#BTColumn  – The social harm of uninformed opinion

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Peter Webster

“Cogito’ ergo sum.” (I think, therefore I am)

– Rene Descartes

“One swallow does not a summer make, nor does one anecdote a picture paint. So how many anecdotes do you need to paint the picture?” – Anon

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus (sic. Like many of our politicians), but a molder of consensus”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

Descartes struggled with a problem that is now called “the problem of knowing,” and sometimes referred to as the “brain in a vat” dilemma. The idea is that the brain is easy to fool – especially gullible ones. The only way a person knows that his experiences of reality are the truth is by trusting in the sensory inputs of his own brain.

Descartes mused that his own perception of himself might be an illusion. The answer Descartes came up with for this dilemma was “I think, therefore I am”.

Even if thinking comes from a different place than what is expected, the thoughts still come from the individual and define the individual as real, regardless of any other factors.

Essentially, what this boils down to is that an individual’s opinion or what he/she thinks is fact or reality may not be such, as it is often not supported by fact but by perception and needs to be fact-checked, otherwise, it can be propagated as a false fact that can result in harmfully misleading the community.

It is unfortunate, therefore, that our popular “call-in” radio programmes (along with associated elements of our press) which can be entertaining theatre, depend so heavily on opinions many of which are uninformed and not fact-checked.

Part of the problem seems to be the undue focus, by the press and radio operators, on popularity and ratings, which involve letting people hear what the moderators and associated editors think their listeners and readers want to hear or read.

This, of course, further promotes the sales and financial bottom line of their employers and shareholders at the expense of fact.

Politician bashing is one of these examples. Our politicians, who are only supposed to set policy but not implement it, still get bashed for all the so-called political issues that result from the lack of, or poor implementation of, the Civil Service or “army of occupation”.

The list is almost endless, but to mention a few: 70 per cent implementation deficit which translates to 30 per cent of deliverables; slow service with citizens waiting in long lines; poor maintenance of infrastructure, roads, water mains, buildings and equipment; state-owned enterprises amassing huge debts that must be subsidised by taxpayers with funds urgently needed elsewhere in the economy; an atrocious primary school system with children who cannot read or write after seven years of school; an overtly gender-biased secondary school system significantly skewed to females apparently because “it is their turn now”; an overburdened health system and hospital with broken down equipment that has A&E patients waiting many hours for attention and others waiting years for quality of life improvement operations; a very slow and unwieldy judicial system.

Let there be no doubt that the vast majority of our
“army of occupation” is “salt of the earth”, solid, talented people who would increase their productivity if they were properly incentivised.

However, every administration since the independence of Barbados has failed its people by failing to get reforms implemented that would incentivise its army of occupation with performance rewards and sanctions.

Yet we never hear this on the “call-in” radio programmes, nor in our popular press. Why? Is the public sector, which cost taxpayers more than 1$ billion annually, not what you think our people want to hear about? Does it not promote your ratings and sales enough?

We have had a “call-in” radio moderator harping on the popular need for local, illegal marijuana growers to receive a fair share of the income from the medicinal marijuana industry –whatever that amount is – and totally ignoring the reality that in an agro-industrial system the pie chart shows:

The industrial activities of the agricultural sector, which involve the greatest investment, essentially earn the lion’s share. Ask any farmer in Barbados and get a reality check. This is why most developed countries subsidise the on-farm portion of their agriculture sector.

Implying that the same thing should not happen with the marijuana industry is not just misleading, but mischievous. The same moderator is also implying that a marijuana grower successfully producing 150 illegal marijuana plants a year at a premium price, with a few buckets of water in a hidden cranny, can successfully produce more than 150 acres of high-yielding, top-quality marijuana for a processing plant at minimum prices is a wishful, popular possibility, but an unlikely one.

A comparative case in point is that Barbados has been growing sugar cane for 382 years yet current yields are on average 40 per cent lower than what we have achieved in the past.

We have even had foreign consultants tell us the obvious “that current sugar cane agronomic management is poor” and that they need a “best practices manual” to guide them. Whereas, Barbados already has two sugar cane “best practices manuals” all prepared in the last 14 years, that neither the Ministry of Agriculture nor current management in the sugar industry seem to be even aware of.

We have also had our Hon. Prime Minister correctly recommending arbitration and conflict resolution before resorting to violence or our non-performing civil courts where extended delays make a mockery of justice.

However, this is like a medical doctor prescribing an aspirin for a headache, which is treating the symptom and not the cause. What is the cause of the rapid spread of poisonous hate, anger and violence in our society? If you plant melons, you are going to reap melons!

His suffering was long and deep. Yet, as the doors to the great Nelson Mandela’s cell in Robben Island prison were thrown open, he was asked if he harboured resentment toward his captors.

In response, he famously said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” He later wrote, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

Anger, hate and resentment, especially when it is self-righteous and justified, become toxic when we hold on to it and refuse to let it go.

We keep the anger alive by going over and over in our minds whatever grievance we have with a particular person(s), and this becomes an emotionally and sometimes physically toxic experience.  Too many Barbadians have failed to heed the great Mandela’s wise counsel and our community is now harvesting what they have planted!

Round and round we go like water in a sinkhole vortex…

Peter Webster is a retired Portfolio Manager of the Caribbean Development Bank and a former Senior Agricultural Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture.