The news agen­da has un­fold­ed in such a way as to sug­gest lev­els of pri­vate and pub­lic reck­less­ness suf­fi­cient to trans­form dai­ly life here in­to a pre­car­i­ous, of­ten dead­ly gam­ble.

It has long been sug­gest­ed in this space that the ab­sence of a du­ty of care is ca­pa­ble of un­der­min­ing things such as heavy laws, harsh penal­ties, more polic­ing, and oth­er mea­sures pre­sumed to pro­duce de­ter­rent ef­fects.

There is al­so no short­age of re­li­gion or di­vine mag­ic to ex­ert ex­ter­nal in­flu­ence. But I have long not up­held their po­ten­tial use­ful­ness be­yond pri­vate com­fort or delu­sion. And their or­gan­ised man­i­fes­ta­tions are all demon­stra­bly hope­less at de­liv­er­ance.

Back on earth, the scope of traf­fic of­fences has, by edict, been widened and be­come more heav­i­ly pun­ish­able, even as dead­ly ac­ci­dents and ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour on our roads oc­cur in in­cre­ments not any dif­fer­ent to how things were be­fore.

Af­ter all, it’s the fault of mo­bile traf­fic lights, the ca­ble bar­ri­ers along the high­way, the fad­ed traf­fic lines, that pot­hole. It’s not the speed, the tex­ting, the heavy tint, the sense of en­ti­tle­ment that size, a brand and a mod­el de­liv­er.

The road­side fires burn and de­stroy. Wil­ful­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly. The smoke gets in our nos­trils and our lungs. The traf­fic stops. Py­ro­ma­nia jus­ti­fied by a sense­less as­ser­tion of ne­ces­si­ty. Spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion, I once had to ex­plain to one apol­o­gist, is not a thing on our ter­rain. And, for sure, there are the laws and reg­u­la­tions. Ask the sweaty, ex­haust­ed fire­fight­ers.

Ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures to ad­dress vi­o­lent crime have be­come nor­malised so that de­clared states of pub­lic emer­gency, as a very last re­sort, are now the stuff of rou­tine, of­fi­cial de­fault. Pub­lic blood­lust and a thirst for re­venge are mean­while deemed sat­is­fi­able ex­tra-ju­di­cial­ly and a right to kill as a pro­tect­ed first re­sponse. Yet, the vi­o­lence and in­jury and death per­sist.

So, what are we to do? What do you do for an en­core or as a fur­ther step when last re­sorts even­tu­al­ly run their course? Is there an op­tion of de­spair? An ab­sence of hope?

Cit­ing con­trast­ing in­stances in Sin­ga­pore, El Sal­vador and the Philip­pines tend to omit nu­mer­ous so­cio-cul­tur­al an­tecedents and ig­nore pit­falls such as cre­ative steril­i­ty, the ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty, and the preva­lence of bu­reau­crat­ic rigid­i­ty.

It might be that the lat­ter con­di­tions, in the minds of some, rep­re­sent the out­comes of sac­ri­fices nec­es­sary to achieve so­cial peace, safe­ty and sta­bil­i­ty. But I re­al­ly do not know. Quite frankly, I do not think so.

There are, mean­while, things re­gard­ed as in­dis­pens­able by some that are not ho­n­oured as un­touch­able by oth­ers. The so-called “Car­ni­val men­tal­i­ty,” an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for and ac­com­mo­da­tion of “noise,” the spon­tane­ity of the “lime,” sans hu­man­ité, the ca­su­al in­te­gra­tion of dif­fer­ence.

Or­der is com­mand­ed to come in­to be­ing rather than nur­tured through the roots of stan­dards, eth­i­cal con­duct and val­ues. Scamp­ish pro­pa­gan­da sub­sti­tutes for truth and a façade of moral­i­ty for prop­er con­duct.

To­day, through all this, lit­tle An­gel­i­ca is dead. Who among us has not been brought to the point of near in­con­solable grief? The ap­par­ent ab­sence of a du­ty of care trag­i­cal­ly ex­em­pli­fied.

More laws? Change the rules … again? Jail some­body? I thought we an­swered those ques­tions the last time some­thing like this hap­pened? When was it? Ten years ago? Last month, as peo­ple float­ed on the ocean and stared qui­et­ly at a blue sky?

Dit­to Sky­lar. Turn your head for 30 sec­onds and they are in the wa­ter! That’s why paid staff and oth­er reg­u­lar folk are keep­ing an eye out for one an­oth­er. Three years ago, it was Damari. And the news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­als and op-eds and let­ters and the phone calls to ra­dio sta­tions flowed.

So how can we help but con­clude that this is not on­ly about the rules, ver­dicts and more bru­tal pun­ish­ment? Where, in this, is a sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to our­selves and to one an­oth­er? The pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od ought to have paint­ed a full enough pic­ture—self-re­spon­si­bil­i­ty dis­missed as vac­cine/an­ti­dote along­side care for oth­ers.

Had there not been the mu­sic, and dance, and po­et­ry, and art of our time, we could have all by now sim­ply downed tools and help­less­ly faced the on­com­ing tides. Re­lent­ed with­out reser­va­tion against the un­car­ing and the reck­less.

That said, tear­ing the ban­dage off and re­veal­ing a raw, painful wound re­mains in­suf­fi­cient. There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ties. Let’s talk about it.