Need to change our culture

In The Middle Passage, based on 1960s Trinidad, VS Naipaul described the brutality and self-centredness that characterise life in TT and offered probable origins and solutions.

Fast forward to 2017 and it becomes clear that one of the biggest impediments to TT ’s development is our culture. Somewhere along the line both educated and uneducated alike have preserved and nurtured a deeply violent everyday approach to life brought with us as migrant labourers.

Recently our Carnival festivities would have seen fire-breathing or eating with indifference to the health implications of pouring fuel in the entertainer’s mouth. Stickfighting, another display of blood and violence, is promoted as our culture.

The words to our music appeal to aggression against women, infidelity and alcohol. At “jumpups” for our children, the lyrics that “the city could burn down but we jammin’ still” indoctrinate young ears with bass levels designed to elicit wining and deafness.

At other times, the beating of bobolees, corporal punishment, burning of effigies and calls for hanging all form part of what is considered normal and right.

Social media are filled with shared photos of mangled bodies and gore from the country’s rumblings which seem to be shared as if to bring pleasure to online users.

A BBC radio programme recently interviewed a young Jamaican woman who spoke of seven of her ten friends having been raped in Jamaica. The dance form of “daggering” suggests they also suffer from this violent culture which hangs over us from our past.

Culture is a difficult thing to change. But what is even harder is to convince governments and other groups that measures are needed to gradually move us away from these barbarisms we have inherited.

So many things can be done which, in time and in collaboration with other measures, could reform us into a more civilized community with a sense of compassion for those around us. But we first have to admit we have a problem.

RISHI-NIRVAN BALROOP Diego Martin