The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

IN a recent video press release, Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell announced The Bahamas’ participation in EXPO 2020 Dubai, an international exposition, a grand-scale exhibition of ideas, inventions and innovations from countries and organisations spanning the globe.

If he and his team are able to engage the Bahamian public at large, especially the youth of the nation, this could be Mitchell’s best contribution yet to his country.

Of course, there’s a lot of political mileage to be gained from this event, but it is a prime opportunity for all Bahamians to put their political differences aside in order to facilitate the refined representation of the Bahamas to the world.

EXPO 2020 Dubai is geared towards creative thinkers aged 35 and under, but there is another aspect of the EXPO - EXPO Live - which seeks to engage and incentivise inventive minds of any age, from any background or country in the world.

We (okay, I) preach a lot about the lack of direction of our nation towards being a thought society, getting Bahamians to think about life in far-reaching terms, and how to make things possible, easier, safer, or better for human civilisation by thinking … innovating.

We have not been a thought society. And from where I stand that is owed almost entirely to a lack of developmental vision as at our date of Independence, as well as the nature of our primary industry, where we are trained to be in service to others. Service before self in tourism has ruined us. I’ll say it if you won’t.

As a people, we’ve been cultivated to think that the hotel resort project gets the royal invitation, sets up shop, hands out jobs and we go to work, 9am to 5pm, day in, day out, our sole aim to pay the mortgage, the car loan, and put our children (if there is an opportunity) through college, so they can grow up and come back to The Bahamas and do the same thing. That cycle was created long ago and has persisted for generations.

Now we are beginning to see, more often and more easily, Bahamians going off to school, some with great struggle by their parents, others with the luck of wealth, deciding to explore their academic and professional interests beyond The Bahamas.

Their interests have diversified, even though the country’s economy has not, and younger Bahamians are learning and then staying away because of a lack of industry. It is not a lack of jobs that keeps them away, it is a lack of industry diversification that ought to have happened at least 30 years ago, so that when Bahamian youth started desiring work in roles other than doctor, lawyer, engineer, they would have had something to come back home to and a system that respected and facilitated Bahamian ingenuity, possibly even ensuring that those doctors, lawyers, and engineers could remain gainfully employed.

But it is not, nor has it been the nature of the Bahamian mindset to encourage innovation over 30 to 40 years, so we end up with what we have today … young and not as young Bahamians seeking lives elsewhere where they can function in their respective callings without being mocked, refused, and denied opportunity.

Now the result of this stifling of innovation is showing itself everywhere in Bahamian society: poor education and low level academic performance, criminality and a breakdown of government functionality and social infrastructure.

All indicators show regression and failure, except where some students excel in high school and then leave to take their excellence to another part of the world, The Bahamas unable to hold onto them or lure them back with anything other than sun, sand, and sea. Most are gone forever to the world beyond The Bahamas, unless they return to The Bahamas as tourists or just in time to retire.

Many say “home will always be there”. But will it? At best, it will not be the same place you knew when you left it. And hopefully we can do something that would ensure that the only reason ‘home’ will not be the same is because the whole country has had an about-turn, a facelift ... and not because it has been completely defaced.

Innovation is a way of thinking that can be taught in school, requiring some level of education, but a large part of innovation is the way you are taught to think in the environment into which you’re born or raised. How many books are read, how much imagination is allowed or encouraged?

A child born to wealthy parents has greater opportunities, but if those parents don’t encourage that child to imagine a better, greater existence, beyond what that child can see, that child can’t understand thinking beyond existence.

A child born to poor parents has fewer opportunities, but if those parents encourage that child to dream and imagine a better, greater existence, beyond what that child can see, that child will likely understand thinking beyond existence or present reality.

All of that to say that no matter the financial circumstances, anyone can be an innovator, anyone can have a great idea, but a good education at any level provides the discipline for ideas to grow and bloom. Have we not provided good education for our people, or are they too stupid to learn? It couldn’t possibly be the latter … which raises another important question.

Are Bahamian parents looking at their children as opportunities to better humanity, or are they just byproducts of not using birth control … left for someone else to inspire, left to be a burden on society when they could be so much more?

When our children can’t think, it’s because we can’t or haven’t shown them how to or provided an environment for them to think. We’ve not placed a premium on thoughts and rationalisation and innovation. In fact, we’ve bypassed the whole creation process and jumped straight to consumption … consumption with no resources available to consume, driving us further into poverty, further into the negative.

When the greatest achievement our children can imagine is working in a hotel and buying a car, we have failed in parenting for life; let’s not fool ourselves.

Not everyone will be an innovator, but everyone can be. Imagine how different Nassau or Freeport or any other Bahamian city could be if at least half of all Bahamians could create something useful, innovate something no one else has.

Imagine all the things that could be sustainably created with our atypical but abundant natural resources. Yet we wait for other conquerors to enter and develop them nearly to our exclusion because we’ve made our people believe they are imbeciles destined to lives of having and being hardly anything.

If you have or if your child has even a simple but brilliant idea, document it, patent it, and develop it, and submit it to EXPO 2020 Dubai.

We can’t rely on our leaders to lead us in innovation. Look where they’ve brought us. The best they can do is open doors for us to gain access to opportunities that they cannot themselves provide. That is, in fact, their purpose. And it should be the only thing they are entrusted with other than ensuring our safety and good health, though we can see how even that is working out.

To be an innovative society, you have to respect good education and free thinking. On both counts, we’re doing poorly as a collective.

To make matters worse, we have utilised a defunct/unsuccessful formula for economic development via tourism that has created more harm than good in the characters of our people and their ability to live their full potential. How many ways do we have to squeeze this dried up formula to make it fit before we see that it doesn’t?

Yes, people need money. Yes, people need to work. But they also need to think. Don’t you want your citizens or fellow citizens to help you think our way out of a problem, instead of using a gun or a knife to create a new problem?

When people with limited thinking ability feel threatened, they don’t think first, they act first. Thinking is not in their defence repertoire. That should be a key indication of a degenerating society, and of what is clearly missing from it. What is missing, we can provide if we take advantage of the rare opportunities that come our way.

There are better ways for the Bahamas to earn/obtain capital than another hotel project. EXPO 2020 is one of those ways. Our full participation in this could help to diversify the Bahamian economy like never before, if many Bahamians put their best imaginations forward.

Unimaginative minds cannot lead us into an innovative future.

• E-mail nburrows@tribunemedia.net, Facebook and Twitter @SoPolitiCole

• For the video press release of Fred Mitchelll’s announcement go to https://vimeo.com/180283927

• For the PDF for EXPO Live: https://expo2020dubai.ae/resources/files/expolive_brochure_eng.pdf