witness most of history or personally verify most of what we know. So we developed ways of reaching things we could not see: witnesses, records, newspapers, courts, archives, auditors. None guaranteed truth. Newspapers have been wrong. Governments have lied. Experts have made mistakes. But skepticism was part of the mechanism. Another journalist checked the story. Another scientist repeated the experiment. An auditor examined the records. The institutions were imperfect. There remained some agreement about how claims could be tested.
I caught myself forgetting this recently. I encountered a claim that confirmed something I already suspected. It sounded plausible, and soon I saw it repeated elsewhere.
Then something did not quite fit.
I looked again. One source quoted another. Following the trail brought me almost back to where I had begun. Several apparent confirmations were variations of the same assertion. What bothered me was how easily I had almost accepted it.
I wanted it to be true.
Had the claim contradicted something I believed, I suspect I would have examined it more carefully. We do not always distribute our skepticism evenly. We scrutinize most carefully the things we do not want to believe. The things we already believe sometimes enter almost unnoticed.
A claim appears online and is repeated ten times. Ten repetitions begin to feel like ten sources, even when all descend from one assertion nobody verified. The algorithm need not lie. It only needs to learn what keeps us looking.
And the tree beyond the hill becomes harder to see.
Someone says it has been cut down. A photograph shows it standing. Someone says the photograph is old. A video shows an empty field. Someone says the video was manipulated.
AI makes fabrication easier. But it did not create our willingness to believe convenient things. It merely gave an old temptation better tools.
The tree itself has not become less real. What has become more fragile are the pathways by which we determine whether it is there. Perhaps our most important defense begins inside the person.
When I nearly accepted something because it agreed with me, I hesitated. I looked again. I allowed for the possibility that something I wanted to believe might not be true. Humility says something harder than skepticism:
I can be wrong.
And because I can be wrong, reality must be allowed to correct me.
A democracy does not require its citizens to agree. Filipinos can disagree passionately about governments, history, foreign policy, faith and culture. But disagreement presupposes something. Some facts must remain capable of surviving our preferences. Otherwise we are no longer arguing about what should be done about the tree. We are arguing about whether there was ever a tree at all.
The deeper danger is a citizenry losing its shared means of determining what is real. A claim we dislike should withstand scrutiny. So should a claim we want to believe.
The standard cannot depend upon the answer we hope to receive.
Much of what binds a people together is easier to see: memory, language, responsibility, belonging, hope. But something quieter precedes them.
Reality.
By evening, the light around the tree has changed. Someone still finds it beautiful. Someone wants it removed. Another sees roots damaging the pavement.
We do not have to agree about what the tree means.
We have to remain capable of seeing that it is there.
A nation does not require its people to see everything in the same way.
But before we can decide together where we are going, we must still be able to see together where we are standing.
