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Dancers getting 'jiggy' under the barrage of dancehall music at Reggae Sumfest 2005 'Welcome Beach Party' held at the Rosehall Beach Club, in Monteo Bay, St. James.
Michael Dingwall, Contributor
SOME TIME AGO, a suggestion was made that we could benefit from our culture economically. The suggestion was that, since we are well known around the world for our culture, we should structure our economy to benefit more from it.
In particular, it was suggested that our tourism product should be strengthened through our cultural 'asset'. However, while many think that this may be a good idea, I think that we would be going about getting economic prosperity the wrong way. Indeed, I think that it is largely as a result of our culture why we continue to remain a very impoverished people.
Perhaps one of the most noticeable parts of our culture is our music. It is said that the first thing that foreigners think of when Jamaica is mentioned is its music. Indeed, many say that it is our music that has put us on the map. However, these days, it has become very clear that it is our music that is negatively influencing our people.
THE DARK SIDE
These days, the Jamaican music scene is bursting at the seams with near-criminals, drug addicts, ignoramuses and other forms of riff-raffs. Most of these musicians have only one thing to say - kill those who are undesirables. When they deviate from this, they preach all sorts of stupid doctrines - perhaps the most popular being the call for us to put all of our hopes in the long dead Selassie.
The few musicians who do sing anything that makes any sort of sense are pushed into the background. So, what kind of impact, you may wonder, do the activities of these 'musicians' have on our country? Though it is very hard to believe, the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of these people is actually believed by a vast majority of our people. This is especially true of our young males who sometimes feel that they must display aggressiveness to others to fulfil some sort of divine requirement.
The ignorance that is being spread by these musicians has become well grounded. We are being cultured to be ignoramuses, and aggressive ones at that.
In addition to this, many aspects of our heritage are proving to be severe 'intellectual' obstacles. Every year, we are reminded about slavery. While we are constantly reminded of the fact that we were once slaves, there is nothing that tells us of the fact that, as a people, we had a history before slavery.
Indeed, one can't help but notice how a strong sense of pride is being instilled in the minds of our people, not so much one of us being made free (at the pleasure of the Europeans), but of us being slaves!
When we see the slavery documentaries that are locally produced, we see images of our ancestors merrily working the plantation, singing happily at the plantation church or gladly serving 'backra masa' his dinner. Our media continue to think that it is doing us a great favour, by ONLY showing movies with slavery themes that have black people being domicile, unsophisticated and suffering the worst abuse.
WE ARE STILL SLAVES
We continue to celebrate Emancipation as if we are free. We still don't get it - we are still very much slaves. What's worse is the sad fact that we are sustaining our own slavery - and we are very happy about it, too.
Talking about our cultural heritage, we have one inheritance from our heritage - our antiquated agricultural industries, especially our sugar industry.
Being the largest sector of our agriculture, one would have thought that our sugar industry would be one of the most modern. Instead, it has changed very little since slavery.
Armies of ignorant and very deprived people continue to use primitive implements to do their work. The living quarters of some of them were shown on television recently. I wouldn't want my worst enemy to live in conditions that even remotely resemble what I saw. Yet, whenever the topic of cultural heritage comes up, our sugar industry features very prominently.
There was some excitement recently in regard to the future of the industry. Europe will no longer be keeping the sugar industry alive. While our leaders continue to condemn the move as 'barbaric', I only wish the Europeans had done that years ago. The old arrangement was helping to keep us back, and the new move by the Europeans is a blessing in disguise we just can't see it.
NO THINKING
Another very noticeable aspect of our culture is its non-promotion of thinking. We must not figure out our own solutions - we must put all of our hopes in Jesus, Selassie, our music and our track athletes.
None of these require much thinking. It is interesting to note that while our culture continues to put far too much emphasis on these time-wasting activities, very little (if any) emphasis is being put on science and technology and their development.
This is not at all too surprising. A people that has been culturally conditioned to think very little (if at all) cannot muster the massive amount of brainwork that is required for great scientific or technological feats.
Largely as a result of our culture, we are, without a doubt, one of the most intellectually lazy people, pinning all of our hopes on imaginary solutions. We don't want to come up with real solutions the Americans, Japanese and Europeans are there to do that for us. How much more unrealistic can a people get?
You see, with a culture like ours, it's really no surprise that we are dirt poor. We claim that we want to get out of poverty, but we fail to understand that as long as we continue to think poor, that is how we will remain. For us to get out of our poverty, we have to think big and this cannot happen with the culture that we have today.
You can send your email to infocus@gleanerjm.com
