Shame as the means to your self-respect

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

"SARAM NA BA” used to be the terse reprimand of my agee (grandmother), to mean rhetorically “that I had no shame," whenever I cheated my smaller sister of the sweets that she had brought from the temple.

In response as a child, I often giggled and walked away with little sense of how I had violated the trust of both my agee and my sister, but now that I am a man, looking back, I know that I should have hung my head in shame for my wrongdoing, showing remorse and asking for their forgiveness, promising never to do it again.

It is also now much clearer that acknowledgement of your wrongdoing and a commitment not to repeat same are the means to your dignity and self-respect as an individual, after which you can hold your head up high without the fear of reproach.

Indeed, such a continuing process of revaluation and remorse is key to your own development for in our humanity we are naturally prone to mistakes, and we grow if only we learn from them. Without a sense of shame you forfeit the human in you and you are no less than the beast of the field acting on instinct to survive.

How do we measure up as a people in this regard? What of taxpayers having to fork out a huge sum simply because officials did not do their jobs, with evidently no worry about the consequence to them?

And the sham of expensive commissions of enquiry like the recently concluded diving tragedy and now that of the disappearing-reappearing file, the first with the unconscionable implicit in little prospect of wrongdoers having to answer or families being compensated, and the second a formality in essence, for the verdict seems a done deal?

And what of the indifference to job loss and empty pockets, even as eggs threaten to rise on their own as part of the now almost “cultural” price-gouging and the threat of increased rates and fees, not forgetting the property tax that looms?

And how about our leaders continuing to make false promises, the one about a Dragon, its fire continuing to grow cold as the facts emerge, and the other about an election victory that is as elusive as a dream, even as we in our tribal obeisance continue to pay homage for a mess of pottage in exchange for our unquestioning loyalty?

And what of our tears for the loss of loved ones day in and day out, even as those charged with the responsibility to protect us continue, incredibly so, to claim that they are doing a great job without battering an eyelid?

But how did we reach such a place? Indeed, the world has become such a place with this now aggravated shamelessness as the face of the unconscionable, with Vladimin Putin murdering helpless citizens in Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused of misusing aid to the country. With Trudeau being anti-protest and Joe Biden with seriously impaired judgment affecting the lives of citizens, and the pattern is the same with other "world leaders" elsewhere.

It as if there is a radical paradigm shift from the basic brotherhood of man's value system instilled by traditional institutions into one of serving the self above all else.

As for us here in this country, what has exacerbated this new shamelessness is the practice of “criminality without consequence” evident everywhere, which has almost become “high culture." The plaintive cry of an aunt whose schoolboy nephew was shot three time in St James recently is telling: “People don’t have a heart!”

But we don’t have to curse the darkness. We can light a candle in our own little way, as many Trinis are wont to do, which can lead us out of the darkness.