Ronald Thwaites | Three images embedded in my mind

I carry three images from the holiday period into this new year. The first is the 16-year-old (his small frame looks more like that of a 12-year-old, and his eyes the pain and tiredness of a 60-year-old drunk), one of the throng of windshield-wiping beggars near the Canadian High Commission. He had a ‘bus mout’’ on Christmas Eve. He had gambled his takings with the other boys, lost, got into a fight, now had nothing; and the traffic had thinned. Desperate and hungry, he is a reproach to what Christmas is supposed to be about and a clear national security risk, whether as victim, aggressor or both.

What if the Vale Royal talks were to be about this guy and his hundred thousand likenesses? Consigned to the streets because of deficiencies at home, lost from any school engagement, estranged from the well-meaning but archaic rituals of most churches, equally afraid of gangster and policeman; how can we not afford a programme to save him and ourselves by a renewed and extended Project Hope (remember that?) situated at Camp, at all other military facilities and every youth camp?

Feed him and them, make them literate, discipline them by providing work and the precepts of wholesome values and attitudes. Keep them for a year at least, school them in productivity, personal respect and responsibility, and point them to a future other than the street corner, Horizon Remand Centre or ‘Must Pen’ Cemetery.

Now, there’s a crime plan! And it would cost much less than the almost million and a half dollars we are paying each year to imprison, punish, half-starve, criminalise and otherwise permanently degrade each of these same youth.

SECOND IMAGE

The second image was that of the picture in the newspapers of the 14-year-old mother of the Christmas-born twins with the big ladies smiling over her. Then there was the plenty talk over whether the incident should have been reported or concealed, and if the minister should have been in attendance. But, hold on, where are the parents of that little girl turned ‘force-ripe’ woman? Which father figure taught her to value the beauty and dignity of her young black body? Where is the father of the twins? Should we lock him up for 15 years for a ‘crime’ as societally destructive as drudging a gun?

Should the mother have been encouraged and permitted by law to have killed the twins by aborting them, since they are likely to be less cared for and inconvenient? Just like Herod wanted to do to baby Jesus! And who will provide baby feeding, pampers and emotional support so that (God forbid) these babies don’t end up like my stunted guy hustling by some traffic light? What kind of sexual instruction and orientation did this babymother ever have?

Which state or charitable agency can fill these needs? It’s not easy new year conversation, is it? We seem to chat more about LGBTQ, fashion, show-off and high life than confront the fact that a significant number of Jamaican births are to teenage girls, most unprepared for parenthood.

The year 2023 must be the time to revise the health and family life curriculum in primary and high schools, emphasising not only rights, choices and mechanical devices, but love, responsibility, faithfulness, commitment and self-restraint in intimate relationships. That’s not prudish: that’s the path to happiness and satisfaction.

THIRD IMAGE

So onwards to the big Christmas stage show in St Ann. That’s the third image. This is a well-resourced, very high-profile entertainment (?) event, much anticipated, expensive to attend, and beamed across every electronic platform. Well, apparently there was a fight on stage (spontaneous or pre-choreographed?), and there is the video of an artiste(?) holding up her crotch as if it was going to drop off and repeatedly screaming into the microphone, “Bblood cl**t!,” no doubt in exhilaration at the excitement of violence.

Jamaica to the world! Culture, Babsy? And the children learn. Jesus said that it were better that a millstone be tied around the neck of those who lead the little children astray. But who cares? We’re over that old Bible stuff. Man (woman) free. Bring on the next state of emergency. Remind them that it’s all People’s National Party’s fault. Is them mek people live pon gully bank. What name ‘conscience’? My morals are to do what I feel to do.

Exaggeration? Hardly. Jamaica is bereft of a compelling moral foundation other than individual advancement at whatever careless cost we can get away with. We are debasing liberal principles, equating them with disorder and vulgar selfishness. Whatever else they may say to the contrary, this is as true of the autocratic architects of the corrupt national security state as it is for heartless, misguided youth on the street corner, the edges of the big dance, or at the ‘lying-in’ nine months later.

Let’s make 2023 different in private conduct and public policy. From the dawn of civilisation, which Karen Armstrong describes as the Axial Age, through every world religious and decent philosophical tradition, is the inexorable truth that “if I make my individual self an absolute value, human society … becomes impossible”. Laws and deterrence alone can never be sufficient to effect behavioural change, let alone promote social harmony. We have got our priorities for security, education and expenditure very wrong.

If we want to, the new year can herald consensual policies on youth resocialisation, effective education, promotion of stable family life and economic uplift, starting with land rationalisation and secure tenure. Of course, there needs be much more, but how about starting with these. We see the need, we have the talent, and the money is there. The only thing missing is the united resolve.

Happy New Year!

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