INTERESTINGLY it has become clear that death has a youthful face in my country, not only as regards the continuing carnage on our roads which is claiming so many young lives but also when it comes to the horrific series of killings allegedly committed by young people against other young people. It seems that my country has crossed some sort of invisible boundary and entered a realm where anarchy prevails. People are asking out loud how we arrived at this point but, frankly, all of the warning signs were there for Bermudians to see if they chose to look.

Killing in recent times would seem to have become an all-too-easy act to carry out. Very little value is attached to human life by some of our young people. This is a distressing situation with grave, long-term implications for our future.

But once the uproar surrounding the most recent tragedy has dissipated, I have an awful feeling that most Bermudians will go back to complacently believing the outbreaks of violence we have witnessed in recent months are aberrations,. In other words, too many of us continue to inhabit a state of denial when it comes to brutal acts of violence which end in death - usually the death of another young black male. We don't like to accept the fact that we now live in an island where our young people frequently resolve their differences with weapons.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this will not be the case this time. I would like to think those youthful faces accused of the most recent, hateful crime against an innocent victim have finally obliterated the myth that Bermuda is another world. Maybe those faces we all saw in the newspapers and on television have been seared into our collective consciousness. Maybe we are finally ready to accept the fact that the violence we are seeing in our community comes from within us.

The truth is that every manifestation of evil which we have seen take place in the rest of the world has happened in Bermuda at some point in our island's history. Man's inhumanity to his fellow man has manifested itself here ever since Bermuda was first settled.

To be fair, Bermuda's isolation, laid-back way of life and strong community values kept widespread violence at arm's length throughout most of our history. But the times, as the poet said, are a-changin'.

Some have expressed the opinion that those caught up in the current whirlwind of youth-on-youth violence are still children. Just look at their ages, they say. Certainly in my day (next month I go 60) childhood was seen to have persisted for a longer period than is the reality that now exists.

In my day children used to still play with toys well into their teens. They continued to play children's games often up to the age of 14 or 15 or even 16. But what would today's society think of a young person who is still playing with toys at age 15? I will answer that question for you. Society would adjudge such a child to be abnormal. Counsellors would soon descend on the hapless youth and the parents might even be brought in to be interrogated by the social workers. Using your imagination, playing games with rules, is deemed to be a sign of immaturity in today's world.

Perhaps it could be argued that today's youth are still playing with toys if you choose to include the video games they play on their X-boxes and computers. But those games (famously described as "murder simulators" by American critics) often have mindless violence as their central theme. And in those circumstances there are no rules or any sense of fair play -only the desire to win by any means necessary. Which usually means machine-gunning or karate-chopping or atom-bombing your opponent.

I doubt there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between video game violence and the genuine article, at least not in any universal sense. But I would argue that the simulated violence our children bombard themselves with these days probably makes those kids who are predisposed towards violence more likely to act out in real life. Yes, I grew up with Westerns at the movie theatres and detective shows on TV. But people of my generation did not subsist on a constant diet of simulated violence as is the case now. We read, we went outside to play, we visited friends: we were not connected by some type of electrical umbilical cord to computer consoles during all of our leisure time.

And just how did our children become so materialistic when it comes to the acquisition of material goods? Why do parents provide them with the money to keep up with all of the latest transient fads and styles instead of teaching them lasting values?

Let me address just one such fad that has taken hold in a big way in our society, especially among our women, some as old as grandmothers. I am referring to the craze for sporting tattoos. I once asked a lady who was in the process of transforming her body into a mobile art gallery why she wanted so many tattoos. And she could provide me with no real answer.

Now I know there are other societies where body art serves a host of cultural purposes. It is applied because tattoos are signs of rites of passage or marks of status or rank. Sometimes they are symbols of religious and spiritual devotion or decorations for bravery or even marks of fertility. In other words, they serve a function. They mean something. But in the West, which has supposedly evolved a long way beyond such so-called primitive practices, there is no sane explanation for the sudden boom in popularity of tattooing. When I was a youngster, one tattoo might be put down to experimentation; a whole gallery's worth would have been viewed as mutiIation! So why we have adopted this practice with such enthusiasm? And more importantly, what do our children make of this craze for body modification?

We are always quick to blame outside influences that we believe (often correctly) negatively impact on our children. But could it be that Bermuda's own culture, once rich and vibrant, is now so weak that it can no longer influence our children let alone forcefully resist those negative foreign influences that are overwhelming our country?

We are undergoing a period of rapid economic transformation. Our culture, once based on the hospitality industry, has changed beyond recognition during the last 15 or 20 years as we have attempted to accomodate the off-shore business community and its demands. There have been any number of unintended consequences from this wholesale shift in economic emphasis, consequences that have impacted on our social structure and our culture. The extended Bermudian family has become less cohesive than was once the case, neighbours no longer know their neighbours, children are growing up in a social and cultural vacuum, a vacuum they attempt to fill with video games and the latest fashions. And, increasingly, gangs.

Because it's only been recently that gang warfare has manifested itself in Bermuda, the phenomenon is new and unsettling for the vast majority of Bermudians. We are not used to violent crimes in general let alone violent crimes in which our children are both the perpetrators and victims.

But in America it has been a longtime reality with youth gangs and guns making for a deadly mix. And in Britain, as is the case in Bermuda, young people are currently killing one another with knives and the politicians in that country recognise recognise they are in the midst of a crisis in terms of teenage violence. In Africa, in Asia and in Latin America there are child soldiers who have more than a little in common with some of our more aggressive Bermudian youths. The commonality is that the average age at which youths begin engaging in acts of deadly violence is 14 and extends all the way up to their early 20s (assuming they themselves don't become the victims of this circle of violence).

What can we do about this? Perhaps the answer is a harsh one. We may have to intervene more deeply and more forcefully than has hitherto been the case. We may have to address our policing, educational and rehabilitation policies to save the minority who are influenced by this culture of violence from themselves. And to save us from them. We need to take a look at all of the cultural and social messages that are being sent out to our youth messages that are clearly not setting them on the right path.

In the final analysis we will have to accept that the myth that Bermuda is another world is just that a myth and what ails the world will ultimately make its way to our door.