– AN ASSAULT ON THE IMAGINATION

We should not quickly shed values and proven traditions the way a reptile changes its skin. As humans, many new rules, twisted creeds and trends seek to envelop us. These new rules creep in from the anxieties that arise from the new technology information platforms, with clarifications and background explanations that surprise and challenge us daily. There is a host of information that unveils an enveloping world. Some truths and projections are embracing, while others can be interpreted as threatening from where one stands – a new-age colonisation of values.

The assault on the imagination is, in many ways, an assault on cultural and core values and spaces, which, if allowed to intercept, nurture, and grow, can lead to a diminished space for self and the preservation of proven self-consciousness. From the late 1970s on, new trends intruded through popular music and fashions. Mind-altering drugs, first marijuana, then swiftly after, cocaine swooped in. Now, we have a full-fledged drug problem across gender and age groups supported by the deceiving, enticing hype. That ‘the high’ provides alternatives to frustrations and mental fatigue, then back to normalcy. Thus, there is a new version of ‘consuming forbidden fruit’.

Technology has indeed assaulted areas of employment once open to many. Incomes today seldom provide the means to basic comforts, and innovative ideas, when voiced, are easily stolen by those who feign concern. We live in a world of illegal finances in many areas managed by a species of humans whose callousness is not contained by morals. So how do we survive? By the things we were taught that we have archived as ‘old-time-ish’. An example of that rests with our experience with the COVID-19 virus. Most of the values we grew up with were the preventable measures the advisory indicated: do not go into the home with your shoes on. You wiped your shoes on the ‘crocus jute bag mat’ at the step or the door. Then, you would remove your shoes on the landing and rest your footwear outside of the door until you completed the other procedures. Take off the clothes worn during the day, especially the shirt, and put them to wash. If you sneezed and coughed in the handkerchief – dump it. (Most kerchiefs were made on a Singer machine from plain cotton cloth for school children at an early age). Change clothes, put on house clothes, which most times consisted of short pants and a vest, and “wash yuh hands befo yuh eat”. COVID-19 proved that those simple old-school treatments were rooted in solid health values.
Relationships between male-female ‘young people’ were subject to parental involvement, values mattered. Of course, there were hard times and many fell through the torn basket into the mud, but most relationships involved family interactions. What is adjusted is the reality check with some families that our children don’t spend time with other relatives because it is necessary. The family wouldn’t be happy at all if a ‘marijuana joint’ is introduced to one of our infants. So, we avoid the problem. It was agreed that not all juveniles would successfully gravitate towards the humanities or the sciences because the finances were not there for special tutoring or the atmosphere was not cultivated earlier through appropriate toys or literature in the earlier stages. Thus, in the Creole environment, at least, one had to learn a trade. Most who did that and were literate evolved to become professionals and masters of the ‘Trade’ rather than “Jack of all Trades, master of none.”

We must comprehend the values of our fathers, for many of them were self-taught. Two important schoolbooks followed many progressive school leavers into young adulthood: the ‘Student’s Companion’ and the ‘First Aid in English. A dictionary was also added to support with vocabulary. Because once you can read, diagrams can be deciphered, as well as contracts. But in the greater evaluation of values, they differ with the circumstances. Therefore, we can only conclude that sometime before electricity, beneath a pale moon, what this article explored was discussed between wise men and women to enable their descendants to live and in time to sensibly wrestle with the challenges that possibly will confront them, with the same humour that revolves around ‘why the dungs tree by the old latrine does got the sweetest fruit ?’.