The Tribune

Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

The production of units of labour has become a norm in the 21st century late-capitalist reality of free market expansion where the market will control itself.

Cogs are the essential parts of every machine, but they do not think. They are simply replicated to produce a predetermined outcome.

The Bahamas is producing young people who are very much cog-like in their use in the mechanism and cannot think to perform any other task.

They are incapable of critical thought; they cannot reason further than lunch or breakfast, and they will not create wealth; they may become rich, but they will never be wealthy.

Further, their behaviour is very much what they observe, because they are incapable of creating a non-conformist type of behaviour that would benefit them and separate them from the socially constructed mainstream.

In order for a developing country to progress, it must develop its human capital. A country must invest in its young people and create a thinking, productive, critical mass that can create wealth at the personal as well as the national level.

We have lost our way in this regard. We are, instead, creating cogs who, much like labour units in the corporation, cannot perform outside of their space or slot. They cannot rise above their peers because they do not have the tools to do so. They cannot compete internationally because they are formed in a sphere that is limited to a small place when they can barely function.

Their gendered identities are controlled by expected gendered behaviour and this defines who they are and how they perform in society. They are blinded to anything other than, if they are male, being tough men and not allowing anyone to “disrespect” them and, if they are women, reproducing, getting guys to look at them and fighting a girl over a boy who really isn’t checking for either of them, except for sex.

The problem when thoughtless, violent behaviour and paradise coincide

Our paradise reality and ideal where tourists come willing to spend copious amounts of money (because the place is prohibitively expensive), has become a tragic flaw. As we graduate fewer students who are able to think their way out of conflict, they are also incapable of being true producers. They are unable to communicate beyond their social reality.

When one walks on to Paradise Island beach, where one must cross over private land for public access, according to government, the first impression is one of violence, insecurity, gang mentality, anger and harassment.

This is what meets tourists as soon as they descend from harassing taxis that drive them to the public access point of a national treasure. Here, aggressive young men line the way onto the beach and carry on in typical Bahamian masculine bravado style. They argue between themselves and then they turn to their targets and put on a kind of performance of ‘Americanness’ or universal tourist-machine masculine behaviour where they speak in an accent not theirs but well learned from television and music, for example.

They sell jet-ski rides, umbrellas and chairs, while shouting at their fellow cogs that, “They mussy like man, and you ns better stop liking man. If you come roun me I ga f you up.”

They are oblivious to their antisocial behaviour, often because they know no better. They look and dress the same; they behave the same and they perform the same roles. They are trapped in a training programme that has produced cogs. Most of them are middlemen who can only see as far as getting high and enjoying life. These are the cogs that, while working as the system has produced them to do, are destroying the very system they need to earn money and to survive.

According to Abhijit Das:

“Men all over the world are in the news for killing, shooting, raping, road rage, domestic violence, honour killing, acid attacks and many more forms of violence against others – women, men, children, sisters, children, wives. Society has often glorified violence and killing, especially in wars aimed at political gain and public safety, where the other ‘party’ is cast as the enemy. But in recent times such ‘heroic’ acts of violence seem to be replaced by more inter-personal violence, or violence which is not aimed at any obvious enemy. And this disease seems to affect men everywhere.”

This behaviour that Das describes is the same kind of disease and disaster we see in this small island. These young men and women are aggressive and hostile when they are not being solicitous. In fact, we know that this behaviour is socially valued because there are countless performances of this everywhere everyday and it gets them points.

Antisocial behaviour that has become socially accepted and respected overtime on the public. Meanwhile, respectability is about violence, swag, and masculine prowess. This is especially troubling with young black men who see it as cool to perform this brand of masculinity, but, as we have discussed on countless occasions, they see no alternative behaviours as many public officials also behave in a similar fashion.

We have created a dangerous group of youth who can do very little other than be cogs in a machine, but even that they are unable to do well because cogs do not feel and despite all accounts to the contrary, these young people do feel. They feel rage.

Das puts it thus: “This phenomenon, of men becoming cruel and violent when their comfort levels are upset or challenged, is at the core of the high levels of violence that we are witnessing everywhere.”

This is also true for women, however. One of the obvious differences though is that men are more likely to perform anger through violence in extremely harmful and threatening ways. They understand that their comfort should include the right to get paid when they demand it and the right to earn what they see other people around them earning. If they see a gold chain, they are told by society that they should be able to have that gold chain. We do not prepare the youth to manage disappointment. In fact, we do not train them to think about disappointment, so when it occurs they are unable to deal with it in any other way than with rage and violence.

The cogs in machine are coming loose and they are unable to deal with thinking about how to pull it all back together. As a country that sells paradise, we must stop producing young people who cannot function other than as cogs. Today’s cogs are explosive and destructive; they will ultimately undermine the national ideal of paradise society continually claims it wants.

When tourism is threatened by these cogs whose sole purpose is, according to popular discourse, to promote Bahamian tourism development and to provide labour, to die trying to get rich and not to think, we know that we are in trouble.