Dear Editor,

I am concerned about a dangerous and unperceived implication surrounding the tragic, robbery-related stabbing death of the third form, Jamaica College student on October 26, 2016 while on his way from school in a bus. Many well-wishers across the nation joined the deceased boy’s father and his principal in lamenting how relatively minuscule the worth of the intended targets of theft was. I know that it was not their intention, but it seemed as if the criminal actions of the robber would have been more justifiable if the boy’s possesions were more valuable. Silently, we are subconsciously buying into a deceptive scheme as to what is valuable and the true value of things.

This deception is largely collective, as it is usually a cultural phenomenon. However, an individual’s circumstances, and his attititude towards them, can make his thinking go awry, even beyond the average, wholesale deception which was suggested earlier. This is typical of addicts, and this can be with respect to addiction to any thing, substance, activity or person. I don’t know if the above-referred-to perpetrator is a drug addict or is of some altered, abnormal mental state, but what he saw in the boy’s possession was not just a relatively cheap phone and watch. What did he see? Only when in a similar state of mind can one tell, and many of us have agonisingly been in that state before. Thankfully, most of us didn’t kill as a result, but many a “bad” thing has been done because of it.

We have seen where the value of a meal was inflated to the value of a birthright between the biblical twin brothers, Esau and Jacob. The book of Proverbs has warned that a man will transgress for a “piece of bread”, so let us resist this deception about the relationship between evil, market values and preciousness. May we also reject the common Jamaican utterance, that “without money, yuh dead”, because those who know, know that it is without love, not money, that we readily perish.

Andre O Sheppy

Norwood, St James

astrangely@outlook.com