Give Them Work To Do
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
When I was a little boy attending primary school, I was quiet and rotund and called all sorts of names. I was an easy target for the bullies, until I engaged the superhuman strength of one of my female cousins. Just the mention of her name and that she was from Cedar Grove would send them packing. The sequence of insult, damage or punishment followed by my call and her response, was so remarkably efficient, effective and Pavlovian, I wondered if I had deliberately and gratifyingly provoked them.
One of the bullies and his Gordian knot of infidels would assault poor, little, innocent me, after I had nervously removed from my own anatomical shoulder, a blade of grass he had harvested from nature, transplanted and called his cultivated own. He might box me and I would display a pensive (and expensive) countenance; and then bawl out for my cousin. It was early training at thinking outside of the box.
Some people just love to fight. They fight when they are right. They fight when they are wrong. They fight all day and fight all night long. Some people just love to jump over fences. They will scale high walls with a garland of barbed wire to enter a free function. And, on discovering the function was free, they will bellow mouthfuls of expletives and gracefully exit the very same way they came in.
Someone has to tell some members of our tribe that the old revolution is over. It was televised. A new revolution is on. But they know this. They also know and believe that, based on all the fighting (and jumping fences) they have done historically, they are the only ones who can run things. Or, can it be that the clamour, the chatter and clatter, and promises, if provoked, to batter and shatter, are mere symptoms arising from and disguising the essential heart of the matter?
A revolution is said to be a large change in a short time. Our independent nation, twenty-nine years old, needs another revolution. Call some members of our tribe what you like. Subtract whatever, whichever and whomever from their past leader. And subtraction and division are in order but you know how they are afraid now of mathematics. They will still have a past to reckon with and a future to fight for.
Warriors do die but they die very badly from inaction. Atrophy sets in and gnaws their lives away. Look at the elderly cast aside with nothing to do but think. Thoughts without deeds are like ploughs without fields. Their arthritic hands and feet disappear and they soon go tumbling after.
When the cry goes out for nation building and nation building stands still, it is not because people are not nation builders. We have to understand this very clearly lest we spend stone-heaps of time firing at a target that does not exist. We are all nation builders but we want to build the nation the way we see it. And the way we see it is uniquely different from the views of others, if views they have at all.
We know the answer to our problems. When we had a problem with the snake, we brought in the mongoose. After the snake died, the poor mongoose, with nothing to do, started to feed on the chickens. Pity they did not have a mongoose to eat the first snake, or wish that Adam had been smart enough, and not a vegetarian, to refuse the apple and barbecue the snake instead.
I remember the May 68 protests in France. Two of the graffiti from that era that bear recalling are: “Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking” and “The future will only contain what we put into it now.” Can we imagine what we have to do to shape a prosperous future for Antigua and Barbuda? Let us assume that the others members of our tribe are found guilty of whatever they are accused, and more even. What does it gain Antigua and Barbuda to go through these bruising battles in court after court and end up with national concussion at best or Alzheimer’s at worst? If we can do mathematics inside the court now, surely we can do the same mathematics outside the court and use subtraction to save long division.
In war and in politics, strategy is vital. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected. Before the days of adequate and affordable security I used to contemplate my response to a burglar breaking into our home; through a window perhaps. Might I express sincere gratitude to him for proving right my suspicions about the vagrant window and solicit his able assistance, at a negotiable price of course, in finding the notorious carpenter (probably his friend) who had done such a terrible job installing the windows?
The local political battle is hot and sticky. The country is tired and weary. Combatants are approaching that point when, if provoked, they warn, they will hawk and spit in the beverage for no one to drink. A large change is required in a short time: A revolution. You know their strategy, so calling their bluff will be too easy for your right and might. No. That is not a revolution. That is simply going round and round and round.
Drop your weapons and leave them with theirs. It is not a sign of weakness. It is the maximum strength and the moral high ground of which you boast that force you to compel them to do the same. Throw down the gauntlet of peace and reconciliation and force them to take it up. Give them work to do. Give them really hard work to do.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
ALL TOGETHER NOW
The Enigma of Independence
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I should be ashamed to report that some years ago I asked another West Indian national if we could exchange nationalities. The negative response was not because my friend declined to accept my nationality. It was arguably that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. We are all the same, one West Indian people with similar cultures, politics and problems. I beg to differ.
Can it be the wrong premise that to become a West Indian and embrace a West Indian nationality I have to first become and express my island nationality? As a musician, I am aware that I have to be able to express myself well on my individual instrument before I can join, understand and really enjoy the collective sound of an orchestra.
What then do I do when I find myself in need of West Indian nationality whilst I am trying to find and come to terms with my island nationality? How can I be part of an orchestra when I, like many of the other players, am still learning my basic craft? This is where many of us find ourselves on the twenty ninth anniversary of our independence. As we write and re-write our political and cultural narratives we are arguably the most assorted West Indian nation per square mile.
The struggle for nationality and its expression post-independence is being pitched against the expressions and livelihoods of the masses of West Indians and other nationalities in Antigua and Barbuda. It’s a very delicate battle that can be lost easily on both fronts. And like all battles, strategy is essential for victory.
We are upset over the way many of our guest Caribbean nationals were shuttled and chaperoned here to alter the political landscape. Ironically, many of our politicians have little regard for and pay scant regard to them, except for their voting fingers. We argue a strange logic that says essentially that we can be bribed at elections but they shouldn’t. This is probably a corrugated corollary of the warped philosophy that some parents can beat their children (almost to death) but that these same parents should not even raise their voices at strangers.
Our guest Caribbean nationals are already here, regardless of how and why some of them bang water to come here. In life and in dominoes, you have to play the hand you have. After a while, when you will have exercised and exorcised your point, you have to, as the English say, “get on with it”.
In getting on with it, we have to escape the paradox trap set for us. We cannot afford to decry and debase our guest Caribbean nationals in order to praise and purify our nationalism. If we do, we will end up losing the soul of the very nationalism we seek to find, declare and display. And then we will end up like those who set the trap in the first place; indeed worse. The plotters will laugh and point with giddiness and say, “See, they don’t love Caribbean people. They don’t even love their own selves”.
Good strategy and tolerance in a democratic state inform us that we should contend with ultra-nationalists who blindly see nothing and no one else. We will also have among us our native, Caribbean nationalists who by dint of travel, family, thought or otherwise will tell you that they have long gone beyond island nationalism, to the greater, more laudable, aesthetically enriching and economically rewarding Caribbean nationalism. But what of those, like swing voters, caught between two extremes, in two minds or with no mind on the matter at all?
National identity (and indeed West Indian nationality) begins in the mind and becomes culture when the expressions of the mind lead us to create, modify and inhabit the world around us. If this identity is perceived to be under threat, nationals will rally around it. Many Antiguans and Barbudans fear that we will end up last and lost as we redefine ourselves as the greatest assortment of Caribbean nationals in the smallest place. But rallying around the West Indies will force us to more clearly identify and crystallise who and what we really are. Maybe in doing so we will disabuse ourselves and others of idealistic notions of nationalisms, island and West Indian.
In the orchestra, steelband or other, there is constant dissonance and consonance (musically and otherwise) to remove inertia and give momentum to the music. It is within the orchestra that the true musician really begins to find and harness that individual voice. You are forced to listen to all others as well as your insular instrument, at the same time. This dialectic gives birth, with all its pangs and damns, to the epiphany that you can only find yourself in others. Independence becomes meaningful only when you selflessly accept this enigma.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I should be ashamed to report that some years ago I asked another West Indian national if we could exchange nationalities. The negative response was not because my friend declined to accept my nationality. It was arguably that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. We are all the same, one West Indian people with similar cultures, politics and problems. I beg to differ.
Can it be the wrong premise that to become a West Indian and embrace a West Indian nationality I have to first become and express my island nationality? As a musician, I am aware that I have to be able to express myself well on my individual instrument before I can join, understand and really enjoy the collective sound of an orchestra.
What then do I do when I find myself in need of West Indian nationality whilst I am trying to find and come to terms with my island nationality? How can I be part of an orchestra when I, like many of the other players, am still learning my basic craft? This is where many of us find ourselves on the twenty ninth anniversary of our independence. As we write and re-write our political and cultural narratives we are arguably the most assorted West Indian nation per square mile.
The struggle for nationality and its expression post-independence is being pitched against the expressions and livelihoods of the masses of West Indians and other nationalities in Antigua and Barbuda. It’s a very delicate battle that can be lost easily on both fronts. And like all battles, strategy is essential for victory.
We are upset over the way many of our guest Caribbean nationals were shuttled and chaperoned here to alter the political landscape. Ironically, many of our politicians have little regard for and pay scant regard to them, except for their voting fingers. We argue a strange logic that says essentially that we can be bribed at elections but they shouldn’t. This is probably a corrugated corollary of the warped philosophy that some parents can beat their children (almost to death) but that these same parents should not even raise their voices at strangers.
Our guest Caribbean nationals are already here, regardless of how and why some of them bang water to come here. In life and in dominoes, you have to play the hand you have. After a while, when you will have exercised and exorcised your point, you have to, as the English say, “get on with it”.
In getting on with it, we have to escape the paradox trap set for us. We cannot afford to decry and debase our guest Caribbean nationals in order to praise and purify our nationalism. If we do, we will end up losing the soul of the very nationalism we seek to find, declare and display. And then we will end up like those who set the trap in the first place; indeed worse. The plotters will laugh and point with giddiness and say, “See, they don’t love Caribbean people. They don’t even love their own selves”.
Good strategy and tolerance in a democratic state inform us that we should contend with ultra-nationalists who blindly see nothing and no one else. We will also have among us our native, Caribbean nationalists who by dint of travel, family, thought or otherwise will tell you that they have long gone beyond island nationalism, to the greater, more laudable, aesthetically enriching and economically rewarding Caribbean nationalism. But what of those, like swing voters, caught between two extremes, in two minds or with no mind on the matter at all?
National identity (and indeed West Indian nationality) begins in the mind and becomes culture when the expressions of the mind lead us to create, modify and inhabit the world around us. If this identity is perceived to be under threat, nationals will rally around it. Many Antiguans and Barbudans fear that we will end up last and lost as we redefine ourselves as the greatest assortment of Caribbean nationals in the smallest place. But rallying around the West Indies will force us to more clearly identify and crystallise who and what we really are. Maybe in doing so we will disabuse ourselves and others of idealistic notions of nationalisms, island and West Indian.
In the orchestra, steelband or other, there is constant dissonance and consonance (musically and otherwise) to remove inertia and give momentum to the music. It is within the orchestra that the true musician really begins to find and harness that individual voice. You are forced to listen to all others as well as your insular instrument, at the same time. This dialectic gives birth, with all its pangs and damns, to the epiphany that you can only find yourself in others. Independence becomes meaningful only when you selflessly accept this enigma.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
A FOOLISH TOUR
It’s A Foolish Dog
It is sometimes dangerous to listen to Observer Radio in the early morning whilst getting ready for work and visiting the toilet. One may have to make a clear distinction between the action of listening and the action. It does require some degree of aural as well as intestinal fortitude. It cannot be that we are having a problem with customer service in tourism because we do not understand the value of tourism. Let us flush that nonsense. The fundamental problem is that we do not understand customer service within and without tourism. We are not generally courteous to each other, full stop.
St. Lucia, Barbados and Jamaica seem to have got something right. I suggest that that “thing” is not just training in customer service. Institutional training must be surrounded and embraced by a sense of national self and national pride. Years ago, on a visit to St. Lucia, I saw sections of the news on television read in patois. In Antigua and Barbuda part of our television news is read in Spanish and a few years ago some man went up his fundament by conducting part of the Independence Service in Spanish.
Barbados was once laughed at as Little England. The Barbadian seemingly made a quantum leap from little England to big Barbados. Quantum leaps are not impossible. Decades ago, when I went to the Catholic Church on Church Street, I was not at all impressed by the Latin and ornate worship. Years later, I suggested to someone that the church had made a quantum leap and had become truly catholic and almost a clap-hand church.
Sadly, Antigua and Barbuda is known as a country where “anything goes”. We can train as many people as we can and invite as many customers service trainers to tell us what we know and what we do not know. This training will work for a while but until we understand and tackle customer service as a national problem, and not just a tourism or job problem, we will continue to spin top in seawater. You do not tell a worker in tourism or in any other business to smile if you really want them to smile, you tell them to be pleasant.
It is indeed a foolish dog that barks at a flying bird (as Mr. Bobby reminded us). That flying bird is the tourist. Those who come in contact with the tourists are not the real foolish dogs. Workers do have responsibilities and many are found wanting. But it is the awful lack of clarity of the fundamental cause of the problem and hence our approach to the solution that is utterly foolish.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
It is sometimes dangerous to listen to Observer Radio in the early morning whilst getting ready for work and visiting the toilet. One may have to make a clear distinction between the action of listening and the action. It does require some degree of aural as well as intestinal fortitude. It cannot be that we are having a problem with customer service in tourism because we do not understand the value of tourism. Let us flush that nonsense. The fundamental problem is that we do not understand customer service within and without tourism. We are not generally courteous to each other, full stop.
St. Lucia, Barbados and Jamaica seem to have got something right. I suggest that that “thing” is not just training in customer service. Institutional training must be surrounded and embraced by a sense of national self and national pride. Years ago, on a visit to St. Lucia, I saw sections of the news on television read in patois. In Antigua and Barbuda part of our television news is read in Spanish and a few years ago some man went up his fundament by conducting part of the Independence Service in Spanish.
Barbados was once laughed at as Little England. The Barbadian seemingly made a quantum leap from little England to big Barbados. Quantum leaps are not impossible. Decades ago, when I went to the Catholic Church on Church Street, I was not at all impressed by the Latin and ornate worship. Years later, I suggested to someone that the church had made a quantum leap and had become truly catholic and almost a clap-hand church.
Sadly, Antigua and Barbuda is known as a country where “anything goes”. We can train as many people as we can and invite as many customers service trainers to tell us what we know and what we do not know. This training will work for a while but until we understand and tackle customer service as a national problem, and not just a tourism or job problem, we will continue to spin top in seawater. You do not tell a worker in tourism or in any other business to smile if you really want them to smile, you tell them to be pleasant.
It is indeed a foolish dog that barks at a flying bird (as Mr. Bobby reminded us). That flying bird is the tourist. Those who come in contact with the tourists are not the real foolish dogs. Workers do have responsibilities and many are found wanting. But it is the awful lack of clarity of the fundamental cause of the problem and hence our approach to the solution that is utterly foolish.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Quality of Mercy
ELEMENTARY MY DEAR SHELTON
Dr. L.C Simon-Hazlewood
As someone who responded in writing to Shelton Daniel's article on homosexuality in his Man Matters series, last year, I feel compelled to respond to his recent article in which he wrote about the backlash he has received.
Mr. Daniel now seems to understand that some people (speaking for myself) responded to his epistle not because they are homosexual or homosexual sympathizers. He hit the nail on the head when he noted that his article might have conveyed a holier-than-thou, talk-down-to-you condemnation. Additionally, some people (speaking for myself again) just love to take on an argument. We studied theorems in school.
But we must understand the basis of this condemnation to which he so apologetically and manly referred. I wish to posit that the fundamental problem is acceptance of a false premise: that of being a Christian. There is no such thing as being a Christian, until just before our last breath. It is not like the practice of “Walking for Confirmation”, that we, Anglican children, endured, and then, voila, we became confirmed. I am registering an obvious fact. Mr. Daniel and all others who profess to be Christians, are in fact in, or should be in, a constant, daily act, indeed an hourly, raging battle, at times, of becoming a Christian. The word Christian should be changed from a noun or adjective, to a verb in its present continuous tense, or a gerund. We are “Christianing”. “Christianing” all the time.
Simply put, my dear Shelton, at the real core of Christianity is a constant battle of becoming Christ-like, with the eternal paradox that we are forever and ever becoming and improving our chances of actually being a Christian. If this act of constantly becoming a Christian were to replace the claims of being a Christian, and become the mantra of Christianity, the world would be a better place, starting inside the very church itself.
The recent article might also raise (higher) the ire that the initial article generated. Daniel claimed that, “No Christian should ever look down on others for their sins or faults – be it homosexuality or anything else”. And then he dropped the axe by saying that the reason for this is because, “…we ourselves also were once foolish, disobedient,…serving various lusts and pleasures..…” (Titus 3:3).
The foolishness, disobedience, etc. are dynamic definers of becoming a Christian, of “Christianing”. You are only less foolish and less disobedient than before. Mr. Daniel should probably have quoted more of Titus chapter 3 because it goes on to explain how the change from being once foolish and disobedient, etc. was realized: “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us…” (Titus 3:4-5).
The fundamental problem I had with the original article had very little to do with homosexuality. It had to do with the response given by some of us when we confront a difficult topic. Throwing the book (the Bible or the law books) at wrongdoers is the easy part, and we can always find the scripture and laws to do so.
I am sure Mr. Daniel is familiar with the Christian principle that Shakespeare inscribed in our hearts. “The quality of mercy is not strain'd. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” (The Merchant of Venice). This, unstrained mercy has nothing to do with being sympathizers or empathisers of homosexuality or of whichever act is being brought to whichever book. This unforced mercy that drops as the gentle rain from heaven is the first radically conscious, Christian, ethical step, in beginning to grapple with a very difficult problem. This is where the original article failed miserably. Daniel’s subsequent attempt to try to understand the backlash he is enduring is highly commendable. Elementary, my dear Shelton.
Dr. L.C Simon-Hazlewood
As someone who responded in writing to Shelton Daniel's article on homosexuality in his Man Matters series, last year, I feel compelled to respond to his recent article in which he wrote about the backlash he has received.
Mr. Daniel now seems to understand that some people (speaking for myself) responded to his epistle not because they are homosexual or homosexual sympathizers. He hit the nail on the head when he noted that his article might have conveyed a holier-than-thou, talk-down-to-you condemnation. Additionally, some people (speaking for myself again) just love to take on an argument. We studied theorems in school.
But we must understand the basis of this condemnation to which he so apologetically and manly referred. I wish to posit that the fundamental problem is acceptance of a false premise: that of being a Christian. There is no such thing as being a Christian, until just before our last breath. It is not like the practice of “Walking for Confirmation”, that we, Anglican children, endured, and then, voila, we became confirmed. I am registering an obvious fact. Mr. Daniel and all others who profess to be Christians, are in fact in, or should be in, a constant, daily act, indeed an hourly, raging battle, at times, of becoming a Christian. The word Christian should be changed from a noun or adjective, to a verb in its present continuous tense, or a gerund. We are “Christianing”. “Christianing” all the time.
Simply put, my dear Shelton, at the real core of Christianity is a constant battle of becoming Christ-like, with the eternal paradox that we are forever and ever becoming and improving our chances of actually being a Christian. If this act of constantly becoming a Christian were to replace the claims of being a Christian, and become the mantra of Christianity, the world would be a better place, starting inside the very church itself.
The recent article might also raise (higher) the ire that the initial article generated. Daniel claimed that, “No Christian should ever look down on others for their sins or faults – be it homosexuality or anything else”. And then he dropped the axe by saying that the reason for this is because, “…we ourselves also were once foolish, disobedient,…serving various lusts and pleasures..…” (Titus 3:3).
The foolishness, disobedience, etc. are dynamic definers of becoming a Christian, of “Christianing”. You are only less foolish and less disobedient than before. Mr. Daniel should probably have quoted more of Titus chapter 3 because it goes on to explain how the change from being once foolish and disobedient, etc. was realized: “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us…” (Titus 3:4-5).
The fundamental problem I had with the original article had very little to do with homosexuality. It had to do with the response given by some of us when we confront a difficult topic. Throwing the book (the Bible or the law books) at wrongdoers is the easy part, and we can always find the scripture and laws to do so.
I am sure Mr. Daniel is familiar with the Christian principle that Shakespeare inscribed in our hearts. “The quality of mercy is not strain'd. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” (The Merchant of Venice). This, unstrained mercy has nothing to do with being sympathizers or empathisers of homosexuality or of whichever act is being brought to whichever book. This unforced mercy that drops as the gentle rain from heaven is the first radically conscious, Christian, ethical step, in beginning to grapple with a very difficult problem. This is where the original article failed miserably. Daniel’s subsequent attempt to try to understand the backlash he is enduring is highly commendable. Elementary, my dear Shelton.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
The Goose is Fat
MY FAVOURITE THINGS
A One Act Almost Christmas Play
Scene: The reception area of a small hotel in Antigua.
Jonathan: Here comes Santa Claus.
Mizpah: You shouldn’t mock Joseph. He is doing a fine job. He is a good chef.
Jonathan: I cannot understand why men can’t cook at home and all the top chefs in all the hotels are men.
Joseph: It’s not that men can’t cook at home. Their mother and women spoil them; like you.
Jonathan: Always remember this: I refused the job that you have.
Mizpah: Women do not get the top chef’s job because of gender discrimination, and talk about women’s domestic life. From now on, any more advice from me about food will cost you two.
Jonathan: You should have applied for the chef’s job. What new advice do you have for Christmas?
Mizpah: I am looking at what is cooked and how it is cooked in this hotel compared to what is cooked outside because I want to understand why there is an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease just outside this hotel’s door. Food is killing us.
Jonathan: Inside the hotel too. Some tourists are so big and fat, they can’t pass through the doors.
Joseph: That’s the reason for the downturn. Some tourists are so fat they can’t enter this small country.
Jonathan: Too much fat, too much salt, too much meat, too much booze.
Mizpah: It’s the sugar, baby. Too much sugar.
Jonathan: Well tell me this, Miss Mizpah: If too much sugar is bad, how can plenty of fruits be good?
Mizpah: A really good man would understand why. In a nutshell (and nuts are good for you too), all of something, or someone, might be good for you but concentrations of some of the parts might kill you.
Joseph: There is coded message there but let’s stick to real sugar, not imaginary ones.
Mizpah: All sugars are not equal. Table sugar is sucrose. Sucrose itself is made from two other types of sugars: glucose and fructose. The key sources of fructose are fruits, vegetables, and honey. Fructose is the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates. It is about 1.73 times sweeter than sucrose, the common table sugar. Excess of any sugar is bad but excess fructose is so bad, it’s almost like a poison.
Jonathan: So, again, why are fruits, containing fructose, the sweetest of all natural sugars, so good, and sugars, including fructose, are so bad?
Joseph: I suspect we need another lesson in biochemistry.
Mizpah: Simply put, glucose is used by all cells of the body for energy and some of it is changed into fat or stored as glycogen in the liver. However, fructose is not used by any part of the body except the liver, where it is changed into fat and some other bad things.
Joseph: It’s complicated. Glucose causes insulin to decrease appetite. Fructose increases appetite. But excess glucose and excess insulin can also increase appetite. Too much of any sugar is bad.
Jonathan: Too much of anything. What is all the fuss about high fructose corn syrup?
Mizpah: High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything, from baby foods to soft drinks. It’s cheap and it is a good preservative for processed foods. But it’s not just high fructose corn syrup, since it actually has in fructose and glucose, almost like sucrose, the table sugar. It’s that we are using too much sugar.
Jonathan: I hear that fructose is almost like alcohol.
Mizpah: The liver handles them almost the same way, just that you don’t get a buzz from fructose.
Joseph: The way some children drink soft drinks you would think they get the buzz and are addicted to the fructose. Plus, fructose opens their appetite.
Mizpah: It’s not just soft drinks. Almost all sugary drinks, including fruit drinks, have added sugars.
Jonathan: So, again, why are fruits so good and the fructose in them is so bad?
Mizpah: You must eat the entire, natural fruit. When the fiber from the fruit is in your gut, it cuts down on the amount of fructose you absorb from your gut into your bloodstream and body.
Jonathan: So what happens to the remaining fructose in the gut?
Joseph: The bacteria in the gut act on it and change it into gas.
Mizpah: You have to know how and when to take your fructose or any kind of sugar. Take it in high doses in drinks and you get fat. Eat wholesome fruits and vegetables so that the fiber decreases the absorption of fructose. Be moderate. Eat too much fiber and sugar and you will make plenty gas and fart. That is why Dr. Robert H. Lustig, said that when God made the poison, fructose, it was packaged with the antidote, fiber. Fiber, unlike fructose, suppresses appetite. But again too much fiber with too much sugar will make you fart.
Joseph: Excess sugar makes you fat or fart. Stop drinking all those soft drinks and all those fruit juices too.
Jonathan: So I should eat an entire orange or local fruits, fiber and all, and drink water, for Christmas.
Mizpah: All the time. Eat properly or repair you body from fatness or excessive farting. Reparations again.
Jonathan: Why does everything with you always lead to reparations?
Joseph: Yes Mizpah, you pushing reparations too far. Reparations and food?
Mizpah: Food is all about choice and control. You have to look back and see the good, natural foods we used to eat in Africa before the European arrived, mainly vegetables and grains; very little meat, used mostly for flavouring. We had to change our diet by adding large amounts of salt, sugar and fat to make the junk food we ate during slavery more palatable for all the energy we had to put out. After slavery, some of us are trying to get back to good, natural foods, like the nutritious one-pot meal; like pepperpot.
Joseph: But the salt, sugar and fat remain along with salted pig tail, salted beef and salted fish.
Mizpah: Precisely. Until we refocus on our journey from Africa to here, how we survived, and regain control of our food, we are dead. Reparations are lined to food. Reparations will assist us at arriving at food security. We would eat more of our natural foods, stop importing so much junk, so much processed food with high fructose corn syrup, and stop financing the rich countries. The goose in not getting fat. It is fat.
Jonathan: The next thing I will hear about is reparations and Christmas.
Mizpah: Christmas, the celebration of the coming of Christ, not the comical, commercial celebration we practice, is all about reparations. But that is another story. I wish you a healthier 2010.
A One Act Almost Christmas Play
Scene: The reception area of a small hotel in Antigua.
Jonathan: Here comes Santa Claus.
Mizpah: You shouldn’t mock Joseph. He is doing a fine job. He is a good chef.
Jonathan: I cannot understand why men can’t cook at home and all the top chefs in all the hotels are men.
Joseph: It’s not that men can’t cook at home. Their mother and women spoil them; like you.
Jonathan: Always remember this: I refused the job that you have.
Mizpah: Women do not get the top chef’s job because of gender discrimination, and talk about women’s domestic life. From now on, any more advice from me about food will cost you two.
Jonathan: You should have applied for the chef’s job. What new advice do you have for Christmas?
Mizpah: I am looking at what is cooked and how it is cooked in this hotel compared to what is cooked outside because I want to understand why there is an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease just outside this hotel’s door. Food is killing us.
Jonathan: Inside the hotel too. Some tourists are so big and fat, they can’t pass through the doors.
Joseph: That’s the reason for the downturn. Some tourists are so fat they can’t enter this small country.
Jonathan: Too much fat, too much salt, too much meat, too much booze.
Mizpah: It’s the sugar, baby. Too much sugar.
Jonathan: Well tell me this, Miss Mizpah: If too much sugar is bad, how can plenty of fruits be good?
Mizpah: A really good man would understand why. In a nutshell (and nuts are good for you too), all of something, or someone, might be good for you but concentrations of some of the parts might kill you.
Joseph: There is coded message there but let’s stick to real sugar, not imaginary ones.
Mizpah: All sugars are not equal. Table sugar is sucrose. Sucrose itself is made from two other types of sugars: glucose and fructose. The key sources of fructose are fruits, vegetables, and honey. Fructose is the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates. It is about 1.73 times sweeter than sucrose, the common table sugar. Excess of any sugar is bad but excess fructose is so bad, it’s almost like a poison.
Jonathan: So, again, why are fruits, containing fructose, the sweetest of all natural sugars, so good, and sugars, including fructose, are so bad?
Joseph: I suspect we need another lesson in biochemistry.
Mizpah: Simply put, glucose is used by all cells of the body for energy and some of it is changed into fat or stored as glycogen in the liver. However, fructose is not used by any part of the body except the liver, where it is changed into fat and some other bad things.
Joseph: It’s complicated. Glucose causes insulin to decrease appetite. Fructose increases appetite. But excess glucose and excess insulin can also increase appetite. Too much of any sugar is bad.
Jonathan: Too much of anything. What is all the fuss about high fructose corn syrup?
Mizpah: High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything, from baby foods to soft drinks. It’s cheap and it is a good preservative for processed foods. But it’s not just high fructose corn syrup, since it actually has in fructose and glucose, almost like sucrose, the table sugar. It’s that we are using too much sugar.
Jonathan: I hear that fructose is almost like alcohol.
Mizpah: The liver handles them almost the same way, just that you don’t get a buzz from fructose.
Joseph: The way some children drink soft drinks you would think they get the buzz and are addicted to the fructose. Plus, fructose opens their appetite.
Mizpah: It’s not just soft drinks. Almost all sugary drinks, including fruit drinks, have added sugars.
Jonathan: So, again, why are fruits so good and the fructose in them is so bad?
Mizpah: You must eat the entire, natural fruit. When the fiber from the fruit is in your gut, it cuts down on the amount of fructose you absorb from your gut into your bloodstream and body.
Jonathan: So what happens to the remaining fructose in the gut?
Joseph: The bacteria in the gut act on it and change it into gas.
Mizpah: You have to know how and when to take your fructose or any kind of sugar. Take it in high doses in drinks and you get fat. Eat wholesome fruits and vegetables so that the fiber decreases the absorption of fructose. Be moderate. Eat too much fiber and sugar and you will make plenty gas and fart. That is why Dr. Robert H. Lustig, said that when God made the poison, fructose, it was packaged with the antidote, fiber. Fiber, unlike fructose, suppresses appetite. But again too much fiber with too much sugar will make you fart.
Joseph: Excess sugar makes you fat or fart. Stop drinking all those soft drinks and all those fruit juices too.
Jonathan: So I should eat an entire orange or local fruits, fiber and all, and drink water, for Christmas.
Mizpah: All the time. Eat properly or repair you body from fatness or excessive farting. Reparations again.
Jonathan: Why does everything with you always lead to reparations?
Joseph: Yes Mizpah, you pushing reparations too far. Reparations and food?
Mizpah: Food is all about choice and control. You have to look back and see the good, natural foods we used to eat in Africa before the European arrived, mainly vegetables and grains; very little meat, used mostly for flavouring. We had to change our diet by adding large amounts of salt, sugar and fat to make the junk food we ate during slavery more palatable for all the energy we had to put out. After slavery, some of us are trying to get back to good, natural foods, like the nutritious one-pot meal; like pepperpot.
Joseph: But the salt, sugar and fat remain along with salted pig tail, salted beef and salted fish.
Mizpah: Precisely. Until we refocus on our journey from Africa to here, how we survived, and regain control of our food, we are dead. Reparations are lined to food. Reparations will assist us at arriving at food security. We would eat more of our natural foods, stop importing so much junk, so much processed food with high fructose corn syrup, and stop financing the rich countries. The goose in not getting fat. It is fat.
Jonathan: The next thing I will hear about is reparations and Christmas.
Mizpah: Christmas, the celebration of the coming of Christ, not the comical, commercial celebration we practice, is all about reparations. But that is another story. I wish you a healthier 2010.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Murder Most Fowls and Most Other Animals
TEN TO ONE IS MURDER
Dr. Lester CN Simon
I have always wanted to be a detective. It all started with my fascination with the Green Lantern superhero and, more pedestrian, my absorption of Perry Mason novels, the first books without pictures that I had read. At first, all I wanted to do was to catch the crooks and show them how smart I was. Now, all I want to do is to understand why we have crooks, and reveal how I am not so smart after all.
My fascination with crime detection was peaked in Jamaica. I had done my medical internship at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in 1977 and during my six months on general surgery and orthopaedics, a strange association occupied my time and space, living adjacent to the hospital. It was the sound of gunshot from the neighbourhood and the subsequent ring of the telephone. Since then, I have always looked to Jamaica to find the causes and solutions to the crime wave soaring across the Caribbean. But I have been looking in the wrong place. Let’s go north and examine the greatest country on earth, the land of the free and the brave, the murder capital of the world, the United States of America.
It was reported by Jill Lepore in the November 9, 2009 edition of The New Yorker that “The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom, and six times that of Germany”. Might we in the Caribbean learn something from America regarding why one country is more murderous than another?
One of the theories reported by Lepore to explain the long decline of the murder rate in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present is the civilizing process. Simply put, this refers to a gamut of behaviours that require physical restraint and self-control. Importantly, it also reflects the “growing power of the centralizing state to disarm civilians, control violence, enforce law and order, and, broadly, to hold a monopoly on the use of force”.
How then does the United States fit into this mold? The American homicide rate has always been higher than Europe’s, even from the start. The reasons put out by some Europeans is that Americans have not undergone the same civilizing process (some might say outright that American are not civilized). The argument goes on that democracy came too soon to America. The suggestion is that, unlike in America, by the time democracy came to Europe, the populace had accepted the authority of the state.
It is argued that the American Revolution happened before Americans got used to the idea of a state monopoly on force. Americans have not only preserved the right for individuals to bear arms (rather than yielding this right to a strong central government). They still have medieval manners such as impulsiveness, crudeness and a belief in a culture of honour. In the case of the latter, Europeans are said to have replaced the culture of honour with a culture of dignity.
The lesson from this comparison between Europe and America is that we West Indians may be more American than we think. No matter how we try to avoid it, we seem to be forever circling the roundabout of how we build a society from slavery and colonialism, from a culture of honour in which “dissing” can cause your death, to a culture of dignity,without addressing reconciliation and reparations.
Recently, I heard the head of the Observer Group say that he was not interested in reparations, all he wanted was opportunities. I used to say the same thing, until I came to the conclusion that individual opportunities will be given, and I have been a beneficiary of the same, but collective opportunities require a seminal shift from a culture of dishonour (slavery) through a culture of honour (post slavery) to a culture of dignity (the future). Collectively, only reparations can do that for all us, West Indians and former colonials within and without the West Indies.
Crudeness can be rampant and subtle. I recall apologizing to a medical student friend after a movie for hitting him very hard during an action scene in the movie. He promptly, told me not to worry because, obviously unbeknownst to me, he had returned the favour in excessive measure. Crudeness applies to the way we eat (no more finger-licking chicken?) and terms we use, like “box off” a plate of food. It also applies to how we treat our womenfolk, directed, as we are, to either make her walk and talk, or “gee she work fu do”, with all the burning flames consuming her.
Some researchers say that the prevalence of guns in America does not support the high murder rate in America. Lepore noted that some scholars have suggested that laws allowing concealed weapons actually lower the murder rate. I recall the first (and only) time a gun was pointed in my face. My entire life passed in a slow-motion flash before me, like a movie, popcorn (with butter), soft drinks and cartoons included. The lasting effect is still present.
Lepore lists other theories for the high murder rate in America. Four other factors mentioned were, mobility, federalism, slavery and tolerance. Mobility has fractured the social fabric that used to bind society together; plus criminals can escape more easily, or blend in so well amongst a crowd of strangers in a small town like St. John’s, with a crowd of football fans peeping.
Federalism is said to be a weak form of government. There are other forms of weak government, such as West Indians in a small (place) state, disrespecting politicians and politicians allowing disrespect as a currency for being local, colloquial and for obtaining votes. Slavery, Lepore argues, rationalized a culture of violence. Tolerance, speak for itself here. From tolerating bad driving, bad roads, bad service, to bad credit, bad behavior, bad debt, bad death, and murder.
One remarkable point Lepore makes would be seen as racist, were it leveled at West Indian. She makes it in reference to Americans. One of the theories she mentions, leads her to conclude that Americans are medieval and backward and warlike, because they became free before they learnt how to control themselves. Risking the loss of friends, I wish to say the very same thing about post-slavery, post-colonial West Indian society. But I have a caveat.
Whenever freedom comes, it must be grasped with hands and feet and whatever else. Freedom must be wrestled away from the enemy, taken and celebrated. Immediately thereafter, the real battle to win the war begins. The battle is to build a society so that we can move from an disparate, murderous ten to one to an attempted oneness of civility, accepting as our battle cry that we will still be imperfect, but less so.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
I have always wanted to be a detective. It all started with my fascination with the Green Lantern superhero and, more pedestrian, my absorption of Perry Mason novels, the first books without pictures that I had read. At first, all I wanted to do was to catch the crooks and show them how smart I was. Now, all I want to do is to understand why we have crooks, and reveal how I am not so smart after all.
My fascination with crime detection was peaked in Jamaica. I had done my medical internship at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in 1977 and during my six months on general surgery and orthopaedics, a strange association occupied my time and space, living adjacent to the hospital. It was the sound of gunshot from the neighbourhood and the subsequent ring of the telephone. Since then, I have always looked to Jamaica to find the causes and solutions to the crime wave soaring across the Caribbean. But I have been looking in the wrong place. Let’s go north and examine the greatest country on earth, the land of the free and the brave, the murder capital of the world, the United States of America.
It was reported by Jill Lepore in the November 9, 2009 edition of The New Yorker that “The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom, and six times that of Germany”. Might we in the Caribbean learn something from America regarding why one country is more murderous than another?
One of the theories reported by Lepore to explain the long decline of the murder rate in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present is the civilizing process. Simply put, this refers to a gamut of behaviours that require physical restraint and self-control. Importantly, it also reflects the “growing power of the centralizing state to disarm civilians, control violence, enforce law and order, and, broadly, to hold a monopoly on the use of force”.
How then does the United States fit into this mold? The American homicide rate has always been higher than Europe’s, even from the start. The reasons put out by some Europeans is that Americans have not undergone the same civilizing process (some might say outright that American are not civilized). The argument goes on that democracy came too soon to America. The suggestion is that, unlike in America, by the time democracy came to Europe, the populace had accepted the authority of the state.
It is argued that the American Revolution happened before Americans got used to the idea of a state monopoly on force. Americans have not only preserved the right for individuals to bear arms (rather than yielding this right to a strong central government). They still have medieval manners such as impulsiveness, crudeness and a belief in a culture of honour. In the case of the latter, Europeans are said to have replaced the culture of honour with a culture of dignity.
The lesson from this comparison between Europe and America is that we West Indians may be more American than we think. No matter how we try to avoid it, we seem to be forever circling the roundabout of how we build a society from slavery and colonialism, from a culture of honour in which “dissing” can cause your death, to a culture of dignity,without addressing reconciliation and reparations.
Recently, I heard the head of the Observer Group say that he was not interested in reparations, all he wanted was opportunities. I used to say the same thing, until I came to the conclusion that individual opportunities will be given, and I have been a beneficiary of the same, but collective opportunities require a seminal shift from a culture of dishonour (slavery) through a culture of honour (post slavery) to a culture of dignity (the future). Collectively, only reparations can do that for all us, West Indians and former colonials within and without the West Indies.
Crudeness can be rampant and subtle. I recall apologizing to a medical student friend after a movie for hitting him very hard during an action scene in the movie. He promptly, told me not to worry because, obviously unbeknownst to me, he had returned the favour in excessive measure. Crudeness applies to the way we eat (no more finger-licking chicken?) and terms we use, like “box off” a plate of food. It also applies to how we treat our womenfolk, directed, as we are, to either make her walk and talk, or “gee she work fu do”, with all the burning flames consuming her.
Some researchers say that the prevalence of guns in America does not support the high murder rate in America. Lepore noted that some scholars have suggested that laws allowing concealed weapons actually lower the murder rate. I recall the first (and only) time a gun was pointed in my face. My entire life passed in a slow-motion flash before me, like a movie, popcorn (with butter), soft drinks and cartoons included. The lasting effect is still present.
Lepore lists other theories for the high murder rate in America. Four other factors mentioned were, mobility, federalism, slavery and tolerance. Mobility has fractured the social fabric that used to bind society together; plus criminals can escape more easily, or blend in so well amongst a crowd of strangers in a small town like St. John’s, with a crowd of football fans peeping.
Federalism is said to be a weak form of government. There are other forms of weak government, such as West Indians in a small (place) state, disrespecting politicians and politicians allowing disrespect as a currency for being local, colloquial and for obtaining votes. Slavery, Lepore argues, rationalized a culture of violence. Tolerance, speak for itself here. From tolerating bad driving, bad roads, bad service, to bad credit, bad behavior, bad debt, bad death, and murder.
One remarkable point Lepore makes would be seen as racist, were it leveled at West Indian. She makes it in reference to Americans. One of the theories she mentions, leads her to conclude that Americans are medieval and backward and warlike, because they became free before they learnt how to control themselves. Risking the loss of friends, I wish to say the very same thing about post-slavery, post-colonial West Indian society. But I have a caveat.
Whenever freedom comes, it must be grasped with hands and feet and whatever else. Freedom must be wrestled away from the enemy, taken and celebrated. Immediately thereafter, the real battle to win the war begins. The battle is to build a society so that we can move from an disparate, murderous ten to one to an attempted oneness of civility, accepting as our battle cry that we will still be imperfect, but less so.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Badness Forever
I SHOT THE SHERIFF
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Show me a country where the majority of the populace comprises descendants of slaves, slave masters, and indentured workers, and where law and order is not a major problem, and Beelzebub will show you the kingdom of heaven on earth. Is there some historical element in our psyche that forces us to defy law and order? Have we inherited this inalienable right?
You can read tomes of literature on the causes of crime. You might even be a victim of crime, or worse, (or is it better?), a perpetrator of crime. You can agree with the experts, like Jamaican Dr. Bernard Headley, that the cause of all street-level crime and violence resides “in the nature of society itself, not in the mental or emotional states of its citizens”. Yet when you confront the corollary that the recipe for preventing crime would be the creation of a social-economic system that can deliver social and economic justice to all, you embrace your head in worrying doubt.
Can it be that a society that has not engaged in reconciliation and reparations for past wrongs, continues to live out the past? The foes may change but the forces of evil remain the same. How else can you explain the way we treat each other? It’s not that criminals do not know their neighbours as themselves. Indeed, they have to study them very well before executing (pardon the pun) their jobs. It’s simply, according to Dr. Headley, that the neighbour is a removable, depersonalized obstruction standing between the criminals and their prize. It’s akin to traversing a nasty pothole on route to a prime, crime destination. Fix it, for badness sake.
Another expert, Dr. Obika Gray, writes about the concept of badness-honour. He notes that defiance among the urban poor is remarkable for its preoccupation with matters of identity, honour and respect. Tie this to the treatise by Dr. Orlando Patterson that to understand slavery, we must grasp the importance of honour. He contends that slavery is a great deal more than an institution allowing property-in-people. It is “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons”. “Dissing” is not new and it has always carried a heavy price. Criminals, including dons and their subjects, understand “diss”.
Badness-honour, simply put, is the idea that there is honour and respect in badness. It is the securing of power, honour and respect by use of intimidation. This intimidation may be overt or covert; covert even to the point of passive vulgarity. I recall a Jamaican who visited Antigua in the 70’s complaining to me in Jamaica how he initially found Antiguans tame and almost respectfully docile. He had passed a dread on the street and shouted, “Hail de dread”, to which the dread replied, “Goodnight Sir”.
He received the obverse, classically and uniquely Antiguan response, when he was ignorant enough to ask a saleslady (so he thought she was) in a bread shop, if she sold needle and thread. Her response was bombastic, fantastic and iconoclastic, “Arwe na sell dem subben ya”. Figuring out the dialect and the dialectic response from “the look” of her voice, he readily apologized by saying that he was a stranger who had just arrived in the island. Such a feeble admission earned him the coup de grace response, “Ana fu me fault that”.
It must be registered that badness-honour is not the currency of the vast majority of the poor, but rather, of a tiny minority. It should also be placed on record, as Dr. Gray does, that badness-honour is not a resource available only to the disadvantaged. Power holders from slave masters, to colonial authorities and party bosses in postcolonial societies have employed it.
Badness-honour can take the illusion of goodness. As my dear father told it (God rest his soul), a bank customer, who just happened to be a white English man, complained to the bank manager that my father had opened the bank door late. It was sympathetically explained to the bank manager and the English gentleman that the bank opened by, and only by, the wrist watch of my father, a timepiece that carried BBC time. Moreover, massaged my father, if he were to open the bank door by the gentleman’s time, he would be compelled, by the inimitable logic of the bank, to close the bank by the same gentleman’s time. My dear father suggested to them that for the sake of good customer service, he was not averse so to do. But, and he slowly kneaded and injected the coup de grace, he would have to go searching all over the island for the good gentleman because he had no knowledge whatsoever of where he lived. You see the problem?
It is ironically remarkable, until you understand badness-honour, that some of the demonstrators, right up front with giant placards, chanting and waving, in public marches against the UPP government, are the very same ones who benefit most from the policies of this government. Be silly enough to point this out to them and you will earn an unadulterated dose of our second national motto, “Me na kay”, sometimes adulterated by a concoction of expletives delivered with an adagio that only a badness-honour symphony can play.
Justification of badness-honour is ubiquitous. With all the wrongs meted out to Jews, and they have meted out their share, it took me an extra hour to fall asleep to BBC radio when an American Jew rebuked President Obama for comments about Jewish settlement in occupied territory. After all, the territory was given to the Jews by God and was once “occupied’ by King David. You see the problem.
Badness-honour takes all forms of expression. When you hear talk on the radio that rape is not about sex, and that it is all about power and control, you wonder if these people have actually had sex. Sex is all about power and control. But in rape, the power and control is neither shared nor consented. Rape hijacks the native power and control ingredients of sex, and perverts them to and beyond the most imaginable extreme, to a vile and inhumane form of badness-honour. Christian fundamentalism and badness-honour inform some dancehall proponents to kill homosexuals and yet the same self-appointed social gladiators are unsighted of their depersonalization of women, to which the dancehall queen contributes so much.
So again, is there some historical element in our psyche that forces us to defy law and order? Have we inherited this inalienable right? We have to know the answer because it seems strange to me that badness-honour exited from slavery time until now, that badness-honour can be used and manipulated, that in our attempt to prevent crime we will create a social-economic system that can deliver social and economic justice to all, and yet badness-honour will still throttle our existence.
It also seems strange to me that slavery has ended and yet, to at least attempt to remove or reduce badness-honour on all fronts, there is no reconciliation, no reparations to restore honour; not one communally rejuvenating thing. So, in the eyes of the criminal, we the majority are left with the empty solace that society should look on the bright side of life because he did not shoot the neighbour, he did not shoot up the police station (this time), he did not shoot the deputy (for “dissing” him). We are lucky. He just shot the sheriff.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
Show me a country where the majority of the populace comprises descendants of slaves, slave masters, and indentured workers, and where law and order is not a major problem, and Beelzebub will show you the kingdom of heaven on earth. Is there some historical element in our psyche that forces us to defy law and order? Have we inherited this inalienable right?
You can read tomes of literature on the causes of crime. You might even be a victim of crime, or worse, (or is it better?), a perpetrator of crime. You can agree with the experts, like Jamaican Dr. Bernard Headley, that the cause of all street-level crime and violence resides “in the nature of society itself, not in the mental or emotional states of its citizens”. Yet when you confront the corollary that the recipe for preventing crime would be the creation of a social-economic system that can deliver social and economic justice to all, you embrace your head in worrying doubt.
Can it be that a society that has not engaged in reconciliation and reparations for past wrongs, continues to live out the past? The foes may change but the forces of evil remain the same. How else can you explain the way we treat each other? It’s not that criminals do not know their neighbours as themselves. Indeed, they have to study them very well before executing (pardon the pun) their jobs. It’s simply, according to Dr. Headley, that the neighbour is a removable, depersonalized obstruction standing between the criminals and their prize. It’s akin to traversing a nasty pothole on route to a prime, crime destination. Fix it, for badness sake.
Another expert, Dr. Obika Gray, writes about the concept of badness-honour. He notes that defiance among the urban poor is remarkable for its preoccupation with matters of identity, honour and respect. Tie this to the treatise by Dr. Orlando Patterson that to understand slavery, we must grasp the importance of honour. He contends that slavery is a great deal more than an institution allowing property-in-people. It is “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons”. “Dissing” is not new and it has always carried a heavy price. Criminals, including dons and their subjects, understand “diss”.
Badness-honour, simply put, is the idea that there is honour and respect in badness. It is the securing of power, honour and respect by use of intimidation. This intimidation may be overt or covert; covert even to the point of passive vulgarity. I recall a Jamaican who visited Antigua in the 70’s complaining to me in Jamaica how he initially found Antiguans tame and almost respectfully docile. He had passed a dread on the street and shouted, “Hail de dread”, to which the dread replied, “Goodnight Sir”.
He received the obverse, classically and uniquely Antiguan response, when he was ignorant enough to ask a saleslady (so he thought she was) in a bread shop, if she sold needle and thread. Her response was bombastic, fantastic and iconoclastic, “Arwe na sell dem subben ya”. Figuring out the dialect and the dialectic response from “the look” of her voice, he readily apologized by saying that he was a stranger who had just arrived in the island. Such a feeble admission earned him the coup de grace response, “Ana fu me fault that”.
It must be registered that badness-honour is not the currency of the vast majority of the poor, but rather, of a tiny minority. It should also be placed on record, as Dr. Gray does, that badness-honour is not a resource available only to the disadvantaged. Power holders from slave masters, to colonial authorities and party bosses in postcolonial societies have employed it.
Badness-honour can take the illusion of goodness. As my dear father told it (God rest his soul), a bank customer, who just happened to be a white English man, complained to the bank manager that my father had opened the bank door late. It was sympathetically explained to the bank manager and the English gentleman that the bank opened by, and only by, the wrist watch of my father, a timepiece that carried BBC time. Moreover, massaged my father, if he were to open the bank door by the gentleman’s time, he would be compelled, by the inimitable logic of the bank, to close the bank by the same gentleman’s time. My dear father suggested to them that for the sake of good customer service, he was not averse so to do. But, and he slowly kneaded and injected the coup de grace, he would have to go searching all over the island for the good gentleman because he had no knowledge whatsoever of where he lived. You see the problem?
It is ironically remarkable, until you understand badness-honour, that some of the demonstrators, right up front with giant placards, chanting and waving, in public marches against the UPP government, are the very same ones who benefit most from the policies of this government. Be silly enough to point this out to them and you will earn an unadulterated dose of our second national motto, “Me na kay”, sometimes adulterated by a concoction of expletives delivered with an adagio that only a badness-honour symphony can play.
Justification of badness-honour is ubiquitous. With all the wrongs meted out to Jews, and they have meted out their share, it took me an extra hour to fall asleep to BBC radio when an American Jew rebuked President Obama for comments about Jewish settlement in occupied territory. After all, the territory was given to the Jews by God and was once “occupied’ by King David. You see the problem.
Badness-honour takes all forms of expression. When you hear talk on the radio that rape is not about sex, and that it is all about power and control, you wonder if these people have actually had sex. Sex is all about power and control. But in rape, the power and control is neither shared nor consented. Rape hijacks the native power and control ingredients of sex, and perverts them to and beyond the most imaginable extreme, to a vile and inhumane form of badness-honour. Christian fundamentalism and badness-honour inform some dancehall proponents to kill homosexuals and yet the same self-appointed social gladiators are unsighted of their depersonalization of women, to which the dancehall queen contributes so much.
So again, is there some historical element in our psyche that forces us to defy law and order? Have we inherited this inalienable right? We have to know the answer because it seems strange to me that badness-honour exited from slavery time until now, that badness-honour can be used and manipulated, that in our attempt to prevent crime we will create a social-economic system that can deliver social and economic justice to all, and yet badness-honour will still throttle our existence.
It also seems strange to me that slavery has ended and yet, to at least attempt to remove or reduce badness-honour on all fronts, there is no reconciliation, no reparations to restore honour; not one communally rejuvenating thing. So, in the eyes of the criminal, we the majority are left with the empty solace that society should look on the bright side of life because he did not shoot the neighbour, he did not shoot up the police station (this time), he did not shoot the deputy (for “dissing” him). We are lucky. He just shot the sheriff.
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