Obscenity seems to be defining our society

Jul 12, 2008 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
We are living in a society that has been getting from bad to worse every day, because we have fallen morally, intellectually and spiritually.

The purpose of this letter is to inform the administrators in our Government that we have failed to sustain our people morally.
Actually, every day we can see and hear our citizens behaving in a very vile manner by using curse words in their everyday speech. We can hear this on our way to work, in our work places, in our own homes, in the police stations, schools, and even some places of worship, or God’s house.
What has really happened to our society? Where are we really heading?

When I was a little boy growing up, I would hear clean conversation in our society and our community. A citizen could have been charged by a police officer and taken to court for using curse words, or indecent language, in our community.

Today we have quite the opposite — our police officers and soldiers are cursing more than the citizens. Thus, we have the blind leading the blind in a whirlpool of madness.

Just the other day, one of our noted politicians was involved in a big cursing brawl in a bar over a woman.

He even discharged some bullets from his loaded gun. Nothing came out of the matter. It seems as if the blind are leading the blind all the way long in our messed-up society.

Since we are now living in a land of the lawless, where our educators and law makers are “cuss birds,” we should stop and think about our next generation and what will really happen to them.

It is my opinion that laws should be implemented about those who use indecent language in our community.

On my visits to several schools in our country, I would hear students and pupils cursing while they are playing in the school compound.

In my days at school, such a situation would have been remedied by the wild cane; yet, many foolish academics are calling for corporal punishment to be removed from our schools.

In some schools, teachers are unable to deal with students, because they are abused verbally by students and the parents of these students. It’s time we introduce religious education in our school system from nursery to university.

When people use curse words in their speech they may feel big or great, but they have shown their lower personality in action.

The real teaching begins in the home. Parents are the first teachers of their children, but because of illiteracy and ignorance, parents in every community are using curse words on their children.

Husbands are cursing wives; wives are cursing husbands, children cursing parents. Here is a real moral breakdown that really needs to be addressed. It is not surprising that our society has produced the list of young killers.

It is because of poor family upbringing, with no discipline in the home. What we have in our country is too much ‘live-home’ lifestyles with no moral, religious and family values.

Some of our marriage laws should be revised. It should be made mandatory for a man and woman to be married by the laws of Guyana after they would have lived together for 3 years. No wonder we have so much single mothers with no fathers around, because of ‘live-home’ and ‘shackups.’

That’s a sin to Almighty God. We need stronger laws on fathers who run away from their children. They should pay child support or go to jail. Sad to say, these laws are partially implemented.

This new philosophy of indecent language and curse words is not only in our society, it’s all around us in the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere. In most films today, the film stars will curse very nasty.

This is also in Indian films, also lots of sexual immorality and violence. Many known criminals are using violent movies to give them ideas to rob and kill innocent citizens.

In lots of songs by many Jamaican, Trinidad, Barbadian, American and some Guyanese singers, curse words are being used.

These can be heard in mini buses every day, and on TV and radio. Many of these music videos promote vile sexual acts, violence, and lots of immorality, which is destroying the moral fabric of our society every day.

Those who help to promote drinking are also encouraging the public and family into drinking, thus rum and beers will motivate people to curse and behave in a vulgar manner.

While many, like Petamber Persaud and others, are promoting Guyanese literature, which is a good gesture, lots of Guyanese literature is loaded with curse words and vulgarity that can destroy our young students who wish to study literature.

I took the time to read a number of books that won the Guyana Prize for Literature. To my amazement, some of these books have some of the most obscene passages, curse words, sexual overtures etc.

One of them is reportedly a good collection of stories in the eyes of a school boy writing. This winning work of literature has lots of curse words, sexual immorality, racism etc. Yet this vile work of literature was given the first prize for best first book of fiction.

This was judged by lots of professors in literature. It tells me clearly that these judges are giving prizes in literature based on their instincts, and not on literary merit.

These works of literature which has been awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature are loaded with curse words and vulgar passages, and could have been written by any high class dunce living in the ghetto. Even the works of a famous Caribbean Nobel Prize winner are loaded with curse words.

The ‘F’ word and ‘S’ word are plainly spelt out in their writings. It seems as if they are running out of vocabulary.

How can a teacher of literature teach a child a book of literature that is written in curse words? How can that child read such vulgar material? Will that child acquire any knowledge from such books?

Yet many are advocating these Guyana prize winning books to be in the C.X.C English and Literature syllabuses.

It seems as if our academics have a very shallow mentality about education. What we need for literature is classics from Shakespeare, Virgil, Dante, Tagore, Shelly, Pope, Keats, Byron, Eliot etc.

I wonder if the Minister of Education ever takes time off to read these Guyana Prize-winning books that our poor Government is paying US$5000 for to make a one-eye writer king among the blind in a broken society of illiterates.

What we have seen in this essay is how the idea of curse words and vulgarity invaded every corner of our society.

It’s about time our leaders, also our religious leaders, wake up to the truth. Mahatma Ghandi wrote, ‘’Literary Education without character is a waste of time. God is truth and truth is God…..’’

What we need is the truth from the Word of God to invade the lives of our citizens which will give them good words to speak to their fellow men.
Rev.Gideon Cecil

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