I WAS in America some years ago and I was hungry. Before me, I had a sandwich and a brand-name box of orange juice. I don’t know what made me look at the expiry date, but I was motivated to call someone, because orange juice fumigates after a few days; even in the fridge. Since the person that I was calling worked at a certain place, they should know and be able to provide the explanation that I was seeking. I was confident. I was told after a chat that because I was where I was staying, and it was a chilly fall night, I could drink some of the juice, but in the future, shop at the ‘Farmers Market’, and get myself a blender.

I was also told some other stuff, which I didn’t know. I think that I was fortunate to have cultivated into maturity an attitude encouraged by the elders that I grew with, not to believe everything, but to listen, then compare, and that nothing was wrong with being a ‘Doubting Thomas’. Thomas doubted, and Christ engaged his doubts.

When I had this conversation in my mid-teens, and I replied that, “Thomas had no faith”, my father laughed in that matter-of-fact way of his and countered, “Christ understood more than you li’l bhai. Suppose was a devil pretending to be Christ, how would dem humble apostles know the difference?” I had no counter for that, but it meant a lot to home my observations later.

I realised that the man under the influence of whatever, who waves a weapon threateningly, may be a lesser evil than the man who smiles with you and lies deceptively, to your detriment. By a man’s works shall he be known; blind faith requires the lack of energy to enquire. That brings into relevance the old parable, “Yuh living in yuh own bubble,” and if a bubble is big enough, when it does burst it can drown you in waves of depression, and the physical (that can be fatal) illnesses that follow that kind of disappointment. Observation also brings disappointment, but with the understanding that you were deceived or deceived yourself after the anger, that new awareness can be countered by a rough evaluation towards a sober realisation, and a much more balanced perspective towards the future.

Then there is the real world we are aware of but do not necessarily live in, which also demands that we take time off to pay attention to. Recently, Germany shut off its relationship with nuclear power as an energy source. A scientist named Heinz Smital was one of the multitudes of German citizens behind this. His awakening had come from the 1986 Chornobyl Disaster in Russia, when, days after the incident, he had waved a damp cloth outside of the window of the University of Vienna to sample the city’s air and was surprised at how far nuclear contamination could spread, and nuclear contamination is fatal to organic life.

In the same World News page Sunday Stabroek 16, April 2023, Germany again was examining Chinese components in its 5G network, in concluding the German fears “there are concerns that such companies’ with close links to Beijing’s security services, could mean that embedding them in the mobile networks of the future could give Chinese spies and even saboteurs access to essential infrastructure”.

If these are German concerns, the nation whose scientists Wernher Von Braun, Heisenberg, and others before and after WWII spearheaded America’s development of the Atom Bomb-see-‘Hitlers’ Scientists, John Cornwel and also some in other streams who should have died at Nuremberg- 1945. The bottom line to all this is our vulnerability at every level of computerised operations that can be manipulated by externals with more intelligent technology toward their interests.

Thus, I am doubtful that our concept of Independence is still viable or merely ceremonial. It brings me back to the onset of the ‘Smart phone’ the idea was promoted that the phone is smart not to the owner but to whoever owns the technology that created the phone. I always thanked that young lady that came forward with that ‘wise up’ with that online video. As well in George Orwell’s book, ‘Big Brothrer’s watching you’, incidentally, “he ent yuh, big brother”.

There are other simple things that we need to be aware of. How we eat is one of them – habits like alcohol and marijuana that can lead to problems, even fatal, that are social and cultural- proposed stress relief habits. This machismo culture ‘ting’ got to change, and I must address its realm next time.