In today’s world, you have two choices, you either live fast and die young, or live smart and prepare for old age. When I grew up, most salaries, regardless of job, were small, but the cost of most essential things was also cheap.
A loaf of bread was ‘a penny’ (two cents), ten mangoes for a dollar, five dollars worth of flying fish could feed the whole family for a feast and housing was not a problem because everyone had a shelter. Schooling was a privilege and skills training was for a few, but regardless, most families prospered. There was always one option: to work for what you wanted or needed, whether for yourself or another or do without the finer things in life.
Life offered us little shortcuts. If you studied well, the chances of getting a secondary school place were assured. If you remained on the job, you could grow to be a supervisor or even a boss.
And if by chance you left the island, the world was yours to conquer.
The bottom line is to achieve or become successful, you have to put your hands on the wheel.
Then came a new generation of ‘Giving’ parents who would pamper, relax the rules, soften on discipline and offer social freedom to their children, not encouraging them to do house chores and giving them whatever they wanted. But note that today we are reaping what we sowed. Some children of today seem to want everything to justify their material needs. Some will do anything to get by – steal if they feel they must, kill if they feel they must, scam and swindle with a smile, betray their best friends, turn against their schoolmates and long-life friends, all that just to acquire wealth, to be known as a ‘Dan’.
As some of us have become older, we begin to appreciate the purpose of saving or securing for a rainy day. We began to realize that the cost of living only goes one way: sky high. So, not committing to the future meant having no future.
Now, the present generation, spoilt by their parents, have all become radicals, untrustworthy, lacking compassion and love, caring little about the environment, people’s lives, or our country, and would degrade society by their behaviour.
In my opinion, for there to be meaningful change to depart from the present mindset of criminality, we need to “wheel and come again”, and change the ways we do things – and the State has to become more robust and take law enforcement to another level.
If not, the present will remain the norm.
You either fight fire with fire or put up your white flag and surrender. Now, it is either them or us, and our safety should always come first and life must never be dictated by the behaviour of a few.
There are several ways to skin a cat, but the powers that be must take the bull by the horns and do what must be done to effect change.
If we must live by the dictates of this generation, then we can all bury our heads in the sand, and let life take its course, then it matters not what our image is.
The police force grows in numbers, but not in intelligence. Crime fighting modules of years gone by have to be changed and new tactics must be applied.
Most public officials cannot be trusted and most of the methods put in place do not seem to be working. Plus, the international governments of the First World dictate the pace and path we should take, so they can have easy access to the Government for manipulative purposes.
After all, the reality is that, whether we like it or not, Capitalism must continue at all costs, regardless of what goods and services are peddled.
We need to wake up and smell the coffee. But in the meantime, as we juggle along life’s path, we try our best to cope as we can. But the bottom line is that those paid to effect change must do it, or get out of the kitchen if the heat is too much.