As we gear up for a year of intense pre-election politicking, we are, it seems, also experiencing an escalation in social and emotional unrest in our nation; and of course the political directorate makes it a point to take full advantage of it.
This silly state of affairs, as a matter of fact, is quite often the making of the directorate by the many divisive and even degrading tactics it uses to gain power. Somehow we seem to believe that cultivating emotional dependency through ignorance and deprivation will liberate our people to a state of responsible citizenship. How absolutely foolhardy!
In the long run this short-sighted approach to nation-building results in a severely dysfunctional society with lots of social, economic and psychological problems. The human spirit was never intended to be enslaved; and so we should expect confrontation, anger, subversive activity and violence after being contained or frustrated over a period of time.
Over the past months we have seen all sorts of unrest and subversive activity. Union after union has been employing one kind of tactic after another to feel powerful. Students have been flexing their muscles to feel powerful in one way or another οΎ– whether through truancy, defiance, graffiti, joining the wrong gangs, fighting, cheating or simply dropping out physically and emotionally. Bonfires of unrest have become our way of life. What happens to children, we wonder, who grow up with a constant diet of hardness, bullying and intimidation? This question crossed our mind after reading a story in the Neighbours Section of the June 4th edition of The Miami Herald.
The story told of a North Miami high school student by the name of Emily Garroway, who was nurtured in a loving, secure home environment. At five years of age she was painfully impacted by the horrors of thousands of dying children and the displacement of millions of families in Sudan, Africa. Her mother, Shan Garroway, explained to her that children like her were being massacred and forced from their homes daily. The sights of starving children with distended bellies so etched an indelible mark on the heart and mind of this five year old that she felt impelled to do something about it as a high schooler. She teamed up with another teen friend, 16-year-old Sammie Higer, the brainchild of Teens For Darfur, recruited six other girlfriends from several high schools and began a movement to raise money and awareness to fight the genocide in this black African country.
As of the writing of the story this small group of young ladies with the support of their parents, teachers and friends had raised some $12,000 through walkathons and various other fundraising events. They had even obtained letters to petition U.S. President George Bush and their local representatives to do something to stop the ethnic slaughter. That is what a group of white Jewish young ladies are doing to alleviate pain, death and destruction in our black mother country.
Here, what are we doing? Instead of trying to cultivate or promote circles of peace in our schools and communities we keep saturating our children with hardness and hate.
We accept abandonment, abuse and brutality of our children and elderly as normal, and expect the result to be a loving, caring society. We expend a great deal of energy and time pursuing wealth and fame, but we never achieve fulfillment. We engross ourselves in social and religious activities, even at the expenses of quality time with our children, and we build edifices to show off to the world, but we seem unable to nurture deep and long lasting human relationships.
This state of affairs can very easily be turned around by following the old adage of charity beginning at home. Many dysfunctional families in some advanced democracies are beginning to rediscover this simple solution. They are slowing down their pursuit of the good life out there, and putting some emphasis on family. Here in the cradle of values, they are making time to have at least one family meal together at home, three to five times a week. As a result they are finding their children are doing better in school and not getting involved in anti-social activities.
Maybe this is a good starting point in our effort to save The Bahamas. Dare we take up the gauntlet to put family first? Maybe lots of our present concerns and challenges would quickly disappear. What do we have to lose? Certainly not more than we have already lost.
By: By Vincent L. Ferguson, The Bahama Journal
