By Ian McDonald
I think I am right in feeling increasingly agitated at the impression one gets that governments everywhere, and certainly in the Caribbean, are simply skipping from one headline problem to the next without time, thought and energy given to the deeper, persistent crises gathering forte like huge, hidden tsunamis.
I once had the interesting experience of browsing in the diaries of William Gladstone, one of the greatest British prime ministers. Many things amazed me, not the least being the inhuman mental energy which allowed him after each day filled with hard and unremitting work to push himself further to record his thoughts and views in a comprehensive journal. I was fascinated also by the intriguing account of this dour, moralizing man’s abiding interest in prostitutes, the trouble he took in getting to know them personally and trying, as he put it, “to save them” – a remarkably thankless task as it turned out.
But there was one extract in Gladstone’s journal which particularly struck me. It was a detailed account of a discussion he had one day with two of his cabinet ministers about England’s forest reserves. At one point, Gladstone records, they talked about the role of the oak tree in England’s history and went on to discuss ways and means to make sure that oak forests still flourished in England in 100 years’ time. That is what struck me – the determination of three old men to secure part of their nation’s heritage long generations after they were dead. What they decided would bring them no personal gain or political merit whatsoever. The resources they earmarked would bear absolutely no fruit for them.
That seems a far cry from these cynical days when, in the words of another British prime minister, “a week is a long time in politics.” Today, what is expedient is what seems to count. What is temporarily successful is what matters most. What gathers instant popularity is most applauded. It is a world where the froth on the wave is made to seem more important than the solid sea beneath – a world where one can say of very few men what the writer, Oliver Goldsmith, said of the great eighteenth century conservative politician, Edmund Burke – that “he was too fond of the right to pursue the expedient.”
It has to be admitted that it is not always easy to get the correct balance between present expediency and the waiting generations. It is all very well to plan for the long-term future, but, as John Maynard Keynes, the celebrated economist, pointed out long ago, “in the long term we’re all dead anyway.” After all, today well-spent builds all our tomorrows. And it is not merely expedient to get through a sudden crisis. “Live to fight another day,” has been a perfectly acceptable, and not necessarily immoral, tactic through the ages. In these perilous times, when new crises fall like storms dropping from the sky, it almost seems enough just to get through each day that dawns.
Still, we must try to hold on to a longer vision through even the sharpest crisis. Expediency taken too far must, in terms of the economy, undermine the long-term prosperity of the nation and, in terms of the society, fatally corrupt and demoralize its citizens. If only instant survival matters every man will grab what he can today and say go hang to tomorrow.
It is therefore important to look out for symptoms of exaggerated expediency in how our affairs are conducted. A one-off exercise serves its purpose if it can be made the subject of a glamorous announcement or, better yet, an even more glamorous opening ceremony. It serves its purpose if it can make a brief showing in the market place. It serves its purpose if the citizens are given the impression that their desperate need is at least being met, however temporarily, in one direction or the other. It serves its purpose if the impression can be given of work-in-progress and action stations bravely manned.
But such exercises do not serve the purpose of adding permanently to the fundamental capacity and strength of the nation. They do not serve the purpose of solving problems once and for all and ‘done wid dat.’ They do not serve the purpose of safeguarding long-term prosperity. They really are a fraud on all our tomorrows.
Consider any new crop or product or initiative. The announcement, the publicity, the ceremony of inauguration, the first dramatic sales or mobilization drive, the showy displays in the shop windows or at the latest exhibition, none of these are really of any importance.
What matters is whether the new business is securely founded, whether sufficient working capital is available for the long haul, whether the new product can be supplied on a regular and continuing basis at a competitive price, whether long-term markets are available, and whether annual profits can be generated, not just instant cash on a one-and-done basis.
When you next see or hear a headline story about a new product, a new crop, a new marketing initiative, any new occasion for premature self-congratulation, suspend applause for at least a year. Check the follow-through. Assess what has happened since the first reports. The only thing that really matters is the follow-through. You can always tell a gimmick when the follow-through is nil.
We do not, it is true, always have to think in terms of growing Gladstonian forests that will yield timber a hundred years to come. But at least when our day is past we should have set some sturdy plants and not just a few precarious shrubs that wilt before the day is done.
