Recently I decided to leaf through a set of old newspapers to see what articles I had missed or had put aside with the intention of reading at a later date. I found myself absorbed in a piece written by Bishop John Holder under the title Hope In Face Of Challenges published in the SUNDAY SUN of September 22.
Basically it dealt with response to the issues facing Barbados and was broadly optimistic that we will overcome the challenges with which we are presented. Hope and despair are essential components of human emotions, but felt disproportionately in different individuals. What might drive one man to hang himself from the beam of his living room might be shrugged off by another.
In relation to the Barbados situation, most of us I would guess do not know the total reality and may not feel the impact of that reality in the same way. The person out of a job for the last six months may see reality and prospects very differently from the person doing reasonably well.
The Economist of September 10, 2012, says: “Joblessness increases depression, divorce, substance abuse and pretty much everything that can go wrong in life.” Public discourse on Barbados’ condition itself presents two different impressions, often reflecting partisan instincts.
There is the doom and gloom perspective. The sky has either fallen or will soon fall. Take Ms Mia Mottley’s position: “We have reached a point where every week matters. We are not yet at rock bottom, but we are fast approaching that point.” Central Bank Governor Dr Delisle Worrell is somewhat more confident. On the issue of the million ten-year bond issue, he noted: “We don’t actually need the money; we are adjusting our way to economic equilibrium.” Economic equilibrium! Light at the end of the tunnel or on-coming train?
Dr Michael Howard, who offers arguably the most objective analysis on economic matters, seems less optimistic. He opines that the decline in foreign reserves, some $447 million since December 2012 in conditions of recession did not augur well. What’s more, says the UWI professor, Barbados’ fiscal current account was in “chronic deficit” and the country might find it difficult to “access cheap funds in international money markets”.
In looking to “an assurance that things can and will get better”, Bishop Holder affirms four convictions. One was the grace of God. The other three included our intellectual power, goodwill and vision. Let us trust to the redeeming grace of God because there seem to be diminishing reserves of the other three. Barbadians tend to overestimate their collective intellectual power based on the achievements of a few “bright” individuals.
Today’s world requires high levels of public intelligence across the board and that the gifted and bright employ those talents in the interest of all. I can’t say I see a lot of that. Besides, what good is intellectual power in a culture that abhors critical thought or where thought is used mainly to promote individual and group self interests? Goodwill is certainly on the wane.
One writer has suggested that you can see when a society is cracking up when there is a rising level of mistrust. As to the vision thing, we seem to have neither a narrative nor a narrator. Leaders in most walks of Barbadian life now seem to have a greater vision of themselves, of their material well-being and status profile than anything else. Could it really be that some parliamentarians are more concerned with their pension rights than with the state of the economy?
Dr Holder’s more hopeful vision seems to rest on “four important building blocks” that constitute what he calls, “our inherited solid foundation”. These include: 1. gritty Barbadian resilience 2. the drive to achieve through hard work 3. the old Bajan spirit of thrift, the will and capacity to cut and contrive and 4. Bajan neighbourliness.
Yet prodigal nations like prodigal sons can squander their inheritance and be forced to rely on the forgiveness of a beneficent father. Culture, defined as a people’s accumulated values, attitudes and sensibilities, is not static. Few Barbadians over the age of 60 would disagree that the virtues of hard work, thrift and neighbourliness do not inhere in the young generation of Barbadians the way they did in the past. The last three decades have witnessed the erosion of a lot of our core values. Can neighbourliness thrive in an increasingly atomized and competitive society? Hasn’t thrift given way to instant gratification in a culture where the drive to consume has replaced the incentive to work hard and struggle?
As Bishop Holder writes, “As a nation we cannot lose the power to hope”. But do we really have the collective virtues to propel us into the future? Barbados is not yet a failed or failing state, but we have some hard choices to make. Hopefully, those choices will be informed by rational, moral and spiritual insight. Self-comforting platitudes and pious homilies about a Barbados that was will not suffice.
• Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator and social commentator.
