Thu | Mar 28, 2024

Launch crusades to halt cultural degeneracy

Published:Wednesday | July 6, 2022 | 12:05 AM

THE EDITOR, Madam:

As a society, we seem to be on a slope towards anarchy and indecency. It is like going down Spur Tree Hill like a car without brakes.

Recently, I happened to be near a certain high school at dismissal time and observed how the students hurried off the campus like unherded animals into the town. Many of them headed to the bus park, and I noticed that they headed towards the vehicles that had the highest syncopated and rhythmic music. The decibel level in some were deafening, but they jostled to get in those. One of the buses stopped beside the car I was in and believe me, the loud music from that bus literally caused my car to vibrate. Soon, I surmised, we are going to have a society with auditory hallucinations and senses numb to decency.

With the advent of the Internet, teens have easy access to sexually explicit content, gun violence and drugs. There is so much lewd portrayals in the media, and it seems there is no one to bell the cat, because there are not checks and balances.

The vulgarity and playing of dirty lyrics in mini-buses that the children travel in makes me embarrassed. No wonder they could not find an appropriate Festival Song, because most musical creations are gutter music, which today’s youth crave. It is catastrophic that Jamaica could get to such level of degradation. Maybe the minister of culture should roll out a programme that seeks to re-acculturalise the nation.

This type of free speech comes at a high cost. Can we really continue to give airtime to DJs’s freedom to play music laced with profanity and explicit sexuality, even to young teens whose minds should be focused on learning/education? I may be too old-fashioned, or too Christ-centric to believe that the powers that be need to intervene and fix this abhorrent phenomenon. I happen to see some videos demeaning women on social media, and I would have thought that there would be a public outcry from women, but instead, they seem to be the ones enjoying it most. Do we now understand why there is an erosion of discipline in the schools, churches and society? Because children live what they learn. Certainly, the current trends are appalling and not fit for decent consumption. They are degrading to the decent people in our society. Schoolchildren, especially, are at risk.

Well-thinking, civilised Jamaicans along with the Church need to launch a crusade against these negative trends in our society, and lift up the trumpet let it be heard from King’s House to the poorhouse. We just can’t continue this way. If we don’t try to get a foot on the brakes, we may allow Sodom and Gomorrah to look virtuous.

Lets not ever forget the words of Holy Writ: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

BURNETT ROBINSON

blpprob@aol.com