THE NATION EDITORIAL of Saturday, May 28 (Page 8) makes for interesting reading.
“It’s time Barbadians get real,” it says, referring to objections by some religious organisations to a new lottery draw on Sundays. These reactions, says the editorial, reflect a “hankering for the good old days, knowing they will never return” and demonstrate hypocrisy “about what we want to observe on Sundays”.
Responding to the question: “If we gamble on Sundays, what next?”, the editorial concludes that “the sky is the limit . . . . We should expect anything”. And presumably, not only expect, but accept anything.
Chaos theory is a field of mathematics that few people know or care about. A simplified stating of the theory is that a system, no matter how complex (like a society), depends on an underlying order. Very small or insignificant events have the ability, depending on the state of the system, to cause large and catastrophic changes in that system.
Another way to visualise this is to imagine a marble rolling randomly on a table top. As long as it stays away from the edge, all is well. But then a small object diverts it to the edge of the table and it suddenly falls off. Chaos has happened. This paradigm is better understood at grass roots level by the tale of the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The last straw before chaos.
This is what these “religious” people are alarmed at – that we are approaching the last straw. They have the benefit of Bible history which minutely details the march of past societies from order to chaos. And those very signs are staring us in the eye, if we want to see.
It begins with a denial, explicit or not, of God and what He stands for. One straw. It continues next with an initially tentative, then more aggressive tearing down of moral signposts. Two straws. In the vacuum that follows, man and his rights are elevated above God and His right. Three straws.
After this, straws follow fast and furious. Public and private sector corruption. Lack of productivity. Family breakdown. Escalating violence at home, school and community. Breakdown in law, order and the judiciary. Inefficiency in government. Laws that hurt rather than help the nation. A gambling and fete mentality rather than a work ethic. On it goes. And then, one day, without warning, the marble falls. The last straw hits the camel’s back.
The problem is that the marble, once off the edge, never returns to the table top. The camel’s back, once broken, stays broken.
The editorial is correct that the good old days will never return. The bad mistake, however, is saying that the sky is the limit. When you fall off the table, it’s down you go. When its back breaks, the camel goes down. The sky happens to be up.
– TREVOR R. SHEPHERD
