THE EDITOR, Sir:
"DEATH AND life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit". These are the words of the author of Proverbs. Words have the power to motivate or destroy, to energise or deflate, to inspire or create despair.
The words of destructive criticism or affirmation by parents to their children have to a great extent determined their capacity to achieve or underachieve in life. The failure of many marriages is due in part to words of disrespect. The increasing level of domestic violence in our society says much about the poor state of communication among family members that contributes to careless talk resulting in the loss of many lives.
The Jamaica culture is to a large degree shaped by oral tradition. Jamaicans love to talk. Everyone has an opinion about everything in our society.
People want to voice their opinions and they wish others to listen to them. Whether Jamaicans are at home or overseas, they are known to be outspoken people. The over 690 denominations in an island of 2.6 million people also represent a religious dimension to the talk phenomenon. Denominationalism in Jamaica is a form of acknowledged hypocrisy. People form new churches to voice their own understandings about how and where God is at work in the world around them. They will not allow themselves to be stifled or suppressed by the political or religious status quo.
There is a story about an ancient Greek physician Galen (c. 130-200 A.D.) whose descriptions of the inner workings of the human body European and Islamic scholars upheld as authoritative for more than a thousand years. However, there was one major problem: Galen had never once dissected a human body! The laws of the land prevented it. So his truth about the internal workings of human beings are based primarily on his dissections of pigs. What he saw in pigs were automatically transferred into the internal world of humans. Galen was sincere but he was sincerely wrong. His teaching remained scientific truth until the 16th century when another physician Vesalius' study of the human anatomy exposed the errors.
Galens' blunder was that he drew conclusions about the human without firsthand knowledge. His teachings were based upon insufficient and false information. Galen's blunder is alive and well in our contemporary age in spite of major scientific and technological advancement. We Jamaicans seem to have a genetic link to Galen, which is visible in our passion to draw conclusion based upon rumours!
In spite of more radio and TV stations, numerous newspapers, magazines and Internet services providing information, this has not resulted in more truth being communicated. As truth-telling becomes a scarce reality, gossiping has taken over as the main ideology of communication. We live in a culture in which information gleaned about persons in public service is known through second - or third-hand. Usually the information that is passed on to others is later found out to be untrue. The spoken word is difficult to retrieve. However, the damage has already being done. Careless talk on radio programmes, on the pulpits, on political platforms, in newspapers, on TV and on the streets of our communities has damaged and/or destroyed many families.
The election campaign season has started and already there are signs that the voters are in for a major dose of the politics of careless talk. Already, we have heard political leaders making promises to give gullible voters what pollsters said they wanted. Our campaign rhetoric has a tradition of scrupulously avoiding the issues. Instead, national issues are treated as consumer items that are sold to the unsuspecting public. Our political worldview is increasingly denying the reality of truth-telling. We expect our leaders to lie and cheat and get away with it. Those who choose not to are easily discarded along the way.
In our culture there is a strong utilitarian ethic that says the good end justifies the means. Therefore, if propagating careless talk helps more than it harms a political cause then it is okay to tell the lie. To compound the problem we have no consensus reality on which we make our judgements about what is truth and what is false. What is presented as truth is usually what those with economic and political power deemed to be right. Perception is what really counts, not substance!
It is into this environment that Bishop Blair is being called to serve as Political Ombudsman. He will need the prayers and support of every Jamaican of goodwill because the history of our political behaviour is not one that can be easily disciplined through respect. Like a loving parent he must also be ready to deal firmly with the excesses of the indisciplined child.
I am etc.,
Rev. Dr. RODERICK R. HEWITT
Hope United Church
Kingston
