Ronald Thwaites | About meaning

An alien looking in over Jamaica this holiday season could reasonably describe us as a “ party” nation. People travel across the world and pay huge dollars to enjoy our public festivities. We want the world to rate us as the bashment capital of humanity, don’t we?

There is nothing wrong with a good party. Recreation is an essential part of the good life. Sociability unites us, even without the ganja and other intoxicants which we “drink (ir)responsibly”. But many of us treat partying as the main part, the signature feature giving meaning to our existence. The postponement of Sting caused a long night of mourning, relieved only by the alternatives down the street.

People who have been late for work most days in 2024 and those who chronically claimed to be “bruk”, lined up hours before opening time at the huge Freedom Concert and willingly pawned their granny’s gold teeth at five per cent interest per week to afford the big US dollar money tickets, liquor and fashion.

NEW GODS

Watchnight services, a revered kernel of post-emancipation culture, were half-empty or filled mostly with old people. Jamaican people have clearly chosen their gods. But we’re having a good time; it doesn’t get better than this! Productivity down; bling and bacchanal up.

Some people make money in this season; others lose lots. We wake up to 2025 with a hangover and bills to pay. So what? There is more of the same coming up this week-end. Because otherwise, the void of meaning would be unbearable. We thrive on anaesthesia. It shows, doesn’t it?

Vicktor Frankl, psychologist and holocaust survivor, described our anomie this way. “When humans can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” And, one could add, “with unconsidered cruelty to each other”.

WILFUL DISTRACTION

It’s on the way home from this or that party that we hear that the economy has contracted by more than three per cent during the third quarter and that it is likely that we will slither into recession soon. Blaming everything on Beryl has become a wearisome half-truth prayed by underperformers.

What really happened to ‘5 in 4? Who can forget the superficial, over-confident, not ‘demure’, assertions of the falsetto choir featuring Andrew, Nigel, Aubyn and Hon Lee Chin, chanting that this target was virtually guaranteed if only they remained in charge of everything.

DISILLUSIONMENT

Well, “just look at us now”! What really happened? Don’t we deserve analysis and explanation? UWI social scientists what does your research reveal? Why did this over-sold prospect flop? Who takes responsibility? What is the basis of continuing confidence in the same failed performers? Who has a successor plan? PNP, what are you saying ?

This disappointment linked with ever-rising cost of living and the sense of vulnerability caused by criminals, liberty-taking leaders, rogue security forces and social media frenzy, all combine to cause people’s sense of commitment to country to wobble, to diminish.

If meaning in life is equated to consumption mostly, as our mostly godless recent Christmas experience suggests, then most of us will feel cheated or deprived. Despite, or perhaps because of Trump, the numbers of new year expectant exiles in front of the US Embassy is longer even than late last year.

“No better no deh”, is their unspoken conviction. One night stands and transactional connections do not mature into the willingness to sacrifice required for meaningful lives, sustained relationships, happy homes and communities. Rebuilding trust in our leaders, the conductors of public and private affairs, now severely absent, should be everybody’s prime objective for 2025.

CORRUPTION?

In this regard how the massive money for road repair is spent, demands full transparency. Anger and disillusionment follow the now wide-spread but unconfirmed story that the main contractor and sub-contractor get close to half of the contract value of the $40 plus billion of the money taken from our pockets, with the inadequate remainder being all that is actually devoted to fixing the roads. No wonder the asphalt is so thin and the marl so siltish.

The Prime Minister himself has acknowledged the inability of the National Works Agency to manage the full extent of infrastructure maintenance. Road repair contracts are a well-established cistern for political graft and shoddy work. Especially in an election year with the ruling party on the backfoot, there is imminent danger of a massive rip-off.

DEMANDS

There must be public demand that the details of all contracts, including the allocations to each named entity, be published. The Auditor General, the Integrity Commission, JAMP, NIA and other civil society groups need a united strategy to try to avoid thievery, kickback and waste.

The Public Administration and Appropriations Committee of Parliament ought to sit continuously to monitor such huge, unprecedented and unrepeatable expenditure. That is their entire purpose. But remembering previous cowardly efforts to defang that Committee by government, that will never happen. The public has little reason for optimism that Spark will ignite the fire of proud nationalist achievement.

GAZA?

Isn’t it ironic? While Jamaicans and many foreigners were reveling in the triumphant return of the ‘King of Gaza’ last week; as Christians remembered Herod’s holocaust against male Jewish infants after Jesus was born, the merciless slaughter of journalists, children, woman and innocents in the real Gaza in Palestine, accelerated with furious intensity.

Meanwhile we in the local media, not to mention a compromised administration which condones the routine killing of unconvicted citizens and banishes refugees without due process, remain mesmerized by often foul-mouthed, misogynistic local frippery in preference to expressing outrage at the revengeful murder of human beings, like ourselves.

Again, if we dare to be truthful to our own morals and consciences, our actions and inaction reveal what our values are, which gods we worship and how we view the meaning and purpose of Jamaican life.

Time to wheel and come again!

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com