Finding ourselves

April 02, 2001

Last week's column, "Eric Williams really dead", brought a flurry of responses. Uncannily the following three responses came in the same order as they are presented here.

What is clear is that all the questions that were not answered or even asked at the time of Independence have to be asked and answered now. What does it really mean to be a nation? And who are we? The first of the specific three said:

Dear Bukka,
I could not agree with you more about your points on the effects of globalisation and the lack of identity, fortitude and pride.

It saddens me to see this "Americanism" of our people when I visit each year. It is also one of the challenges that we as people of Trinidad and Tobago, people of the Caribbean, immigrants to the USA, face as we constantly swim upstream against the tide of American ideals and cultural norms.

I know that my spirit constantly needs to be replenished, hence my unending quest for pan music, socialising with friends and family, keeping up-to-date with current affairs, with the conduit being the Internet and Caribbean reading (although old books are hard to come by).

As a parent, I also need to teach and instill what it means to be of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, including the contributions of believers like Dr Williams.

Please continue to use your column to enlighten and uplift. I for one certainly appreciate your valid observations; hopefully others will also. Much appreciated. A son of de soil, through thick or thin. The second established an interesting point of departure:

Sir,
In reference to your article "Eric Williams really dead", could it be that we, as a nation, have not stressed the right ideals and values, such as patriotism and intellectualism, but have instead focused on the ideals that are, although important to any society, not as important as those which ordinarily will elevate a society's status quo to the height where it becomes an idealistic and valuistic social order within the global system?

In the USA's society, this is obvious in not only it's arts but as well as in it's ideology, economic strategy and it's intellectualism.

I'm sure you'll agree the United States casts a shadow over the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. And for the most part is pretty much a heavy influence on the social global system. After all, the only reason everyone wants to be "Yankee" is because what is there to being "Trinidadian" or "Tobagonian"?

Carnival is without a doubt Trinidad and Tobago's "dancing queen". But should it be? Should our country's heroes be only those who strive artistically? Will we make an impression on the rest of world, or even be catapulted to our own high self-esteem, on the merit of a talent not every Trinidadian or Tobagonian possesses?

Where are the local heroes of government, and business? Of family values? Of education? Of progress - whatever the facet of society? In a culture where to be a leader, whether it is Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, is to be a laughable, unrespectable position, but to be a calypsonian is Mighty? where's the logic in that?

There are many demons in T&T's closet which will have to be faced if the country desires to really become a nation. I'm not against the Carnival procession, it's the right of any T&T citizen to be free to cultivate or participate in any action within the law. But why is it the whole country must be shut down, and the Government must regulate and finance this event?

I respect your articles. As a young Trinidadian, of East Indian descent growing up in NY, with a desire and a passion to return to the country one day well equipped to be giver and servant to the society, for it's sake and benefit, I ask you continue to write on the landscape of civilisation, or the lack thereof, in the Trinidadian and Tobagonian social order. We young ones need our history to know our place today. Thank you. God bless your day!

What is interesting is that in the first e-mail quoted, the writer, in discussing the prevailing Americanisation process, suggests from his own experience that the local art forms provide us with a buffer and the mechanisms to insulate ourselves from the negatives of Americanisation and serves to strengthen us to find and define our own direction.

In the second e-mail quoted, that very significant role ascribed to the arts in the first is denounced.

There are other facets of life that are of greater importance than the arts, the second writer argues, and that in any case not everyone possesses artistic talent.

It is important, therefore, to indicate that there are varied forms of talent. Everybody has some form of talent whether academic, artistic, technical or otherwise. It is crucial however, that each person, in conjunction with the overall society, seizes the responsibility to nurture and develop and extend to the fullest respective talents.

The "arts" really function as a mirror to our souls. It is through the arts that we constantly examine ourselves and reveal ourselves to ourselves with the view to stimulate deep reflection and rededication to our own way of seeing and doing. The arts breed and nurture social conscience.

Not surprisingly, the arts and the humanities, which involves the history of the arts and the history of social contemplation, are significant to the American education system.

It is the US film industry and music and the entertainment industry, a section of their popular arts, that are the flag-bearers of US ideology and are the torches that penetrate and guarantee US global hegemony.

One needs only to see what emanates from Bollywood to recognise the extend of the psychological penetration. Just then a third e-mail came from a friend who, as if reading my mind, brought everything down to the salient, spinal issue:

Dear Bukka,
Just a note of thanks for your column on Monday 26. It helped to focus the broader question. The Americanisation question is real. These days it's being covered up by the globalisation debate. In the church, universality is the blanket. For me it is a broader question of identity and value.

A question that I have come back to again and again in recent times is quite simply this: Is there anything that I am willing to die for? Until we can ask and answer that question, we do not know what morality is, we have no truly enduring values.

Perhaps England did us our greatest disservice by giving us independence, rather than making us fight and die for it. Then we might have acquired the guts and balls you write about. So, thanks once again. Let us pray for each other. Truly, it is that bigness that we all should be seeking.