Commentary: Celebrating independence between pretense and paradox
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| Published on Monday, November 2, 2009 |
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Dr Isaac Newton
What does a morally strong, successfully sustainable, independent country look like?
On the 28th anniversary of Antigua and Barbuda’s independence, we are trapped between broken promises and undetected decay. This situation is made more desperate with deceiving cycles of ‘family themes’ that stop short of suicide.
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| Dr Isaac Newton is an international leadership and change management consultant and political adviser who specialises in government and business relations, and sustainable development projects. Dr Newton works extensively in West Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, and is a graduate of Oakwood College, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia. He has published several books on personal development and written many articles on economics, leadership, political, social, and faith-based issues. |
But when placed along side daily political conditions that purposefully divide, the people’s ideas of building a nation on the principle of family ties, turn into dreadful lies.
This year’s theme, ‘One family: Reliving our national pride,’ begs the question, what exactly constitutes our national pride? Perhaps we prefer catch phrases that mask unpleasant experiences and betray our need to ponder. A more pertinent question: Under what conditions are we reliving national pride?
A great deal of national/regional pride lives in our heads and hearts. Ideas that destroy building the nation/region by putting people first are worthless.
There is little evidence that we have built public libraries, museums, parks and gardens that preserve our intelligence, our history, our sense of community and our aesthetic values.
Shouldn’t independence represent reflections of personal aspirations, cultural expressions and communal priorities and how these connect to development? If this is the case, where are the public intellectuals that nurture, and the media educators who define our national/regional pride?
Each day before independence we find ourselves living in fear. And each day after independence we are afraid to live. This heartrending lamentation continues to put the edge on the anxieties we all feel about the future.
If we are going to stop promoting family talk while behaving like prowling enemies, we must be willing to confront our pretense and expose the paradox in independence.
Pretense
When we should be re-evaluating what it means to be free, most of us are engaged in sterilizing analyses that deny horrific problems, which are thriving amongst us.
For example, there is a false belief that national progress is assured as long as political parties are voted in or out. Too much faith in small-minded party politics and in the personal advantages some derive from it. This has little to do with nation building.
We seem preoccupied by an underdeveloped idea of democracy that lends itself to careful control. This works against the strengthening of our collective spirit.
Sadly, we are at a place where the constant rape --physical, psychological and spiritual-- of our mothers, daughters and wives is a commonplace along with bold crimes and in-your-face robberies.
Technological games and computers gadgets have replaced fruitful relationships obtained through role modeling and mentorship. There is no visible respect for the elderly. Politeness and other social graces are no longer popular.
Education is reduced to collecting information as opposed to nurturing critical minds. If the goal of public education is to create mature citizenry, then teaching the masses to question the status quo and expand their creative horizon is essential.
Consider the Ministry of Health, Sports and Youth Affairs. It continues to confine youth development to sporting activities and health care to treatment of diseases. There is no high mission to chaperone young people into processes where they could dream big and answer a deep sense of vocation. There is no orientation to alternative medicine and wellness practices.
Not surprisingly, we leave our young people alone so that some of them could destroy their lives. In fact, we do not pay enough attention to those who are doing marvelous things. To be terrified by our own children is bad. But to watch them become consumed by anger and force them to perish in houses with no homes is worse.
Not only are our social values and moral ideals on a steep decline, we have forgotten why our fore parents fought so hard for independence. They bequeathed to us a challenge. It is this: “we have a nation to build and a country to mold.”
I wonder; when was the last time we paused to ask, whether where we are going as a people-- translate into going some where significant-- for our generation and the next.
Part of our pretense is that we avoid probing questions. Why do we allow our leaders to display unfounded arrogance and vicious ignorance that is insensitive to the plight of the masses?
Why do we permit ourselves to be manipulated by accepting the IMF’s prescription for widespread suffering as a code word for the public to make sacrifices? Rather than change the past, we are chained by the past.
It is as if we accept our station in life without considering, that we can imagine our island state better off than it is.
Let’s stop the blame game that justifies poor performance. Let’s desist from explaining away our duty to improve the public’s welfare in the language of learnt helplessness.
We need an interdependent minded culture that produces great athletes and outstanding leaders. Great athletic achievements require honed talent and considerable self- discipline. Outstanding leaders make life-enhancing sacrifices on behalf of the people. They must deliver on promises made. They must commit to legacies of honor and generational goodwill.
Paradox
Instead of celebrating a deep sense of national pride and cultural identity--- measured by improved quality of life for all-- we subscribe to happy activities built around mindless thinking.
So much of what we do is bent on protecting our private interests at the expense of the greater good. But in matters of nation building, we only dare to win but never dare to learn from failure.
Instead of being humbled by victories that repeat the same mistakes we once rallied against, we are wary of failures that have the capacity to learn from history. Paradoxically we seem proud to fail.
It must be that we do not have enough national pride to try our hands at anything that require personal risks or communal willingness to die for the truth. Nor do we have enough self belief to empower our own. Our first instinct is to think that a service is great or a product is top-notch, as long as it is imported.
We measure self worth in money. We see happiness as the absence of misery. But self worth is love in action and reaction. It is compassion that at once affirms the self, and at the same time, values the other. Happiness is sadness turned inside out. It is the capacity to deeply and meaningfully commit to compelling social causes.
Our fighting spirit for substance is gone with the wind. Our passion for fair treatment, social justice and equity is like a bridge under water.
Let me illustrate. Just before the elections of 2004, it was admirable to see so many NGOs talking openly against everything that insulted standards of decency.
But today, these groups including some from various religious associations, have gone woefully silent in the face of mounting poverty, political vendetta that targets those that dare to speak out, and rising gender inequities.
Yet we continue to nurse an overall culture that is hostile to Antiguans and Barbudans living abroad save for remittances. Lethally, we are callous to the blind and the disabled. Taking care of the mentally, emotionally and physically challenged is not seen as a civil duty. It is viewed as an ugly inconvenience.
How, then, do we build a people, whose celebration of independence involves much more than defining our problems and solving them or coining empty family talk?
Re-defining independence
Our nation/region has so much vitality that we continue to struggle against every private dysfunction and all public irrationalities that plague our soul.
Given this reality, we could put ourselves in fine spirits. Antigua and Barbuda --like other neighboring islands-- has reasons to be glad. I see signs of a radical imagination--- a collective spirit that transforms defeatism into triumph.
It is a spirit that searches for sound values. Deeply self-critical, it views independence, less as an enthralling dramatization of our failures; and more as a portrait of our potential genius.
National/regional reconciliation must begin somewhere. With energies of self awareness, we must decorate our future with patriotic emblems—selflessness, compassion, a call to corporate duty, values that instill regional interests over square mileage loyalties, an indomitable sense of purpose, and spiritual energies that put our trust in God.
We should not lightly give our trust nor easily withdraw our confidence from safeguarding the Caribbean’s liberty. This liberty is premised on “each endeavoring all achieving.” And, perhaps from day to day, anger and bitterness will be offset by gentleness and warmth.
A rebirth of values equals a living history that must be re-created in every family. But each of us must defend our deepest freedom—of mind, of body, of spirit, of geography and of ecology.
In this context, reliving our national/regional pride is clear and invigorating. For Antigua and Barbuda and other Caribbean islands to remain competitive, we should cultivate strength of character. But we should also create, find, and keep our best talents in every sphere of life. Let’s chisel the good into the great. This is a heritage that every Caribbeaner can proudly embrace and this is what independence is all about. | | | | Reads : 602 | | | |
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