Express ( Trinidad and Tobago )
25 December 2022 ( Page 15 )
The brith we need
THIS Christmas day finds us in the darkest time ever in Trinidad and Tobago with the worst leadership we could have had at a time when we needed the best. They are certainly not the saviours they pretended to be.
They have done nothing to arrest the social decay producing unprecedented levels of murder and crime, domestic violence, child abuse and student hooliganism, among other ills. The economy has been sinking under their fossilised approach, temporarily saved by high energy prices from the invasion of Ukraine. This has not stopped business closures, increasing unemployment, a shrinking middle class, growing poverty and deprivation; with not one single idea in seven years for economic revival. And citizens continue to be cheated by inadequacies in all public institutions-the police, Judiciary, ministries, Government offices, departments and agencies-the rot deep in most. The nation is crying out for deliverance. This Christmas Day, Trinidad and Tobago needs a saviour but will give birth to none.
The society is impoverished intellectually, cultural-ly, socially and politically. It will therefore not produce the revolutionary human spirit that Jesus exemplified, as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela also did, wanting a just and humane society and willing to risk personal life and liberty to achieve it. There is no civilisation in Trinidad and Tobago for the birth and nurturing of a saviour.
Indeed, the mere rudiments of civilised living we attained keep receding. But hiding from reality we engage in make-believe, our favourite delusion being our 'great culture'. But what evolutionary cultural steps have we made in 60 years of independence? Have we nurtured the courage and commitment to fight and die for this country like Ukrainians are doing for theirs against the invading Russian army? Flag and anthem doth not a nation make. That Ukrainian patriotism and love of country have never been nurtured here. We lack the depth of culture for it.
Instead, the height of our 'great culture' is the annual degradation when tens of thousands 'wine' half-naked on the streets, all trivialised, many performing acts close to fornication in public. And we have been promised the 'mother of all carnivals' next year. Alas, we continue to suffocate the birth we need. Four years ago, I wrote of 'a tyranny of shallowness here. Anarchy threatening or not, leaders cater to the very materialism, hedonism and superficiality that crucified Christ on Calvary'.
I am unable to contemplate today's baby in the manger without thinking of the extraordinary human being he became. Four years ago, in 'Come, Resurrection', I said: 'Christ epitomises the triumph of the human spirit. Here was a man of conviction and commitment who asked to be spared the bitter cup but was courageous enough to submit to the cause he served; who, in the face of overwhelming odds, including betrayal, triumphed by the sheer force of his inner power and defeated all, including death by crucifixion, leaving a message that has endured for over two thousand years.'
Has Trinidad and Tobago, always celebrating Christmas and Easter, truly benefited from that message? I have said 'Christ was the revolutionary in action. When the money changers demeaned the temple, he drove them out. He blasted the Pharisees and High Priests, for their hollowness and hypocrisy. He made it clear he came to bring 'not peace, but the sword', the weapon of discernment and conviction that separates wheat from chaff and stirs the courage to tell it like it is, to speak truth to power.' Trinidad and Tobago, do you have the philosophers, visionaries and luminaries to stir the consciousness for speaking truth and saving the nation and the children's future?
Draw from the experience of wider humanity. As I wrote ten years ago, 'The world worsened after the crucifixion. For two
thousand years, we had unspeakable carnage from multitudinous wars from the fall of the Roman Empire to two World Wars. We had plagues, pestilences, horrible natural disasters, poverty, slavery, bondage, the Holocaust, dehumanisation, alienation, tyranny and injustices.
'Not surprisingly, as we approached the 20th century, doubt rose in the Western mind, Nietzsche's idea 'God is dead' taking root, and also Absurdism's view of a random, irrational universe.'
'But,' I continued, 'during those very millennia that culminated in doubt, western civilisation also emerged from early medieval darkness and feudalism to the growth of towns and cities; renaissance of the arts, literature and philosophy; religious reformation and 'the priesthood of all believers'; scientific and industrial revolutions that brought prosperity, physical comforts and longer life; the enlightenment that fuelled the American and French Revolutions; emancipation, decolonisation, and the spread of liberal democracy; globalisation, the information revolution and the world wide web; all creating greater space for more people to discover and express their humanity and shape their society. The indomitable human spirit defied despair, moving civilisation forward.'
That spirit is asleep in Trinidad and Tobago, today. Wake up, people, see the rot that surrounds you, diseasing the country's vision and vitality. You do the worst violence to yourself when you slumber while you sink.
Wake up this Christmas morning-it is you who must summon the birth we need.
Photo: RALPH MARAJ
Trinidad and Tobago, do you have the philosophers, visionaries and luminaries to stir the consciousness for speaking truth and saving the nation and the children's future?