I guess one foolish pappyshow initiative deserves another, maybe we aiming for 50 such inititatives to mark our Independence?
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/commentaries/This__great__foolishness-167785915.htmlThis 'great' foolishness
By Ralph Maraj
Story Created: Aug 28, 2012 at 11:01 PM ECT To mark 50 years of Independence, the Government has decided to choose 50 great "icons" of Trinidad and Tobago. According to the chairman of the Government-appointed committee spearheading the effort, these are "people that have created Trinidad and Tobago". Really? Wow! He went on to say that "the committee went through great pains to ensure a level of equity with respect to gender and ethnicity", that "young people received much focus in the project", that there was "a balance between Trinidad and Tobago", and that "an attempt was made to select persons from diverse backgrounds".
My God! Is this how we determine greatness in Trinidad and Tobago, not purely on merit but with gender, age, ethnicity and place of birth as criteria? Pathetic foolishness!
To start with, it is itself an absurdity to want to determine 50 "great" citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. For centuries, the greatest nations combined have produced just a handful of great people. For the past 2,000 years, since Christ, humanity in its entirety, now nearing eight billion, has not produced more than 50 great minds, if so much; the calibre of Plato, Shakespeare, Einstein, Lincoln, Gandhi, Mandela. These define greatness. But this small nation of 1.2 million is looking for 50 great "icons", to celebrate in just 50 years. "One great for every year", must have been the shallowness that produced this silliness. Fifty candles for the 50th birthday cake!
Couldn't they have reflected a little? Who after Gandhi, can be considered great in India, a nation of 1.2 billion and one of the world's great civilisations. Sachin Tendulkar? Shah Rukh Khan? Outstanding in their fields, but do they equate with Bapu, who defeated the British Empire with his beliefs and whose message of non-violence will resonate forever?
Who on the entire African continent can match the beloved Madiba, who sacrificed his freedom, was prepared to give his life to defeat apartheid and who, in triumph, forgave his oppressors and later relinquished the power he could have kept.
What greatness has England produced since Winston Churchill, or the US, after Abe Lincoln, except perhaps FDR, or Martin Luther King, a century later? And speak not of outstanding contributions in sports, entertainment, academics, and so forth. These are merely exceptional. Greatness is greater, almost almighty. It is enduring, with a deep transforming influence on society and civilisation. Greatness takes the human species forward.
Have we produced any such person? Naipaul comes closest. Williams had potential and opportunity, but faltered in the politics. So call our other achievers "outstanding", "exceptional" and other superlatives. Don't call them great. Twenty five great "icons" would have made Trinidad and Tobago into the most outstanding society in human history; 50 would have made it heaven on earth. But after 50 years, what we have here is a spreading social swampland.
We never nurtured greatness. We did not capitalise on the optimism after Independence when, for about two decades, a national soul was emerging. There was patriotism, respect for the humanities including West Indian literature and history, the quest for "peace, bread and justice" that culminated in the February Revolution of 1970, and considerable activity in the performing arts: music, dance and drama. We even made movies. But the political directorate of the era tragically failed to seize the moment. We have not stopped paying.
It has been mainly mediocrity since then and generations lost. Ruinous deficiencies persisted in the education of the young, in and out of school. In the adult world, they found little but corruption, decadence, divisiveness, materialism and selfishness. Generations of youth matured in a rudderless society woefully impoverished and downright corrosive in its political and cultural life.
And in our education system, every year we churned out thousands. And where are we? Where are they? To this day, a small percentage attains academic excellence, whilst the vast majority are either ordinary or dysfunctional. The proficient enter the professions to be wealthy; the mediocre remain middling, struggling to survive; the dysfunctional are trapped by inherited parameters. Nothing happens. And we look for greatness?!
Our education system does not develop the social conscience in Trinidad and Tobago. This is a national tragedy. Young people emerge with certificates but no burning passion to make the world a better place. Where is the idealism of youth that matures into a commitment to a just society? What is the nation's reward after so many billions spent on its young?
Not much. Citizens remain unmoved by Independence. The national mind grows increasingly distant from its history. Few now can still speak of colonialism, Cipriani, Butler, Gomes, Rienzi, Bhadase, Capildeo, Weekes; or of the Literature: Naipaul, Selvon, James, Walcott. Worse still, how many have even a smattering of the origin of the species, ancient civilisations, the Renaissance, the enlightenment, the scientific revolution, the British Empire, the French and Haitian Revolutions, American Independence and Civil War, all of which have shaped our lives? We live in vacancy, without context.
And now this Government will increase the vacuity with its trademark superficiality. Looking for great "icons"! Your great citizens either live in your hearts or don't exist. But to create a show, sustain the façade, live the lie, as we do with annual national awards, we will reward outstanding achievements as well as mediocrity or less, just to make up the number and call them all great. In the process we devalue the idea of greatness. We corrupt the concept and therefore sin against the children. We continue to make this society a suffocating space for youth where most eventually experience the inner strangulation that kills the capacity for magnificence. This way, we will still be looking for great citizens when we attain 100.
• Ralph Maraj is a former government minister