Jamaican Till I Die!

Will Jamaica ever progress as a country, can Jamaica ever achieve any sort of economic or social progress under our current political system. I am beginning to believe we are stuck in quicksand, caught in a quagmire and being pulled with equal force from opposite ends. Our Political class and their operatives are clearly in this for selfish reasons, The Jamaican people for the most part represents only a means to an end, we are the football on the field of life being kicked every which way till Sunday. The purpose of all political oppositions, regardless of which party forms that opposition, is to oppose anything and everything proposed by the sitting Government regardless of which party forms that Government. Because the concept of bipartisan agreements, in the national interest simply does not exist in Jamaica. The Jamaican people practice and mastered the fine art of being like crab in a barrel. The PNP and their operatives when in opposition opposed every single thing the JLP ...

The great debate in Jamaica is a never ending debate. Jamaicans are always debating which Political Party is best to lead Jamaica and this debate is as old as Jamaica itself. Jamaica is no stranger to being ruled by different factions over the many hundreds of years. First the Taíno Indians, also known as the Arawaks ruled Jamaica but suffered continued attacks from the warlike Carib Indians who wanted them for dinner. Then the Spanish conquered the island claiming that they discovered it and proceeded to exterminate every last one of the native population or try to. It was the Spanish who first introduce Africans to Jamaica in order to replace the Indians they systematically wiped out. Then one sunny Jamaican morning in 1655 on the 10th of May another band of European scavengers turned up on our shores. It was two Spanish settlers who first spotted the huge fleet just as it rounded Point Morant. This was the English Armada which resulted in an invasion and the start of yet an...

  “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” -    Leo Tolstoy. Last week, I touched upon the need to revisit our reasons for making choices in our lives, whether it is going to a gym, going on a diet, choosing a path for your life, or deciding whether or not to marry someone. The question is, after we revisit our reasons, what process are we going to employ to be able to make better choices? Basically our values; what we think important in life, is one compass that we can use to point us to our priorities, however most of us aren’t even clear on what our values or priorities are. The perspectives of Taoism and Abraham Maslow/Carl Rogers’ Humanistic psychology complement each other and offer a basic answer. These two views (small bias toward the Taoist view) believe one’s hierarchy of focus should be self, environment, loved ones, and passions/talents, these all give aid in developing one’s full potential as a hum...

By Breakboy NRG... It has been a while, maybe 6 months or more since I’ve written anything, if you remember my last post paid homage to my grandfather who died in December.   Since then I’ve been more or less looking at my life and reassessing some of my views and approaches …  questioning a few things in particular. My duties as a home school dad over the past two years has really forced me to try to understand what it really means to be a good father and by extension a good teacher (they are one and the same, aren’t they?), There are so many things that I want my children to learn about “navigating the waters of life”, I want to be able to instill in them an ability to find solutions to problems, to communicate effectively, to care for their bodies, to be kind and considerate, to fundamentally understand and love all people while having the wisdom to discern abuse of that benevolence, to understand addictive behavior and to understand money as a tool and not ...

The Picture might be funny but it gives me a lot to think about. Slavery was something that was done to us, we did not have a choice, it was forced upon us, however most of our suffering and hardship that we are experiencing now represents things we did to our selves... Maybe as an over reaction to freedom and fighting for that freedom. I have never said Nation Building was simple, I am very much aware of all the global forces affecting us, having lived through the cold war but trying to deflect Personal Responsibilities and pretending as if we are completely innocent with regard to the state of the country today, is disingenuous to say the least. There were times in Jamaica’s history when we willingly Yinged when we should have Yanged, decisions made out of pure selfishness and greed, it is time to man up and take full responsibility as a people. It is way too easy for us to blame everyone and anything but ourselves. It is Slavery fault, It’s the British fault, its America’s ...