Ian Boyne

The Gleaner has counselled us editorially to "move on" from the Don Wehby issue, but pardon me for noting a striking, if revealing, omission in all the controversy over the issue of his being a Government minister while retaining ties to GraceKennedy - that of his compensation package.

Aside from the legitimate concern over any conflict of interest which might exist with his being a minister while still being employed to GraceKennedy, it was simply assumed that it was unreasonable to ask a highly paid young man to leave his cushy job at a big conglomerate to give public service at a substantially reduced pay package. One commentator said rather matter-of-factly: "Well, you couldn't expect the man to leave his big job at GraceKennedy and come to work for Government for much less!"

Why not? How have things changed! There was a time in Jamaica when there was such a notion of public service and that public service was equated with public sacrifice. It was considered the desirable thing to do precisely that: "To leave a well-paying job and to take a big salary cut just to serve your country."

Our culture has become so materialistic and atomistic that it is now part of the common sense that people don't leave high-paying jobs just to serve others.

Suspicion

Even to raise that issue is to look stupid and invite the suspicion that one is in a time warp. One also opens up oneself to ad hominem attacks such as "Why don't you ask your employers to pay you less in the interest of public service?"

The issue is not about Don Wehby, whom I rather like and who I know has a commitment to service over self. (I was the first journalist to have profiled him in both print and television as a rising star over 15 years ago).

The state will never be able to pay people what the best private sector firms can pay. This does not mean the state must offer subsistence salaries to professionals and expect to attract the best and the brightest, but unless the state can be assured of getting some of the best and the brightest without being salary competitive with the private sector, the country will not maximise its development potential.

When I talk about a heavily funded, creatively conceived and comprehensive values and attitudes programme, I am talking about something which has enormous implications for all aspects of Jamaican life. We have not begun to understand how issues of values, culture (in the broadest sense) and what the Germans call zeitgeist affect everyday life. Let me illustrate.

The Prime Minister has designated this weekend the national post-Hurricane Dean weekend. There have been ads, jingles and various exhortations for us to go out and clean up our communities and neighbourhoods. Business people have been asked to come out and all strata of the society are being mobilised for this action.

Uncommon reasoning

Buy why the hell should I, after labouring all week, going to school or, worse, working and studying, use my rest days to do what I am paying my taxes to the Government to do? Why should I be asked to give up my days for relaxation, resting, watching television and DVDs or just lyme with friends, to go out in the sun and just to do what the solid waste people should be doing? Is this reasoning uncommon?

You say it's my own community and that I will benefit from having the place clean. Fine. But I can sit back and watch others do the work. Other people who are civic-minded will come out. I don't have to do it. Now, what set of arguments would you employ to convince me to make the sacrifice, to possibly give up some money I could earn from some hustling, to do community work? What would you say to me?

We don't realise that as much as we scoff at issues of values, morality, patriotism, etc. - or as much as we underplay the importance of the non-material - we, as a society, are deeply affected by the indifference of others to these issues.

There are some who call themselves hard-nosed realists and practical people who will say, "Stop writing and talking crap about values and attitudes and just get people jobs. Grow the economy, bring in investments, build factories, get the crime rate down and give people a decent living by creating economy opportunities and other things will sort themselves out. Cut all this moralistic crap about values and attitudes and write about some real, live issues."

They would do well to listen to Robert Goldwin who says in his chapter in the book Civility and Citizenship that "The central difficulty of liberal democratic societies is that there is little or nothing in the doctrines of liberalism and democracy that has to do with public propriety. The principles of duty, honour, public service, sacrifice, respect for elders, respect for authority, all have their sources in other times, other regimes, other ways of thinking about civil society."

Let's break that down. Prime Minister Golding will urge us to come out today and do community and voluntary service; to work hard in the sun; to give up the beach, a fete, an all-day dancehall session to work for others. But why should we? We have been taught that life is about the maximisation of pleasure, power and privilege. We have been taught that 'life is just for living' and that sensual gratification is the object of life. In the name of what can Mr. Golding inspire us to give free service when this money-mad society reduced everything to material transactions?

If my culture, inculcated from early, is that no life is complete without service to others, service above self; If I am socialised into believing that it is right to suffer loss and even pain just to serve others and to stand up for certain principles, then heeding the PM's call is natural.

Acquiring education

If we learnt from early through media and other societal messages that a life lived solely for personal gratification is a diminished and unworthy life, then an appeal by my Prime Minister to give up a day for community service would be in line with my cultural orientation and sensibilities.

There was a time in Jamaica when professionals were more involved in community and civic work and in voluntary groups. People thought in terms of not just acquiring education to get a big house, a fancy car and a flashy, status job. They thought of getting an education also to be able to serve others, to be able to improve the lot of their fellow Jamaicans.

We did not have as much problem with corruption and a lack of integrity in that kind of Jamaica. We did not have to worry as much as we worry now about people's being dishonest and seeking creative ways to rob the public purse, or to cheat us out of binding personal contracts.

But as Goldwin has said, "In a rights-based society, the individual comes first, not the community. The rights of the individual are powerful, masterful and primary." So the individual is about his sensual gratification, his maximisation of pleasure, power and privilege. To hell with society.

One of or finest social scientists saw the problem clearly and wrote about it before he died in the 1990s. In his last major scholarly work, a paper titled Values, Norms and Personality Development in Jamaica, Professor Carl Stone wrote that, "The dominance of money as the single most important currency of influence, power and status, and the decline of respectability as a status-defining factor have promoted increased and rampant corruption in both Government and in the private sector corporate world."

I charge those who neglect these larger philosophical and sociological changes with catastrophic myopia, intellectual shallowness and philistinism. It is not enough to talk about creating revolutionary changes in our thinking and practice on the economy, the environment, governance and constitutional issues. We must radically overhaul our philosophical assumptions and hedonistic, materialistic orientation, a heritage of Western cultural imperialism.

Our cultures should be routinely producing Don Wehbys who would not hesitate to walk away from high-paying, high-status jobs to do public service at personal sacrifice for a few years; even in positions much lower than afforded in the corporate world. We should be training our young people to structure public service - voluntarily - as part of their payback to the society in which they were reared.

You cannot have a culture which promotes the rate race and the mad scramble to the top to acquire as much as possible and then complain about brain drain and have ministers pleading with Jamaicans in foreign capitals to "come home and help us build Jamaica." Why should they want to come back here to work and build Jamaica when they can earn so much more abroad? And why should they be motivated to do so when there is no culture of self-sacrifice and devotion to public duty which is being inculcated?

Potent and credible

Another of our fine social scientists, Professor Don Robotham, who has emerged as the most potent and the most credible independent voice in the Jamaican media, taking a plague-on-both-your-houses approach to the political parties, said in his GraceKennedy Foundation lecture in 1998: "The question to be answered sooner rather than later would be: 'Why should I put out an effort to increase the living standards of Jamaicans as opposed to those of myself or my immediate circle of family and friends?'

Robotham went on to say, "There is thus no escaping the challenge of trying to formulate this positive vision for Jamaica in moral terms." But the Jamaican intelligentsia doesn't have a sophisticated grasp of these issues. Yet, so much of our public issues really hinge on an appreciation of world views and culture wars.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com