Bermuda is breaking down

October 15, 2009

Dear Sir,

With the culmination of the long night ending in the validation of Dr. Brown and his actions, I have to hang my head in mourning for my Island home.

While the results of the votes were not a surprise, it was still a disappointment and a sad day for Bermuda.

I fear Dr. Brown will take Bermuda down a road from which she will never recover. The avarice and self-serving actions of the politicians on this island will strip the soul from an Island with centuries of history. The remaining husk will carry on, a lesser version of itself, like a zombie in the night.

I have never been so disappointed in a collection of humans in my life. The weakness and cowardice that emanates from the sitting MPs, every single one of them, fills my nostrils with a tainted stench that I am ill-equipped to stomach. They need to look deep into their souls and simply around this Island to see what their mismanagement is fostering.

This Island is on a one-way road to disaster. The drop in tourism is obvious, but people choose to believe we are in a "Platinum Period". International Business is moving out or passing over, but people choose to believe we have no need to change. Following the status quo is easy, it requires no effort. I will give Dr. Brown this, he has no problem disrupting the status quo, unfortunately his goals and actions are mercenary and for the betterment of his ego rather than our Island. But I do wish that more had his spirit and drive, just mixed with a little humility and intelligence. But through the apathy of the people and the incompetence of our leaders we will sit in one spot like a rotting fruit on the ground as the world passes us by.

Fortunately, there are people on this Island who are well suited for this environment, and are happy to have the wool fitted firmly over their eyes. Even if they are suffering, even if they are the footstools of the politicians, even if they see the Island they love deteriorate into a cauldron of violence, crime, ignorance and mistrust. Everything is fine. I cannot lay the blame solely on Dr. Brown, he is what the people want, they don't want responsibility, they do not want to think, they do not want to have to do any work or put forth any effort to make Bermuda a better place. Sheer laziness and blind ignorance put this Island on a path to ruin.

If you look around, I mean really look around, and recall the physical Bermuda you knew from your childhood (some may not go back as far as others, but even in the last ten years), this Island is taking on the face of its people. It is a direct reflection of the mentality of this population, and a mirror for the ugliness that this culture is taking on. I look to the ground and marvel, that on an island as small as this, people cannot wait five minutes to throw something away, they just toss it to the ground, or dump it in the parks or throw it overboard. A true testament to the irresponsibility and selfishness of this people. Look around, see the buildings and concrete devour the land, with no consideration for the aesthetics or beauty of our cultural architecture or natural beauty. It seems anything gets approved with enough money or connections and that's what it looks like, a chaotic scab infecting the once beautiful Island. There is only lip service to conservation and preservation of our greatest resource.

The monstrosities being erected only blot out the disrepair of our history as we allow the Island fall into a dilapidated state. We have shanties, homeless, jobless. We have people dying alone and uncared for in abandoned containers and our once pristine parks. We have shootings and murders, crime of all kinds, yet nothing is done. People throw blame around and protest the crumbling of our society, but no one looks at the root. No one looks for a solution, a cure, only at ill-conceived treatments, as long as something is in it for them. Education is at the bottom of the priority list, "keep 'em dumb and reliant and we'll stay in power", the more things change, the more they stay the same.

There is a critical breakdown in our society, and I am afraid it is one that cannot be stopped unless people change. A child does not end up killing or stealing in adulthood because he was evil. It was learnt through neglect or example from family and role models. "Do what you want as long as no one finds out...", hell, "Do what your want..." seems to be the mantra these days. It does not matter if someone finds out, blame someone else. Accountability and responsibility are foreigners in this land, it has become every person for themselves and this is being handed down to our children. Think of the example we are setting while we cheer or mourn the survival of Dr. Brown. The most prominent role model on the Island. This is the legacy we leave, how we will be remembered.

Why not be transparent if nothing is done wrong? Why deceive if your intentions are true? I am so sick of the refuse that pours out of the mouths of politicians. However, I wish I could say we deserve better. We deserve exactly what we get, because we allowed it to happen. I could quote all sorts of scripture and verse, but that is always disingenuous and self-serving that it no longer has any meaning.

Suffice it to say, some of us will cry, some of us will mourn, some will leave, some will fight and some will remain clueless and, like a multitude of Nero doppelgangers, will fiddle as our Island burns.

I am glad I was able to witness the Bermuda of my youth and I weep for the children of the future as they only get a mere shadow of what we were lucky enough to have. And it is my fault. It is our fault. It is all of our faults.

SHAME ON US

Smith's

Milestones of progress

October 15, 2009

Dear Sir,

I for one am delighted to see such letters as Stephen Notman's discourse on the merits of the morality of Naturalism and Materialism, versus the morality of the spiritual: "Where naturalism errs" on October 10. When an approach to faith is given a foundation in intellectual argument, the argument can become so persuasive, so alluring and seductive that only towards the end where a great flying leap of summation of the argument is made, three columns in, can credulity become incredulity, the illusion wrought by smoke and mirrors at once transparent, and the suspension of critical thought abandoned in favour of the resumption of common sense.

Mr. Notman's assertion: "Contrary then to the assertions of Dawkins and others, a naturalistic world view cannot provide a philosophically justifiable foundation for moral duties and obligations. In order to avoid the insanity of moral chaos, the naturalist is forced to live an irrational life of make-believe values and freedoms, denying with wishful thinking what he knows to be true about the nihilistic nature of reality."

True morality can only be based on belied in "the goodness of virtue being rooted in something transcendent to the virtue"? In seeking to assert Mr. Notman's belief in God he would have us believe that we cannot justifiably hold a true sense of moral obligation if that moral obligation is derived from simple evolutionary processes, rather than being something outside of ourselves and our naturalistic material world. I think that the opposite is true.

Secular law and community traditions and social fabric have developed over centuries of mankind forming colonies to protect and defend and survive, and yes, prosper, materially. The morality developed is based on the needs of the society, not on some vague promise of either an afterlife or the threat of the adverse judgment of a fearsome deity if you don't play by the rules, or the horrifying prospect of the hot-forged penalty of being consigned to the outstretched welcoming flames of his alter-ego.

The entire history of those driven by this sense that right and wrong are part of God's fabric of the universe is a history of bloody, ruthless, cruel, and unforgiving conflict, intimidation, bribery and political intrigue, and the imposition of sectarian views on those on the outside of such sects, and slaughter, literal and metaphoric, of those in breach of their tenets. Incidentally, "spiritual" morality has fluctuated much more than temporal morality. A few years ago it was OK for Christians to slaughter native peoples and Muslims, and to enslave Africans, and to butcher and burn the deranged, and carry a handbook entitled "Malleus Malificarum" on how to torture witches, i.e., the deranged, to death or confession … and death. And then get on one's knees and thank God for the opportunity to act in his service.

If this is the influence of recognising that true morality is spiritual – give me temporal and secular at all times! We have a better chance of dealing with our shortcomings if we hold ourselves accountable, and not blame our slaughterous inclinations on a higher sense of morality woven into the fabric of the universe by its creator.

I think Mr. Notman's discourse and conclusion err, not naturalism or materialism. We are what we are and I think that at the end of the day, we haven't made such a bad job of standing on our two legs, bellowing and beating our breasts, grunting and growling, learning how to dominate and be submissive, and learning how to live within the tribe of mankind in mankind's backyard and the greater neighbourhood, and how to navigate the swamps, sail the oceans, fly the skies, and negotiate the jungles, and even care for the future of our jungles and our descendants, and make things, and make pictures and signs to communicate with each other.

Not that we haven't a-ways to go yet, but each step we take forges a deepening understanding of who we are and of what dreams, what personal sacrifices, what achievements, what compassion, and of what morality we are capable. And, yes, of course, of what horrors we are capable.

Magna Carta, The American Constitution, Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parkes, Raoul Wallenberg, Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Wilberforce, and Charles Darwin, are but a few random examples of many, many milestones in mankind's moral progress.

"The insanity of moral chaos" is not the product of either Naturalism or Materialism. It is the direct result of bigotries and discriminations, and religio-nationalisms which commenced in pagan times and were embraced opportunistically by later religions, and which have arisen from sectarian beliefs promulgated under duress by centuries of clashing dogmata and their mitred warlords, fighting for supremacy of ideas and killing millions in their destructive paths. And yet we still prevail.

TACITURNUS

Southampton

A voice for the horses

September 30, 2009

Dear Sir,

As I was driving along Front Street this week, I could not help but notice a commercial carriage horse standing under the canopy with his head just hanging really low, just looking physically drained, and also a very badly swollen back leg. This whole situation could have been handled so different if the Corporation of Hamilton and St. George's Corporation and West End Development in Dockyard were given strict guidelines by the government body namely the Environment Protection Officer who are in charge of licensing of commercial stables. It would keep a close watch for the well being of the horse, who needs a voice, all kinds of terrible abuses have been going on for 30 years, and still no change. for someone like myself who has owned and shown horses for 50 years and would like to see a change and be a voice for the horses, here is a list of recommendations and guidelines that would help.

1) Physical Examination

All carriage horses should be examined for fitness by a licensed veterinarian at least once per year. This should be done prior to horse registration. Physical examination should include jogging for soundness, ocular, dental and cardiovascular examination and advise on shoeing and feeding. Evidence of appropriate vaccinations deworming and dentistry may also be required.

2) Records

Carriage horse owners should keep a log of each horse's daily work hours. also each horse should have an individual medical record including record of illness and treatment, vaccinations, deworming and shoeing and dentistry. All accidents involving carriage horses, including those with no injuries, should be reported to the regulating agency.

3) Stabling

Stables should be well ventilated, cleaned daily and large enough for the horse to lie down, free choice to water and have mineralised salt at all times. The stable should be regularly inspected by enforcement officers and annually by fire inspectors.

4) Traffic

Carriage horses should be prohibited from working in areas of excessive or unsafe motor vehicle traffic during peak traffic hours.

5) Operator Education

Carriage horse operators, owners and drivers should be trained in basic health care and emergency care of horses and safe driving techniques, and also have to monitor in the summer months when the heat temperature is in the 90s.

The reason for this letter is in April 2007 there was a horrific accident at Harbour Nights involving two grey runaway horses. There was a big public outcry and as usual after everything is forgotten in time, the plight of the carriage horse is still unchanged and the horse is still being exploited and still has no voice.

DEBBIE MASTERS

Devonshire