To Resolve The Critical Issues We Must At Least Agree On Truths…

“TRUTH”

“A tran­scen­dent fun­da­men­tal or spir­i­tu­al real­i­ty”(Merriam ‑Webster)

It’s has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to have a con­ver­sa­tion on how to solve some of our nation’s prob­lems these days.
Many peo­ple much smarter than I argue we are liv­ing in a post-fac­tu­al world. I am no intel­lec­tu­al so I don’t know whether we are or not, I still believe in the good in each per­son to see reason.
Whether true or not it is becom­ing clear­er, at least to me, that con­ver­sa­tions and debates get bogged down in the mundane.
In addi­tion to the ad hominem attacks that are com­mon­place when we dis­agree, it appears we can’t even agree on truths.

We are not going to solve the issues fac­ing us a race of peo­ple or even in small­er quan­ti­ties as Jamaicans if the basic require­ment of acknowl­edg­ing the truth is out­side our grasp.
As an opin­ion writer, I am thrilled to dive into the debate and defend my point of view. I believe that when we are able to hash out opin­ions and agree on truths we are that much clos­er to resolv­ing our problems.
We can always dis­agree on opin­ions but it becomes a waste of time talk­ing when we can­not accept facts such as cred­i­ble irrefutable data.
Of course, we can dis­agree about how the data was col­lect­ed, we can dis­agree on how it is inter­pret­ed, we may even argue on its rel­a­tiv­i­ty to the top­ic being dis­cussed but it does no one any good to argue when the data is unindictable.

A friend recent­ly told me that she dis­agrees with my writ­ing style, she tells me it’s too jar­ring, “I get a headache every time I try to read your work.”
I Love my friend but the truths that I try to com­mu­ni­cate, are not exact­ly palat­able to the poten­tial tar­get groups of which she is a part.
My friend, a real down to earth edu­cat­ed woman may find it dif­fi­cult to agree that the edu­cat­ed elit­ist class has no use for cer­tain truths which dis­rupts their decade’s long com­fort zones.

As much as I rel­ish the thought of appeal­ing to my friend’s group­ing I am more inter­est­ed in appeal­ing to the wider mass­es who must begin to take their own lives into their hands through the appro­pri­ate assim­i­la­tion of use­ful truth­ful information.
In order to make the best use of truth­ful infor­ma­tion, we must first iden­ti­fy truth and use that as a start­ing point. Essentially at some point in time, we have to accept that black is black and white is white instead of wast­ing time bick­er­ing over shades.
Or even more banal spend time tear­ing down the mes­sen­ger when the truth does not line up with the safe place you devel­oped on the issue.

It’s ridicu­lous to accuse your con­tem­po­rary of being a Democrat because his views do not line up with your Republican world-view.
It’s equal­ly unpro­duc­tive to spend time accus­ing your con­tem­po­rary of being PNP because your Government is in pow­er and I just hap­pen to chal­lenge them with facts.
How dumb are we real­ly when we believe the par­ty we sup­port can do no wrong and the one we despise can do no right?
I’ll tell you what that is, it is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of small-mind­ed­ness and ignorance.

So what if the per­son is a Democrat, so what if I just hap­pened to be a mem­ber of the PNP, does that then trans­form truth to fiction?
Does it change the fun­da­men­tal fact that we must come togeth­er to solve the issues which affect us?
I vot­ed once in Jamaica and it was for Edward Seaga It was my very first oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote.
Not only did I vote but at the ten­der age of 18 I signed up to be a return­ing offi­cer at the polling sta­tion because I believed in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.

It is that fer­vent belief in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process which makes it impos­si­ble to sit idly by and watch as our coun­try embarks on process­es which I know are absolute­ly the wrong path, regard­less of who sits in Jamaica house.
The only time I ever vot­ed was for the Seaga Government yet I was one of his harsh­est crit­ics and con­tin­ue to crit­i­cize Seaga today and give him cred­it where he deserves that credit.
The PNP has been demon­stra­bly destruc­tive for our coun­try, sub­se­quent­ly, I nev­er con­sid­er that par­ty wor­thy of much dis­cus­sion or debate.
I was always quite com­fort­able to see the PNP on the side­lines look­ing in, just not com­fort­able enough to allow the arro­gance of some with­in the labor par­ty to go unchecked.

I am Jamaican, not JLP and damn sure not PNP.
I will con­tin­ue to lob­by and speak truth to pow­er, not just in Jamaica but in my adopt­ed home, the truth is lib­er­at­ing it is refresh­ing we should all wel­come truth, regard­less how unpalat­able it is.