Violence, the basis

December 21, 2002
By Bukka Rennie

This has always been a violent society. It was so from the very inception. A society has as its fundamental base a system of social relationships. And once that fundamental relationship is one of the "powerful" standing diametrically opposed to the "powerless" and/or the "subordinate", then the society will by nature be violent.

As a matter of fact, there is no society in the world today that can exist for 48 hours without a coercive arm of State, ie police and army.

Church and school and family unit as well as other ideological and philosophical agencies of mediation and reconciliation are geared to handle the moulding and nurturing so as to minimise social conflict and violence but as these tend to quite quickly become outmoded, irrelevant and inappropriate in modern life, probably because these agencies depend too heavily on superstition and ignorance, the police and the army have to make their presence felt at all times.

The system of relationships at every level, the relationship between leadership and led, between teacher and pupil, between priest and postulant, boss and worker, tradesman and apprentice, etc, etc is by nature violent and breeds violence. That should tell us something about the nature of the world in which we live.

Listening to comments about the level of crime in T&T today leaves me to wonder whether people expect T&T to possess some unique, idyllic characteristic that would somehow set us apart as some special children of some God's own selective manufacturing. Nothing could be more nonsensical.

The level of crime today is a mere reflection of modern existence. Crime will develop and take on various complex dimensions relative to our stage of modern development.

To deal effectively with crime would require a complete overhaul and transformation of society, a transformation of all the fundamental relationships.

It is said that 90 per cent of all crime today are in fact crimes of passion. Why? It is because women are demanding a more equitable relationship with men.

Women, because a higher level of social consciousness has been generalised amongst them, can no longer tolerate sex relations and sexual relations that reflect the power relationship mentioned above.

Women are in fact demanding that "change" must begin with change of the most fundamental relationship of all, ie sex and sexual relations. It is that demand that has been putting their lives in grave danger.

I wonder if we understand that women must win this struggle if this world is to go anywhere. The masculine kind by its specific nurturing in the competitive environment of maleness is in fact the greatest repository of aggressive violence.

Challenged by almost everything, even by life itself, power relations have served to mould within males the deepest fear of being unable to match up, the fear of failing, the fear of being less than what is essentially required.

That all-embracing fear and its corollary, the urgency to succeed, creates the fragile ego and the insecurity that underlies all crimes of passion.

The second most prevalent cause of crime in the world today is the drug trade. The drug trade in all its dimensions represents the epitome of modern power relationships.

The patriarchal hierarchic structures that manage and run this industry from the ivory towers to the common herd of pushers and members of the hood on the streets tells a particular story.

Worldwide the drug trade was said to be turning over annually approximately US$200 billion. In T&T it has recently been reported that local banks handle annually some TT$30 billion, T&T being a major transshipment point for drugs on the way to North America and Europe.

Every shipment of drugs is accompanied by the most modern weapons available for the protection of this most "valuable" merchandise. Those weapons end up on the streets and are used in the wars to control turf and cower everybody, the involved as well as the innocent.

The executions, the murders, the violence seem senseless to the decent-minded, law-abiding, hard-working citizens but to the billionaire patriarchs, it is simply the required discipline of business.

Everybody, every agency, every institution, every official, every authority, etc in society must be made subordinate to the demands of "this business".

In T&T it is no different. How are we then to expect police officials, far less fat-cat bureaucrats such as we do have in T&T, to walk into those posh urban ivory towers to arrest multi-millionaire "citizens of substance" in three-piece suits and ties?

All investigations tend automatically to stop at the arrest of the petty users, dealers, female mules and the cowboys on the streets. Dole Chadee became expendable because he did not stay in the ivory towers and chose, to his detriment, to consort with the common herd of cowboys.