Where is the good purpose?
WHAT IS the purpose of human life and human society anyway? Is it whatever suits your interests or pleasures me? Does it matter if I choose to live from one titivation to the next until capacity, money or breath run out? Is the principle of mutual obligation a concept to be downplayed or completely avoided in this age?
Current events force the question. Last week, the Israeli prime minister, captive of nativism and the justifiably morbid fear of holocaust, made his purpose explicit. There is to be no place for Palestinians in Palestine. No two states. No autonomy. Because it is in our interest to be so, he said. Migrate from your ancestral land or die, is the advice to the descendants of Ishmael. Israel might determine Palestinian right. Terrible wrong has been done to innocent people in Israel. Their response is to do it back to their aggressors with greater force. It’s the same here.
Human history rhymes? So it was in the beginning (read the Old Testament) is now (check the theatres of war here and elsewhere) and ever shall be?
Deep in the human psyche and history is the lazy conviction that the way to stop violent tendencies is to apply superior violence. It is very pervasive. Last week, Delroy Chuck, who surely knows better, and the clinician Horace Chang, who ought to know about underlying causes, while piloting law prescribing drastic penalties for drastic crimes, raised up false arguments of deterrence mingled conveniently with the impulse of revenge, offspring of hatred. Is this the best we can do?
And the public, wild with fear, so our leaders hope, will applaud indiscriminate toughness and ignore the truth that official, statesponsored violence creates the atmosphere for violent behaviour throughout the society; on the streets where the police are among the most violent and in the homes and bedrooms where Andrew Holness, commendably but fruitlessly, would want a law to outlaw corporal punishment and spousal conflict. That’s Jamaica.
In slave society, at Green Bay, Crawle, remember the Agana Barretts, in police guardrooms and as promoted by the likes of Robert Montague and the Observer cartoonist. Is so we stay.
None of this need be so if we were better schooled to believe that life’s purpose and society’s primary objective is the flourishing of all in a climate of mutual respect and devotion to common causes. Our schools, our media, our economy and our systems of governance would be radically different. They can be. It’s affordable and economical too. As usual, they are having the wrong debate in Parliament.
SEMI-USELESS ELECTION
Consider next the semi-useless local government election campaign which the worried minister of finance warns should not be the occasion to fritter away too much money. It’s semi-useless because little or nothing is being credibly advanced to improve basic services by the municipalities. Instead the main purpose is to use the poll to gauge the political temperature in preparation for the general election.
Take the state of the markets. Andrew and Desmond are travelling everywhere and encountering the wrath of vendors complaining of decrepit infrastructure. Do you think Crab Circle was bad? Garbage is inadequately collected everywhere and obtaining street lights is to be considered the height of a councillor’s eight-year term. Everything that should have been routinely delivered is being brazenly promised again. Of course, when the particular parish municipal authority is People’s National Party controlled, they are the ones to be blamed.Who else?
A CONTEST WITHOUT PURPOSE
It becomes clear what we should have known already, that local authorities have no autonomy. There is no evidence that people fare better at the municipal level if one or the other party wears the mayor’s necklace.
Not even lip service is paid to the principle of subsidiarity – an essential foundation of caring democratic governance. I predict that nuff money will have to run in the next few weeks to ensure even a half-decent voter turnout. Our taxation dollar, forcibly taken from all of us, is going to be shelled out to some of us to bribe us to participate in an electoral process which most of us know will have very little if any positive effect on our lives. And the candidates with access to the most money will prevail. Guess who!
PURPOSE OF PUNISHMENT
It costs upwards of $2 million a year to keep a prisoner in the squalid conditions of a Jamaican prison or lock-up. So when a sentence of fifty years is imposed, the taxpayer is undertaking an investment in retribution and destruction of $100 million and climbing. The Gleaner’s leader last Saturday wonders what about hard labour. It doesn’t happen. Rehabilitation which has to be a major objective of incarceration if we believe that all human life, even the most tainted, has a purpose and destiny, cannot be achieved when prisoners are underfed, locked down for most of the hours of the day, have nothing useful to do and have no prospects for their future. That is what we are paying big bucks to do now. Makes sense?
WHAT DO WE SPEND ON?
The Jamaican dissidents demonstrating in Miami are right in their assertion that citizens really don’t know how their tax dollar is spent by the few who sit in cabinet and the ministries. Check the budget review process about to happen again next month and observe that not even the elected representatives exhibit much care.
In the event, the citizen’s inevitable preoccupation becomes trying to avoid contributing to the common good through taxation while demanding or seizing as much advantage for themselves as possible. Our official processes contribute to the scamming mentality.
This is the season for promises. It should be a time for accountability and realistic prospects. The government wants to present a feelgood budget before the elections. But who will believe them?
This nation has tremendous potential for greatness and individual satisfaction if we turn our hearts and wits towards mutual obligation and the common good: declare a season for practical solutions especially for the underserved in our midst.
That would really signal a new beginning of good purpose!