WE NEED TO FOCUS with some precision on our national future.

Here in Barbados, indeed in the entire world, a general situation of iconoclasm works at splintering hitherto rationalised systems.

Case in point, the debate about the legitimacy and indeed morality of cutting (chopping) a dreadlocks' natties in event of a Rastafari being sentenced to jail.

Some persons in our society are arguing that cutting off dreadlocks is an infringement of the constitutional rights of a practitioner of that particular religion.

I find myself unable to credit their argument as rational, cultural or even legal/constitutional.

A Rastafarian is not a Rastafarian because of his dreadlocks.

A Rastafarian is a person who chooses first of all to elevate and pay honour to the flag of Ethiopia. And secondly wear his beard or in cult speech, his Jah beard as an iconic sign of wisdom and manhood.

And indeed where I learned about Rastafari all black people are automatically qualified as Rastafari. Though certain attitudes are demanded of that general brethren.One had to avow a belief in physical repatriation to Africa as a ritual in commonplace encounters,
on streets, houses, alleys or conference rooms, the divinity of Haile Selassie I and tapering at the end, hailing (acknowledging) the 'mystical power' of lion mane dreadlocks.

The point is, dreadlocks were not icons, they were merely status symbols to mark those totally committed against sedentary, antiseptic, social values.

They are mystical things because they purport a strength 'beyond the ordinary', adjuring scalp conditions, humidity or discomfort – a new wonder kind.

They are a vanity so it is entirely negative to argue that chopping dreadlocks infringe on religion.

What Rastafarians in prison should and could legally agitate for is limited access to their flag and the right to wear their beards.

We cannot be sidetracked as a meaningful nation. Incarceration says that a man or woman has lost some personal struggle with the power that be and is therefore, let's face it, being punished.

The penitentiary actually temporarily suspends certain constitutional rights, rationally and legally when you look at it squarely, and the regulation anti-sociopathic uniformity is one of its punishments "healings'.

Man, all that happened is that you lost a bout with the system, keep your sense of fairness and allow the system to function.

No man should sulk about getting more vanity lopped off. I looked at the pictures of numerous overgrown, spiky, sociopath dreadlocked heads in the prison yard and felt ashamed of their effect over casual untidiness, evidence of leadership neglect and disorder.

Listen! I may be abrasive but I am not against dreadlocks because dreadlocks are symbols of total premature idealistic freedom and I am a black man.

I consider a free school of thought in Rastafarianism would not allow its followers to wear dreadlocks in prison.