Barbadians urged to reconsider their values
Barbadians are being asked to think deeply about their current value system and consider whether the values they now hold are superior to the ones cherished dearly by their grandparents and great grandparents.
The call for a reassessment of the current value system held by most Barbadians, came recently from the Most Rev. Dr. Charles Jason Gordon, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Bridgetown, Barbados, who will be leaving this island towards the end of December, to be installed as Archbishop of Port-of-Spain.
Archbishop-elect Gordon, in delivering a parting message to Barbadians, has suggested that this reassessment is key, if the country is to head in the right direction.
“The waters have been rough … and with those waters, it is very easy to lose both hope and a sense of a destination point. And it is my fear that at this time, Barbados is losing focus on both. The problem is not a problem that political parties can solve in the first instance. It is a much deeper societal problem that we have come to,” Gordon commented.
“I have said it in many different ways. We had some old-time values that grandmothers used to pass on to the children, (but) we threw out baby and bath water together. And as long as we throw those old-time values out with everything, then we replace them with a new set of values that is really about getting rich or dying trying,” he added.
“That rugged liberal capitalist model has really infected the soul of this nation and has created great grief among our people,” the Archbishop-elect maintained.
Suggesting that the nation’s founding fathers Errol Barrow and Tom Adams both put the development of the people ahead of the profits of companies, Gordon however suggested that this process has now been reversed.
“We have reversed it and we have gone to a value system that is really at the heart of the problem that we are facing,” he stressed.
“People think a quick fix will change this, change the other and we change it magically. I think what we have to change is our hearts, our values, and I would ask that Barbadians think deeply about the values your grandmother had. How she was cooking a pot with barely anything and the neighbour comes and they are getting some to share. [She had] two cents to rub together and somehow she feeds her family for the month. With her frugal means, she was able to do with very little and produce children that were excellent and outstanding, who never wore a brand name and yet they had a deep sense of identity and security in themselves,” Gordon stated.
“We have given our children far too much, which has put us into debt and which has created a lifestyle that we cannot sustain, in a small part of the world like the Caribbean,” he lamented.
Noting that it is not just Barbados, but the entire Caribbean that has gone in this direction, he said, “So I would ask again that we reconsider the values that we have received from our grandmothers and our great grandmothers and ask ourselves if the values that we now have, if these are really superior to the ones that we inherited. And if we ask that, then I think we have to ask the hard question, what direction do we to go in the value system of our country.” (RSM)