Ronald G. Thwaites | New fire and energies of love

You should have seen him. Eyes gleaming with elation as he screeched past the line of traffic in crowded Papine Square on his motorcycle, the front wheel in the air. “B**bo***! Him skillful eeh”. Then there was an older guy with the gold teeth in the muffler-less car going 100km or more down West Ave in Kingston Gardens, heedless of the little children playing in the road. “Hey, pickney, go inna yu yard. Road is fi cyar-man, no fi play.”

Empowered by their machines, starved egos raging, boasy with the same liberty and freedom of choice as the big man with his billion-dollar boat, while the people he cares for and earns money from go hungry at Christmas, or the privileged and powerful ones who thumb their noses at the lockdown rules or at the vaccine campaign, which really hardly exists.

“Whey Ranny a talk ‘bout restraint? My money, my bike, my cyar, my ooman! Man free to do what im feel like.”

In our pseudo-liberal society where we confuse personal freedom with irresponsibility, exalt charity in place of justice, selfishness instead of the common good; there is a crucial question for 2022. How to we restore respect for order, impose discipline consensually, mentor and coach private – even intimate – conduct without being authoritarian and resorting to the likes of states of emergency and incipient fascism?

Please don’t start by telling me about law, as if its application is what will produce a balanced society. That is a half-truth, at best. Law is a blunt instrument and it does not produce justice for the majority of our people. Laws alone can’t capture the soul of a nation.

So what can? First, I think we need a coherent national ethic to advance. For some, this will have a religious foundation; for others, a humanistic one. Michael, towards the end of his life, spoke about the fundamental principle of equality as being the ethical core of his nationalist philosophy. We clearly do not still believe this. Look around you.

And before you get off: equality does not mean that everyone has the same quantity of goods and services, or that personal liberty is subsumed under the sway of some mob or despot. The polarities of left and right ideologies are passe now. What is immanent, corrupt and unsustainable is the advantage-taking system which we have normalised and which encourages self-indulgence on the roads, in the economy and, not least, in the usage of state resources.

DISTRUST FOR AUTHORITY

All around us, and borne out in the statistics of the more than 400 road fatalities, almost all quite avoidable, we end the year manifestly unable to cope with the increasing nihilism of young people and mounting disrespect and distrust for those in authority. Just check the last voter turnout again for proof.

Can we blame them though? Hardly, when the imbecilic conduct of a member of parliament is pictured last week, live and direct, painting up sidewalks (most probably with public funds) in party colours as if the shade of the pavement can improve his standing. Then things got worse by the addled defence of this pathetic immaturity by a highly placed ‘Honourable’.

The year 2021 has been a most difficult year – perhaps the most spiritually debilitating one since the civil war of 1980. The full extent of pandemic damage, grafted on to pre-2020 anaemic realities, is still unknown and ongoing. Every national institution has been weakened.

To recover, there has to be a change of mood and content in the national discourse. The extremes and harshness of tribalism and classism must go. Idealistic and impossible, you say. Well, what better therapy do you have to propose?

Let us define 2022 values, set goals and targets to find jobs for idle hands, effectively remediate the tragic learning loss, and engage a massive public education campaign in favour of productivity, rather than entitlement and dependence, equity for all instead of gauche consumerism for the few; good humour and tolerance in place of one-upmanship and hypercompetitiveness.

There are so many good examples. Consider Zion Care International. Inspired by the Jamerican Bishop Craig Brown and local people like Orville Johnson, Hon Oliver Jones and Mike Fraser, they will offer free medical and dental services to thousands whose only distress is their poverty. They are able to garner impressive support just by the purity of their purpose and witness.

Celebrate, too, the appointment of Courtenay Rattray, a scion of a family of exemplary public servants, who now is elevated to the epicentre of the United Nations. Think of the example and upbringing, the best of ‘Jamaicanness’, which has prepared him for this role.

BIG 2022 CHALLENGE

Two generations ago, one of the greatest Caribbean economists, William Demas, put our big 2022 challenge this way:

“The critical area in which change is required is in that of values. Only a change of values would hold out hope for a solution of the unemployment problem and for a transformation of agriculture and rural society. Only a change of values would enable the people to accept a revised definition of development itself and reject the Madison Avenue definition of the ‘Good Lif’”. Only a change of values could contain the revolution of rising expectations for material improvement. Only a change of values could give the people the motivation to build from below”.

( The political economy of the English-speaking Caribbean, cited by Robert Thompson, Redemption Song)

The fusion of divinity and humanity in Jesus is the essence of Christmas; the personification of our best selves. He arrives in Jamaica this year, helpless according to the values of the world, but potentially as powerful as ever to inspire anew the fire and energies of love. And his entire life – teaching, dying and rising – can strengthen us to still know that we have the power of renewed and authentic purpose.

A blessed Christmas season to all.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.