Ronald Thwaites | Valuing our lives

The wise elder of Jamaican statecraft, Hon. P. J. Patterson last week pleaded with us to come together to refine the value and meaning of our Jamaican life. What could be more fundamental? Yet, what could be so often unexamined and therefore less-cared? It is supremely worthy of an end-of-year reflection.

MURDER MOST FOUL

Barbara Gayle’s shocking murder, apparently by a fellow citizen who, it is alleged, considered her car more precious than her life, has triggered the soul-searching. This incident is arresting because Barbara was a special and valued soul and also because the suspected motive for her slaughter is so banal. I am reminded of how the killings of Leo Henry and Paul Fitzritson electrified us half a century ago.

MISTRUST AND FEAR

The criminal mind places his or her distorted, self-contemptuous want ahead of the levity of a victim and assaults the basic principles of social life. The starkness of Barbara’s killing is so gross that we scream and mourn. I know people who decided not to send their children to Jamaica last week because of the heightened sense of unease. In our increased vulnerability we hide, reach for our guns and bay for retribution: except that only increases the blood-flow.

By the way, I don’t question the police statistics indicating a significant decrease in violent crime and road deaths. But please don’t think that these figures correlate to improved public confidence. Jamaicans know they are not safe, even in Barbara’s gated community or on the roads and public spaces. Police action alone, even if they gave us reason to trust them more, can never relieve the foreboding of insecurity and lack of purpose in life which most feel.

SOUL-SEARCHING

Sir P. J. urges us to go deeper into the soul-case of our people to revive a fundamental moral principle, which, terrifyingly, many do not share, that every human life has sublime significance; is worthy of unyielding respect and that no matter how many of us are killed by criminals, the police, the hangman or the angry citizen, none of us are safe until Cain’s contagion in us is rooted out.

P. J., who knows us intimately from decades of engagement and service, has been prodding this profound introspection for at least 30 years. He has been scorned, derided and ignored, to our continuing peril, by those of us content to live unconsidered lives or who think that so long as we can find a way to thrive personally, broader social concerns are inconsequential.

MORAL GENETICS

Look at our moral genetics. Slave culture demeaned and commodified life for the majority and indeed for the minority who themselves were debased by the thrall they exercised over their own flesh and blood. Since Emancipation, structures of racial, economic and class stratification continue to define identity, albeit with commendable easing over the last century.

Reverence for each other as equally fashioned in the image and likeness of God is a deep spiritual conviction and praxis which many of us have yet to internalize. Because that demands wrenching, radical changes to how we view and treat one another. Hopefully, a jolting event like the sacrifice of Barbara’s blood will persuade us that “time come” now for deep introspection about the sacredness of Jamaican life.

WEAKENED INSTITUTIONS

Institutions shape culture and affect behaviour patterns. The unnecessary and unhelpful divisiveness of our political culture weakens the pursuit of common good policies. The ardent religious fervour that motivated Sharpe to prefer death to slavery or which led Bogle and Gordon to martyrdom, has unravelled into a weak secularisation. This has not evolved into some rationalist and humanistic enlightenment as some had predicted. Instead it has led to mouth-water religion, the departure of robust ethical influence in schools and a lurch towards an abyss where society empties itself of virtue because foundational principles are not promoted: where self-centredness becomes the norm, altruism is considered optional charity rather than justice and where repression and authoritarianism become reflexive.

Unattended, all that is likely to get worse in 2025 and will deflect from the urgent reform of the public bureaucracy and the health and education sectors.

WHAT WE CAN DO

P. J. Patterson is right. We need a narrative of national moral revival. How about a new year challenge to start with functional family life and early socialisation? Most of the cognitively and emotionally distressed children with whom I interact at school and church come from severely disoriented domestic situations. Chronic poverty and inequality of opportunity are major contributors. Could we unite to promote, as a national behavioural norm, that Jamaican men and women do not conceive a child unless and until they have made a commitment to joint parenting and family life. And suppose we incentivised such conduct by taxation, housing and child care preferment. After all, growing up in a loving, affective family context is the best antidote to disordered adult behaviour.

Then what if we changed our approach to early childhood education to exclusively emphasise human and social competencies; the cultivation of those very values and attitudes which Mr. Patterson encourages and which people like Barbara Gayle lived.

Also, at the risk of crowding an already challenging agenda, could we begin 2025 by being honest with ourselves that the nation is suffering from a serious illiteracy problem which silently, but devastatingly limits and distorts the value of life by sapping moral sensitivity. Old time people used to describe illiteracy as “darkness”. They were correct.

When P. J. and others of us, of all political and social stripes, launched what came to be known as the JAMAL programme in 1974, we thought that illiteracy was an adult problem and that the school system, by then universal, would prevent any escalation. We now know that this is manifestly not so.

CAUSES THAT UNITE

Which of us would fail to unite around these three supremely civic projects – responsible family life, effective early childhood development and the eradication of illiteracy? Even the effort, let alone measured achievement on any of these fronts, would enhance the precious value of Jamaican life.

New Year Blessings!

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com