Time to change our thinking

THE EDITOR, Madam:

TOO MANY of our nation’s institutions are caught in a pre-COVID-19 time bubble that needs bursting, if we are to progress as a people and embrace the changes needed in our thinking and being in the digital age.

We have young people who did not graduate from educational institutions due to continuing past traditions that are no longer relevant nor driven by a sense of participatory history, which would have recorded how they were a part of the creative processes in charting new opportunities.

We have churches whose leadership contradicts its prophetic and discerning role in the realisation of the historical nature of pandemics that signalled changes in religious/theological thinking, the rise and fall of nations, and social upheavals. These groups have cancelled important conferences, conventions, synods, or symposiums, while waiting to return to a world that no longer exists.

Then we have political parties, and in this case, the People’s National Party, cancelling its annual conference due to the pandemic. Where are its techsavvy members in providing the digital platforms to connect to its constituents? Is this the same party that was hoping to lead Jamaica in embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and living in the digital age?

It is time for us to stop living like the metaphorical Jonah in the belly of the whale. Our world has changed and, as Albert Einstein has reminded us, “the world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking”. Those who fail to change their thinking will find themselves irrelevant.

DUDLEY C. MCLEAN II

Our world has changed and, as Albert Einstein has reminded us, “the world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking”.