It occurred to me when I realised that Keith Rowley's Section 34 e-mail fiasco was still going on–for weeks after the alleged communications were first revealed with parliamentary privilege six months after the "fact." That the authenticity of something so potentially significant, which could be verified in a day, an hour, a glance and yet would drag on and on and on without resolution and still take top spot in the news, in people's minds, in the public consciousness, said something even more significant.
It occurred to me when I realised people were still talking about that gender policy. I remember talking about that gender policy ten years ago, that exact same gender policy. Civil, religious, academic and political groups are saying the same things a decade now.
It occurred to me when I realised the country was suffering from the same problems every year for as long as I could remember–crime, flooding, corruption, lawlessness, lack of healthcare, traffic, lack of entrepreneurship, lack of innovation, poverty.
It occurred to me when I noticed certain people who were no longer in public office were still paramount in the public mind, still up and about making waves when their time had long passed. It occurred to me when I realised miniscule bits of bacchanal and nonsense and old talk substituted for bigger, more critical and more impactful issues in the public and political discourse.
It occurred to me when I saw other countries big and small embroiled in real problems: immigration protests, economic decline, civil war and environmental disaster. What would happen to T&T should such big problems suddenly strike? We might implode.
Small island, small vision
In a small island-nation, it is easy to have small vision. The nearby shores narrow the perspective, perhaps. The history is not long and full of fantastic legacies and leaders to mould our mantras and missions into fantastic ambitions. People don't walk around quoting the constitution or the legendary words of great leaders past as they do in other countries. The media, politicians and community leaders unfairly control the public discourse. The elected officials aren't ambitious or revolutionary enough to inspire the people they lead and the generations they nurture.
Who knows whose fault it is? It just is. And an inherent and chronic focus on the small things could never lead to a big future. When the national focus is consistently on the details, the personalities and the allegations, focused on the bacchanal, there is no room for opportunity, for dreaming, for vision, for ambition. In other words, there is no room for growth.
Is small thing en masse. Or maybe en mas. Because it is a bacchanal, a carnival, a mas parade of small thing every day.
There is an endemic culture of small-mindedness: that everything is small thing and no one has a big picture in mind. Where is the country going? What do we want our country to be? What do we want for our people? What is the bright future that we aspire to?
Culture of smallness
People have no thought for others. A man gets beaten with a cutlass while buying doubles and no one does a thing. The attacker gets his doubles, too. Driving on the roads, it's every man for himself. Without a thought or concept of order, much less courtesy, drivers break the law repeatedly per day just to get ahead. There is only a singularity of purpose and a culture of selfishness.
Issues are not solved through fact and evidence. When a terrible car accident happens, the talk focuses narrowly without a widened perspective of the bigger problem. Big issues are solved only through sweeping action. A single solution of raising the age of driving eligibility does nothing if we don't look at the drinking and driving problem in T&T, the lack of enforcement of traffic laws, the regulations test that anyone can pass without effort and the culture of corruption where anyone can pay $500 or $1,000 to pass a driving test.
Policy issues habitually degenerate into personality clashes and allegations and other forms of thoughtlessness. Again, few look at evidence or have a bigger picture in mind of the country's future direction. The draft gender policy is in perpetual stagnation and will continue to be eroded into nothingness if those who have a static view of gender and sexuality issues continue to be given preference in policy-making. Is what exists now what we want to maintain or is the purpose of the policy to better the future of the country's men, women and children?
When our great-grandchildren peer into the archives to see what their country was like a century ago, what would they find? Headlines for decades about the same problems that just never got fixed. Headlines about fiascos and allegations and bobol and the dotishness people said and did. There's a good vision of the future of our country.
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