“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”.
This taken from writer W. B. Yeats gives an extremely accurate depiction of where we are in present day Jamaica. It is apparent everyone is out for the jugular with little or no care and concern for truth and integrity. It is sad that there seems to be no window of morality to look through with the assured guarantee of finding a few solid and uncompromised room. The advent of social media has cast an eternal net that catches all in one swoop as journalists, civil society, lawyers, judges, politicians and the rest.
These days everybody is an expert on every subject, but even more telling is how easily many have no regard for facts and truth when declaring what is “known”. The sad reality is you can wake up tomorrow and have two or three supposedly popular people say anything about you that is untrue, knowing their psychotic, possessed and Pavlovian posse will immediately take it as gospel. Why? They are all aware of how much we have become tuned in to far more suss and sauce, than common sense.
There is no fear in consequences either, because the unlearned believe freedom of speech has no checks and balances. They also believe as long as they are not the creators of it, then it absolves them of responsibility. The idea of being somewhat of a ghost hiding behind fake names and identities allows many to spew venom, disparage, scandal and destroy people in their so-called “knowledge”.
I can understand the missteps of the ignorant who have no intention to enlighten their darkness, as “the worst are full of passionate intensity”, but when so many who stand on a soapbox and platform of what is right and wrong, it is clear “the best lack all conviction”. It is important that those who seek to drown others in the pool of rumour remember that there are others as venomous lurking in the grass to do the same to them.
What is even better is for them to shake and break their folly ground. This country is facing a serious crisis in missing morality and we keep slipping day by day into an abyss of no soon return. There are many who do not subscribe to using the court of law to settle what has been dished dirtily in the court of public opinion. The scourge of missing integrity and morality being defended by many is now almost as deadly as the crime rate. It seeks to kill and maim people’s character and destroy their lives and that of their families.
We can always sit in the arena enjoying the demise of people without holding ourselves accountable for our actions, but who will stand for us when the rabid lions are let loose? The centre cannot hold, where is our moral compass Jamaica?
