The loss of shame and the embrace of ignorance
What kind of backward nation has Jamaica become with our misplaced outrage and love of all things degenerate and ignorant?
We barely bat an eye at the passing of some of our greatest educational and musical heroes and there is no national conversation about their impact, but we are easily distracted by silly ghost stories fed to us as political distractions.
Recently, the citizens of West Kingston were more outraged by political graffiti in their community than they were for their own relatives who were killed and disposed of like dogs during the May 2010 incursion. What was more disappointing was the prime minister visiting West Kingston and addressing the graffiti incident as if he doesn’t have more pressing issues to address. We as a nation also felt no embarrassment when countless numbers of desecrated graves were found with many skulls and bones scattered all over the May Pen Cemetery because we know that it happens every single day and we have accepted it.
Why aren’t we angry at the fact that we no longer own what is called our national airlines or the steady sales of Jamaican assets to Trinidadian companies, but we are upset at the Trinidad and Tobago prime minister’s recent comments about the conditions under which they would render aid to their neighbours?
When a PhD holder like Dr Kingsley Ragashanti Stewart finds it more convenient to talk what he does rather than uplift the nation’s mentality, what does that say about the purpose of pursuing higher education or what children should aspire to be? Look at the people we see or hear in the limelight every day. It is definitely not those like Barry Chevannes or Attorney-at- law Howard Hamilton. We glorify the bleached-skin artistes promoting depraved sexual behaviour and wanton violence. We respect the politicians who bicker without shame as to who is more corrupt. We see prominent businessmen being exposed in all manner of criminality not being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Where is discipline, morality or a sense of shame to be found? Not in the parliament, the church, the police station or the schools. All these institutions have become factories for manufacturing corruption, depravity and ignorance.
We ignore positive role models and our educational system is busted at the seams. The decent and hardworking police personnel that do exist are handicapped by inadequate resources and are given very little support by the public. Police are not given credit for the number of crimes solved, but by how many people they have killed. The simple fact is that we don’t value justice or our fellow citizens’ lives. Instead we celebrate death and depravity.
Patrons fighting at a recent event, included in a segment of a popular entertainment show, and Tanto Blacks on a morning television show now constitute “family entertainment”. This shows the lack of judgement on the part of local programme directors as dramas depicting pornographic relationship dominate all relevant art form as entertainment – from DJ music to dancing to stage plays. Whoi! Mix-up, blenda on the public airwaves is a speedy ride into the abyss of illiterate behaviour that some corporate advertisers are only too willing to embrace and sponsor.
Sometimes I think that because we have abandoned the English language and reduced patois to a few words such as “maad”, “sellaff”, “shell dung”, “luu”, “blenda”, it may have reduced our ability to reason in a logical way, hence a possible reason for the increased violence and depravity that we seem to have become accustomed to.
Where are the leaders and teachers of our country? I am sure this was not what Manley and Bustamante had in mind when they were seeking independence for our beautiful country. The fact that we are lost on so many different levels in Jamaica is only too apparent when we look at the upper echelons of both political parties and the mockery that we call a justice system in Jamaica.
If we are going to be angry about anything, we should be angry about the lack of leadership, the ignorance and the culture of depravity that has taken hold of our own country; but how can we be angry if we feel no shame or embarrassment about what we have descended into? Maybe, just maybe, we can start after we get back home from our next cocktail party or dance.
Sherman Escoffery is a music consultant and host of Jamaican MRI (Musical Reasoning Interactive) on E2onair.com in New York, USA.
blazetv@gmail.com