Dear Reader,

When the late Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr wrote about the “paralysis of analysis”, he must have had the Jamaican intelligentsia in mind. If there is one thing that you can find in abundance in our country is an oversupply of analysis. In fact, it boggles the mind when you consider the gap between the intellectual prowess of the country and the deep economic and social crisis in which we find ourselves. To put it bluntly, we are good for the talk, but weak at the walk.

Jamaica may be short on capital, but we are definitely not short on conversation.

Our newspapers, talk shows and conference halls are full to overflowing with daily regurgitations of the state of the country, but we refuse to come to grips with the fact that our talk has become cheap.

I sometimes laugh at my own finite ideas of “knowledge” and my feeble attempts at wisdom, and it is always a humbling experience. It seems to me that the country’s intellectuals and experts should be willing to confess that they suffer from the malady of “over-talk” and “over-analysis” to the detriment of action. I am finding it more and more useful after every speech and every column to step back and ask, “OK, so how has that advanced the common good?” I am increasingly mindful that if our words (and our actions), however humanly flawed and misguided they may be, are not intended to create a better space, then we might as well do as Jamaicans suggest, and “tek way wiself”.

And the masses out there, despite their exclusion from higher formal education, understand fully the insularity and inertia of the intellectual class. My exposure to talk radio constantly reminded me of the wide socio-economic gaps that exist, but equally significant, the awareness on the part of the “lumpen” of the shallowness and selfishness of those who call themselves the “learned”. One very sharp, insightful caller to my talk show often reminded me that “PhD” stands for “Permanent Head Damage” – that, he argued, as a result of the perennial failure of the intelligentsia to effectively address the problems of social inequities, poverty, corruption, and the like. Rev Martin Luther King Jr warned his colleagues that if they were not answering the knock at midnight of injustice, exploitation, and all the other ills of society, they were in fact suffering from the “paralysis of analysis”.

As I see it, many of the educated in Jamaica are infected with what I describe as “intellectual narcissism” — some of them holding firm to the notion that “the pen is mightier than the sword”. While nobody could deny the power of the written word, I feel certain that the phrase was not coined as an option between the two. It seems to me that the “mightiest” of all is when the pen and the sword find “common ground”, so that those writers with more enlightened, progressive world views can help move society to “higher ground”.

Having a love affair with our own words is a complete waste of time, especially when the future of a country is at stake. A friend of mind who grew up on the streets keeps asking the question, “If the “A” and “B” persons in the society refuse to lead, shouldn’t we expect to be led poorly by the “C” and “D” persons?

The “paralysis of analysis” is particularly perplexing in light of the serious state of affairs in Jamaica. If there was ever a time for intellectuals to stop the empty chat and get involved, that time is now, and the causes for activism are plentiful.

As we count the bodies of children and youth cut down as a result of indiscipline, negligence and criminality, and watch the economy sink in stagnation, in addition to the myriad other problems, it is disappointing that those who know more and have more are satisfied with just talking and profiling.

And it is not just the empty talk from vantage points protected by human and canine security that is apparent, it is that the privileged don’t seem to care that as the masses struggle to find food to eat and to send their children to school, the opulence of their lifestyles keeps appearing in the social pages of our newspapers. It reminds me of a scene from Titanic, sinking, while the orchestra played those melodious symphonies.

Of course I am fully aware of those partisans who pose as “pure” intellectuals or “pure” journalists. They are the worse, for behind the intellectual façade is a deep and abiding loyalty to the two “gangs” that have run Jamaica into the ground. As far as they are concerned, loving their party means loving the “perks” that come along with power and prestige. Like their leaders, they couldn’t care less about the appalling state of poverty and dispossession. So long as they too are captured by the cameras hob-knobbing with the who’s who of the society, they are fine. It is camaraderie over conscience, and money over morals.

The “paralysis of analysis” is particularly acute within the country’s colleges and universities. So disconnected have our institutions of higher learning become that they don’t seem to realise that they should be the source of grooming and supplying credible leaders for the society. Instead, they spend time elaborately ‘robing’ some of those very people who have contributed to the demise of the country, apparently oblivious to the contradictions and the hypocrisy of their actions.

So the intellectual class continues to specialise in the “paralysis of analysis” as the country degenerates. The Apostle Paul in the Bible puts it aptly when he chided us that “though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass of a tinkling cymbal…” (being neither hot nor cold, just tepid talkers and writers).

With love,

bab2609@yahoo.com