Our first National Hero Marcus Garvey said: “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because, whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.”

Andrew Carnegie is noted as one of the pioneers of America’s global industrial dominance. He played a pivotal role in revolutionising the steel industry in the 19th century. Carnegie said the innovations started in his mind.

“I am no longer cursed by poverty because I took possession of my own mind, and that mind has yielded me every material thing I want, and much more than I need. But this power of mind is a universal one; available to the humblest person as it is to the greatest,” he also famously said.

CARNEGIE… I took possession of my own mind, and that mind has yielded me every material thing I want, and much more than I need

If the profundity of Garvey and Carnegie’s statements were understood by a majority of us we would have far fewer problems and be miles ahead of where we are situated socially, economically, and politically, today.

A mind that is in chains is especially susceptible to damaging narratives. These kill human potential and retard societal advance.

Damaging narratives

Early last Sunday I tuned into a local radio station. On it, a preacher waxed warm about the evils of money. Poverty was equated with spiritual purity.

To buttress his flawed thesis the pastor leaned heavily on a popular misquoting of the Bible: “Money is the root of all evil.” How often have we heard this piffle?

1 Timothy 6: 10 says, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

The good book did not say this. In truth, 1 Timothy 6: 10 says, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

For decades many preachers, especially in churches with predominately Black congregations, have been misrepresenting the Bible in this and relatedly damaging ways. The Bible does not vilify the possession of money. But it doe, pour scorn on individuals who allow money to possess them.

The view that the genesis of numerous damaging narratives can be traced to enslavement through to colonialism is supported by abundant scholarship. Post these debilitating periods, many of our own — who should and often do know better — have continued to maim the minds of our people with the nonsense that Christian piety is diametrically opposed to material acquisition.

Tacitly and overtly we have been taught that it is ordained by God for white people to attain material wealth, and that black people were forever to be relegated to the category of “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. This is a wicked distortion.

Ecclesiastes 10: 19 says, “A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.” No race was singled out here.

Preachers who demonise money and promote poverty as being a prerequisite to being a good Christian are not helping in the health and advancement of their congregants. In fact, Jesus tells us to “Occupy till I come.” (Luke 19: 13)

As I understand it, this means we must not sit with hands underneath the jaws like “po’things”, as we say in local parlance. Instead, we need to get up, get out, and honestly and responsibly advance our lives.

Prayer without works

Here is another massively damaging narrative.

How many of us have heard that prayer changes all things for the better. I believe it is true. Individuals, however, need to fulfil a prior work condition first.

What do I mean? It is useless to sit at home and fast and pray for a job if you have not equipped yourself with the necessary skills and competencies. It is purposeless to pray for God to send you a good wife if you are an Ebenezer Scrooge, the cold-hearted miser and protagonist of Charles Dickens’ novel
A Christmas Carol. And it is impractical to reduce the likelihood of developing lifestyle diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes if you live a sedentary lifestyle and binge on unhealthy foods.

SIDNEY… God helps those who help themselves

English political theorist Algernon Sidney famously originated the adage, “God helps those who help themselves.” The Bible supports this position. “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: Shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” (James, 17-18)

For decades, again, mostly in churches with majority black churchgoers, preachers have taught that fervent prayer and fasting are panaceas. But have neglected, sometimes deliberately so, to add that prayers work hand in hand with the required diligent personal investments of time and energy.

In Genesis 3: 19, the Bible is definitive, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

There are no shortcuts to honest and hard work. Recall, in primary and the early years of secondary school many of us were taught Aesop’s fables. Honest work was a recurrent and dominant theme in many of these fables. For example, recall the fable The Hen that Laid the Golden Eggs in which a cottager and his wife had a hen that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the hen must contain a great lump of gold in its inside, and in order to get the gold they killed her. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the hen differed in no respect from their other hens.

Debilitating narrative

Damaging narratives come from high and low places. In recent days, for example, the usual merchants of the garbage which they call music took to the highways and byways of traditional and social media to defend its dissemination.

Salespersons of anything and everything which appeals only to regions below the navel are a sorry lot. They are so ensnared by unenlightened self-interest they do not even realise that they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. We must strenuously resist all attempts by these peddlers of the lowest common denominator. Their campaigns to contaminate all of Jamaica with low ‘voltage-ism’ (my coinage) must not succeed.

Sound logic is not the strong suit of wholesalers and retailers of mind destroyers. Consider this, there is a mountain of credible research findings that pinpoint a direct correlation between music and the way humans feel and act. Yet, like the proverbial ostrich, some among us — for reasons and motivations that are obvious — continue to deliberately bury their heads in the sand regarding that fact.

One does not have to have a degree in logic to realise that since music can make us feel relaxed; influence our buying habits, levels of productivity; improve our mood; lower our blood pressure; and, among other things, influence our perception of the world, it is a common sense deduction that music can do and influence us in negative ways.

Music can influence aggressive thoughts and encourage crime and violence. It is not rocket science, well, maybe except for those among us who are hell-bent on investing in ignorance. Sponsors of this kind of delusion are no different from the purveyors of misinformation and disinformation during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Those who pretend to be blind, dumb, and deaf to the debilitating impact of lyrics that promote murder, mayhem, unfettered immediate gratification, and the belittling of innate human worth, because of personal financial gain, do not mean Jamaica any good. I am no prude.

One does not need to be to see that some things are wrong.

Nowadays, advocates of all forms of relativism, much of it imported from elsewhere, tell us that nothing/no one is absolutely right and nothing/no one is absolutely wrong. These geniuses, often well-credentialed, tell us that because nobody is right or wrong, and nothing is right or wrong, all behaviours are to be tolerated and embraced, even when the majority of a society disagrees. The craziness is real!

Of course, there is right and wrong. Right or wrong is the glue which helps to hold societies together. When that adhesion is removed, in part or whole, the results are invariably catastrophic.

Unrestricted freedoms do not exist in real life. I believe that is why self-respecting societies are governed by the rule of law. Yet, over many years, some among us have been tacitly and overtly advancing a rotten relativism which has helped to significantly undermine especially the social infrastructure of Jamaica. We do not need to do any more studies and/or consult
Google to understand the hugely crippling results of this damaging narrative called relativism. We are living it. Frankenstein is alive.

Crassness is now a full-fledged disease in our music. Violence is celebrated. Objectification of women is glamourised. Smoke emanating from assault weapons, sending the clear message they have just been fired, are now commonplace in what some continue to hold up as art. Gang wars, the defence of turf, ganja smoke rising like a cloud cover, drinking of expensive liquor, and women gyrating in various states of undress have all but eclipses the social agenda that our music used to be famous for.

This is unfashionable, but I agree 100 per cent with the banning of lyrics which glorify death. And I also support 100 per cent with our sister islands that have taken steps to ban music which promote debilitation as normal behaviour.

Countries have a duty to protect their borders not just from physical incursion from external forces, but also from putrid influences that will maim and damage their citizens. We have neglected this critical role for far too long. I believe our music; dancehall in particular, has near lost its mind. And thousands who imbibe it are rapidly losing theirs.

Everybody’s fault

“We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation in which nobody is responsible for what they did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did,” said Thomas Sowell, renowned economist, social philosopher, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Blaming everyone else is one of the most damaging narratives of our times. Personal responsibility is now being labelled as a scornful term. Remember the maxim, “If everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible.” I agree.

So you have a stockpile of unpaid traffic tickets and several warrants but you blame society. Most days you sit on the corner and drink ‘Special’, a highly concentrated alcoholic drink, yet it is someone else’s fault that you can’t get a job to take care of your 10 children with seven different mothers. You have resources to produce but you blame he, she, and the old for your lethargy.

‘Mi nuh business wid politics’

Pericles warned us, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

Those who separate themselves from key decision-making forums which massively help to determine the quality of life for them and their countrymen are living in la-la land. The “mi nuh business wid politics” position, moreso excuse, is another most damaging narrative.

Recently I had a conversation with a lady regarding the reasons she was a chronic non-voter. “The PNP and the JLP are failures,” she exclaimed.

“So why don’t you form a political party and get like-minded people to form the Administration?” I asked.

“I don’t have time for that,” she submitted.

Garvey and Carnegie were right. If we are to realise our potential, our minds have to be emancipated. This is why education transformation is so critical.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, journalist, and a senior advisor to the minister of education and youth. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.