Things Fall Apart (At the Year’s End and Beginning)

As we head toward the end of 2017 and the start of a brand-new year, it is an occasion on which we can usefully glance back in the rear-view mirror and focus ahead on the broad vista of the windscreen.
At every moment where we close one time-period and enter another, we review the period ending, see how we fared and draw warranted conclusions in the hope of a much more successful effort in the coming period.
Ironically, as we count down to midnight December 31, in almost macabre ritual, there is a count-up going on by those who seem to relish and also by those who are deeply concerned about the body count of the murderous deluge that continues.
What Has Happened
The last 12 months have whizzed by at giddying speed or at least appeared to have done so as time seems to have been accelerated by the absence of even a single dull moment.
Growing concern at the end of the last period has given way to a kind of cynicism or even resignation to a point of expecting nothing different in the future.
Everywhere there are signs of Collapse and Decay – Crime and Corruption are out of control with even the authorities resorting to appeals to the Divine for respite. There is Seething Anger in the face of the Collapse of our Social Order and putrefying Cultural Decadence.
The Economy is in Crisis as the indicators plunge downward as if accelerated by G-force while our lives are snuffed out with equal acceleration by the G-unit.
Our society is Sick and there is a sense of frustration, helplessness and desperation created.  We Need a Dictator, some declare.
The population is excluded from the political process and deprived of any opportunity of having an outlook which they can use to find solution and guide their lives.
What We Are Seeing
The atmosphere of Fear and Cynicism is the result of the perception that there is No Hope.
Road Rage is but one expression of this sense of hopelessness.
The Failed Economy cannot provide for the needs of the population.
The touted “Solutions” to the Crisis are prescriptions for more of the same. Roger Hosein is correct – those who control decision-making offer only the continuation of the old failed approach.
The Law Enforcers claim advance having seized more than 1400 illegal weapons as close to 500 of our people have been cut down by weapons still in the hands of the organized criminal element.
Our Right to Safety and Security is non-existent and there is a sense of resignation to an almost inevitability that if not today, then soon, we too will fall victim to the marauding criminality. This, while the “guardians” pat themselves on the back with callous disregard.
Instead, at the eruption of mass violence in support of criminal dons, our political bosses threatened further curtailment of rights and criminalizing dissent in the name of ‘security’.
Are We Misunderstanding
Are our Interpretations of the Reality mistaken, misguided or just plain blind?
The institutions of society are collapsed or mired in such a mess that renders them useless.
The most basic needs of the citizens are not met whether for water, health care, housing or transport between our islands.
Our Rights are being denied with impunity.
The political elite present themselves as the best deal-makers and the prosecutors of those accused of wrong doing while engaging in the most scandalous corruption hiding their actions in plain sight as in the case of their destruction of the Seabridge. The direct Cabinet involvement in the latest round of procurement only shows that they are not satisfied to allow others to fail and are determined to do it themselves.
The question is – Whose Analysis and Agenda?
Do we continue to accept the analysis and agenda of those who control power by force and who, like the AG seek to impose their will on institutions which are supposed to be independent, like the DPP?
Or do we engage in our own analysis and set our agenda for establishing a Guarantee for our Rights?
Our society is being destroyed in the name of Monopoly Right and Power. Things (every aspect of our economic, political and social relations) Are Falling Apart.
THIS IS NOT ACHEBE’S FALLING APART
Chinua Achebe, renowned Nigerian author, wrote Things Fall Apart as a tragic tale recounting or lamenting the destruction of the entire social structure of the village and tribal life of the Nigerian society under the weight of Colonial Conquest and Subjugation.
But, We Are a Free Nation, an independent country that is supposed to be in charge of our own destiny.  Our society’s Falling Apart in a state of Independence is not Achebe’s Falling Apart.
It is a collapse imposed by the failure of the entire social organization left over from a colonial past that we have failed to renounce.
Our economy after 5 decades of independence remains a monocrop – hydrocarbon – estate which only pins its hopes of escaping recession on the very monocrop on which we have failed to reduce dependence.
Our political system is based on the remnants of the Divine Right of Monarchs and un-representative “Representative Democracy” based on the concept of Rights as privilege, to be granted or denied as was done by rulers in medieval times.
Our culture is deprived of every useful element created by our First Peoples and all those who have created the wealth of this society by their labour which is usurped by those who produce nothing.
Our Carnival is gutted. Our creativity sapped. Competition replaces the motivation of presenting an uplifting image of ourselves to ourselves.
Recently, at the funeral of a people’s soldier of 1970, someone asked: What is our image of ourselves, the definition of the Trinbagonian in social and cultural terms? A profound question arising from the tragic destruction of our social order as certainly as happened to the Ibo in Nigeria that Achebe laments.
What Do We Do
The danger in our situation at the end of 2017 is that in the absence of a NEW outlook and a NEW understanding of the situation, some will simply drop out because they cannot cope. They see no hope, not understanding what is really causing the decay. They will become more cynical, indifferent about the future.
Some will resort to acts of anarchy or terrorism thinking they are defending themselves or ‘their own’.
What is needed is for everyone to become involved in understanding the underlying causes of the crisis and decay and to finding ways to resolve the problem in a manner favourable to the Majority of the society.
The problem is much deeper than blaming this or that political party-in-power. The crisis and the decay, the slaughter of people have continued regardless of who is the party-in-power.
The problem is even deeper than the kind of governance that elevates unworthy elements to head offices in ministries and institutions for political expediency. The crisis in the judiciary, the failure to implement legislation that may make the smallest dent in corrupt activity all point to the destruction of whatever is left of public authority, except for police powers.
We must get to the root of the problem.
We must demand Rights because of our being human, and not as privilege.
We must fight for the Renewal of our society based on modern definitions fit for the 21st Century – definitions of Rights, Democracy and other fundamentals.
There is the danger of a Government of Police Powers curtailing our Rights in the name of security and overcoming economic difficulties. There is also the danger of descending into Anarchy in which those who refuse to make the effort to forge the NEW resort to destructive anti-people violence.
Both these dangers must be combated by those who desire Change that solves the deep-seated causes of our problems, those who desire Real Change or Transformation for the benefit of the Majority of our society and for society itself.
While there is much that is troubling, there is also a sign that increasing numbers of people are refusing to give up or give in. A growing number of people have rejected the notion of PNM or UNC as a real choice.
Others are coming to the conclusion that it is necessary to fight for a NEW governance - governance of the people by the people.
All will not be achieved in a single day or act.
But, unless those who desire to do more than watch our society fall apart and descend into the abyss of collapse and describe our demise; unless those who want to do more than understand the problem, but, to solve it, stand up and organize for the NEW, it will not happen.
On Wednesday afternoon, as I entered the C-R Highway, my youthful passenger remarked – When the speed limit was 80km, everybody was flying; Now they made it 100, people are cruising at 80.
This, like the growing body of those who refuse to give up, is a sign.
Is this a signal of a maturing discipline, a self-discipline that may begin to demark the rise of a nation?
Perhaps, there is hope still that the Centre Will Hold!
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A citizen working for the
Democratic Renewal of Our Society
 

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       THE SECOND COMING
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
         William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)