16 years ago I started this blog with a political post: Happy Birthday Norman. For the last decade and a half I have continued to post articles mostly political or religious in nature, often both, with the inner conviction that has been my mantra since my early twenties – Every responsible adult in a culture is obligated to actively participate in the political and religious conversations of their time. Not to do so, is to cede their agency as adults to others and effectively to become children in thought and life.
Religion is how human groups make decisions on values. Politics is how human groups make decisions on policy / direction. It is how humans answer the questions of being and doing on a group level. The ‘adult’ questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What do I?’ become “Who are we?’ and ‘A wa wi a go du”?”
The fact that these vital human spaces in our times has been hogged by competing and divisive political parties; and competing, counterclaiming and often conflicting religious denominations or world religions is quite beside the point. The political party and the house of worship is not going away at least not any time in the foreseeable future. And yes there are many aspects of these realities that have proven divisive and sometimes counterproductive on the macro-level. But to become cynical and disengaged is not an option, except for the child at heart who is content to play with toys while the world burns around them, until the grave.
That first post was political not because it centered on Norman Manley, but because it centered on children. The Bible says a child shall lead them. But the context is sometimes missed. The only time a child leads a group is in the absence of responsible adults. And children are resilient. If circumstances call for them to play the role of mother or father before their time, the exceptional ones rise to the occasion and without much whining. That certainly was Ian Boyne’s story, who ‘married’ his mother, figuratively speaking, when his father died young. The trauma set him up to be a leader for life. His accomplishments cannot be gainsaid.
The fact is, we do have to pass the baton to the younger generation and any society who loses the cultural attention of their youth is already dead, regardless of all the institutional trappings that appear to sustain them in the now. Human institutions are not machines. They must be led, guided, interpreted and operated by people. If the motivating ‘people’- factor gets lost somewhere down the bloodline, the old institutions will die or be overturned from outside or inside by insurmountable challenges. That’s what Malachi meant when he said if the fathers and sons stop talking, the earth is smitten with a curse. Societal blessing remains in place only for those societies who remember and take care to pass the baton.
When generations receive the baton and run with it, the cycle of human evolution continues. When the torch of vision is dropped, a social order may run around in circles like a poisoned cockroach for a while, but will ultimately and, relatively quickly, simply be overturned and die.
Every now and then, I return to past season’s writings to see if my life is going around in circles, or if I am exploring new depths of the vortex that is the cycle of life. I invite you to do the same.
YeKengalé 