Ronald Thwaites | Confusions we live by

Last week, we lamented the low trust levels between persons and institutions as recorded by the Inter-American Development Bank. Nobody in power or influence has so far expressed any anxiety over the cancerous revelations of this study. Dem ketch ‘fraid!

Clear and consistent thought and speech, modelling truth and compassion, all help to build trust. Leachim Semaj put it well last week in a conversation on ‘Public Eye’: Trust takes long to build, can be broken in a second, and takes centuries to build back.

Consider some of the confusions we indulge and which undermine trust.

Last week’s concern was expressed about the dangers of gambling addiction in Jamaica. But check the regular media advertisements on every possible platform encouraging easy winnings. They very seductively target people, mainly in weak economic circumstances, so as to create a mentality of desperate risk-taking.

On top of that, there is a large tax take from the wagerings of the very people who should be discouraged from any gaming at all. To hell with productivity and prudence. And most of us think that’s quite OK, and is to be defended as a great exercise of freedom!

Then, we say we want to suppress deadly and expensive, non-communicable diseases, while taking years to regulate the tobacco companies; still relying on them for plenty revenue and allowing these purveyors of disease and death to promote themselves as worthy philanthropists. We tolerate the addiction once more as a sublime act of personal autonomy.

WILFUL OPPORTUNISM

This is wilful opportunism again. Freedom cannot mean that I am at liberty to destroy myself, infect bystanders, and then charge my health bill to everyone else. This is exactly what we are doing right now.

Want more instances of the confusions we live with? Think of the very well-meaning road safety campaign. We do this at the same time as we condone rampant corruption in the buying of driving permits. Where is the logic? Where is the corrective action? The only thing consistent is the spurting of human blood on our roadways.

The most tragic one for me is the welcome and absolutely necessary advocacy for reconstructed family life in the nation while the whole bent of popular culture tilts in favour of promiscuity. After all, man and woman free, is the irresistible rallying cry.

Last week, too, there was this fruitless argument about penalising parents for their children’s absence from school. This is sheer diversion when the truancy provisions of the Education Act have not been invoked which, if applied, would utilise other measures to enjoin better attendance, without criminalising all but the most recalcitrant cases. We have a reflex recourse to coercion and punishment (the consequence of low trust levels), while ignoring fundamental causes.

When you trust and respect someone, you tend not to caricature their positions and think you have succeeded gloriously in refuting them. Take the media reports of Dr Chang in Parliament last week erecting and demolishing a straw man of contradiction between social restoration and strong policing.

Who is it that has ever suggested that “counselling and five grand” can dissuade the successful scammer? There can be no objection to strong policing within the law for such brigandage. The scandal is that we very seldom catch the big fish. Their firearms are always legal. That guy is never going to get a minimum mandatory sentence.

Who needs restoring, Dr Chang, are the 3,000 or so ‘fryers’ scraped up in any typical state of emergency. They are seldom charged, often beaten and held until they tell “whey di gun deh”. This is the 21st-century equivalent of the ‘indefinite detention’, which you rightly opposed fifty years ago but would now wrongly impose. Lives collapsed, laden with resentfulness from their experience, these youth, just as Mr Seaga said, sulk until the next encounter with what poses as justice.

Gordon House will soon confirm this latest instance of self-confusion.

I was assigned by my religious denomination to participate in the church service scheduled for yesterday, but postponed without reason given, to celebrate Queen Elizabeth of Jamaica’s long rule over us.

We never stop confusing ourselves, do we? When do we begin to “move on” as the prime minister, purposely vaguely, I believe, assured Mr William Mountbatten would happen? I admire what I have learned about Missis Queen and will happily pray for her good health. But I reject the confusion of recognising her as Queen of Jamaica in this our 60th year of Independence. And I cannot bring myself to sing “long may she reign over us” any more.

Let us clear up this fuzzy notion of ‘soft empire’ associated with our Commonwealth connection. What is in it for Jamaica that normal bilateral relations do not offer? And what are the costs. Independence does not mean going it alone, but it does mean separating ourselves from the petticoats of a largely oppressive and extractive relationship which has never been fully acknowledged or redressed.

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