Make wise choices on roads, beaches

Maybe my stance was too negative, that instead of lamenting the objective reality, I should be appealing for that same sense of logic and good moral sense which my fairly objective assessment has found virtually non-existent both at home and abroad.

Admittedly, there are good things and good people in this country such as the absence of any volatility in race relations as elsewhere, even though, especially in the politics, we are a race-based society. And as for good people, this country is well noted for its positive response to needy cases, especially at this time, and equally noteworthy is the civic consciousness many display in volunteering to clean up our beaches, despite repeated calls to keep our beaches clean.

But instances like the latter continue to abound, not because of any intrinsic malice on the part of the perpetrators, but simply because of a lack of appreciation of the environment, which a well taught lesson on “The Daffodils” by Wordsworth or on a nature painting by Cazabon would have helped to counter.

The point here is the lack of proper schooling, together with other issues like poor parenting or little or no peer pressure, is the one factor that inculcated that lack of awareness, causing the would-be perpetrator to see no wrong in littering on the beach or elsewhere.

And the same can be said about the carnage on the roads.

Calls are being made, as in the media this week, by hapless relatives losing loved ones for drivers to slow down or to be more discreet and considerate on the roads.

However, such appeals fall like water on a duck’s back in the same way that calls to keep the environment clean seem to fall on deaf ears simply because there is no intellectual consciousness about a clean environment or the dangers of poor driving.

Once again there is no malice, but mere ignorance, not in the disparaging sense, but simply a despairing cry for the mind of a nation, suffering the pangs of cognitive dissonance as to the way we should think. Which is why appeals by the poor mother who lost her sons will blow aimlessly in the wind unless our educators see the need to educate our children to critically assess the things they do and say, so that cumulatively, in the long run, they can make intelligent choices on the roads and on the nation’s beaches, inter alia.

DR ERROL BENJAMIN ebenjamin522@hotmail.