An intimate knowledge of our history will guide our future

Sep 18, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is troubling and beyond what I describe as a rational understanding, how leaders we assume to be intelligent and rational beings, who declare their interest in the people they were elected to serve, yet do things contrary to their own best interest. It is my postulation that if the leaders everywhere could only learn from lessons history has to offer, we will avoid the many tragic circumstances we see all around us, in this so-called civilised world.

This failure or inability to learn from the very powerful lessons that history offers, has led to the destruction of property, the lost of precious lives, and as we see today, the starvation of innocent babies, and children being disfigured mentally and physically for life. The horrors of all this, is that this pain and suffering is endured by innocent children and our womenfolk.

As I remember fifty years ago this very month, incidents of pain and suffering repeating itself in many corners of the globe. Let’s turn the pages, just fifty years ago when I was in active life, in September 1975, Egypt and Israel signed the Sinai Interim Agreement, also known as Sinai II, in Geneva. This agreement established a UN buffer zone in the Sinai and allowed for the further withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula, a region they had occupied since 1967. It also included provisions for an early warning system with American civilian technicians, and reaffirmed the commitment to resolving disputes through peaceful means rather than military force. Yet, just five decades on, there is the murderous taking of lives in that part of the world. And no one seen willing to engage in sane, sensible conversations. I recall Shakespeare’s words in the play Julius Caesar; men have lost their reason and fled to brutish beast. I pose this question; When will purported civilised man, become truly civilised?

Fifty years ago, this month, the United States had to deploy troops for the Boston integration of schools, to avoid the right-wing reaction to that decision. Today federal troops are being deployed in certain cities to control alleged criminal activity.

Fifty years ago, this month, there was heavy fighting in Beirut, which marked an escalation of the Lebanese Civil War. Today, this month, we have the situation in Nepal and elsewhere.

Having lived through, and observed these and other events, I ask dear editor and citizens, when will we take counsel, from our own human weakness, arrogance, and shear stupidity at the highest level.

Our religious, national, and other leaders must pause to talk things through. If they fail, this constitutes a curse. What is the solution?

My belief is we have lost more than a generation to materialism and a lost of our souls and as been noted before many of our generation see a grey and confused line between what is right and wrong. In candid conversations we get the impression that for many folks there is nothing really wrong with an illegal and corrupt transaction provided, as one man told me, we are not caught.

This means that if President Ali is serious about his inauguration statement, he needs to involve both the young and the old to first agree what is acceptable behaviour, and what is unacceptable behaviour. If I am right the campaign has to begin with a complete overhaul of our education system, where those who teach must first of all have a thorough and intimate knowledge of all our history, this is an absolute. If we are to prepare the generation in our educational institutions, to be prepared for a swift changing and complex world. In school primary, secondary and tertiary is the time for students to understand the dynamics in a changing world.

This letter is merely to wet the appetite to deal with a serious issue of genuine national development. In closing I pose this conundrum; as a youngster we were led to belief in the statement; that the pen is mightier than the sword, beyond all the lecturers and sermons the other epithet; that might is right, seem to be an uncomfortable truth. Let’s begin the debate.

Elder Hamilton Green

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