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Responses to the declaration of a state of emergency have predictably been draped in political flags. As usual, everyone knows what should be done, and just as in West Indies cricket, everyone knows where the blame falls.
What continues to be apparent is that it is not politically expedient to heed the pleas of so many to examine and address the roots that have sprouted our strange fruit with blood on their leaves. The solutions and criticisms that are prancing around with that smug smell of self-righteousness, make me wonder what thoughts we are keeping.
As the year turned, I kept coming back to two questions of a fairly personal nature. What is the life you want? What is the country you want?
I was reading Gabrielle Hosein’s profound column, Dreaming of a Better World, whose premise is that hope counters apathy, and it felt like she was exploring the same questions essentially.
Gabi makes the point that some people turn inward and focus on what they consider to directly affect them. It is a declaration we often hear from people who say their only concern is looking after themselves and their families.
This has always been humankind’s prime concern, but there has been a discernible shift from a simultaneous relationship with community. The rise of individualism has kicked aside the concept of belonging to something larger: a society.
We live in an age where the notion of civic-mindedness has lost currency. Have we become a nation of dogs eating dogs?
People remain huddled in their cliques and camps, throwing stones and erecting fortresses. Nothing seems to be worthy of a little thoughtfulness or consideration outside of their needs and desires.
Locked inside self-serving actions, they remain oblivious to the long-term damage their apathy does. It took a lot of small tings going unchecked to get us where we are today.
I return to another of Gabi’s columns, A different playlist for athletes where she complained about the inappropriate music that is played way too loudly at various sporting events.
I live across from the Aranjuez Savannah, a site of several wonderful community activities—football, cricket, jogging, walking, kite-flying, exercise classes—in which adults and children partake. Often, some group holds a sports day, or a family day, and inevitably they transform the precious gathering into a nightmare for residents in proximity to the park.
I can look out through my kitchen window and see that the participants are often younger than teens. It’s primary schools we talking here, and the people playing the music are dishing out track after track of highly sexualised content at decibel levels that have our windows rattling, east, west, north and south of the pavilion in the centre.
Fifa has implemented mandatory safeguarding courses around the globe to better protect children athletes.
Photo: RBNYFL/ 12 Media Productions
These are obviously events dominated by the presence of children. Is there no one present to rebuke that abomination? What value does it add? What thoughts are going through the minds of the people who are supposed to be responsible for the youngsters in their charge?
What kind of goodwill do they think they build from nearby residents?
The fireworks business is an example of the triumph of individualism at its crudest level. Andre Abraham, CEO of the vendors FireOne, had the gall to call for tolerance.
Photo: T&T Newsday
I was glad that Citizens Against Noise Pollution of Trinidad and Tobago gave him the kind of response he deserved. But you see, he can continue selling fireworks because there is no legislation to stop him—and more importantly, people buy them.
There are things that citizens can get actively involved in, but they have to rouse themselves out of apathy. I keep coming back to my belief that there are roles for all of us to play, but we have to see ourselves as part of a community.
The two questions are intertwined. You can’t get to the life you want without seeing how you have to work towards building it as part of creating the country you want.
It’s through the small things that we can shift ourselves from a blubbering mass of hopeless victims to people who belong to a space and show their ownership by caring for it.
We are the ones who litter. We are the ones who clog up our waterways. We are the ones who defile our landscapes, our streets, our parks, our mountains and our valleys.
You think the state should bear the blame for our nastiness? We are the ones who drive like no one else has a right to the roadway.
We tend to think that the worst offenders are alpha males with their egos blaring out of their rides. It ain’t them alone. You ever tried to get by on a street outside a school at pick-up time? It’s a merciless jungle out there.
We complain about inequities with the delivery of services—nothing gets done if you don’t grease some palms. But who’s been doing the greasing?
It is by acquiescence that we have enabled corruption to become a way of life. We can snort and snap at leaders of the pack; blame them for our sorry state, but they are only part of the problem we have created with apathy and refusal to take responsibility for our actions.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
You are asking people to change a culture. Their ingrained ‘programming’ makes that impossible. It takes roughly three generations (to die) for any discernable change, provided, of course, the culture isn’t programmed into each successive generation.
President Bukele of El Salvador showed us how to take back a country from criminals. El Salvador was the murder capital of the world and now it’s safer than Canada. How anybody in Trinidad and Tobago can choose not to follow that example is a mystery. We will blindly follow the US and UK that full of gangs but we won’t follow a fellow latin American and Caribbean country that had a huge success in it’s fight against crime and in it’s Bitcoin strategy.
A great insight into the aspect of the attitude of our citizens which emboldens the idea that there need to be a paradigm shift to the mentality of our adults,for children adapt to whatever is meted out by adults and for significant change to be achieved it must be instilled – planted – in the minds (roots) of the generation that comes.At all levels of society,more so at leadership levels,we must inculcate the art of servant leadership; it is one where we will always be willing to help each other for the benefit of all.
I agree we have been trodding down a very destructive path. The question is how do we correct course or maybe bring about a cultural shift to address/overcome these issues that are besetting this country and its development. Fixing these ills require lots of self-introspection, a united country, sheer effort/hardwork and most of all honesty in recognizing where as individuals/groups etc we are falling short and determining the actions that are needed to effect change. Big task but not impossible, once the will is there.