Thank you for focusing on compassion

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I want to thank The Sunday Gleaner of June 2 for publishing Dennis Minott’s defence of compassion; Curtis Ward’s defence of Jamaican democracy; Sean Major Campbell’s defence of equal rights and human dignity; and Carolyn Cooper’s defence of the rights of children to access their education. As a brawta, it included news of improvements in the quality of cricket being played by the West Indies team.

Most of the great moral leaders, including the Buddha and Jesus, made compassion the main source of all ethical principles, whether at the individual or institutional level. I can remember when this country was a more compassionate place, and had an international reputation for being so. When a society begins losing its compassion, which is the highest of the passions, as I like to quote, it is on its way to losing its soul.

I believe the unbroken survival of Jamaican democracy since 1944 (and I have lived through all of it), and which is a rare thing in the post-colonial world, has been this country’s greatest achievement so far. I found it distressing that in the final years of my teaching career, many of my students were inclined to dismiss this achievement with a wave of their hands. The rising tide of totalitarianism in the world today is one of the biggest threats facing humankind, and small and fragile countries like Jamaica, with democratic traditions, need to strive harder to protect what they have accomplished. As a political adage has it, ‘freedom, once lost, cannot be really regained’.

In a society that has been so cruelly dehumanised in its history, it is hard to think of a more important goal than its greater humanisation.

As a boy who walked six mile daily to and from school, I empathised with the story of the hardships being experienced by children today in getting to school. I was very touched.

I have little doubt that much of all this can also be linked with what is not happening beyond the boundaries of the diminishing cricket fields, as CLR James, cricket’s greatest philosopher, would say. Is better cricket a signal of the coming of better ethics, and more respect for rules and fair play?

EARL MCKENZIE