The Dark Ages

January 14, 2004

When the Huns and others overran the Roman Empire, it was said that these hordes of "barbarians" destroyed the institutions of classical civilisation for example, they burnt libraries.

The European world would enter then a period that they described as the "Dark Ages" until the light of the Renaissance or rebirth reaffirmed and reasserted classical culture and structures and ushered in a whole new wave of artistic manifestation in all areas of life as well as heightened levels of critical and divergent thinking.

What a weird way of seeing? From where else could this whole new awakening, new ideas and new vision come if not from the very mixing and cross-fertilisation of the peoples that then found themselves welded into one? The fact of the matter is that the success of the "barbarians" destroyed the cloistered, elitist, oligarchic culture that prevailed and opened up Europe to a new vista on the religious, political and socio-economic realities in context of human existence and human possibility.

It is that melting pot of all kinds and all types, many of whom were previously marginalised and kept out, that set the stage for the so-called "renaissance".

The point is that "development" is never a straight-line, linear phenomenon. What to many may appear to be retrograde and backward steps, most times involves the tumultuous interventions of masses of people who storm the citadels of power and authority to give meaning to their human presence and force developments that to even them are yet to be imagined.

There is an analogy that some people may wish be made between the Europe of that period and Trinidad and Tobago of today.

People are screaming that the world of Trinidad and Tobago that they once knew is rapidly being destroyed before their very eyes; that the appropriate social conventions by which we live are being discarded gradually as we seem overwhelmed by the rule of the gun in the hands of young bandits and anti-social deviants trading and posturing as "community leaders" whom many believe are about, inadvertently or not, to storm the citadels that signifies and embodies social order here. Is this possible?

If one were to listen to the hysteria that is presently being generated throughout the society at all levels, one would most likely tend to conclude in the positive.

In this space we have repeated again and again that it is certainly not a matter of "hordes" descending on us, that it is a small minority who have consciously chosen a particular way of life and who with the "bling" they get from news coverage are made to appear bigger than life and greater in numbers than they really are. That, the folklore, feeds their ego and it intensifies the mystic of the gun, when what is required is anything that will serve to de-mystify "the gun", such as a national military service.

Their numbers are so small that proper work by the intelligence units of the protective services can readily isolate them, community by community. It will be the intelligence reports that will indicate who must be imprisoned for long periods, who can be drafted to military service after prison, and who can be targeted to develop new skills as part of the rehabilitation process.

At the same time, the big drug business-people who finance the drug shipments, always accompanied by guns, and are the ones really responsible for the crime situation must be investigated thoroughly and be brought to justice. Of course, it is easier said than done.

It requires long, hard, painstaking work and the officers in charge must be facilitated to the maximum by the State and be assisted by every single law abiding citizen.

However, to get back to the point that was being developed, it must be noted that all modern societies who exhibit extreme polarisation between "haves" and "have-nots" sooner than later come to be faced with such deep-seat social problems.

It will be stupid to adopt the view that the solution is to simply liquidate the bandits and the deviants. It is also stupid of the political leaders and the captains of industry to pursue development strategies that will bring only "jobless growth"; that seek engagement only in mega-projects that do not touch the people in any direct way; that will bring rising prices while the price of labour remains fixed; that will see bankers declaring multimillion dollar profits, build elaborate unnecessary headquarters and overdone branch offices, while they do little to facilitate long-term investments and venture capital.

The approach to development must seek to tie the various sectors together into a vibrant domestic economy that is as varied as possible with the right mix of pre-requirements that would guarantee that all and sundry can be involved in the process of generating and accumulating and disbursing wealth.

We must stop seeing the economy as being something abstract and distinct and separate from people. I have always held that self-esteem comes from a relationship to ownership and from a sense of belonging and it is self-esteem that is crucial to young people formulating a vision of their own future. But how are the youth to visualise any future when there is no schooling?

The world has surely changed. In the 60s and 70s the activism of the streets and campuses all over kept alive the ideological, philosophical and political debate on the nature of societies and the future of mankind. Today, the campuses are not alive with the debate of ideas, and the streets have been taken over by the drug dealers.

In fact, it was said, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, that ideological conflict, even history, as it had come to be known in context of the ongoing struggle of ideas, had come to an end. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the present paucity or lack of debate on fundamentals is surely an indication that we are into another epoch like that of the Dark Ages. Without the political activism of the streets and the campuses, the reign of the "gun-boys’ shall continue unabated.

We must realise that if the people are marginalised and are kept out of the processes of decision-making while huge salaries and profits are declared in their faces, an opulence is juxtaposed with abject poverty, then bitterness will continue to develop and for sure, sooner than later, people will storm the citadels.

Sadly though, they may even burn libraries, given what has come to pass in Port-of-Spain recently when youths had to be expelled from probably the most modern library in the Caribbean.