Dear Editor,

Government’s recent anti-crime plans plus the supposed solutions to the relative stagnation that our country has experienced for many years will and have mostly all come to naught, largely because we have failed to recognize that the root to much of our problems is cultural.  

As such, and sadly I am afraid, the solution to these problems are far into the distant future.

For many years now, we have been trying to come to grips with this crime monster threatening to destroy us.  

The problem, however, is that most of us no longer see our high crime, and especially homicide rate, as anything out of the ordinary.  

Indeed, most of us have come to expect our annual murder total of over 1,200 people as normal.  If we should have only 100 murders in a year, we would not see that as symptomatic of a major problem, but as indicative of us living in a paradise.

The problem with us is that we have become accustomed to aggression and brutishness.  We are quick to kill each other for the slightest of disagreement.  

Look at our electronic media, for instance. Our music videos are replete with musicians promoting aggressive gangsterism as the norm.  Our young men, and indeed, our young women, are being encouraged, sadly with much help from the media, to become wild beasts.  

This has been the accepted cultural norm for some time now, and as this is so profitable, especially to sections of our media, no amount of laws will change that anytime soon.

This cultural problem also extends into how we see ourselves.  For all intent and purposes, there is no science in us.  We have been cultured to think like a very small and insignificant people for a very long time.  

That is why we don’t want to engage in the sciences, or anything that requires us to use our brains.  As such, for us, greatness is simply being able to provide the entertainment.  The few of us who are science-minded are seen by the majority as nerds, weirdoes or even gays. 

 I fear that all the science fairs that we have had in this country are for naught – like wasting powder on black birds, as our culture clearly is not very accommodating to the sciences.

This strange culture of ours feeds into this simple-mindedness.  That is why we tend to excel at things entertainment, like athletics, religion, music, and a lot of talk.  Sadly, I fear this is how things will remain for many years to come.  Culture is a very hard thing to change – especially when we enjoy it.

Thinking logically is not something that can be legislated, it has to be cultured.  In our culture, it is much easier to fight and kill when we have a disagreement, because that requires very little thinking but much action.  Some say this may be because of slavery, but I really think this has roots much deeper than that.

Notice that our number one economic industry is tourism.  This is the provision of entertainment.  Our culture is well suited for this.  We have no great plan to become a great scientific and industrial power because we can’t – and we can’t because we have a culture that does not encourage us to think.

We are poor and we think it is normal.  It doesn’t take much thinking for a people to be poor and aggressive to each other, and this poverty and aggressiveness, including our intellectual poverty, is definitely symptomatic of this strange culture of ours – a culture that reinforces poverty and backwardness.

Michael A Dingwall