Ethon Lowe | A safe Jamaica: from immaturity to maturity

Jamaica has the highest murder rate in the Caribbean, with 52.5 homicides per 100,000, and is ranked 10th in the world. With this murder rate, it wouldn’t be surprising if Jamaica is also one of the most undisciplined countries in the world: sexual and domestic violence, half-crazed death-defying taxi drivers on the roads, ear-splitting noise (laughingly called music) in our homes from boom boxes at 2 a.m. (I had to call the police), jostling, pushing, breaking lines in public places, obscene language and physical conflicts among students, teachers and parents in schools and showing up late and chronic absenteeism at the workplace.

Is there any hope for Jamaica?

Will Jamaica ever be a safe and civilised country? Perhaps not in my lifetime. Until this country adopts mental, emotional and social maturity, this is highly unlikely. We need to change the mindset of future generations.

As the saying goes “the child is the father of the man” (Wordsworth).

All children, Diderot the French philosopher once observed, are essentially criminal. It is merely our good luck that their physical powers are still too limited to permit them to carry out their destructiveness. I might add that all childish minds are dangerous but particularly when those minds are housed in adult bodies. The undisciplined Jamaican mind is one such and must be confronted and rectified. This should be our goal to set in motion a proper psychological development from immaturity to maturity in the next and future generations.

A human being is born self-centred. He should be encouraged to grow from being self-centred to develop an understanding relationship to others – parents, other adults and older children. He should see himself as one among others, and to ‘do unto others’, as he would have them do to him, sharing beliefs and affection and feel their feelings as his own. It’s called empathy.

No social institution is more fateful to the human race than the home. In a good home, the child matures quickly, developing confidence, skills, affection, responsibility, self-reliance and communicative skills. In a bad home, the child is made to feel unwanted and loses confidence in life. He may be influenced by parents who are emotionally and socially immature. Take the epidemic of fatherless boys. “Absentee fathers” makes it more difficult for boys to build an image of masculine adulthood. Sexual maturity should also be encouraged. The subject of sex is all too often a hush-hush affair, a thing of shame. In a good home, children are less likely to develop the misconception that sex is a dirty, ugly burden to carry.

PSYCHOLOGICAL GROWTH

Schools should take on the task of preparing the young to become mature adults, and the building of minds: inquiring minds rather than receptive minds; critical minds rather than merely passive and credulous minds. Civics should be taught to educate the student about community activities and obligation. Educated people are more enlightened, less racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic and authoritarian. They are more likely to vote, volunteer, express free speech and belong to a civic association.

Jamaica being a Christian country, you would expect religion to play a part in Jamaicans’ psychological growth. Yes, hugely I might add. My Christian friend messaged me thanking God for a successful surgery on her eye. She added “without God we are nothing”. I reminded her to thank the doctor too. Lest we forget. The idea of an omniscient, judging, rewarding and punishing God leads us to think in terms of pleasing God, obeying God’s rules, seeking to gain divine rewards and avoid divine punishments. If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. This seems repugnant to me. Is this how we should live our lives? Why not take control of one’s life using reason, thinking critically and hopefully make the right choices to live a more meaningful and productive life. Religion is especially prone to irrationality, fanaticism and absolutism, all of which are root causes of violence in ways that secular realities are not. I often wonder if religion is a contributory factor for Jamaica’s violence. There is a correlation between religiosity (belief in God, prayers) and homicides, suicides, sexually transmitted disease, abortion and teen pregnancies ( Journal of Religion and Society, 2005), but correlation is not causation.

APPLY KNOWLEDGE

Psychological maturity is the most triumphant way of human fulfilment experienced mainly in the adult years. Children and adolescents cannot experience the mature insight of adulthood. They can only prepare for it. Adults should now embrace maturity, an attempt at self-understanding – the Socratic “know thyself”, an intelligent look at their community, what needs to be done, and looking back on their lives make an appraisal of the ways they had been nurtured and educated.

They should view the good and the bad, the wisdom and the folly of what had been done to them in home, school, college or elsewhere with a new wisdom. They would be in a position to judge how all young lives should properly be brought up and these young lives benefiting from their wisdom, when they reach adulthood will become the parents of tomorrow.

We will never have a perfect world, but there is no limit to the betterment we can attain, if we apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing. Sentient creatures like ourselves, with the power of reason, the benefits to our lives require only the convictions, that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance.

Where there is no maturity, there is no vision. Our obligation is to grow up. This is what may yet be the saving of us.

Dr Ethon Lowe is a medical doctor.ethonlowe@gmail.com