Boyne
Ian Boyne, Contributor
HUGH CROSSKILL is dead. Long live Hugh Crosskill!
No other Jamaican journalist has received as much honour, adulation, outpouring of heartfelt grief and pain at his passing than Hugh Crosskill. It is doubtful that he himself had any idea just how much he had touched the lives of thousands of Jamaicans.
Everywhere I went over the weekend the discussion was centred on the tragedy of the life and death of this outstanding journalist. The discussions are not dying down.
Everyone who knew him has used the word "brilliant" to describe him. Everyone reflexively refers to his sharp mind, analytical grasp, resonant voice, keen interviewing skills, wit, ease with a variety of subjects and interviewees. He was the broadcaster extraordinaire.
BEST IN HIS FIELD
To have succeeded at the famed BBC, the beacon of impartiality and professionalism in broadcasting, was no small achievement. To have been recruited back into Jamaica by the characteristically cautious Lester Spaulding to head the conservative, fastidious Radio Jamaica was an accolade. For a journalist to go on to head the number one radio station in the island was an extraordinary achievement.
Everyone, including Cliff Hughes, recognised that he was the sharper of the dynamic Hughes-Crosskill 'Nationwide' duo; that while Hughes was the more effervescent, more muckraking and the one with the keener sense of the news and the issues of the day (my view), Crosskill was the intellect in the team, the formidable interviewer with the knock-out punch.
Journalists are rarely unanimous about their assessment of the best and the brightest in the profession. It is a tribute to Hugh that all readily and without controversy admit that he was the best in the field. Even among those whom he ruffled particularly members and supporters of the present Government whom he has harshly and bitingly criticised there is no disagreement about the sharpness of his mind and his brilliance.
But brilliance is not enough, as we have proven by his tragic death; perhaps more so by his addiction to crack-cocaine.
The death of this illustrious journalist affords us the opportunity to focus on some critical issues usually left unattended in the hustle and bustle of everyday life and in the cut-and-thrust of making a living and getting ahead.
VALUES AND ETHICS
Everyone who has been reading this column knows how much attention I have paid to issues of values, ethics and norms. I keep making the point that our economistic, materialistic approaches to life are counterproductive and destructive of social and personal development.
But some "hard-nosed" thinkers dismiss these soft, "mushy" issues. They want to concentrate on the "really important issues" of politics, the economy, social order, technology, etc.
It is when we are faced with the tragedy of a prematurely aborted and wasted life like Crosskill's as a result of the inability to master the self and to achieve inner peace that we realise that our secular, despiritualised philosophy just can't deal with the nitty-gritty issues of life, or all the curve balls that real life throws at us.
Irreligious and secular people pride themselves on being tough-minded realists who don't need the crutch of religion or any infantile, psychologically needy belief in a Supernatural. That's for the emotional cripples, the people whom Freud said were really looking for a father figure; those whom the philosopher Ludwig Fueurbach dismissed as merely engaging in "wish fulfilment". The concept of God, he said, was merely human self-projection.
I don't hold the view that religion is a panacea to our problems. Far from it. Religion is often the root cause of many of our problems.
You don't have to go to the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka or India or Pakistan to realise how much religious bigotry and fanaticism have proven costly in human terms.
Look at the sex scandals in the Catholic church and the many priests who can't manage their own demons and carnal lusts. Look at the large number of Protestant ministers who are having affairs and who are engaging in sexually inappropriate relationships, often with the people they are preaching to.
Look at the many religious people you know who are cracking up under pressure, who are bitter, depressed, lonely frustrated - and hopeless despite their religious dogmas. I am not talking about religion. I am talking about spirituality and even a humanism that finds purpose and joy in living.
People need a sense of purpose and meaning; an anchor to their lives and it can't be materialism which is self-stultifying and suffocating.
WRETCHED LIVES
Many in the rich Western countries are turning to hard drugs, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity and suicide because fat salaries, fine homes, flashy cars, yachts and even private islands can't fill the existential void in their lives.
Oprah Winfrey with her US$1 billion business empire and international celebrity is still unhappy, miserable and worried about dying.
If you think Hugh Crosskill's tragedy is uncommon, read the celebrity magazines and the tabloids and acquaint yourself with the wretched lives, incredible inner pain and frustrations of the bold and the beautiful. There is something we are not getting right in the West.
Our hedonistic, materialistic way of life is literally killing us. Our brilliant minds can't find purpose and meaning to their lives; there is nothing beyond the fame and the fortune that we are offering them. There is no transcendence in their lives.
The great philosophical thinker, Fyodor Dostoevsky, said, if God is dead, all things are permitted, all. When philosophers like Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Nietzsche wrote of the meaninglessness of life in a non-theistic universe, they were not just talking theory.
Hugh Crosskill was desperately seeking after a spiritual path late in life, but the addiction had gone too far and the willpower almost non-existent for the change to come. Some were optimistic that he was about to change and experience a spiritual renaissance.
Crosskill had talked religion before but the demons were not easily exorcised.
The lesson is that we must catch people early. That we must prepare our children and young people for the harsh realities of life. That we must give them a solid moral foundation; that we must instil certain values within them and teach them how to live, not just how to make a living.
HOW RESILIENCE WORKS
We must teach our children and young people about resilience - for they will need in it in the real world. Academic brilliance and intellectual acuity are no substitutes for it.
The May 2002 issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR), contains a fascinating article on Resilience. The HBR has been carrying same excellent articles over the last few years on the soft issues of management, in recognition of the fact that these are more critical than the hard issues of strategy, re-engineering, forecasting etc.
The article 'How resilience works' quotes Dean Becker, chief executive officer (CEO) of Adaptive Learning Systems, as saying, "More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That's true n the cancer ward, it's true in Olympics and it's true in the boardroom."
Daniel Goleman, former Harvard professor has done pioneering research in the area of emotional intelligence, drawing on the earlier work of another great Harvard psychologist, David McClellan, who showed that emotional intelligence was more important than cognitive intelligence in determining success in life.
Diane Coutu points out in the May 2002 HBR that resilient people possess three characteristics. "A staunch acceptance of reality, a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise" Coutu says, "While it is popular these days to ridicule values businesses that survive also have creeds which them purposes beyond just making money. Strikingly many companies describe their value systems in religious terms."
It is this deep sense of meaning which gives the power over present circumstances. Continues Coutu: "This dynamic of meaning making is, most researchers agree, the way resilient people build bridges from present-day hardships to a fuller, better constructed future these bridges make the present manageable removing the sense that the present is overwhelming." We will continue to watch hopelessly and helplessness while our brilliant sons like Hugh Crosskill are wasted because our values don't give us much of an anchor when reality comes crashing in.
NOT DIE IN VAIN
The bewilderment that a fine, analytical mind like Hugh could freak out comes because we oversell intellect and the analytical, and don't place enough emphasis on emotional control and the mastery of what philosophers call "inner space".
Our educational and value systems are flawed. So we ill-prepare our geniuses. Look at how many have been destroyed. How many more Hugh Crosskills must be destroyed before we realise that something is wrong?
If Hugh Crosskill must not die in vain, let us learn lessons from his tragic life and passing. This might be the most important contribution Hugh Crosskill will yet make to this nation and people whom he dearly loved.
