Dear Editor,
Growing up, generations – ours, those who came before, and, just after – were taught ‘behaviours’. Good behaviour involved being mannerly, showing respect for all elders, and in time understanding self-respect as well.
We learnt not only to be civil in discourse, but to be honest and tell the truth. Obedience was expected of the young by older models who were seen as dignified – in style, but more moulded in integrity.
Survivors would argue that one has to search diligently to identify these attributes in the current theatre of players – players who boast of themselves as aggressors. There are no longer ‘gentleman’ and ‘lady’, as can be gleaned from the videos on the TV screens which, by the way, are cluttered with semi-literate advertisements which present to foreigners an embarrassing image of the current quality of our education.
Prudes of the old generations note the nomenclature of ‘mister’ is replaced by ‘big one’. ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’ is hardly an option in an empathetically transgender world.
Now all week, every night, they are vociferous offers at ‘PC Wednesday’ of ‘ladies free all night’ – a contradiction in terms.
Too often is the debate in the media conducted less to enlighten the uninformed; more to misinform even those who feel they know. Argumentation shows little evidence of mutual respect; but is more committed to acrimonious exchanges and personal vilification. Rancour replaces rationality.
A long time ago, not too seriously it was said that ‘confession was good for the soul’. Nowadays those affected complain of how confessions are extracted from them at named police stations, from which when transferred – to a magistrate’s court – the result is failure and non-conviction – in the same way as when suborned witnesses are involved, much too often. In our time people quarrelled. Incidents reached the courts where magistrates of the day were not only learned in their profession, but also displayed a considerable understanding of the dynamics of the society and its frailties; persons of dignity who were respected for their aloofness from any breach of the legal process.
Comparatively many argue that such breaches are currently par for the course, and moreso defensible. They are, however, only part of a mosaic of infringements, indiscipline, transgressions, lawlessness in the society: crimes of passion – rape, sodomy, murder; along with the more textured forms of corruption.
Contributors to this degradation of standards and the (acclaimed) quality of living are some media and the ‘advanced’ technologies that provide ready access to the weaknesses of developed societies presented as serial entertainment for programmed minds to mimic – in the absence of any viable role models in this desert environment.
Notwithstanding, those who have, doubtfully, led and continue the pretension to leadership, are offering the same morsels of degeneration in what they consider to be more palatable forms. For it does not occur to them that they too have been scarred by the environment they have created, and must therefore heal their own scars before they can lead in administering the healing balm to members of a defective, disaffected, dehumanised society. So what will constitute the cure for youth, deformed by the lack of education, debarred from access to skills training; confronted with unavailable employment; harassed by emasculated uniformed subordinates; subjected to prolonged criminal enticements; if not stimulated by illegal drugs, submerged to the massive dosages of raucous music that dulls the mind into a state of inertia.
So that those youth who are more alert must insist on the leadership showing clearly where the future lies.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
