– So to be chartered sensibly through the enchanted jungle of the ever-changing times

RECENTLY a conversation came up about two blood brothers I knew, who had proposed a couple of decades ago, in my presence of a group of five of us, about the positive life-changing options of the narcotics trade. I had told them then, that this country was too poor and the authorities too self-absorbed, that plenty of people would suffer, especially the young, because we do not know the dangers that drugs present. They ignored me, the two others there back then chided me about being ‘soft’ and explained that “Yuh just need to mek yuh heights and move on.” In conversations such as this, variables are hardly considered, or if so, are mentioned against the must-be-tough position; and so other days followed, the two brothers were gunned down, and the other two I haven’t seen for years. I can only hope the best for both for them. My father, with whom I didn’t grow up, but spent some time with him after my godparents had passed, often told me, “Don’t wake up and find the enemy in the mirror.” I shook my head in agreement but never did understand until one day I raised the courage to ask him what ‘is the enemy in the mirror’? he laughed and replied, “ah know yuh didn’t understand, ah was hoping yuh had the honesty and courage to ask meh.” He interpreted it for me in this way, “If something nice present itself to yuh, but yuh got to do something bad to get it, but yuh feel that if nobody ent know, is alright, then yuh wrong, because you know, yuh never see people holler pon people just because they eyes mek four, well is the guilt in wondering- ’if deh know’ torment from within ent good at all, it tear yuh apart, yuh got fuh shout loudest what ent de truth, but what yuh want to believe is the truth.” My father was a kind of philosopher as were many of the men of his day, they were students of the cultural inheritance of proverbs, sayings and wordless expressions and short sayings that directed approval or disapproval without a long litany, they also subscribed or inherited subscriptions to interesting magazines, Readers Digest., Parade, Popular Mechanics, Life and Man’s Action, the latter my secret entertainment exploring favourite for a time, outside of my comics, but even he erred, in companionship choice, but that’s family business.

There’s nothing indeed ‘new under the sun’; there have always been weak souls and callous opportunists. When we use the term free choice, we must always remember that that as a unique species we stand on a platform of choices, not compelled by instinctive survival commands, thus we are faced with intelligent, positive and negative choices and the subsequent grades of consequences. Every opposition taken will be infiltrated by selfish opportunism; this is common in most family situations, the sister or brother that wants all, or the scenario of the old man or woman who signs over the real estate of his inherited or life’s work too early, to his trained well daughter or son, then comes the psychopathic In law, seductive, compelling and devious, next Mom or Pa are in the Palms, there to grieve to death, because the law is considered the law, and variables were not taken into consideration. In the late 1970s, I visited a friend who was incarcerated for murder, his and his colleagues were to be a popular case, he had asked me to come to get over the idea to his children’s mother that he would be in prison for a long time, that she had to get on with her life, he had already told her that, but I was the reinforcements. The ‘thing’ with the visit was he kept repeating,’ “Brethren I had a bad feeling about this ting, dem man convince meh, bro something, a voice keep telling me nah fuh guh pon it.” The eeriness about the conversation hit me much later, when he and all, except two of the charged were hung, in a case that divided the upper East Coast. What was this voice that was so compelling that he had kept repeating its existence to me?

I have read about and discussed this question over the years; there are no clear definitions except two –A. Science from studies from various disciplines of the functions of the human mind, attribute the impact of religion/culture on genes, which can be interpreted to determine the development of empathy or lack of it, which influences consciousness and perhaps generate warning signs with the former directed from the levels of the inherited sense of right and wrong, as my diseased friend had and ignored. B. With in-depth evidence [all evidence is subject to new findings, especially of the functions of the human brain] however, in closing, not all humans are subject to the inner voice, the realisation of ‘The Psychopath’ has thrown a new definition on the human reality “They Lie and manipulate, yet feel no compunction or regrets” why they don’t care, because they can’t — Scientific American Mind magazine Sept/Oct. 2010. And they are among us, at various levels.