THE devil is in the details, right? Or is it in the insidious? Insidious as defined by the Oxford Dictionary says: proceeding in a gradual subtle way, but with harmful effects.

It’s that slow seep that creeps into the mind, heart and soul when we are most unguarded. To me that is why Jamaica is a morally failed state and becoming more so every day.

We neglect the gradual and slow ways in which we achieve these long-term, negatively impactful and extremely hard-to-get-rid-of ills which erode our societies in terrible ways. Moral decay through the insidious has had so many triumphs that the affected do not even realise the damage being done. Look at the bleeping of indecent songs on the radio to make them “radio friendly”.

Just recently, specifically the third week in November, amendments had to be issued to regulations sent out by the Broadcasting Commission in February – intended to use the bleep technique to keep profanity from the ears of our youth on public radio.

The February directives indicated that the bleeping and beeping of profanity in songs was okay, as long as the “cuss words” were not clearly heard.

Well, Jamaica being the population it is, gradually (insidiously) our children started connecting the dots, ergo the bleeps became irrelevant and as such minors were singing right along with the tunes… full hundred!!! Profanity and all.

Sadly, these alleged bleeps and beeps left in the **^&%**, so do the phonetic maths “F” and “K” rapidly pinned together sound like what? Certainly not lollipop.

Not to mention the other clear and improper sexual statements – so Jamaican kids, surprise surprise, easily fill in the “blanks, the words, the acts, the deeds”, etc – shocker!

So subsequently new amendments had to be given, for no bleeped-beeped music at all! This to correct – but guess what? The harm, “the gradual harmful osmosis” of nastiness via music has already wrought its dastardly infection!

It is the insidious acceptance of crap – which leads to the gradual decay; we scramble to clean up after the fact when it is way too late. We need to watch the gradual. Evolution is gradual, giving the mind the ability to acclimatise to the same model can be applied in the case of insidious decay.

It has been deemed by psychologists the world over that after a long enough period the human psyche can come to grips and accept anything. Think dinner party – eating each other to live; that didn’t happen overnight, it took enough hunger. In fact I watched a documentary on the subject. It took months of starvation, then enough thought and desperation, then a taste and then gradually it became “sensible” to eat humans, and hey presto, cannibalism.

Check your own life, acceptance of the negatives you now take (insert any area), can be traced back to the insidious creep.

Squatting is insidious social decay, more disrespectful Jamaican kids represent insidious social decay, kids stabbing teachers and throwing chairs at principals as in the case at a Molynes Road high school recently. This is insidious decay, children fighting each other due to musical affiliation is insidious social decay, common beliefs that pastors take from the collection to bling their cribs insidious – but guess what? Evidentiary support makes these ideas take root, politicians synonymous with corruption is insidious social decay.

Case in point on the latter – many kids I talk to these days say, “I don’t want to be no politician, dem too corrupt.” And this is from high school to college age.

Insiduously, the link has been made in the minds of the youth that politics is planted with a crop of evildoers.

The acceptance by gang members that elderly folks, babies and children are no longer off-limits in gang feuding is insidious social decay. Back in my day certain persons, no matter the conflict, were sacrosanct.

Just last month they burnt to death a crippled, blind woman in a so-called gang feud. I am assuming that her visual challenge and inability to walk were creating a major issue in the war being fought and rendered her public enemy number one – lest she dragged herself off her bed and “brailled out” to Kingfish the secret information to which she was privy.

I am as guilty because this is so normal these days – (hmm, another blind, crippled old person burnt to death, raped, wow I’ve moved on) my outrage lasted six minutes exactly.

One crucial illustration of the insidious in relation to moral decay I thought of is the recent “sit-down” (peace talks) which occurred between the Mark Myrie (Buju Banton) camp and certain international pro-homosexual groups to “iron out” a way forward for the entertainer’s global career.

The normal is that Beenie Man cannot go to Australia to earn a living and Buju sits down with gays! Bombaat Star!

Insidiously they have reached the point where they can stop persons who are not in favour of homosexuality from earning a living and insidiously we have to take it. Now isn’t the world done gone and turn upside down, massuh?

I canvassed some opinions at my hairdresser’s and all the women there said, “Bwoy, years ago it was a non-issue; now, somehow it doesn’t seem that bad anymore.”

A Banton’s gotta eat, right?

Look at the issue with ex-Miss California 2009, Carrie Prejean, exercising her freedom of speech in the country that constitutionalised freedom of speech.

She feels marriage should be between a man and a woman, while being quizzed during the Miss America Pageant.

Google what was said on national (US) television about her after that remark – the humanity! Marriage is between man and woman?! Whose dang fool notion is that?

So a conservative young woman in this world cannot, if she wants to remain popular, go against the new accepted norm – thou shalt accept homosexual marriages, but a homosexual person can? Hmmm…

And I pose the million-dollar question, when did marriage between a man and woman become the reason to spew violence against its advocate?

I feel like I am in some alternate universe. Gomorrah anyone?

In such a slow and non-explosive fashion, morally wrong is the new normal.

It can be compared to vaccinations – in small doses our body learns how to cope with a disease.

Look at The Girls Next Door, a cable show on US tv – three young women being kept as concubines by Hugh Hefner. Sending the clear signal, in my assessment, that prostitution is not wrong – it’s just how you carry out the business of it.

Essentially, the premise of the reality show, The Girls Next Door, is be a whore and see the world, not to mention get fame, success and fortune.

When did that become cool? Insidiously.

But guess what? Even I didn’t cop to the observation and tune in regularly to the show (and sadly still do), using it as my “mind candy” from a stress-filled life.

Call me slow Joe, but I said, damn! But this thing nuh jus’ a version of prostitution, she buy some breasts, have sex with a man who could be the crypt keeper and she gets a condo and a spin-off series.

It was then I started my dissection of this very entertaining piece of crap, glossily crafted, accompanied by music associated with the Leave it to Beaver era, giving it a pseudo-family feel from the 50s and slowly drawing you in like a siren’s song. The show portrays them as living a sisterly life chock-full of perks, luxury cars, hot parties, magazine covers, public appearances, slots in movies – all directly linked to them having sex with Hugh Hefner.

The Girls Next Door – reference many similarities between those cults that practise polygamy, where those men are demonised and ostracised. The cult women are scorned and children of those polygamist sects are mocked, and belittled – they ain’t blonde and big-boobed, right?

So, my brethren, I ask of you only one thing. If you had stopped, start paying attention to the “little” things once more. Observe and dissect your environment; the shows you watch and what you are now accepting in terms of standards, which you were never used to. Did you drop the ball on the matter of respect, manners and behaviours? Once you do and they become the “truth” of the time, the children we are all so concerned about cannot be blamed for their immorality and fallen-angel status. You see, their frame of reference is being crafted by what we insidiously let in, let through and let become the way we live our lives.

Maia Chung is the news manager at Newstalk 93 FM and managing director of the Maia Chung Autism and Disabilities Foundation.

https://maiachung@yahoo.com