Well, you mussee see how last week I show that it en for parents to set the society straight. They are important, mind you, but not responsible for the whole project. And parent maths so often does not to add up to the sum of societal good.
As I wrote last year: “We cannot wait on parents to train up their children in the discipline that the society cannot do without.” Nor can we wait on schools. Or the church. Or community organizations. Or the police. Or the courts.
And gone are the days of the fortuitous confluence of things that gave rise to the social monoculture of the pre-1970s era, which was evidenced in near unanimity in acceptable public behaviour.
Any significant consonance now has to be crafted. And for that you need a strong, overarching, empowering support structure.
Who else is that but the Government?
But what happened here after the serendipitous conformity was no more?
It looks like Government put the weight of creating that consonance in social discipline on others (parents, schools, the church, community organizations, the police, the courts), who are like gatekeepers/security guards. In the realm of across-the-board societal standards, they don’ run tings.
At best they seek to carry out what the master of the property backs with clear guidance and unflinching resolve – ’cause gatekeepers don’t have power over all the land.
An instructive scenario: The master tells the gatekeeper, “Let in people with passes – that’s just a few really decent people I know personally.”
He added: “Of the others, don’t allow entry to anybody who is shifty-eyed, playing loud music, looks like they have a bomb strapped to their body, has any part of their face covered, is wearing a T-shirt with an off-colour slogan, is wearing a batty rider, is an itinerant vendor, has snot running out of their nose . . . .” And so on.
As time passes, to the gatekeeper’s consternation, everybody and their mother starts to turn up with a pass officially stamped “Master’s Guest”. These include some who look like they have bombs strapped to their bodies, women with butt cheeks puffing out of shorts, a driver in a car loudly playing a song saying something about a “bitch”, a vendor’s car reeking of the smell of marijuana, a man with a T-shirt saying, “I am not a gynaecologist, but I’ll take a look”.
In shock and bewilderment, the gatekeeper calls the master, expressing his chagrin at the disconcerting guests. The master says he really can’t deal with that because he is busy dealing with other matters (he mentions something about a “budget”). The gateman is also sure he hears him say, “Everything is all right, though.”
So the gatekeeper tells his children and his wife not to leave home with strange T-shirts or strap bombs to their bodies and in his little hut he plays his radio real low and makes sure to change the station at the bare mention of “bitch”.
In the large scheme of things, gatekeepers can’t do much more. Somebody else calls the shots.
There is no doubt that in wide-ranging societal matters it is government that must determine the standards, shape the response and inhibit non-compliance.
And it is clear that Government has been lax in many cases, thereby confusing and demotivating many a gatekeeper, while emboldening the self-indulgent, the self-willed, the unruly, the restive.
So what must Government do now, apart from engaging in the usual long talk?
Well, it must buy into the idea that where there are “broken windows” (Zimbardo, 1969; Wilson, Kelling, 1982) – signs that lawlessness is the norm – people are more likely to act lawlessly. And not only in the same ways.
The rampant scofflawry of PSV drivers has spawned a virtual “industry” of negative by-products (which themselves are “broken windows”): truancy, lateness to school, flouting of traffic regulations, loud playing of music, littering, disrespect for law officers, just plain disrespect for other people.
The “broken window” of Government-sponsored simulated sex in public and the instigating “wukupmentistic” songs (both part of our “sacred” Crop Over) has aided a libertinism in sex-related public overstepping in speech and deed.
Of course, Bajans are almost world leaders in diabetes, so it should not surprise anybody that we want to eat our cake (sex on a public Crop Over platter), while giving no thought to (moral) diabetes. But what sweeten goat mout . . . does cut off he leg!
Other things that are “broken windows”: graffiti, obscene language in public, public drinking, school deviance (re uniform or whatever), public drug use, disorderly public gatherings, set-up-anywhere-you-please vending, abandoned vehicles, vandalism, law-flouting bicyclists and motorcyclists. These “little things” are forerunners of other, often more serious, forms of lawlessness and social indiscipline.
If indeed there is any chance of significantly reducing worrisome social irresponsibility, the Government must zealously man up and “fix” the “broken windows”. No other entity has that authoritative reach.
Next week I hope to deal with other kinds of interventions.
• Sherwyn Walters is a writer who became a teacher, a song analyst, a broadcaster and an editor.
