Not Only Have The Values Changed So Too Has The People…

One of the most dif­fi­cult things to accom­plish is to get peo­ple to think out­side their com­fort zones.
We, humans, are cer­tain­ly prod­ucts of our envi­ron­ment.
As for us Jamaicans who were raised on JLP and PNP ortho­doxy, see­ing rea­son out­side of the con­fines of those polit­i­cal blink­ers is near­ly impos­si­ble.
Unfortunately for the coun­try, because of this blink­ered men­tal­i­ty, the lead­er­ship of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties has very lit­tle to fear from engag­ing in cor­rup­tion and step­ping out­side the bounds of the law.

A rev­o­lu­tion­ary change is nec­es­sary, the immi­nence is up to the peo­ple.
I believe it was Norman Manley who was cred­it­ed with the state­ment quote;‘There can be no real vic­to­ry with­out a few bro­ken skulls.“
Whether Jamaica’s evo­lu­tion will be one of a pop­u­lar peo­ple’s upris­ing or an intel­lec­tu­al awak­en­ing is impos­si­ble to say.
But if the blood-let­ting and the car­nal­i­ty are to be halt­ed there will have to be a shift, a par­a­digm shift even,_______________ in the way we think, in the way we act, in the way we expect our coun­try to be run.
Presently there is lit­tle sign that we are even cog­nizant of the right path to take.
The new nor­mal is the dai­ly killings with the bod­ies of entire fam­i­lies wiped out by gang­sters.
The new nor­mal is lit­tle babies describ­ing in graph­ic detail the sex­u­al organs of their par­ents and the actions their par­ents engage in sex­u­al­ly.
The new nor­mal is the record­ing of that despi­ca­ble nar­ra­tion from a child no more than an infant and the pro­mul­ga­tion of it on social media for likes.

Often we hear of a desire to return to the way we were. It is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a return to the way we were when many who cre­at­ed the “way we were” are no longer around.
Through the pas­sage of time, death, immi­gra­tion, and prob­a­bly more con­se­quen­tial the change forced on the silent major­i­ty to remain silent, at the per­il of vio­lent death, our coun­try has changed for­ev­er.
When the mass of crim­i­nals and oth­ers being returned to the coun­try, some after a life­time of crime abroad, are added to the mix, it seems to me the sta­tus quo is here to stay.

Contrary to the hyper­bol­ic argu­ments you hear and the faux attempts at patri­o­tism the vast major­i­ty of Jamaicans have told poll­sters they would emi­grate if they could.
In fact, those who make the loud­est noise about not leav­ing Jamaica have been those who have not been able to leave.
In 2015 alone The United States Embassy in Kingston con­firmed that Jamaicans spent J$3 bil­lion) try­ing to obtain visas to the United States.
And that is only to one coun­try. Every day Jamaicans line up at the British and Candian con­sulates as well as con­sulates of oth­er coun­tries try­ing to find a way to have a bet­ter life.
According to a 2016 sur­vey com­mis­sioned by Respect, Jamaica and the local office of UNICEF, 81 per­cent of Jamaica’s youth between 14 and 40 years of age would leave the coun­try imme­di­ate­ly if they could. 
The only coun­try they ruled out as a pos­si­ble choice was the nation of Afghanistan.
As far as Transparency International is con­cerned our coun­try is 84% cor­rupt.
These are only a few of the neg­a­tive trends which dic­tates that regard­less of who is in pow­er polit­i­cal­ly, the real­i­ty is that we are head­ed in the wrong direc­tion.
There seems to be no under­stand­ing that their eco­nom­ic sur­vival and growth is hinged on their abil­i­ty to remove vio­lent crime and cor­rup­tion from the soci­ety.
Failing which, regard­less of the smoke and mirrors and the mirages, the Island could be doing expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter by attract­ing new Investments. Those Investments are out­side the Chinese takeover which is anoth­er iter­a­tion of slav­ery.
Nevertheless, the empha­sis is on whose par­ty is in pow­er so that scarce hand­outs may be derived.
It was sad when it first start­ed, it is sad today, yet the real­ly sad thing is that we appear to be frozen in accept­ing that we can­not change it.
Instead of root­ing out the mur­der­ers and demand­ing there is no more cor­rup­tion, soci­ety seem­ing­ly has evolved into accep­tance of cor­rup­tion and vio­lent mur­ders as its cho­sen path.

We should nev­er grade our­selves against the world’s worst actors. Instead, we should look at what works for the best and see whether we can co-opt some of their best prac­tices and see if they can work in our unique sit­u­a­tion.
Make no mis­take about it, the Jamaica of yester-year is no more, not only has the val­ues changed, but the peo­ple have also changed.
The sad real­i­ty is that for many Jamaicans who yearn for the land of peace and seren­i­ty of the past, that ship has long sailed.