At­til­lah Sp­inger

The clean­li­ness in life is gone

Is on­ly vice and cor­rup­tion that go­ing on

Stay­ing alive

Try­ing to sur­vive

That is how it is to­day

So as you go along your way

-Be Care­ful, Mer­chant

Not that many of us will no­tice it, this week­end, so hap­py that we are to be get­ting an ex­tra day to fete. With the ex­cep­tion of ad­ver­tis­ers who will pub­lish many nice look­ing im­ages in the pa­pers of sani­tised agency brown ver­sions of what Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tists look like, most of the so­ci­ety isn't re­al­ly sure what the hol­i­day is about and don't seem ter­ri­bly both­ered to in­sist on a greater lev­el of un­der­stand­ing.

I am al­so guilty of this. Al­though there's one thing I get from Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tists and that is the es­sen­tial­ness of thanks­giv­ing. It makes sense to me. To be thank­ful. To give thanks for life and for health. To give thanks for man­goes and the sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar beau­ty that de­scends on our con­crete jun­gle of a cap­i­tal city when poui sea­son comes.

Thank­ful­ness is ap­par­ent­ly a de­plet­ing re­source in Trinidad. Dis­ap­pear­ing faster than the North­ern Range or nat­ur­al gas re­serves. Don't talk for good morn­ing. Man­ners have gone out of style in town and I won­der what is to blame for this lack of brough­tup­cy.

It's the foun­da­tion of any pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety. Giv­en that, as my grand­moth­er used to say, in­grat­i­tude worse than witch­craft. But I guess when the goal is a sec­u­lar so­ci­ety, there is room for nei­ther thank­ful­ness nor the im­pend­ing threat of witch­craft. Nei­ther thing holds any weight any­more. And where lead­ers lead the peo­ple will fol­low.

So if you can be a mem­ber of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty one day and the next day you're run­ning for deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of an­oth­er par­ty, well I have no right to ex­pect any­body to say good morn­ing to me any­more. I used to feel im­mense pride in the fact that I came from a small is­land, where peo­ple ex­changed sim­ple pleas­antries as a mat­ter of course. It doesn't take any­thing for you to smile at some­body, or to say thank you, or to say good morn­ing.

I like to take my small-is­land man­ners with me wher­ev­er I go. I es­pe­cial­ly like to try it on Lon­don bus dri­vers who al­ways look kind of askance when I say good morn­ing. But the price of progress is a lack of man­ners. This would work if Trinidad wasn't so small. The like­li­hood is that you know the per­son you're choos­ing not to say hel­lo to. You have to go to great lengths to be un­man­ner­ly. And for me this is worse than big-city anonymi­ty.

It's hip, ap­par­ent­ly, to be un­grate­ful. It's hip to not have loy­al­ties any­more. To pick up your­self and ride out when you feel like it. I hear they don't owe any­body an ex­pla­na­tion. Every­body be­ing a free agent and all. I hear it doesn't make a dif­fer­ence and big peo­ple don't have to ask per­mis­sion to ex­er­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al right.

There's a word for it. And I be­lieve it is hog­gish. Pow­er is the pigsty that we all as­pire to now. Pow­er and the pol­i­tics of hog­gish­ness. No time for thanks. No time for part­ing words of cour­tesy. Poui trees bloom un­no­ticed and we have no sol­i­dar­i­ty with Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tists who cel­e­brate lib­er­a­tion.

It's as if we're not all mu­tu­al­ly in­vest­ed in free­dom in the many ways it man­i­fests it­self for the Shouters, at Eman­ci­pa­tion time, the tri­umph of light over dark­ness at Di­vali, the res­ur­rec­tion of the Christ. We cel­e­brate in a vac­u­um, not un­der­stand­ing that every sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal mo­ment is im­por­tant to all of us.

What an un­for­tu­nate time we live in when we have noth­ing to share. Not even good morn­ing. What un­for­tu­nate ex­am­ples of lead­ers we have for our chil­dren. I met a man with a walk­ing stick the oth­er day and he was telling me about the prob­lems he has to get pub­lic trans­port. He said the taxi dri­vers don't like to pick up crip­ples. And on more than one oc­ca­sion he's been pushed out of the way by younger and stronger com­muters who tell him to get out of the way old man.

He waxed lyri­cal about what he would do to make those in au­thor­i­ty un­der­stand and feel his dai­ly pain. His lan­guage was so elo­quent­ly pro­fane and loud enough to alert passers-by to the fact that he was very much in touch with his anger. He wasn't try­ing to hold it in for ap­pear­ances sake. I un­der­stand that his sit­u­a­tion is bad enough to jus­ti­fy the ven­om that he spews be­cause he is get­ting me to lis­ten.

He blamed every­thing on the gov­ern­ment. The present one and past ones too. I found it hard to dis­agree. If you're not about the busi­ness of cre­at­ing a so­ci­ety where a phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled man can get a taxi, then you're fail­ing in your du­ty as a gov­ern­ment.

I have noth­ing to of­fer him by words of re­as­sur­ance that it will get bet­ter. I imag­ine with what pass­es for lead­er­ship these days it's go­ing to get a lot worse. We live what we learn. And what we are learn­ing from those who oc­cu­py the li­on's share of time on the night­ly news, on the pages of the news­pa­pers, on the air­waves, is that it pays to be ve­nal, vi­cious crea­tures who hug up one day and cut each oth­er apart the next.

No time for thanks­giv­ing. No time for the sim­ple un­com­pli­cat­ed pleas­antries to ex­change be­tween hu­man be­ings. It's just not po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent to have man­ners. It's not the mark of progress to have re­spect for each oth­er. Whether you share their views or not. t is a kind of cal­cu­lat­ing in­ci­vil­i­ty that could make Machi­avel­li blush.