Dear Sir:
We live in an ethnic-based political hierarchy. When one party is in power many of its adherents expect to be given something. They go to the government asking for, and expecting something. We want this or that to be taken care of. We have exchanged, in other words, Massa, for post-Colonial Massa.
However, there is nowhere in any holy book that I have seen any prerogative for a government to help or give something to people. There is a prerogative to pray, seek celestial gifts to help yourself, to help one another; to give and not take from government. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
As long as we expect something personally from government, begging for help, then we become slaves to our government and make it our master. This means that large cohorts of our people are slaves. And government adopts a master mentality.
Our duty is to give to our government and nation, not take. And in return make sure that the government does its duty, not to us, but to all of society. If we enforce our policy of making sure government does its duty, then we would not be bribing the Customs, the Police, the Judiciary, the Licencing or Red House officer. If we had good systems, procurement, etc., we would not be bribing government for contracts. If we ensured that government does its duty to healthcare, traffic and crime, we would not be so unhappy.
What we each seem to need is a house to live in, with amenities, lights, water; a piece of land to farm or pass on to our children; connectivity, communications and transport; fine schools and hospitals; healthy foods; and culture. Culture is music, song, books, sports, good food, recreation, dance, films and systems of knowledge, the things that appeal to the soul.
Why do we have to destroy the life of the planet to achieve this? Make a jail to get these? Kill each other, lambast and be sadistic towards each other in our politics and social life to fulfil these wants?
Culture is also identity. Caste, race, tribalism, xenophobia; common to us all. These are shared ideologies. Humans like to be part of a system of rank, place, station and function within an identifiable group. The way to mitigate the dystopian impacts of caste, race, tribalism and xenophobia is diversity: celebrating our ethnic identity, and that of others. Not being afraid to celebrate and proclaim all ethnicities, instead of disparaging (dog-whistles, coded euphemisms) that of others, especially our minority groups (Syrians, Europeans, Chinese, Venezuelans).
Our money-based economics, what is called the financialization of our lives, is taking us to hell in a coconut shell. We need to de-monitize, not monitize our lives. We need to invest in the best and most moderately priced assets available to us: the protonic (modern 6G systems) and photonic (the solar economy) to make ourselves less dependent on the water and energy grids; government, the large corporate economy, the money and wage economy.
Governments which try to monetize our commons, our native infrastructural economic assets, sea, river, mangrove, land, forests, communities, beach, mountains, must be removed. This is the ultimate crime against our people and heritage. The monetization of the lands, the people and community, is the ultimate slavery to the global green-back system of empire.
Governments cannot create equality. It may strive to act with equity and fairness. We badly need a government and a State firmly based on equity.
Trade is good, not bad. Trade brings prosperity. Trade is the best substitute for war, murder and violence. Trade predates bourgeois capitalism. Bourgeois capitalism is a system of agglomerating assets in a few hands and using them to control our governments, media, church, education, trade, culture, and other vital institutional structures.
Violence is the opposite of prosperity. We should rename Trinidad and Tobago – The Non-Violent Republic of Trinidad and Tobago – make this our personal and institutional dogma. This would, in time, liberate us from murder in our communities, our streets and high seas; and from social, ecological and economic crimes against our peoples, lands and communities.
Wayne Kublalsingh
