In early August, 1975 when I arrived in Israel I was taking sixty milligrams of Valium every day; and, I was sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of apathy and hopelessness.
I was as depressed then, as I am today; the exercise in futility in which I have been engaged for thirty years, is, at last getting to me.
Often recently, I find myself praying for death; whether that state precipitates the reward my determination and efforts to transcend the attitudes and patterns of behavior of coercion based culture, deserves; or, I simply and inevitably rejoin the nitrogen cycle.
The deep pit of depression in which I exist today evokes nostalgia for that previous period of deep despondency; a state of mind created then by the fact that my native land was being riven by a conflict that bordered on civil war triggered by a search for national identity; and, because in my personal life, I was anticipating a divorce that would mean that I would become a visitor in the lives of my children.
During the three and one half months that I spent in the Land of the Bible; I discovered and regained hope for the future.
When I left that beleaguered nation my faith in the ability of human beings to overcome the manifest and urgent social problems that beset the human race, had been restored.
I witnessed a nation making much out of the scanty and scarce resources it had to work with; I saw apples growing in the desert; I passed numerous tanks in which fish were being grown for consumption; I lived on a farm that was so well planned that after a few days I could have operated it profitably on my own, without help or assistance.
Moreover, I witnessed the civility, the courage, the resiliency displayed by a people under constant pressure because they were surrounded by populations who were committed to their destruction.
I confronted racism on one single occasion; I was called a wog by an Australian who operated a restaurant in Tel Aviv near to the Institute where I was studying.
Once, near the end of the course I was invited to a party attended by ordinary Israeli men and women; and, observed a representative from Thailand, a drunk, middle aged representative from Thailand, kiss a teen aged girl, who broke from his embrace; they were dancing, and run weeping off the dance floor.
I was sure that this incident would have provoked a fight; and, was surprised by the tolerance displayed by those present to the foreigners in their midst; especially because many of them were armed with Uzi machine pistols, as they invariably were, no matter where we went.
I thought about what would have been the end result if such an incident had occurred in Jamaica as I had previously struck a comparison to the grove of apple trees thriving on the edge of the desert; and the planning that had obviously been applied to the farm on the Moshav on which I lived for a week; in my native land if a drunk foreigner had been so forward with a Jamaican teenager this would have sparked a violent confrontation which would have ended the festivities; and, on a another level, I contrasted the comparably pitiful attempts at agriculture in the lush tropical climate and plains with deep alluvial soil of my island in the sun, which caused my nation perennially to be unable to fill its sugar quota in British markets.
Lately, I have been constrained to reflect on my experiences in the twenty three years I have lived in the United States of America in a so far futile effort to recapture hope for the future here; hope that this nation will lead the world towards peace, not ensure that the human race will fulfill the tragic ancient prophesy that it will be destroyed by fire.
In December, 1984 within a few months of my becoming a resident in this country, I was employed as a limousine driver servicing and operating, for the most part, out of Newark Airport.
One winter night the flight of my last passenger had been delayed; and, while waiting in Terminal B of the airport, early in the morning of the next day, I fell asleep while sitting on a bench.
I was rudely awakened by a Transit policeman kicking my feet; after informing that individual of the circumstances that caused me to nod off, I sought to find out why he had not tapped the bench to awaken me - instead of kicking my feet.
He was unable to provide any reasonable explanation for his action; and, I requested to see his supervisor, whom he called on his hand held radio.
That supervisor quickly arrived; and, when he heard my compliant instead of satisfying it, he also kicked my feet.
This incident was witnessed by numerous individuals; but not one of them would make eye contact with me afterwards; or, seemed likely to admit that they had witnessed that racist assault.
On my way back to the garage after I had transported my last passenger home; I reflected on what had happened and decided that I would not seek justice in respect of this incident;
because I was surfeited with controversy, and, believed there was nothing I could do that
would positively affect the deeply ingrained prejudice that created and sustained the climate of racism that tainted every aspect and dimension of existence in this country.
I held to this judgment even as I endured the patronizing, hypocritical salutations of that Transit policeman on the future occasions my job caused me to return to Terminal B of Newark Airport; and, I made the adjustment of sleeping in the limousine if I was tired and my fare was delayed.
I found that I could set an alarm in my head that would cause me to awaken after an hour, or half hour so that I would not fail to fulfill my responsibilities to my passenger.
I feel constrained to confess that this experience was not the beginning of the series of circumstances and events over the years that has left me convinced beyond doubt that good guys come last.
For the first ten years of my adult working life I had been employed by the company, Esso West Indies Limited that operated the Esso Kingston Refinery; and, after that period, resigned to become an Officer of the National Workers Union - at a substantial reduction in pay.
I worked for that Union for six years; and never lost a section.
Indeed, every section I had become responsible for was being threatened by raiders from rival unions, mostly communist unions; and, on every occasion I not only extinguished the conflagrations of dissent, but was so popular for my diligence and integrity that these threats never reoccurred during my tenure.
I resigned from the Union when a senior Officer in the Union to which I was employed, Roy Thompson, conspired with tanker drivers behind my back to cross the pickets of striking refinery workers.
Wage Guidelines were in effect and the refinery workers voted to strike to support their claim that since the oil refinery was owned and operated by a multi national company whose initial investment and earnings by agreement with the government was counted in US dollars, restrictions on wage increases and on free collective bargaining would result
in extreme hardship for workers who were paid in Jamaican currency and were subject to the sharply rising tide of inflation in the local economy; and, would have the effect of increasing the profitability of Esso simply because of that fact; moreover that that Oil Company was an enterprise whose transactions and operations were not, nor could they be, a drain on foreign exchange resources - so the wage guidelines a component of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund should not be applicable to this sector of the economy.
The tanker drivers ceased delivering petrol in support of that legitimate protest and a clandestine meeting was held with them to save the government embarrassment; a meeting to which I, nor any refinery delegate, was invited, a serious breach of industrial relations etiquette.
I resigned, as did every refinery worker en bloc, as a protest against that blatant act of treachery against members of the working class; who witnessed their picket lines crossed by strikebreakers who were also members of the union to which they paid dues to protect their interests; an outcome unique and wholly an aberration, even in the context of the corrupt, violent, chequered history of Trade Unionism in Jamaica.
I started working for a living when I was thirteen years old at Malcolm’s Hardware, an enterprise in which my father owned shares; and, was accorded no favors because of that fact but was required to load when required, in high temperatures and humidity, hundreds of bags of cement on the backs of flatbed trucks along with other adult employees.
When I resigned from the National Workers Union, I had never been fired from a job; yet I remained unemployed for the next five years - because I had caused embarrassment to the powers that be in my native land.
During that period I lost everything of economic, social and emotional value in my life, including my two children, both of whom I was forced to send to live with their mother and my former wife in the USA.
I was permitted a very brief, foreshortened career as a free lance journalist doing political commentary for the Daily Gleaner - because I was popular and my revelations and first hand opinions of the inadequacies of members and failures of the political movement of which the Union that had previously employed me was the power base - bolstered the popularity of the other political tribe and assisted them in achieving their objective of winning the general elections in 1982.
From that platform I suggested that a government of national unity be formed composed of members of both political factions; to bear responsibility for, and oversee the implementation of, the extreme draconian economic measures necessary to curtail government spending and end the inflation and drain on the foreign exchange reserves that this overspending precipitated.
I prophesied in an article, which was described by an assistant editor of the Gleaner, as the best I had ever written; an article which by some ‘oversight’ was never published which I still have in my possession with an attachment containing the handwritten comments of that assistant editor; that if this option was not adopted the then Opposition Party would win the election but subsequently would be held responsible for the exponentially increasing hardships that the continued decline in the economy precipitated by overspending in the national budget would eventually cause; and, after less than a year in power that they would wish they had not dismissed and summarily rejected, my call for a government of national unity.
The newly elected government instead of doing what they knew was necessary, what they knew was urgently necessary - reduce government spending; attempted to borrow their way out of fiscal quagmire created by the Manley Regime’s attempt to redistribute the wealth - a naïve and unrealistic policy which substituted for the historical situation in which there were a wealthy few; one in which countless individuals suffered economic death having lost their jobs, experienced abject and extreme poverty; and, as I did, presided over the dissolution of their families and lost everything of economic, social or emotional value.
This cowardly, spineless approach of borrowing from every available source to support overspending of the government exacerbated the problems and had the woeful, easily predictable, very lamentable effect of accelerating the pace of economic decline; and, right on schedule the doom I had foretold in that unpublished article came to pass.
After a brief space in office the government of the Jamaica Labor Party, to retain power in the face of draconian measures insisted on by the International Monetary Fund; that the representatives of the Fund required if they were to continue to provide foreign exchange support, called snap elections which they won because the Opposition party did not contest to protest a plebiscite which came ‘like a thief in the night;’ and, thereafter were consigned to the political wilderness, to the limbo of always being the parliamentary opposition even up to the present; for the most part because they were in office when the Jamaican people eventually had to foot the bill for the glaring, monstrous errors and indiscretions of the Manley regime.
The same people who were so happy with my criticisms of my former colleagues in that wholly corrupt cabal that the Peoples National Party government became, were completely incensed when my exposes and trenchant censures came to be directed at their policies; and, this came to a head when I wrote an article exposing and condemning the infamous crocus bag murders.
I remember with a clarity undiminished by the passage of time how this all went down.
It was sometime early in the year 1983 and I was residing in the parish of St. Elizabeth with a member of the poorest branch of my family; all others had, by that time, pretty much given up on me.
That very generous, big hearted and compassionate cousin with whom I was staying made a living by supplying marijuana to those who flew small planes into Jamaica to procure a load of ‘weed’ which they sold at a gigantic and gargantuan profits in the USA.
I admit I had smoked ‘ganja’ as it is called in Jamaica every now and then during my life; and, out of deference to that detail supplied and made notorious by former President Bill Clinton because of its mendacity, I am also constrained to confess that I inhaled.
I never became habituated or addicted to smoking this intoxicant, but considered it a much superior means of getting high when compared to alcohol, which sometimes caused me to become angry and aggressive, and, produced a hangover which I hated to experience.
During that particular period when I had unlimited access to marijuana because it was grown in close proximity to where I resided; I indulged only on Friday nights - if I did not have the funds to buy the few Red Stripe beers that would cause me to transcend, even for a few hours, the sere reality of the abject and wholly undeserved poverty of my existence.
I am also constrained to comment that the purely aesthetic vista created by marijuana plants twelve feet high, covered with the moss that proclaimed them to be of the variety ‘sensimilia,’ is, and always will be, one of my most poignant, replete with hopeless yearning, and unforgettable memories of my island in the sun.
Before I am reduced to copious tears let me quickly move on to that fateful morning when I exited the minibus that had transported me from Fife’s Pen in St. Elizabeth, near the Kingston Public Hospital on North Street and began to saunter down into West Kingston to catch up on developments there.
The first scene I confronted was the somewhat bizarre apparition of a derelict woman whom had been filled with “ The Spirit” and who, as a result, was speaking in tongues.
I soon left her behind and penetrated deeper into that ghetto area until I reached the domicile of “Quattie,” an individual who was reputed to be a very dangerous ‘man of respect,’ a front line warrior in the conflict between the two major political tribes in Jamaica.
He greeted me warmly and was full of news; he reported that his political party had won the recent national elections in a landslide victory; and, that he had resigned from the Cooperative for which during its fledgling, formative period I had played the role of Change Agent.
He was happy to relate that he had new employment, as a member of the security force that maintained order in nearby Coronation Market.
I left him and traversed Wildman Street going west until I arrived at Bread Lane, which was the single stronghold of the opposing political tribe in West Kinston.
There, I encountered a gentleman who was the leader of a group; that, in a great sea of ‘laborites,’ had the courage and temerity to be a small atoll of ‘socialists;’ more accurately, he was the leader of the respectable law abiding who were members of that political faction, also located on that narrow thoroughfare was the headquarters of a posse composed of individuals who professed to having similar convictions, over which he had little control.
He also was filled with jubilation and had much to report.
He said that peace had come to the constituency of Western Kingston; that, for the first time at last, he could wander through the precincts of his neighborhood without fearing for his life; without fearing that he would be attacked and robbed by members of the criminal element, or, be shot while an innocent bystander to any of the numerous shootouts that with monotonous regularity had occurred between rival political factions.
He indicated that the cause of this renaissance and transformation was the actions of a group who were located at “The Bump.”
If, he declaimed, a victim went to these worthies and petitioned for justice because someone had raped them, or forcibly removed from their necks a valuable gold chain; on the first occasion members of this vigilante group would beat the miscreant ‘to sickness,’ a second offence would result in the offender being bound hand and foot, placed in a crocus bag, and be afforded another hole in his head, most often between his eyes; an additional aperture created by an explosive accelerating particle of lead that would admit more light to his brain, and speed his way to eternity.
I am constrained to interject that this means of maintaining discipline and order among members of the posse that invested Tivoli Gardens had been a fixture of that criminal subculture for several years; and, during this period many bodies had been discovered enshrouded in crocus bags, with hands and feet bound, shot at close range in the head; and, such discoveries had served to enlarge and expand to the status of near legend the grisly reputations of the infamous, much celebrated and intensely feared instigators and perpetuators of “crocus bag murders.”
In fact, one of the items of proof that counted mightily as circumstantial evidence of being a participant in, or perpetuator of, certain gruesome misdeeds was to have discovered in the trunk of the motor vehicle owned by any individual, crocus bags and lengths of cord;
and, a popular threat much used and overused by all and sundry in the ghetto was the caution to wayward individuals that they might find themselves ensconced in a crocus bag peering out, for the last time, on a hostile, cruel world.
I realized that this sanction seemed to have worked so well and inspired so much fear and trepidation in those who harbored criminal and antisocial proclivities that its application had been widened far beyond the need to limit and restrain the criminal impulses of the denizens that prowled Tivoli Gardens - to embrace the entire area of West Kingston.
But, me being me, I immediately perceived the downside of such a development; I began to speculate that individuals who engaged in illicit and covert sexual relationships with females who were considered the paramours and chattels of high ranking members of the Shower Posse might find themselves in the unenviable position of being punished for their infidelities and promiscuity by being “bagged.”
Also, that the intense competition for goods and services among residents in that area produced numerous grievances that hitherto had resulted in incidents of virulent vituperation; which instead might come to be unjustly, extremely and finally disposed of by misdirecting the malefic, deadly propensities of these all powerful vigilantes against those guilty of relatively trivial infractions.
With these reservations in mind I sought confirmation that this extreme sanction was being applied by going to its source; I crossed Spanish Town Road and approached the headquarters of the Shower Posse located at “The Bump.”
It soon was clear that one of the developments precipitated by the victory of the Jamaica Labor Party in the General Elections was that the power and authority of the Shower Posse, hitherto limited to the residents who lived in the precincts of Tivoli Gardens, had been enlarged to allow its members to apply their particular brand of order and justice to the entire constituency of West Kingston.
The article that attempted to communicate these reservations and concerns died on the desk of my editor; a truncated version that effectively, subtly, effectively and efficiently concealed and buried my attempt to expose this example of vigilante action was eventually published in “The Star,” the afternoon edition of “The Gleaner.”
Of course, me being me, I made copies of this article and other documentation supporting the claim that the truth I was attempting to reveal was being diluted and eviscerated to make it more palatable and less embarrassing to the powers that be; the new Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, was the member of parliament who represented the constituency of West Kingston.
This contretemps ended my brief career as a free lance journalist; as once again I was hoist on the inevitable, quixotic and perennial petard of my integrity and principles.
This baring of my soul, this testament revealing some of the dark deeds that I witnessed, would not be accurate or complete without reference to the beam in my eye, my Achilles heel.
In the interests of creating an accurate and complete picture of the corruption that tainted my existence, I must admit that during this five year period of unemployment I regressed and began to prey on the domestic servants I employed; I exploited them to satisfy my carnal lust and basest desires.
Many were willing and enthusiastic participants in these encounters, others I paid and prostituted; the resistance of others I overcame and eventually made them pliant and amenable by the condign, judicious application of my superior physical strength; a few resisted all my blandishments and importunes.
I remember one woman who proved recalcitrant and obdurate to the point where I engaged in a wholly illegal search of her belongings where she had secreted a small quantity of rice, I speculate to feed her family.
I used this discovery of her ‘stealing’ as an excuse to fire her; so that I could hire someone more amenable to satisfying my gross and lecherous designs.
In reporting this I have no salacious or prurient intent or motivation, nor, am I trying to shock or create revulsion in my readers; I am mandated by the necessity of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
If I were to reveal the corruption displayed by human beings, while concealing my own moral failings; I would be adopting and utilizing the mechanism of repression that is the main pillar supporting the social traditional edifice that is coercion based culture; the powerful buttress and support of a world where anything goes, one that perpetuates the intangible, impermeable monolith that is a crushing, intolerable burden on the existences of those who constitute the wretched of this earth.
I am wracked with intense shame and guilt about these incidents not the least because I could no longer claim that I did not know what I was doing - because by that time I had been exposed to these observations and insights of Orlando Patterson in the “Sociology of Slavery:”
According to one missionary ‘the sanctions of marriage were almost unknown’ and the institution was largely ridiculed by the slaves. ‘Every estate on the
island - every Negro hut - was a common brothel; every female a prostitute; and every man a libertine.’ This breakdown of sexual mores and the institution of marriage among the Negroes occurred all over the New World. But in no other area was the degree of sexual abandonment so great as in Jamaica. The reason for this is to be found largely in the similar breakdown of such mores among the dominant white group which we have examined in detail in our chapter on the whites. The scarcity of white women and the absence of moral sanctions led to a ruthless exploitation of the female slave. Sometimes this exploitation was crude and direct, being against the will of the woman, who would be ‘compelled under pain of corporal punishment to yield implicit obedience to the will of the master.’ Another witness stated that ‘if an overseer sends for a girl for such purposes she is obliged to come, or else flogged. Whitely was told by a book - keeper that he had had twelve ‘Negro wives in six months; and when he refused to participate in the custom of the country he was regarded ‘with mingled contempt and suspicion.’ The male partner dared not complain if his ‘wife’ was called upon to satisfy the lust of the overseer, for if he did all he could expect was flogging ‘couched under the name of some other misdemeanor.’
Quite apart from this exploitation by the whites, the sex - ratio of the slave population would inevitably have led to promiscuity. We have already discussed this problem in an earlier chapter. Purely biological reasons, therefore, prompted the female slave to promiscuity. The sex life of the creole Negroes began quite early; from one report they began to have sexual intercourse ‘even at the age of nine, and with a multitude of men …’ Phillippo found that that they had ‘sacrificed all pretensions to virtue before they had attained their fourteenth year’ and that ‘hundreds were known to have become mothers before they entered their teens.’ Another missionary also found that ‘the men go astray as much as the women, and girls of fourteen are said to be common instruments of pleasure.’
Where young girls resisted they were raped, many cases of which were reported by Mahon. Particularly gruesome was his account of the rape of an eleven year old girl by the attorney of Richmond Estate. But rape was often unnecessary since the slave Negress soon gave in to the overwhelming pressures and made the best of its rewards, for, ‘not only did these connections exempt the poor female from the toils of field labour, but it gave her many enviable exemptions in other respects, and in her own eyes especially raised her to a fancied superiority over the other slaves.’ (Patterson 159)
It was when I reached this passage in this text that I began to believe that it contained ideas adequate to the reality about human existence; because what it described was so exactly what I observed and remembered from the period of my life that spanned my adolescence and early adulthood.
I once took a poll among process technicians who worked on shift in the Esso refinery; everyone with the single exception of Edward Browne confessed to having sexual relations with their domestic helpers when they were home alone with them, when they worked the second or third shift.
I record these confessions and revelations to emphasize the point that there is no original innocence, only learned innocence; that the attitudes and ways of thinking that produce these malignant patterns of behavior are deeply embedded in human culture, in social systems that permit individuals to avoid responsibility for the most odious acts, one in which there are few meaningful external checks on immoral acts; morality is a matter of the strength of the conscience of the individual, and always has been.
On more than one occasion I have mistakenly perpetuated the myth, the very seductive myth, of Original Innocence; a myth that I encountered in a movie that portrayed the life story of St. Francis of Assisi; which depicted his encounter with the Pope producing this observation from that Holy Father, “In our preoccupation with Original Sin, we forget that there can also be Original Innocence.”
There is no original innocence; each and every one of us are socialized to be agents of coercion based culture, the central theme of which is that we are conditioned to creating a ever increasing schism between ideals and action, between concept and precept in our lives; a dichotomy that allows us to retain our self esteem and self respect while engaging in the patterns of the behavior, the often wholly immoral and primitive patterns of behavior that permit us to satisfy our needs and desires.
I stumbled upon the means to bridge the gap between concept and precept; between ideals, principles and values; and, patterns of behavior.
I stumbled upon the means, telling the truth, that honed my perception of what was right, of what supported function; and, also provided the understanding of the implications and consequences of my actions that compelled me to do the right thing.
For example, when I had sexual relations with a woman, I could perceive what her initial sexual encounter had been like because I learned that this determined her capacity to function; those whose initial experiences had been traumatic, and had occurred when they were very young, usually evidenced this by being frigid; while those whose first experience was with someone they cared for, and, occurred when they were mature enough to voluntarily and consciously participate, were usually able to function; with a multitude of variations and differences in capabilities existing between those two extremes.
My conscious appreciation and understanding of the possible consequences and implications of abusing a child made it completely impossible for me to do so, knowing with surety that this would likely result in a lifetime of dysfunction and misery for another human being.
Recently, I witnessed a discussion on television that centered around how much truth a candidate could provide and hope to be elected; the metaphor for the convenient lie was ice cream, and, the that for the inconvenient truth was broccoli.
But that choice does not exist for someone who is aware that the necessary prerequisite to the solving of any problem is its accurate description; and, of the corollary that is universally applicable to this world in which anything goes - that those who rely on ice cream, on plausible lies and spin to get elected will never be harbingers of any positive change, so we are trapped in a past that repeats itself over, and over, and over, again.
Another vicious circle at large in democracies is composed of the reality that those who tell the inconvenient truths that would facilitate positive developments are rewarded for their moral courage by being unelectable; and, those who tell the electorate what they want to hear, when elected are only capable of leading them deeper and deeper into a quagmire of despair.
This the ultimate conundrum and major obstacle to the creation of functioning democracies; that the electorate is composed of dependent personalities the detritus of a system that relied, for many millennia for function on draconian, brutal, physical sanctions and controls, one in which, as a consequence, lies and deceits proliferated like flies and maggots on a rotting carcass.
It is very easy, given that powerful tradition, to perceive examples of experiences in which you are being victimized; easy to make others responsible for the hardships, shortcomings and vicissitudes of existence.
It is well nigh impossible, as I have discovered, to convince anyone that they too are guilty of predation in encounters with others who are weaker than they are; and, that being unaware of this is the key to perpetuating the status quo because perceiving this is essential to the realization that cultural change is the necessary prerequisite to exiting the ‘state of nature’ that humans create and create wherever they go; because the template of culture whose ethos is competition and in which the dominant roles are territorial predator and prey, are deeply embedded in their subconscious.
For those who would conclude from the above that I am a prophet of doom and gloom, a purveyor of pessimism; I wish to emphasize that I am being completely accurate because
things always will be a little better or a little worst if viewed in the short term; even while secular decline occurs in the long term, if viewed from the perspective of long march of history - because stasis is impossible.
For example, during the Clinton Presidency, the economy improved because of the very positive impact of the fiscal policies applied by the Newt Ginrich lead Congress; but, these improvements could not be sustained because opportunism, corruption and naiveté have a greater weight in political decision making than principle so the trend in the long term will perennially be downward.
Which brings me back to why I am constrained to never be involved in disseminating palatable, convenient lies but must always tell the truth; I know beyond doubt that what the majority believes the social reality to be has little relation to the facts; but is a tainted, distorted picture, a composite of propaganda, lies, obfuscations, myths, illusions and delusions, leavened with particles of truth.
If we were to accept the version of reality, the contemporary version of reality being promoted by the many various interests groupings, and those who ‘front’ for them; the multitude of spin doctors that create, recreate and perpetuate a world where anything goes; the present has no logical and factual links and connections to the past, to the savage, brutally oppressive past of Absolutism which relentlessly suppressed every moral value for most of human history.
They would have us believe that predation ceased and no longer had any impact on the human condition in social systems that claimed to be democracies, even in those that
continue to be bastions of Absolutism; such behavior is currently limited to sexual abuse of minors and even contemporary Absolutist regimes are camouflaged and obscured by being labeled as dictatorships of the Right or the Left.
This perception of civility and equity is carefully nurtured and supported by the fact that in all movie and television dramas, justice prevails in the vast majority of scenarios created by the dream merchants, right always overcomes might, the villain or villains are always defeated, the good guy always get the girl; and, they invariably live happily ever after.
What I perceive, and have the unenviable, inconceivably difficult task of exposing, is, the sere reality of human existence; one in which we have not cleansed our minds of the powerful traditions, impulses and dictates of the past; to the extent where we repeating that past over, and over, and over, again.
Human beings have not dispensed with the deeply embedded habits of predation, they continue to be habituated to playing the roles of territorial predators and their prey; but they pretend to civility while continuing to do as they have always done; and, avoid knowing this be burying knowledge of predatory activities in their subconscious minds.
The first occasion in my life when I was treated ‘with mingled contempt and suspicion’ was when I refused to steal gasoline in the refinery as did every individual who worked on shift.
Human beings have developed an opportunistic approach to social reality; one which allows them to satisfy their wants and desires; one which permits them to retain their self respect and self esteem while engaging in behavior wholly inconsistent with the ideals they revere and promote - in concept.
In concept, the richest nation on Planet Earth is a democracy which promotes and is completely dedicated to the common good; in precept, it is run by politicians who relentlessly and savagely prey on those who elect them, who have bankrupted the national pension scheme for citizens, the Social Security Fund; who have created a national debt of such magnitude that it will be a burden and negatively effect the quality of life of countless future generations of Americans; who are engaged in an palpably unjust war that is claiming the lives of, or maiming, some of the best and brightest young Americans; who are presiding over rising tides of crime and drug abuse that they are helpless and palpably incapable of doing anything about; who are doing very little to control and limit the burning of fossil fuels which is creating the problem of global warming that will soon have attained a pace and momentum which will make its effects irreversible; who have presided over, for a quarter of a century, a secular decline in education.
The government of the USA is acting like the government of a Third World country; except that the governments of Third World countries rely heavily on the excuse that they lack the resources to overcome these problems, an excuse that is not available to the government of this nation.
The fact is, most governments worldwide who have limited the degree and extent to which coercion can be applied to citizens are experiencing similar problems, low levels of motivation, dysfunction and anomie; and, for the same reason, that human beings were driven up the steep incline towards civilizations and relying on coercion to motivate action creates social systems which produce neurotic personalities in the vast majority of human beings who belong to these societies; individuals whose intellects are lamed by repression, and who therefore, are incapable of resolving social problems.
The fundamental problem is that a long history of relying on coercion created massive dependence on this means of attaining social objectives; and, made unnecessary the application of reasoning and intelligence in this area creating a pervasive incapacity similar to the atrophy that is created in a muscle when it is rarely used.
In some democratic societies, notably the Scandinavian countries, education and the practice of moral values has overcome this disability, in other countries, for example, the United States of America this development has not occurred resulting in the situation I am attempting to define and describe.
Which is simply that I stumbled on a remedy, telling the truth, that when applied will overcome this obstacle to social development; the problem, is, that in the USA almost everyone tells the truth opportunistically resulting in a situation that is getting worst with every passing day.
How can there be ideas adequate to the existing reality or truth, when nobody tells it; not politicians, religious leaders, telemarketers, advertisers, or journalists; when nobody is aware of the value or need to tell it, when nobody appreciates its impact on function, when nobody realizes that there is a connection between fact and function, which can only be bridged by morality - even though it was American social scientists who discovered that the necessary prerequisite to solving any problem is its accurate description.
The truth is, the pattern of my life over these past thirty years since I accepted the discipline of truth and, began the arduous journey towards moral consistency, was a period when I tried to do the right thing; always followed by a bout of privation because doing the right thing attracts the sanction of poverty; and, during those bouts there occurred a regression to promiscuity.
This habit of promiscuity was broken by ever more painful consequences; when I had an affair with a married woman shortly after I migrated to the USA, she became pregnant but the child was born with a hole in its heart, a deeply traumatic catastrophe for someone who loved and revered children above all else.
On another occasion in Florida in the early Nineties, when I struck up a relationship with a woman whom I thought was divorced; and continued that affair even after I found out she was not - I was stalked by her husband who, for several months, punctured my tires, frequently and at will; until to avoid this occurrence the police being no help, I had to sleep in the car in rest stops on the Florida Turnpike.
Sometimes I feel, not think mind you, but feel; that I was whipped by events, by very painful events designed for that purpose and with me specifically as the target - into a shape; into a form, into the moral consistency that was required for a duty that was required of me, for that experience separated me from the last vestige of my immoral animal past, it was the last gasp of immaturity and childishness; I became someone who finally understood “that duty was heavier than a mountain, and death was lighter than a feather.” (Jordan 657)
I was no longer capable of promiscuity but that was not the end of it; I had to become capable of loving another human being, I had to learn what would result from being stripped of all my defense mechanisms; so that I could realize just what my promiscuity had been, defense mechanism that were in their totality a way to avoid intimacy - when belatedly I made a complete and total commitment to another human being.
It was not that she was a good or very intelligent woman by the standards I had developed during my life; and, somehow I knew that from the start; but love, I discovered, was not a very discerning emotion; it was a stage of personal development that I had belatedly attained.
It flowered and grew exponentially out of the fact that I could focus all my emotional energies on a single woman; without having the slightest fear that I would mistakenly give myself away as I had to strictly and tensely guard against in the past; it achieved dizzying altitudes of feeling and intimacy that I had never before ascended with previous partners - because I had to justify my infidelities by concentrating on and enlarging their inadequacies and failure to achieve inhuman perfection.
With her, I discovered the real and accurate outline of a dream of love that I have cherished for all of my adult life; what, I speculated, in the deepest recesses of the cathedral that was my heart, would be the result if I could find a woman who was capable of living with me in truth, without need for artifice or deception or reservation; one who was capable of divesting herself of the brittle, impermeable shell created by previous painful experiences; and, effect the transformation and epiphany into a new, enlightened, wholly emancipated being, as I had done.
When that relationship failed; when she demonstrated that love was not enough to overcome her powerful conditioning; when she confused the emanations stimulated by deep and sincere affections as those of prey; and, began to treat me with contempt, as if I
were her easy prey; I left her and promised myself that if I ever were to love again, it would be someone who had a capacity for truth, a promise I have kept for fourteen long, interminable years replete with bittersweet nostalgia, lurid sexual fantasies, immeasurable loneliness and poignant regret.
My first brush with poverty in Jamaica lasted for five years; for the first two years I continued to be responsible for the welfare of my children, and, for the final three years of that trial I was on my own.
I would never have survived that initial introduction to the sere brutal reality that good guys come last; that there exists deeply embedded in human culture a dichotomy between concept and precept; that the moral values though bandied about and valued in concept, became meaningless in reality; more, that their practice would result in untold misery and suffering; but for my duty and responsibility to my hostages to a cruel and fickle fate that caused me to preserve my life, to preserve theirs.
It is my greatest achievement that they lost only one day in school during that period; because on that day I did have the money so they could purchase lunch.
When they eventually left I had become habituated to survival; and, bore the shame, degradation and privation that was the consequence, the inevitable consequence of doing the right thing in human societies.
My mother was a citizen; and, I was the unmarried son a US citizen which made me first in line to be granted a green card the passport to being permitted to reside in that country, why then did it take so long?
That story might help human beings understand the workings, the tortured twists and machinations of a fickle, immutable and unpredictable fate that determines our destinies; that makes it difficult for us to manage or plan our lives.
My mother was born Mavis Albertine Chung, the daughter of Chinese gentleman who had migrated to Jamaica from Hong Kong; and, a mulatto woman who could have passed for white.
In appearance, except for a broad, flattened nose she seemed to be Chinese; and, because of this her father took possession of her at a tender age she grew up as a member of his household; though she demonstrated her courage by trying to run away in a failed attempt to return to her mother.
When she was sixteen years old, her father married her to one of his cronies who lived in Falmouth, in the Parish of Trelawny, someone who was ancient and decrepit in her eyes; to escape this fate she again ran away but this time she was successful.
She was an oriental beauty and attracted the attention of a cousin of my father, who was a dentist and hired her to work in his office; I have no evidence of this but the character of this promiscuous gentleman which makes me certain they had a brief affair.
When his ardor cooled, or, when she became pregnant; he handed her off to his cousin, who ‘married’ her, which was her first act of bigamy since her first nuptials had not been annulled.
That union produced four children, the eldest of whom was a girl; followed by three males, I was the eldest of these.
She was incapable of being faithful; nor had she access to babysitters, so she dragged my elder sister and myself along when she engaged in her extramarital activities; first with Dudley Chin, someone who was connected in some obscure way with the horseracing industry in Jamaica; and, latterly with Richard ‘Dicky’ Vassell, the captain of a cricket team that I could not help but be aware of.
She also began traveling to the USA to seek her fortune, when I was quite young.
Eventually, she was deported from that country; but this was a small obstacle to her ambitions because after a brief sojourn in Jamaica, on July 18th, 1954 she returned to the USA under the name Mavis Williams.
She abandoned the four children of the ‘marriage’ to the care of their father; despite the fact that her promiscuity cast doubt on who was the actual father of these hostages to fate; a doubt reinforced by the fact that the birth certificates of every one of them, in the space reserved for their progenitor, appeared the name of the aforementioned, Dudley Chin.
She did send funds back to aid in the support of the family she abandoned; monies which were used to purchase a home which she visited briefly in 1955.
She next honored us with her presence in 1958, when she returned to Jamaica to be issued with her green card; which she was granted as a result of an arranged marriage, which made her Mrs. Wilson; and, made her guilty of a second count of bigamy, since she was still legally married to that old Chinese gentleman who resided in Falmouth - who might have been deceased at this point.
On that occasion when she departed she purloined the most valuable item in our depleted household; a chest of silver that my father’s sister had purchased from Holland as a wedding present to her brother and his ‘wife.’
It was clear that she had engaged from the outset the services of a very special firm of lawyers who specialized in immigration matters; who were capable of fixing anything, for my sister discovered that she had divorced the individual who we perceived to be our father when she sought a vacation visa to visit the USA early in the decade of the Sixties.
My green card took a long time and cost an arm and leg; because of the difficulty involved in establishing a familial relation between someone whose birth certificate had on it the name of his mother, Mavis Albertine Chung, and, someone whose birth certificate indicated that she was Mavis Williams; but somehow they were equal to that task - once the money was paid that greased the wheels of American bureaucracy.
Their task was made more difficult because I had once been charged and found guilty of simple assault because I had punched a neighbor who had attacked me with a hammer but eventually I escaped the hell hole my existence had become in Jamaica because I had had the temerity to attempt to live a moral life, not in concept but in precept.
That law firm also handled my wife’s petition for divorce in 1977; and, I am constrained to confess that my childhood experiences and my promiscuity made me a poor husband but they also caused me to be an excellent father.
A circumstance of which my wife was well aware when she abandoned our children to my care a year earlier as she precipitately decamped to the USA; leaving me with the unenviable task of explaining to our children the circumstances of her disappearance.
Yet, with support of that law firm, in a court in the USA; she claimed sole custody of those children which she obviously could not produce to the court, whom she had not laid eyes on in more than a year; a claim I could not contest because of financial constraints not the least of these being restrictions on access to and export of US dollars created by the decline in the Jamaican economy.
That she was granted sole custody of our children combined with her benign neglect to ruin the moral character of two children who were considered to be in the community in which they resided before they emigrated; the best behaved, most disciplined and the possessors of habits of study that made them stand out when compared to their peers, habits which they did not long exhibit after I was forced by the circumstances I have described to consign them to her care.
I am constrained to make clear that this has always been a work in progress with insights emerging sometimes at the most inconvenient times, often while I am writing; as has happened not more than a few minutes ago while I was revising a previous paragraph.
I am trying to convince my race of the value of telling the truth; which should be a simple task but is not.
For example, Jesus, the individual who attempted this a long time ago created a Ministry that should be a great help to me; it is not.
I have concluded that those who documented his Ministry used the approach now popular among advertisers; they determined those features that would be popular and embellish the product, for example eternal life, in a age when the average life expectancy was thirty five; they made sure the product was fortified by powerful traditions, and was the fulfillment of ancient prophesies; they gave it unassailable authority by vesting and associating this Ministry with supernatural occurrences and events, with miracles and winged creatures singing hymns of praise; all of which obscured and deemphasized the prescription that worked, telling the truth.
I am completely safe in saying that they produced something that was a tissue of lies because none of these events made it into any other history but the New Testament, a version of occurrences that we could only accept on faith; can anyone imagine that winged creatures sang, and no one else in that area mentioned or recorded it?
Every people mentions a flood in their history; because these were a result of the melting and inundations of vast areas that occurred after the several Ice Ages that are documented by contemporary scientists to have occurred.
I ask you, would an All Powerful, All Knowing God give us a prescription that did not work?
Which is why I was careful to provide a rationale descriptions and reasons why I could never, ever abuse a child; a perspective produced by the practice of the discipline of truth.
The version of the prescription provided by Jesus one that if applied would create moral and civilized human beings who could enter heaven; as interpreted and documented by the Roman Catholic Church produced priests, many of whom were pederasts; and, their religious organizations instead of punishing and excommunicating them, as they excommunicated many individuals who believed that the world was round or any other heresy that challenged their doctrine, instead provided financial support and concealed their depredations; and, paid off parents and fostered the opportunistic belief that huge sums of money was a suitable and appropriate compensation for the misery and suffering inflicted on countless hapless innocent children abused and corrupted by their agents.
History records that this palpably false doctrine has produced very few Christians; which few they have canonized and used to promote, excuse and justify the failure of the opportunistic doctrine that made this Church one of the wealthiest organizations on the planet.
Through the World Wide Web everyone has access to the depredations of the this Church, from the outset it had little to do with the teachings of gentle Jesus; and, its contemporary depredations and abuse of minors was not confined to the USA; but occurred worldwide.
I claim that if a bare majority of human beings in any society adopts, and practices the maxim, telling the truth will make you free; they will create veritable gardens of eden as a result; they will create heaven here on earth.
One of the most striking paradoxes historically produced by human ambivalence, by the dichotomy between concept and precept; is that slave owners believed, sincerely believed that their slaves were happy and contented, a complete departure from a reality that would seem preposterous and insane when the facts of the quality of life enjoyed by the slave was considered.
Which is why I documented my experience with the white policeman and his superior in Terminal B of Newark Airport because this was not by the widest stretch of the imagination an isolated incident; all individuals of color in this country quickly learn to be careful in their interactions with white policemen.
But most do not have my resources of experience to draw on; I know, having interacted with black policemen in Jamaica that the problem is not race, it is the same cultural
problem I have described; that those vested in power must abuse it, and a difference in pigmentation being obvious, is one thing that triggers predation, but there are many others.
A black policeman in the Sixties in Jamaica confronted a black young male adult who had rolled his hair into ‘candy bumps’ so that it would be easy to comb; that policeman, for no other reason but his disgust at what he considered a girlish display, slapped the face and boxed the ears of that individual until he urinated in his pants.
The point I am trying to make is that the persistence of these ancient attitudes and the patterns of behavior that they produce, create an enemy within in every individual, patterns of behavior that are reinforced and rewarded by being the means to satisfy needs, wants and desires in every social system.
It is clear to the intelligent, discerning observer that the Iron Curtain was not dismantled by the USA winning the Cold War; as the spin doctors and other purveyors of propaganda would have us believe.
The reality is that the Union of Socialist Republics lost its preeminent place and status of being a super power because of the failure of the Russian economy; its disintegration occurred because this nation could no longer produce enough food to feed its populace and so was constrained to come, cap in hand to the government of the USA to avoid widespread rioting and dislocation; further that its resurgence and the new willingness of its leader to reassert Russian independence and protest the placing of a missile defense system in Europe; is as much a consequence of the resurgence in the Russian economy as a result of the unprecedented increases in the price for oil, as from the perceived weakness of the USA as it plunges deeper and deeper in the quagmire of the war in Iraq.
The United States of America will never be defeated by an enemy without; its nuclear arsenal and other sophisticated weaponry makes that well nigh impossible.
However, it can be defeated by the enemy within; not the enemy created by the injustices meted out to minorities; not the dissenters created by attempts to demonize those who disagree with its policies; these old ruses will continue to succeed directed as they are against groups and individuals too weak and insignificant to engage in damaging protests.
The threats against the soldiers at Fort Dix or the naïve irrational unsophisticated attempt to blow up the pipeline into Kennedy airport in New York are only pinpricks; more effective as propaganda for the Bush spin doctors, to shore up the plummeting approval ratings of the President than conspiracies were ever likely to cause significant damage.
The transformation of dissidents and opponents into monsters, traitors and subversives is as old as the hills; the depredations of Native American tribes in response to efforts to deprive them of lands they had inhabited from time immemorial was headline news in
every existing media of that period; if a small group of Apaches grew tired of bad food and oppressive conditions on the concentration camps that the reservations actually were; and, attacked and scalped settlers who were encroaching on their land, these raids were blown out of all proportion to ignite public opinion and outrage against these red savages; powerful emotions that were the window dressing and camouflage for the wholly unjust and primitive occupation and exploitation of resources on lands which Native American Tribes had ever right to defend since such venal, relentless and merciless exploitation led to the destruction of their way of life and their eventual extinction.
The same method was used to justify the attack on Iraq when combined with the 911 catastrophe; the actors were different, it was the Twenty First not the Nineteenth Century, but the methodology was the same.
Those who protested at the outset this naked act of aggression, for example the French and the Dixie Chicks; anyone who attempted to halt this juggernaut of unwarranted destruction became subject to vilification and malignant attempts at desecration of their careers, their characters and their lives; and, despite the fact that opponents to the war are right, that it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that there were no weapons of mass destruction, nor were any of the other subsequent justifications and rationalizations anything but wholly contrived opportunistic political fabrications, that changed with chameleon quickness and adroitness as they were debunked and proved false or unrealistic - this process of demonizing opponents to the war continues.
And, when this process was applied to the victims of this naked act of aggression; one that the Soviet Union in its heyday of merciless, pitiless oppression and suppression might have been proud of, these A-rabs were transformed from patriots stoutly and valiantly resisting the mean, wholly despicable and underhanded attempts of the Allied Forces to occupy their country and gain possession of their oil resources - after at least one of these nations had profligately used up their own such resources - into terrorists, subversives and Muslim Fundamentalist monsters.
But even the worst case scenario that I predicted will be the outcome of this unjustified attack will not defeat this great nation; even if the Allied Forces attack Iran and suffer an abject defeat as I prophesied four years ago, long before in response to the threat to that nation implicit in the unjustified attack on Iraq, the people of Iran elected its most radical candidate, developed nuclear ambitions and began to cross the border to kill Americans.
Even if, as I prophesied then, Israeli forces have to intervene to save the Allied Forces from a complete debacle, expanding and enlarging this conflict so that it becomes World War Three, and, this conflagration eventually results in a nuclear device being detonated somewhere as I predicted four years ago; this will not result in the destruction of this nation because its forces can retreat behind its defensive ring of missiles and live to fight another day - though this may result in the end of the experiment in democracy worldwide, another of my predictions.
It is on the petard of immorality on which this nation ‘conceived in justice and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’ will be hoist; it is the failure by Americans to do the right thing, beginning with the current President, and the current Members of both Houses of Congress, and, ending with the National Guardsmen who are manning the borders with Mexico; it is their moral debility which will constitute the enemy within, the irresistible, occupying force that can and will eventually defeat and reduce to penury this great nation.
It is notion that it was OK for the then Secretary of Defense to blatantly lie; to deny all personal knowledge of the abuses that were occurring in Abu Graib, to deny that anyone in the higher echelons of the Pentagon and the Bush Administration had been aware to what was going on; when it is patently clear that they all knew of, if they did not orchestrate, the atrocities that had taken place - it is this level of perfidy and deceit that will bring about the destruction of this great nation.
It is the notion that to win an election it was OK to attempt to malign and destroy the characters of those who served with honor and distinction in Vietnam, veterans like Senator John McCain and Senator John Kerry; an invidious, base, cowardly enterprise entered into by an individual who hid in the Texas National Guard and declined to risk his precious skin in that conflict; it is such low and dishonorable tactics which will cause the USA to eventually suffer ignominious defeat.
It is the notion that it was OK for a President to transform a nineteen year old intern into a very special kind of caregiver; to seduce her into becoming the headgiver to the President, it is the accumulated impact of incidents precipitated by that level of depravity that will eventually destroy this nation.
It is the notion that it was OK to destroy the wetlands that were a buffer protecting the city of New Orleans by legislating that this natural sanctuary for wild life become the site of tax paying commercial enterprises, completely ignoring the fact that this greatly increased the vulnerability of this metropolis to the ravages of hurricanes; it is the accumulated effects of this type of corruption, venality and opportunism that will destroy this great nation.
It is the notion that it was OK for Members of Congress engaged in implementing and bringing to realization an overwhelming mandate from the people to end in the war in Iraq; to attach to that critically important Bill designed to achieve this honorable and just objective, earmarks composed of funds destined for the pork barrel that diluted and compromised the integrity of their cause and dissipated and dissolved their commitment to that transcendent undertaking; it is such incidents of corruption that will bring this nation to its knees and cause it to become a mendicant, depending for its economic survival, on loans and handouts from other nations.
It is the notion that it is OK for members of National Guard Units ordered to the Mexican border to immediately grasp the money making opportunities implicit in their duties and responsibilities and begin accepting bribes for allowing foreign nationals to cross the borders they were ordered to secure; it is such pervasive and numerous incidents of selfishness and venality that will eventually cause this nation, for the first time at last, to lose its status as superpower and its preeminent place in the world.
It is the notion that it was OK for a President to use the authority and power of his office to cause Thiokol’s Corporate management to override and rescind the no fly recommendation of its engineers so that he could engage in a publicity stunt, a live discussion with the first teacher in space during his scheduled radio address; a flagrant abuse of power that resulted in the destruction of the Space Challenger, a tragedy from which he benefited and made political points by giving the eulogy for those whose deaths he caused; it is such wholly contemptible acts that will eventually result in the defeat and demise of this nation.
Each of these incidents have a direct, immediate, instrumental effect on social reality; they also have an indirect and long term in that they influence and affect the actions of other human beings.
Anyone in the governmental bureaucracy witnessing the corruption of others; must have their inclinations and proclivities toward such behavior strengthened, they would hardly be human if the thought did not cross their mind, if everyone is doing it why shouldn’t I ?
Also, if they enter a group already tainted, one in which corruption is pervasive; few can resist joining in and endure for an extended period being treated with ‘mingled suspicion and contempt.’
When did corruption gain such a stranglehold on the bureaucracy that it began to affect its function? Was it during the Nixon Administration with the Watergate scandal or even before?
It is clear that historically, governments played a more limited and marginal role in the economy; that there was a time when government was unconcerned with social welfare and did not intervene in the economy; but was concerned with external and internal security, the building of infrastructure like roads and bridges, with transportation and extending lines of communication, and, it is clear that bribery was always a fact of life, that the payment of money to bypass gatekeepers and galvanize civil servants is an ancient institution, was this the source of contemporary governmental corruption that expanded and grew more sophisticated with the ever increasing intervention of governments in the economic and social life of citizens?
I noted earlier that insights into the dynamics of human culture came at inconvenient times, sometimes even as I writing.
I was referring to the fact that it is likely that the success of democracy in the Scandinavian countries was not conscious or deliberate; that it could be attributed to education over time destroyed the suppression that was the obstacle to the solution of social problems; as it might have done in the USA if other factors, for example, racial tensions and conflict had not intervened.
I can posit a situation in which a country like Norway, a relatively homogeneous society; might have, because of socialization in relatively small families, less and less have had to rely on coercion because students started school after having extensive practice in paying attention and concentrating because they had been read to often during their brief lives.
It struck me very forcibly that it is possible that I am the only human being who consciously, reasonably and rationally had managed to create a realistic appreciation of human culture; the only human being who had attempted to communicate in such detail the very positive implications and consequences of substituting positive reinforcements for coercion as the means relied on to motivate action in the other.
Whose failure had caused him to ruminate on the reason for this failure and attempt to trace its roots in the context of information about the nature and causes of neurosis in human beings.
The text “Personality and Psychotherapy” by John Dollard and Neale Miller contains the following paragraph:
The notion of “abnormal” behavior misleads many people. They think it to be the study of persons entirely different from the rest of mankind. Practically all specialists agree now that such is not the case. The very same variables which are operating in an extreme degree in mentally ill people are present in people who are not ill. Neurotic people should therefore be seen rather as a population in which the study of higher mental life is especially convenient than as a group of people different in kind from others. Important variables which are hard to see in mild degrees become very clear when presented in extreme degrees.(Dollard 5)
When taking together with my experiences; that before I traveled to Israel and was exposed to the concept that the motivation was a very important component of behavior, though I had been hitherto exposed to that concept in a roundabout, indirect way in lectures on Communication in the University of the West Indies; I had never given any serious thought the implications and consequences of the type of motivation I relied on to motivate the other.
Further, one of the very live issues in the course was how to harness the energies and creative intelligence of human populaces to the national plow; how to release the creativity of labor; and, returned to my native land and was involved in the formulation of governmental policies - which discussions did not mention or express the slightest concern over this issue.
In this context when I failed to communicate that positive reinforcements was a much superior means of motivating behavior when compared to coercion, I soon became convinced that the entire issue of motivation was an area of stupidity in the human psyche an effect produced by neurosis; and, from that hypothesis it was a small leap to the fact that the long tradition of operating in coercion based culture produced personalities that all were neurotic to some degree and that the type of motivation relied on determined the intrinsic nature of human culture, and, caused me to perceive and coin the phrase, coercion based culture.
When I migrated to the United States of America and realized that in this scientifically advanced nation the populace was quite as uncomprehending and oblivious about the importance of motivation; even though it was American social scientists that had created the theory that had put me on this scent; I became even more convinced that my conclusions were valid.
It is clear to me that this nation is drifting towards disaster; towards a catastrophe it cannot see or comprehend because it has lost touch with reality, because it was so successful it collectively became arrogant; and, prompted by hubris lost touch with basic, commonsensical principles like the need to tell the truth; and, over time completely lost its way.
This is implicit in the situation I encountered when I went back to school to attempt to get an accounting degree at the Central Campus of the Broward Community College.
In a marketing course I witnessed an instructor, Professor Sheets, provide the answers to a multiple choice quiz, on the eve of an examination and the students still failed to get high marks, immediately I realized that something was very wrong.
When I participated in a required course in Public Speaking and confronted the reality that half of the other participants in the class could not read; I began to discern the true dimensions of the problem in education; that students at lower levels of the system were not learning the basics, to read and do simple sums; but were being passed upward through the system by means like cheating permitted and orchestrated by Professor Sheets.
I got the last piece of puzzle when an African American teacher, with twenty years experience in teaching in Public Schools, confided in me that the problem had its genesis in
that period when the schools were integrated; white parents could not bear the thought of black teachers having the authority to apply physical sanctions to their children; and, had corporal punishment removed from schools, the descent into disorder and chaos began.
Recently, I have heard discussions on CNN that focused on how many children had been killed in Chicago; today, on June 20th that same program, “The Situation Room” provided information about the crisis in Public Schools, about the more than a million students that will not graduate from the Public School system this year, and focused on the one of the cities with the most urgent and pressing problems, Detroit.
The Mayor of Detroit was interviewed during that newscast and discussed the problem; and, gave his take on what caused the problem.
He spoke of the lack of parental involvement as the number one problem; and, then went on to speak of the lack of resources caused by the transition taking place in the economy in Detroit because the manufacturers of automobiles and automobile parts are moving out of that city.
He made no reference to the lack of motivation in the Public School system; and, the cause of this sad situation which was contributed by that teacher who had twenty years of experience teaching in public schools.
I will never know if he got around to the numerical strength of the Teachers’ Union which caused politicians to be afraid to incur their animus and displeasure by requiring that they do their jobs because I changed channels when it became clear that this ‘expose’ like everyone I have listened to for the past eleven years carefully avoided talking about the key to reversing the decline in education, low levels of motivation.
To get even a semblance of justice in this country you have to be willing to fight for it; and, even then it is uncertain that there will be an equitable outcome; but, when I came to this country I was determined to live the quiet life, to renounce activism.
So I had tolerated everything; from the overt racism displayed by that Transit policeman; being fired because I made a report to OSHA about a working condition that was unsafe; the fact that I developed student loans attending a college which was a complete sham and an unmitigated fraud, a way of making money based on the availability of education loans which had little to do with providing education.
On one occasion I did attempt to protest the fact that I was discriminated against when I was passed over for promotion for individuals who had the correct pigmentation but who were totally incompetent to manage anything; the people who heard the compliant and the process seemed itself seemed so biased and tainted that I could not help but form the opinion that the requirement to receive justice had little to do with the merits of the case and much to do with your associations, with what organization you belonged to; and, the connections of the attorney who represented you.
But when I became aware of what was happening in education; and, that instead of sounding the alarm concerning the fact that students were not learning to read and do simple sums but were managing to graduate High School despite these deficiencies; those in the know, teachers, were developing techniques that covered up these inadequacies oblivious of the very negative consequences of their perfidy on the welfare of this nation; I was galvanized to do something, anything to change this situation.
Those efforts begun in 1996 and has had so little impact that I now understand and fully appreciate the callous, cynical unconcern of those teachers; after literally thousands of letters to politicians, activists, talk show hosts and to editors in every major newspaper and television station; the lack of motivation in public schools remains a taboo subject that no one talk about, one which everyone is strictly prohibited to discuss; causing me to come to the conclusion that there is a gigantic ongoing cover up taking place that perpetuates the decline in education.
When the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed there was hearing into the causes of that catastrophe; witnessed by so millions on television.
The evidence of experts made clear that everyone inside the space program knew that the O rings would not hold at low temperatures; also, that this was not common knowledge but that because there were so many safe flights the general public including members of the Reagan Administration believed that the shuttle hardware was safe and that concerns of insiders were magnified and resulted from individuals being overly cautious.
It is clear that the Thiokol engineers who were the most knowledgeable about the properties of the O rings did everything in their power to prevent the destruction of the shuttle; they called a meeting on the eve of the flight when they knew beyond doubt that there would be low temperatures the next morning when the shuttle was scheduled to fly; and, collectively issued a no fly recommendation, something that the Space Administration had never failed to accept in the past.
Someone, called Thiokol Corporate Headquarters and absolved them of any responsibility or blame for any event arising from the failure of the O rings and got these executives, who were thousands of miles away, to withdraw the no fly recommendation of the engineers who were on site precipitating the fireball that appeared in the early morning Florida sky the next morning.
Strangely, the hearing omitted to examine who was responsible for this about face by Thiokol; no individual was called upon to testify from the Corporate Headquarters of that Company so no one was deemed criminally responsible for the lives lost in the destruction of the shuttle; and, Ronald Reagan is the most popular former President of recent times.
This would not have been the outcome - but for the decline in education; if there was a population composed of individuals who could connect the dots, or, if members of the media could not be disciplined like a well trained dog, to roll over and play dead the report of that Commission of Enquiry would never have been accepted.
Let us quickly pass on to the projected bankruptcy in the Social Security Fund; this outcome will be caused by the fact that the government has been borrowing, beginning with the Reagan Administration, from that fund to increase government spending without returning the money borrowed; and, now they are so deep in debt that there is no hope that they can return that money in time so that the fund that can make the required payments to retirees; another situation that would be unacceptable to any informed population.
In a democracy the ultimate check and balance is an informed electorate; and, an uninformed, uneducated electorate cannot limit abuses of power; they cannot stop those they elect from wholly unjustified acts of aggression, from granting amnesty to twelve million illegal immigrants who will then be able to compete for jobs and reap very costly welfare benefits they are not entitled to; from creating a national debt of such magnitude that it will destroy any hope of an adequate and meaningful quality of life for countless future generations of Americans; from accelerating the amount of people below the poverty line and exponentially increasing the byproducts of poverty, crime and drug abuse.
In short, the most dangerous enemy within; the institution whose corruption has, and will have the most damaging effect on the future hopes and aspirations of citizens of this nation, tragically, comically and ironically is, its democratically elected government.
And, the powerful pillar of support perpetuating this world where anything goes, is, the fact that every individual American is using this same approach in their lives; it is because everyone is using the mechanism of regression to be oblivious of the consequences and implications of their actions; that they very opportunistically do not know what they are doing to others, so that they cannot recognize the magnitude of victimization that is being inflicted on them by their government.
They must follow the trail that I have blazed; a journey of discover of the existing social reality during which it was relatively easy to see the inadequacies and failures of others; but very difficult for me to perceive the ‘beam in my eyes’ to see that I did not know what I was doing; the impact and implications of my actions as blindly I attempted to satisfy my needs, wants and desires; when I began to attain a semblance of moral consistency, the ability to follow the dictates of my conscience, I found I had gained control over my impulses toward aggressive behavior and had become a rational human being.
It is this journey of discovery that each man or woman must travel alone; that will cause this nation to achieve the moral revival, to overcome a quarter century of decline in education; and, again squarely place this nation on the road to wealth, progress, freedom and real civility.
It is practice of the discipline of truth that cause citizens of this nation to develop the sense of urgency and the indomitable will to confront the urgent, pressing social problems that I perceive is facing this nation today.
It is in this way they will be galvanized to overcome their aversion to work; an aversion created both in those who were the masters, and their hapless slaves or serfs during the many millennia when human beings were driven up the steep incline towards civilization; it is through the practice of the discipline of truth that precipitate the release of the creativity, enterprise and maximum efforts of all actors in the necessary undertaking of production; that will allow us, for the first time at last, to overcome the deeply embedded and entrenched attitude of seeing the other as prey, and create open ended systems of reward for both labor and capital; by limiting and restraining government spending and creating incentive schemes that give equitable and just rewards for those who labor.
It is through the practice of the discipline of truth that the citizens of the USA will eventually emerge victorious in their sacred task of creating a functioning democracy; it is by hewing to the values of justice and selfless honesty in precept, that they will engender and create a society that exhibits and demonstrates national consolidation; and, the level of cooperation among diverse and variegated cultural components that will permit this nation to reverse and overcome the potential calamity of global warming; and, confront with confidence any other obstacle that may arise to peace and progress.
It is by adopting this world view, that telling the truth will make us free; that human beings will overcome their powerful, deeply embedded and entrenched impulses towards aggressive behavior and avoid destroying their civilizations with the weapons of mass destruction they have constructed with their unbridled ingenuity and inventiveness.
And I will continue to engage in what has been an exercise in futility by communicating these long exposes to all I can reach through electronic mail and blogs and message boards; if you are reading this and you have reached this far, know that this report have reached the desk of the editor of every major newspaper, it has been communicated to every candidate whose electronic mail address I can access, it has been communicated to every television station, and to every program with these stations dedicated to debating political issues, it has been communicated to every member of both Houses of Congress; and, that this is an enterprise that I have been engaged in for more than a decade and had my attempts to sound the tocsin and promote these ideas comprehensively ignored.
It is clear to me that the decline in education not only affects the aptitudes and skills of citizens in the USA; this inability to socialize the young in the home and at school also results in the incapacity to teach and inculcate other attitudes critically important to societal order and functioning; for example, respect for adults, respect for constituted authority, respect for life and property, civility and good manners, habits whose absence creates the rising tide of disorder, crime and incipient chaos which is being increased in this nation.
Consider also, the issue of immigration that in every poll it is clear that the vast majority of the people are against amnesty; yet the President and the Congress are for this perversion of justice, that would allow individuals who broke the immigration law to profit from so doing.
Politicians are for this because their patrons are overwhelming in favor to this option that would provide them with cheap labor; it is big money that is driving amnesty through Congress, that will swiftly speed it across the desk of this President; the same power that now has made a mockery of democracy in this country since he or she with the biggest was chest to purchase television commercials will win the next Presidential election; for those who have the moral courage, this contretemps that pit’s the will of the people against the will of those with economic power has occurred in an opportune and timely fashion since it illuminates the threat to democracy posed by the weight and implications of allowing television commercials to decide who wins elections.
If the fact that the President still is prevaricating and procrastinating as he confronts the clear and present danger of global warming because he is owned by the oil companies; if that were not enough for voters to see that they should not vote for anyone who accepts a campaign contribution in excess of one hundred dollars, from any individual or organization, if that did not lead to the banning of television commercials as an election deciding device - the immigration issue makes this urgent necessity as plain as the nose on your face.
Perhaps employers have a case; perhaps the aversion to hard work that I perceived at the Terminix location is more widespread than anyone knows and employers perceive that the only way to compete in the global market is to create a workforce that is less costly and more amenable and over whom they have the whip of their having to stay employed to pay the massive fines that would make citizenship possible; but that attitude is patently and blatantly regressive - the way forward is to compete by creating open ended systems of reward for labor and capital as I have described.
A democracy in which big money owns the government will loose in the social system another vicious circle; it will create a bureaucracy that cannot complete any project, that cannot get anything done, that cannot successfully implement any initiative that will redound to the common good because any such change will negatively effect the wealthy, so not being able to satisfy the needs or fulfill promises to the majority of the electorate politicians will not only be more and more dependent on the one way communication of television commercials of to be elected; but they will have to resort to higher and higher levels of taxation.
This in turn will stifle and suffocate enterprise and reduce competition for the established conglomerates who will benefit from economies of scale that will make new tax regimes affordable to them; but make the cost of establishing and capitalizing new enterprises out of the reach many potential investors and entrepreneurs.
By comprehensively ignoring and suppressing certain issues that perpetuate the power of the elite the media is failing to do its job; and, in totality becomes little more than the propaganda machinery of the government, perpetuating and condoning that evil with its silence in respect of the causes of governmental corruption; as they destroy the will of the body politic to resist the tyranny of the wealthy and powerful by inundating them with reports of criminal activity; the very visible and noticeable effects of predatory attitudes that are deeply embedded in every social system, that are precipitated by inequities in the society.
No more relevant example of the way certain issues are twisted and distorted is that of right or wrong in Palestine; when the USA became a nuclear power this initiated an arms race with the Soviet Union; when India became a nuclear power, Pakistan followed suit to protect itself; the fact is Israel has been a nuclear power for four or five decades but no other country in the Middle East is allowed to develop such a capability, in fact when Iraq seemed about to this fact precipitated a air strike by Israeli jets to ensure that this did not happen.
Let us examine the history for a moment; the Jews were expelled from Palestine by Imperial Rome in the first century of the modern period, near the beginning of the Twentieth Century galvanized by pogroms and other atrocities Jews began to return to Palestine by buying lands from the Emirs who they accepted as the sovereign government in that region.
The persecution of Jews in Europe reaches its zenith when six million Jews die in Nazi concentration camps; and, the refugees from these camps begin to illegally enter Palestine; and, after examining and rejecting other sites, the State of Israel is voted into existence by the United Nations; and, armed by the near unlimited resources of International Jewry the Israeli army defeats the Arab nations who resist this travesty of justice, not once but again and again.
And, always it is clear that if the Israeli forces were to be defeated, or, be on the brink of defeat; that nation would use the nuclear devices that it is privileged to have, that it alone is privileged to have to wreak havoc and total devastation on its neighbors.
The real foundation of a world where anything goes is the fact that every individual, every organization, every political party, every nation has its price; so justice is not that at all, but becomes whatever the highest bidder says it is.
But there are some things money cannot buy; it cannot buy peace and it cannot buy function, so again I ask the very apt, very relevant and very meaningful question:
Must humanity atone for the death of those six million Jews, and the persecution of Jews by Europeans down the centuries, with the eventual detonation of a nuclear device, the destruction of human civilizations and a regression to savagery?
Is that what Jews want, because very soon that is what they will have purchased?
I say again, that the necessary prerequisite to solving any problem is its accurate description, and demonizing A-rabs will never result in a solution to the Middle East crisis which is getting, with each passing day, more and more likely to produce the Armageddon that humanity has somehow managed to avoid since the first nuclear device was detonated above the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
There never will be a solution to the problem of low levels of motivation in every social organization that precludes and severely limits function in these critically important institutions - until we confront the ubiquitous extremely negative impact of reliance on coercion to motivate action for most of the conflicted, replete with tragedy, human story.
The enemy is deeply embedded within the psyche of every human being, it consists of the attitudes and patterns of behavior that together constitute coercion based culture; these have for so long been the conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action that they have become automatic unthinking responses, which in addition are so much a part of human existence that no one can be successful, or, satisfy any innate or socially learned drive, or, live even marginally in most human societies - unless he or she is willing to play the roles of social predator or prey; so that good guys always come last, and, human beings are endlessly trapped in the dichotomy between ethics and powerful traditions, between the dictates of conscience and what is necessary to satisfy human drives, ambitions and desires.
This issue will only be resolved and human psyches cleansed of a laming limiting massive burden of guilt by creating a cooperative society which relies on positive reinforcements to motivate action; one in which the practice of our cherished values and ideals is rewarded; one which actually rewards merit and industry and applies sanctions to criminal activities and aversion to work; which does not reward and interminably perpetuate the hegemony of a miniscule elite by affording the greatest rewards to those who can, by any means, attract and accumulate the most impressive and considerable increments of political, social or economic power; in short, I am positing and promoting in precept, by my selfless and courageous example, a just society, one in which good guys come first, and bad guys come last.
There is hope, boundless hope, not in blindly, opportunistically and unconsciously interminably repeating, regurgitating and perpetuating the cruelty and selfishness of our past; but in adopting the shorn of avarice, interests and egoism Christian prescription of the man called Jesus - that telling the truth will make us free.
Copyright Retained and All Rights Reserved by me, in trust for the Children who died in the Fire at Orange Lane.
P.S. I believe that this transcendent enterprise - that began for me when I made a mental and emotional pact with the two children, who died senselessly and needlessly at tender ages in the Fire at Orange Lane; that I would dedicate my life to creating an ideology that would explain and support the proper functioning of modern democratic societies - will end one way or the other this year. When, in September, 2007 humanity will face a fork in the road of history; they will either take the low road of attacking Iran that will lead to World War Three and end the experiment in democracy, or, they will find a way to extricate the Allied Forces from the quagmire of Iraq by adopting the discipline of truth, which will be the high road that will lead to a prosperous, peaceful future for human beings. This essay will be my final attempt to create ideas to influence that decision, in the future I will be more concerned with promoting these ideas, an infinitely more dangerous assignment. I wish to state that the fact that I have never broken that compact, that through repeated bouts of poverty during which I have endured unimaginable and indescribable shame, degradation, suffering and misery, through the concomitant periods of loneliness and isolation which created, if that were possible, more pain as I existed without human contact, without affection, without company, increasingly, for the best part of three decades; I have given all I was capable of every day, every month and every year to keeping a promise to dead children who may not know of the sacrifices and suffering that this journey of discovery has entailed. I survived because of the capacity for love that I have developed during this pilgrimage, that love kept me safe from political predators and their denizens in Jamaica, it kept me safe as I navigated the immoral and insensate reefs and shoals of existence in the USA, because of that reward I can honestly and sincerely state that I have only one regret, I wish that I could have done more to make real my vision of peace and prosperity, that I could have done more to create the possibility of happiness for human beings. Let my epitaph be that I tried my best, and proclaim how happy I have been to have rejected coercion based culture and become a voice of peace.
Bibliography
Personality and Psychotherapy by John Dollard and Neale Miller; published in 1950 by McGraw - Hill Paperbacks
The Sociology of Slavery by Orlando Patterson First American Edition published 1969 by Associated University Presses, Inc.
The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan from the Series The Wheel of Time, A Tor Book published by Tom Doherty Associates in 1993.
William E. Virtue
Ph: 901-322-3800 or 901-201-8090
3222 Airways Blvd # 312
Memphis, TN 38116
About Me
- voiceofpeace
- I am trying to be a voice of peace,I have adopted the discipline of truth and committed to using positive reinforcements in my relations with other human beings.