The Tribune

THE American writer and philosopher William Durant (1885-1981), wrote extensively on history and civilisations, comparing different epochs and countries.

One of his famous quips was, “It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.”

One wonders what he would think of America today, including Donald Trump and the inability of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to do something as basic as electing a speaker.

His best known work, the 11-volume, The Story of Civilisation, comparing Eastern and Western civilisations, was composed in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant. It was published between 1935 and 1975.

William Durant repeatedly insisted in various iterations: “Civilisation is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

As noted by another author, Durant defined civilisation “as social order that promotes cultural creation, so you need order and personal freedom.” He appreciated that freedom required responsibility and necessitated direction and certain guardrails to avoid societies dissolving into chaos and anarchy.

Absent personal responsibility, adherence to social norms, and the observance and enforcement of various laws, children and adults lapse into antisocial and even feral behaviour, like publicly urinating wherever one pleases or cavalierly throwing trash onto roads.

Such behaviour is increasingly normal in The Bahamas, alongside mass corruption and illegality by the political and business classes, who gouge the public purse and consumers to enrich themselves at the expense of the country.

As noted in previous columns, decades ago, in the 1970s, the late Monsignor Preston Moss observed what he viewed as the lack of basic human development in a significant number of our people. It has worsened since then.

Monsignor Moss was concerned that many Bahamians of all ages, but especially a large number of young people, lacked fundamental values and habits required for human and moral development, including impulse-control, civility, basic manners, respect for authority and other mores necessary for individual and social development.

Near the end of his life, Sir Lynden Pindling lamented that we were raising a nation of brutes, especially many young men who acted in an uncivilized and brutish manner, often incapable of basic civilities and minimal standards of conduct, including the ability to treat women with respect.

Sir Lynden should have reflected more on the role his governments played in the decline of social values and the toleration of slackness, corruption and social decay, turbocharged by the drug era.

The attenuation of the role of the extended family in raising children and young people, the explosion in the number of young parents, the destruction of values of the drug era and an attendant lowering of expectations, all helped to make a significant number of us less civil, less humane and more prone to violence as a response to conflict.

Though there have been a significant number of single-parent families for many generations, there was often a stronger family network, as well as intermediate associations with greater influence on young people. This included churches, neighbourhoods and a variety of civic groups.

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has written extensively on the sociology of violence in urban America. His analysis also has resonance for New Providence.

The majority of young people on New Providence and throughout the Bahamas, are law-abiding citizens. But there is a large cohort of what Patterson describes as “disconnected youth”.

Most of these youth do poorly in school or are chronically unemployed. The staggeringly high rate of youth unemployment is having a toxic effect on our social landscape. Matters have worsened in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a larger number of teens who missed several years of learning.

The chronic unemployment of nearly a quarter of young Bahamians is an economic and social emergency with far-reaching ramifications.

Thousands of young people wake up every morning with no work, no job prospects, with nothing to do. And they do so day after day and year after year. What is the impact of such an existence on individuals and on society?

Boredom breeds its own discontents and demons, a truism for us all. If we don’t have something to keep us busy, we will find something, or as is so often the case, something will find us. Recall the aphorism about idle hands, which might also be said of idle minds, idle talents, idle energies and idle youth.

There are many thousands of disaffected youth who have not been sufficiently reared with certain positive values and mores and who are in basic survival mode and feel cut off from society.

With current and future prospects seemingly bleak, is it any wonder that many disaffected youth live for the day and have little interest in delayed gratification or self-control.

University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Professor Leon Dash, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was once a leading reporter for the Washington Post. Dash wrote about his research among African American teens in a poor neighbourhood in Washington, DC.

He was convinced that the high incidence of these young people having children had to do with insufficient knowledge of birth control. The teens quickly disabused him of his incorrect supposition.

The teenage girls told him that as they had few job or other life prospects, they decided that they would have children by a man who might love them and who might support their children.

Humans typically delay certain life events, like marriage or having children, or delay gratification when future prospects are on the horizon.

But if prospects and life seem short, the experience or thrill of living now whether in a gang or in the drug business and culture, with the benefits of belonging, sexual enjoyment, alcohol and drugs, other forms of escapism, the power of the gun and violence and the supposed respect these bring, make more sense than the broader society may grasp or understand.

For many disconnected youth it’s not just about job and professional prospects. It is also about the quality or lack thereof of family life.

Quite a number of disconnected youth are in difficult family situations and often feel that they do not have access to clubs, associations and activities through which they may find greater purpose, a sense of belonging, adult mentoring, opportunities for growth, the building of self-esteem and skills development, and wholesome friendships and love.

Patterson observes: “As one gang member told an interviewer working for the sociologist Deanna Wilkinson: ‘I grew up as looking for somebody to love me in the streets. You know, my mother was always working, my father used to be doing his thing. So, I was by myself. I’m here looking for some love. I ain’t got nobody to give me love, so I went to the streets to find love.’ “

To be sure, a number of individuals who were afforded love and material well-being have often had difficult adulthoods. Still, a child or young person insufficiently loved, mentored or governed during their formative years tends to begin life with tremendous headwinds and without basic human resources.

What often seems irrational for the broader culture, may seem entirely rational for a subculture. What Patterson says of parts of urban America can also be said of our social context: “With few skills and a contempt for low-wage jobs, they [disconnected youth] subsist through the underground economy of illicit trading and crime. Many belong to gangs.

“Their street or thug culture is real, with a configuration of norms, values and habits that are, disturbingly, rooted in a ghetto brand of core American mainstream values: hypermasculinity, the aggressive assertion and defense of respect, extreme individualism, materialism…”

While Bahamians tend not to exhibit the extreme individualism of the US, our disaffected youth mirror various mainstream values embedded in our culture.

Hypermasculinity, misogyny and sexism are the order of the day in The Bahamas, which is one of the reasons it has been so difficult to pass a referendum on gender equality. For so many Bahamian men, having a child in and of itself proves that they are a man.

“The aggressive assertion and defense of respect” has also become pervasive, resulting in retaliation killings, which are not unique to The Bahamas.

We have become increasingly more aggressive in responding to sleights, real or perceived, with verbal or physical violence. Even the slightest sense of being disrespected can elicit the angriest of responses.

Moreover, an orgy of materialism reflects a particular level of shallowness and crudeness in our society. Corruption in public life is endemic. So many of us will do whatever it takes to make money.

Our disconnected youth reflect the broader society. It is not us against them. Sociologically and ethically, how we respond to the most disconnected among us is a critical test of our decency and our ability to renew and sustain a humane and civilised Bahamas.