Doublethink writ large

It used to irritate me when the old folk said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

It seemed to shut down all hope, any chance of a surprise or a eureka moment.

However, age brought a less literal understanding. The deeper meaning is that things, in their essence, remain the same, regardless of their new forms, and that human nature and the way we conduct ourselves is fixed.

It is a depressing thought, but acknowledging its veracity helps us to have courage as we try to make sense of the confusion of contemporary life and politics.

Doublethink, everyone of a certain age and education knows, is how George Orwell, author of one of the most influential books of the last century, the dystopian novel 1984, described our enduring ability to believe in contradictory ideas simultaneously.

We have many examples of it in Trinidad and Tobago. Take the preposterous notion that we can have a healthy society when so much poverty of the spirit, let alone of means, exists. It is more than just wishful thinking that Carnival is powerful enough to lance the boil of ever-deepening human discontent, or that marching and praying will stop the crime when the structures that support crime remain untouched by those who have the power to pull them down.

It is not that we are stupid citizens, but we do not have all the information and are unaware of the ways in which how we think and behave are encouraged. We do not perceive the methods used to keep us in that rut. Doublethink trickles down through our politics and affects society.

As the late Mr Panday remarked in a relatively recent interview, how come, after all the oil-boom money, and with just 1.3 million people, some TT citizens still have no running water?

It is a rhetorical question, but he might have added, why are the roads collapsing, the rivers and drains clogged, literacy at record lows and society fragmenting?

As a former PM, he might also have questioned his part in the unsatisfactory state we find ourselves in on almost every index.

We can forgive Mr Panday who was, after all, a trained actor of screen and stage, even appearing for a year at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End in 1961, and revelled in being seen as a fox.

Current events in Gaza are a horrific example of doublethink. Israel’s mantra could well be “war is peace,” as in 1984. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to pursue the war to its bitter end till the last Hamas soldier is rooted out and Hamas is defeated, even if it takes all of 2024 to achieve that goal.

We, including him, have no idea how many more Palestinians must die in the process, and it really does not matter to anyone – not Hamas, not the Israelis and not the Americans, who are the biggest perpetrators of doublethink.

It is unconscionable that anyone could argue that Israel has “the right to defend itself” with the full might of its military, which is employing state-of-the-art American war weaponry against an unarmed civilian population. The proof is the 22,000-plus children, women and men who have been killed so far. Violence has always begotten violence in the long run, but we have convinced ourselves otherwise.

Another startling example of doublethink is linked to mankind’s biggest challenge – the acute environmental changes caused by human activity. Defence forces are huge consumers of fossil fuels and major contributors to global warming (an estimated 5.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions), yet the true environmental cost of global national security remained undiscussed at COP28 because military activity abroad is considered a security issue, and defence forces are not bound by the 1992 Kyoto Protocol nor the 2015 Paris Agreement either to cut or report their carbon footprint.

In 2022, global military spending totalled US$2.24 trillion. With 183 ongoing conflicts plus Israel-Gaza and all the violence still to be unleashed from that conflict, the 2024 total in energy consumption, expenditure and environmental damage will be even more staggering. According to a July 2023 Reuters report, Dutch carbon-accounting expert Lennard de Klerk estimated the first year of the war in Ukraine would trigger a net increase of 120 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual output of Singapore, Switzerland and Syria combined. We are now approaching year three.

It is instructive that neither of TT’s two leading political parties which will seek our support at the polls next year has articulated a policy on the environment or championed its safety. It’s tricky being an economy reliant on fossil-fuel energy and having to advocate its demise. Somewhere in the government’s budget are some financial incentives, but we have not been called to action. Let’s see what smoke and mirrors our political leaders can conjure when the moment demands it.