The celestial has scattered its salt on the earth. This salt appears in the form of the people, the plants and animals, all forms of biotic life including the strange and esoteric: fungi, unicellular organisms, bacteria, algae and microbes of the deep sea so fantastic as to defy the imagination.The great tragedy of the modern planet is the flagellation of these salted forms of life, the beating and washing out of their salt by the predominant world economic systems and their puppet overseers, modern liberal democratic governments.
But if we have no salt upon the earth, what have we? Jesus Christ said it best: "Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."In the name of progress, development, our modern government's dream is to wash out the salt from the people, the lands and the communities, sanitise them, make them, saltless, brakish, bland, edible for consumption by the predominant global economic order. To make saltless civilisations fit for nothing.
They want to wash out the "ness" out of Syrian-ness; out of Chinese-ness; out of European-ness; out of Tobagonian-ness; out of African-ness; out of Indian-ness; out of Spanish-ness.From Chatham to Chaguaramas, they wanted, and want their smelters, their off-shore heavy industrial island, their industrial port, their heavy industrial port, their steel mill, their chemical factory, their megamalls and megaplexes without recognising, respecting the salt of the people, their inexorable cultural and economic identities; their lands and communities.
Every corner spot must be replaced with the bank, the chicken and chips outlet, the drugstore and the gas-subsidising gas depot; to guzzle up our money, bodies and ecological systems.
Every primary school must be equipped with the "national" curriculum. To wash out the geniuses, the knowledge of locality, of the salt of their ancestry, from the heads of our children. The "bright" ones are so bright they become politicians and parliamentarians and become clones of the global economic order. Their job? To wash the identity, the salt from the people and their economies, their ecologies, the better to eat them up.
They have become clones of the colonial masters, who, like socouyants, could bear no salt. Rebuff is rudeness. Reason is treason. Revolution is terror. He ain't dead yet? Put him in jail, hire a sprang to get rid of him.Do you think buying out the churches, the schools, the communities, the children, the police will win you an election? And would you sell your church, school, community, children, the police and your very bodies for a pottage of filthy lucre?
A lottery-line of the house-less waiting for HDC homes. A lone line of voters stretching all round the corner, from Matelot to Mayaro. These are the sheep and cows of our modern island civilisation.The people must rebel to protect and grow their identities, their economies, their ecologies, the saltiness of their salt. Rebel until their clone-headed governments learn, respect their ancestries, their economies, their sense of self, worth, being. Without your salt, you have no identity, no economy, no community, no ecology, no sturdy grain to build a civilisation.
We are each ingrained with our unique, inimitable blend of celestial salt. Do not sell this out. Money must not buy it.
Wayne Kublalsingh