If we are to ever again live in and enjoy existence in a more loving kind of society, we must in this time of troubles generate a new kind of vision and a new set of plans for the realization of such a beloved community; that sweet place where people are bound together by cords of love rather than held in bondage by consumerism and materialism.

In other words, the very rootedness of violence in human society must itself be rooted up by men and women intent on building a better kind of life for themselves and their children.

At the base of it all must be raised up a sustained fight for not only economic growth, but also a fight for both social change – and social justice.

These thoughts and others such welled up in us just the other night as we drove along one of the highways of New Providence at around eleven thirty. We found that we were being summonsed [by phone] to come to the Base Road as it was abutted by Christie Park.

As we approached, there it was: the remains of a dead Black man. Another of his ilk who had – just minutes earlier – found himself [still in the fresh greenness of his youth] cut down by gun-fire.

While this was jarring enough, what was even more telling was the fact that, a Junkanoo practice that had been underway for hours continued with neither hitch nor delay; and clearly, with absolutely no concern or human for the dead.

Those who practiced their steps and who sought to get their stuff together for their time on Bay Street could care less about the man who had been shot dead or about the identity of the shooter.

This is really a very bad place. It is a sad fact of life that very many bad people live in today’s sin-sickened and crime-ravaged New Providence.

As we have already indicated, this is just so very bad for the rest of us who are reduced to cowering and fearing and hoping for the best even as we fear the worst.

As we look at the extent to which one community after the other implodes in our beloved country or as we examine the extent to which Bahamians routinely hurt each other, violence comes to be seen as being both normal and natural.

Once this happens – people reach that point where they are prepared to believe that this violence, this brutality – this coldness – just so happens to be a function of what some describe as ‘human nature’.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact of the matter is that violence is always nothing more [and nothing less] than an exercise in power; one that pits strength against weakness; affluence against poverty; men against men; men against women and adults against youth.

Today it is quite evident that we are currently caught up in a bloody morass of troubles. There is [obviously] no easy way out of the mess to all who would see and to each and every Bahamian who would hear.

Evidence in support of this bleak conclusion is to be found not only in the lurid report of some of the damage done some of this nation’s children, but also in all those bloody statistics that come with and from the ‘wars’ now going on between some of this nation’s youth-men and the police.

It should not be forgotten that there are fights going on between some of these men and other men for the lubricious attention of this or that so-called high-maintenance ‘love-object’.

There are those situations and circumstances where children are sometimes left bruised and battered by this or that brute whose defense is routinely wrapped in some ideas about what happens when you spare the rod. And so the whippings, brute blows to the head – and the humiliation continues.

Sadly, this kind of behavior sometimes persists for very long periods of time in the lives of any number of such people; thus becoming – at least for that crew – a kind of culture.

And so, the violence done one generation persists across time; thus the current conflicts in world-views and values by any number of Bahamians.

This explains how there are so very many Bahamians who are today engaged in a species of class and culture based warfare; a situation that is very rarely mediated by either by the police or any other-such public authority.

Yet a healthier time might yet emerge from this mire, muck and rubble.