My ar­ti­cle to­day is the first part of an ex­cerpt of the fea­ture ad­dress I de­liv­ered on Tues­day at the prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny for stu­dents of the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Agri­cul­ture.I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank the dean of the fac­ul­ty, Pro­fes­sor Dy­er Nar­i­nesingh, deputy deans, heads of de­part­ment, aca­d­e­m­ic and sup­port staff for con­sid­er­ing me fit and prop­er to make the pre­sen­ta­tion.To­day I un­der­take a great chal­lenge-to mar­ket to all of you a prod­uct, eth­i­cal think­ing, which I firm­ly be­lieve is much need­ed in a coun­try-and re­gion- that seeks to brand it­self as a fore­run­ner in achiev­ing glob­al recog­ni­tion for de­vel­oped sta­tus.I dare­say, my prod­uct is a hard sell in a coun­try that of­ten times shows lit­tle or no re­spect for what is right and those who seek to be right­eous.But I love chal­lenges and so I hope to en­gage you in a mean­ing­ful dis­course which will en­cour­age all, es­pe­cial­ly the young peo­ple and grad­u­ates among us, to in­tro­duce as a mean­ing­ful part of their every­day lives-eth­i­cal think­ing.

Think­ing it through

It is lam­en­ta­ble that in or­der to de­ter­mine if the be­hav­iour or con­duct of an in­di­vid­ual is ac­cept­able, the law is the on­ly bench­mark used. In oth­er words, as long as the ac­tion is not il­le­gal, in that it is not in vi­o­la­tion of any writ­ten or un­writ­ten law of the land, then it is ac­cept­able.This in my view has made it even more dif­fi­cult to con­vince peo­ple that eth­i­cal think­ing is in­deed the right way to go be­cause our so­ci­ety has al­most waived its right to de­mand the high­est stan­dards of eth­i­cal be­hav­iour from all who claim to serve the pub­lic in­ter­est.

For­ward to the past

I pose the ques­tion: where in our his­to­ry did we not get it right in the de­vel­op­ment, pro­mo­tion or cul­ti­va­tion of eth­i­cal think­ing? Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance-these are the na­tion­al watch­words of Trinidad and To­ba­go but per­haps the rea­son that eth­i­cal be­hav­iour is not giv­en promi­nence, far less ad­her­ence, is due to the re­stric­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the word dis­ci­pline.Ac­cord­ing to the Ox­ford dic­tio­nary, the word "dis­ci­pline" means the train­ing of peo­ple to obey rules or a code of be­hav­iour; so by its very de­f­i­n­i­tion ethics is in­clud­ed. Maybe it ought to be viewed in this per­spec­tive-Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance, these three, but the great­est of these is dis­ci­pline.Ref­er­ence is made to a speech which I con­sid­er most bril­liant and which un­de­ni­ably spelt out in clear and ex­plic­it terms the words which were meant to pro­vide the frame­work of op­er­a­tion for our then soon to be in­de­pen­dent na­tion.

The first Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, the late Dr Er­ic Eu­stace Williams, stat­ed in his ad­dress at the in­de­pen­dence youth ral­ly at the Queen's Park Oval on Au­gust 30, 1962:"I have giv­en to the na­tion as its watch­words, Dis­ci­pline, Pro­duc­tion and Tol­er­ance. They ap­ply as much to you the young peo­ple as to your par­ents. The dis­ci­pline is both in­di­vid­ual and na­tion­al. The in­di­vid­ual can­not be al­lowed to seek his per­son­al in­ter­est and grat­i­fy his per­son­al am­bi­tions at the ex­pense of the na­tion." It was very clear there­fore from the out­set that at the birth of our in­de­pen­dent na­tion, we were ex­pect­ed to be a dis­ci­plined and eth­i­cal peo­ple.But some­how the mes­sage got lost and what ob­tains is a gen­er­al dis­re­spect for laws and codes of con­duct.

Dri­vers past

We have had out­stand­ing eth­i­cal dri­vers in the past. For ex­am­ple, the late Sir El­lis Clarke, who in 1962 was ap­point­ed am­bas­sador to the USA and per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions and who in that ca­pac­i­ty in his in­au­gur­al speech to the UN stat­ed:"Our Con­sti­tu­tion be­gins with an af­fir­ma­tion of our be­lief in spir­i­tu­al val­ues and di­vine as­sis­tance. Guid­ed by these val­ues and in­spired by that as­sis­tance, we look for­ward to our fu­ture role." More re­cent­ly, we lost yet an­oth­er eth­i­cal dri­ver in the name of Rev Cyril Paul, who should have re­ceived a na­tion­al award dur­ing his life­time for his pa­tri­o­tism, com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to na­tion build­ing. As I lis­tened to all who spoke in gen­uine, glow­ing terms of this pa­tri­ot­ic son of the soil, I re­main con­fi­dent that his good work, words and ac­tions were not in vain.Rev Paul of­ten opined: "The prob­lem in T&T is a pop psy­chol­o­gy-me, my needs and my ful­fil­ment." Rev Paul urged peo­ple to be less self-cen­tered and less in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic and to take bold stands, as he did, what­ev­er the reper­cus­sions, in the name of God and coun­try.

And men­tion must be made of Sir Hugh Wood­ing, who was born in 1904 in Trinidad of Bar­ba­di­an her­itage and was our first Chief Jus­tice. Sir Hugh was a man of in­dis­putable in­tegri­ty and hon­esty. This re­gion­al in­tel­lect, on the oc­ca­sion of the con­fer­ment on him of the de­gree of Doc­tor of Laws, hon­oris causa, by our uni­ver­si­ty stat­ed:"With­out prin­ci­ples, in­sti­tu­tions would tot­ter and pro­ce­dures will be in vain." He was con­vinced that for the main­te­nance of the prin­ci­ples in­her­ent in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, a spir­it of hu­man­i­ty and hu­mane­ness was nec­es­sary.All these in­tel­lects of the past had a gold­en thread that ran through their ut­ter­ances-the need for us to be eth­i­cal.

Dri­vers present

We are very for­tu­nate in that we still have many eth­i­cal dri­vers who con­tin­ue to di­rect us as to what we ought to be do­ing in or­der to lift our stan­dard of hu­man com­pas­sion and un­der­stand­ing. These in­clude Leroy Cal­liste, the Black Stal­in, whose so­cial and po­lit­i­cal com­men­taries point to ar­eas of slip­page and, more im­por­tant­ly, what needs to be done to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age. Fr Clyde Har­vey, a re­cip­i­ent of a na­tion­al award this year, has al­ways preached "that we may come from many tribes but we are one peo­ple, one spir­it."And then there is John Regi­nald Du­mas, a wor­thy re­cip­i­ent of the hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws from UWI and who has had a dis­tin­guished ca­reer as a pub­lic ser­vant, diplo­mat and con­sul­tant to gov­ern­ments and the Unit­ed Na­tions. Du­mas con­tin­ues to pro­mote the high­est stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy from all who hold high of­fice.With such a pow­er­ful pool of peo­ple and with many oth­ers who preach from the same page of ethics, I ask the ques­tion: why are so few peo­ple lis­ten­ing?

Next week: Part 2