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We can’t pretend that this society, our society, has not become ugly and hateful. The place has been practically reduced to internecine warfare, spewing venom-like mud volcanoes.
Try as you might to avert your eyes and focus on the little sparks of decency and beauty that still refuse to be extinguished, you can’t ignore the seething malevolence in the atmosphere. Doesn’t it distress you?
The haunting question is whether the hatred has always existed. Has this contempt surfaced because of the proliferation of platforms that enable a measure of anonymity?
Are people expressing thoughts that had hitherto been festering under brooding silence?
(via Vector.)
It might not be prudent to take online rants as primary evidence of this descent into barbarity. There are still many who hold fast to the concepts of integrity, equity, and a harmonious way of living as the foundations of a homeland that nurtures its occupants. But the very public displays make it hard to hold on to hope.
It appears that there is a retreat into tribalism, noisy enclaves of mealy-mouthed assertions of superiority that thrive on beating down whomever is deemed the other.
In a more optimistic time, I would have reminded people that many of the driving forces emanate from the petty shenanigans of politicians. Don’t let them define you! Don’t let them erase your daily interactions with the people who are facing the same struggles that you are!
Don’t let them belittle the nature of your life! But you know, I reluctantly feel that we are at a point when people embrace their political affiliations so fully that the only rationales that matter come from declaring fealty to gilded gods. Policies and plans play no part.
Photo: Chevaughn Christopher/ CA-images/ Wired868.
Given the nature of this country’s history, the politics reflect racial divisions. People cordon off themselves within ancestral corrals and forget about the intermingling that led us to this present time.
Of course, it is important to respect your heritage. One’s roots invariably shape the trees we become. By all means, we must know our past, but at the same time, we have to honour our present.
Every day, you wake up in a today. Your life is the accumulation of those small steps you take from morning to night.
Do we live those moments without thought for their consequences?
Photo: Ezra Bartholomew.
At the heart of racial contentions lies an often undeclared preoccupation with bloodlines. The whole business of superiority stems from the belief that one bloodline is better than the other. Legends and myths have given us all kinds of fanciful narratives to support that.
Truth be told, if you were to take a close look at your bloodline, up the ancestral chain, across to your living relatives, you would find a range of flawed creatures. Because that is what humans essentially are.
I don’t like using the word “flawed” because it implies we fall short of perfection, and perfection is simply a concept based on our value systems.
To bring it down to specifics, there are thieves, rapists, bullies, murderers, sleazy practitioners of incest, child molesters, men who beat up women because they think it is their right—all manner of villains.
However noble you think your bloodline is, someone in your family falls into these categories, maybe many do. Look around. You know it is true.
So yeah, take pride in where you come from, but don’t let extravagant tales of grandeur fill your head to the exclusion of reality.
Even with the most pristine lineage (whatever that is), the most valuable contribution you can make is reflected in the way you choose to live your life. The decisions you make every day, from morning to night.
Your race, your religion, your ethnicity, your gender; these and other factors shape your outlook. By themselves, they are not the sum of you. It’s your actions that matter.
I figure this is coming across as a preachy bunch of words, and I don’t feel comfortable in the role of a preacherman. But frankly, looking on at the way things are unfolding, I feel an unusual sense of despair for this place I love.
Many have expressed that feeling as well. They no longer recognise their home. Some have been so overwhelmed that it has shut them down. They don’t feel it is worth trying to continue to channel their energies into the upliftment of this, our corner of civilisation.
I am talking here about folks who have been formidable and inspiring presences in my lifetime, people who have contributed enormously to building us something in which we take collective pride.
The twin-island nation is only the second country in the English-speaking Caribbean to qualify in the tournament’s history, after Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz in 1998.
(Copyright AP Photo/ Shirley Bahadur.)
You think we have achieved as much as we have done by recoiling from each other and throwing stones? The accomplishments that trigger the feeling that we belong to something, that remind us of the bond that spawned so many unique creations, did they emerge from spitting out one another?
This is why I am so bewildered by the kind of thinking that is fanning out within our populace. It shows a deep level of trauma within this society.
Everyone is carrying a depressing load of baggage. That much is sadly clear. If we try to excavate the root, we might find it doesn’t originate where we think it does.
Ultimately, where will this ugliness take us? For those who are relentlessly nursing rage, have you even paused to consider the irrevocable damage you’re doing to us all?
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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.
