Ronald Thwaites | About cruelty

I abhor cruelty – hurt inflicted by design or default, personal or systemic. Cruelty denies and defies humanity.

“Cruelty is an outlet for sadism allowing individuals to inflict cruel acts (and support cruel systems) believing they are acting justly”. This quote is attributed to the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

ALL AROUND US

Slavery was personal and systemic cruelty hardened into an all-pervasive way of life; colonialism a modified version of the former. Embedded economic exclusion, intentional communal or personal violence and advantage-taking are among instances of cruelty emerging from the sadism of which Russell speaks.

All forms of cruelty are the antithesis of the Christian New Covenant although church members and religious institutions have wreaked mammoth wrongs against the weak who Jesus tells us to especially protect.

NO CONFUSION

Cruel behaviour is not to be confused with constructive correction or the imposition of reasonable order for the common good of home and society. Acts of cruelty are the ultimate contempt for whichever victim. Equally, every such instance displays the desperate self-disrespect of the perpetrator, however powerful.

Check those who have stoked decimation and slaughter in Israel and Palestine; (created the desert of which the prophetess Mia Mottley, alone among otherwise cowardly Caribbean leaders, speaks) and then whine when not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a ceasefire over the rotting corpses of the victims your action or inaction caused to be killed.

AT HOME

Last week we witnessed the egregious cruelty of the slaughter of a little child and others in Commodore, Linstead. Within hours, without proof or the due process which is indispensable to a democracy, alleged malefactors were cut down, no doubt with more to follow. Apply Russel’s aphorism about sadism masquerading as justice.

Declining crime statistics cannot suppress the deep infection of cruelty afflicting this polity. It flares out like a burst carbuncle in domestic disorder, school chaos, street-corner violence and in some of the things done and not done in the chambers of governance.

Want recent examples? Every crime outbreak is said to be gang related. Yet gangs are announced to be degraded and few are brought to trial. Meanwhile guns and ammunition abound.

Well, those of us observing what happens with easily 25 per cent of teenage school boys from deprived communities can tell you from age 14 who the likely future gang members will be, if not remediated. They uniformly come from unstable and deprived families, often hungry or absent from class; have been witnesses or victims ( and sometimes aggressors) of chronic cruelty; are four to six grades behind their age level in literacy and numeracy, socially inadequate, treat school as a boring nuisance and incubate anti-social behaviour. That is the cruel reality we downplay. Ministry of “Peace” where are you?

GOOD TALK

Last week the minister of education made a stirring and commendable speech about the need for godly influence in our schools. Yes! So make sure the State acts to enhance – not diminish the engagement of church-owned schools while strengthening the hopelessly watered-down ethical content in its own schools.

The lazy churches who have taken their eyes and hands off of the schools they once sponsored to “Make Jamaica Great” need an inspired shub to re-engage. By default, it is an act of cruelty to leave children largely to their own devices.

CHANGE IS POSSIBLE

Here is Lord Russell again. “Fear and hatred can be almost wholly eliminated from human nature by means of educational, economic and political reforms. The education reform must be the basis since such humans who feel hate and fear will also admire these emotions and wish to perpetuate them, although this admiration and wish will probably be unconscious.” (from Why I am not a Christian)

We clearly do not accept this analysis in Jamaica. We school our young in increasing spiritual poverty, domestic brittleness, intense individual competition rather than cooperation; we model cruel and inequitable systems from prisons to corporate structures, and then spend our billions fruitlessly trying to catch, contain, kill or clean up the mental and material mess which we have created. We splurge on the manifestations of distemper and hide from its causes.

BAD START

How else do you explain the bad start which this renewed administration is displaying. First, having feathered their nests so amply done with no assurance of increased productivity, how in conscience can the government require public servants to accept wage restraint?

Next, despite all the prating about collaborative governance, why the stubbornness about opposition chairmanship of the already institutionally degraded parliamentary committees? It is nothing other than the fear of exposure and accountability of which Russell spoke. Then what moral scar tissue allows high officials to slough off responsibility for explicitly favouring their lovers with public resources?

“They have reached a point where they call the arrogant blessed.”(Malachi Ch 3 v15)

GREEN SHOOTS

All is not lost. Recently I visited a newly established preparatory school in May Pen where children are rigorously prepared for PEP, but even moreso, and with the engagement of parents, schooled in Christian principles of love of God, neighbour and creation, as well as the social graces of order, gentleness, obedience and self-respect. A Franciscan ethos is cultivated.

There is no cruelty there. It costs no more dollars. It is a huge investment of principle, generosity of spirit and civic commitment by owners and teachers.

AN EXAMPLE

Almost a century ago when publicly funded education hardly existed, the Guyanese teacher Hazlewood operated St Simon’s College in Kingston. In meagre facilities, with few books and fees so low that they could be scraped together by striving lower middle-class black families, emphasis was placed on humane subjects. Business subjects and skills now take the swing. Balance is lost.

There was a multiplier effect at St Simon’s. Each student learned by teaching what they had been taught. They were charged to return home after classes to teach what they had learned to siblings and others for whom the opportunity was not available.

This modest, but hugely consequential effort brought dignity and learning to the likes of Samuel Carter, Hugh Lawson Shearer, G. Arthur Brown and Louise Bennett-Coverley. Who they became was directly related to their schooling. It always is.

We could replicate this everywhere if we could get over our lazy, selfish personal, class and partisan jags.

“There are no poor countries, only failed systems of resource management”. (Noam Chomsky)

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com