One of the key as­pects of life in Trinidad and To­ba­go that help shape our 60 years of in­de­pen­dence is the fact that we love to ar­gue for and against things.

From where you can find the best dou­bles to the best fete to the best po­lit­i­cal par­ty, we ar­gue and de­bate a lot. And with pas­sion.

With the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, these of­ten high­ly po­larised views are now cir­cu­lat­ed more quick­ly and, at times, more force­ful­ly than ever.

Done in the right way, this is a good thing. This is what good democ­ra­cies and open so­ci­eties are all about: free speech and con­stant de­bat­ing with a view to mak­ing T&T a bet­ter place.

At times, though, some in­di­vid­u­als go too far. Or risk over­step­ping the mark and stray­ing in­to the stir­ring of di­vi­sion, es­pe­cial­ly along racial lines.

That is nev­er ac­cept­able and must be tack­led head-on, as his­to­ry shows us the use of eth­nic di­vi­sions for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es al­ways ends in tragedy with­out gains for any­one.

There is no doubt that, as the na­tion reach­es its 60th an­niver­sary, there is a lot to cel­e­brate, but we al­so have quite a bit of work in progress that needs at­ten­tion. That is nor­mal.

The high­ly politi­cised so­ci­ety we live in is, per­haps, one thing that must be both cel­e­brat­ed and im­proved on.

Cel­e­brat­ed be­cause a strong so­ci­ety must be po­lit­i­cal­ly en­gaged, with cit­i­zens ac­tive­ly ex­er­cis­ing their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights and du­ties.

Im­proved be­cause we can of­ten be­come quite po­larised in the po­lit­i­cal de­bate, bor­der­ing on the ridicu­lous. Just take some time to read com­ments on opin­ion pages or so­cial me­dia plat­forms to spot some of the odd­est re­ac­tions– of­ten, even de­vel­op­ments com­plete­ly be­yond what politi­cians can or can­not do are still framed as a PNM or UNC thing.

Ei­ther way, de­spite be­ing a very young democ­ra­cy, per­haps we can teach some much old­er na­tions a thing or two about liv­ing in a po­lit­i­cal­ly po­larised and mul­ti-faith so­ci­ety.

In coun­tries like the US, where the po­lit­i­cal dis­course has be­come more ad­ver­sar­i­al and an­tag­o­nis­tic since Don­ald Trump ef­fec­tive­ly com­man­deered the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty, em­ploy­ers have had to grap­ple with a rel­a­tive­ly new is­sue: the po­lar­i­sa­tion of views in the work­place.

So much so that one of the coun­try’s lead­ing Hu­man Re­sources or­gan­i­sa­tions, the So­ci­ety for Hu­man Re­sources Man­age­ment, is ded­i­cat­ing time and ef­fort to help em­ploy­ers deal with the prob­lem.

Ac­cord­ing to its CEO, John­ny C Tay­lor, the prob­lem start­ed when em­ploy­ers adopt­ed the wrong ap­proach to di­ver­si­ty in the work­place, ef­fec­tive­ly en­cour­ag­ing em­ploy­ees to bring, among oth­er things, the po­lit­i­cal bi­as­es that, in the past, they would have left be­hind be­fore en­ter­ing the of­fice or the fac­to­ry.

HR spe­cial­ists add that high­ly con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sions, such as the US Supreme Court’s re­cent rul­ing on abor­tion rights, are not help­ing.

At­tempts by em­ploy­ers to con­tain the sit­u­a­tion are al­so al­most as con­tro­ver­sial.

Meta, the own­ers of Face­book, In­sta­gram and What­sApp, are re­port­ed to have sent a memo to all staff ask­ing them not to dis­cuss the Supreme Court’s de­ci­sion as ‘dis­cussing abor­tion open­ly at work has a height­ened risk of cre­at­ing a hos­tile work en­vi­ron­ment’.

These moves are not with­out risks–both the cryp­to gi­ant Coin­base and the tech com­pa­ny Base­camp saw walk­outs af­ter they tried to im­pose sim­i­lar rules over the past few years.

And here is where our ex­pe­ri­ence in T&T could well help oth­ers.

What re­search seems to be point­ing to­wards in places like the US is that, in in­creas­ing­ly po­larised po­lit­i­cal land­scapes, many look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to ‘de-po­larise’, and the work­place can be one of them. Or, at least, to cre­ate the con­di­tions where staff learn to ‘dis­agree well’.

This seems to be what we learned in our 60 years of in­de­pen­dence.

We are high­ly politi­cised and po­lit­i­cal in how we see life in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but we seem to know where and how to ex­press our views.

And the work­place is not one of them.

The same ap­plies to faith, as the rich mix of re­li­gions in the coun­try is not on­ly re­spect­ed but of­ten cel­e­brat­ed in the work­place–Ra­madan, Di­vali and East­er or Christ­mas bring work col­leagues to­geth­er, in­stead of sep­a­rat­ing them.

By and large, we go about our dai­ly work tasks with­out be­rat­ing the PNM or the UNC (or the PDP if in To­ba­go). Or judg­ing col­leagues based on who they vot­ed for or may vote for.

But this doesn’t stop these same col­leagues from hav­ing heat­ed de­bates about the coun­try’s ills, the Gov­ern­ment and the po­lit­i­cal par­ties when lim­ing to­geth­er af­ter work or over the week­end.

But we must not take this for grant­ed.

As we have seen else­where in the world, democ­ra­cy can ac­ci­den­tal­ly breed its own worst en­e­my: the pop­ulist.

And pop­ulism thrives in an en­vi­ron­ment of di­vi­sion and po­lar­i­sa­tion, usu­al­ly us­ing seg­ments of so­ci­ety as the scape­goats for every­thing that is wrong. Or by blam­ing things on fuzzy con­cepts such as ‘deep state’ or ‘main­stream me­dia’ or ‘for­eign in­ter­ests’.

These base­less and hol­low con­cepts are even more dan­ger­ous in a world where lies can quick­ly and eas­i­ly spread via so­cial me­dia, a tool well un­der­stood and wide­ly used by pop­ulists to dis­sem­i­nate ru­mours, fake news and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

We saw that ma­li­cious be­hav­iour hap­pen­ing with the COVID vac­cine roll­out, with po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly con­se­quences.

Like every hard-fought gain since our in­de­pen­dence near­ly 60 years ago, we must both cel­e­brate and pro­tect the fact that, de­spite liv­ing in a high­ly po­lit­i­cal na­tion, our work­place is, by and large, free from pol­i­tics, free from splits down re­li­gious lines and free from po­lar­is­ing views.

We are far from per­fect, and so is our pol­i­tics, but let’s cher­ish and pro­tect the many pos­i­tives we al­so have. At home and at work.

Hap­py 60th an­niver­sary.