Yesterday came quickly

By DAVID “JOEY” HARPER
| Tue, August 28, 2012 - 12:01 AM

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Perhaps the biggest challenge the new society faces is that of communication.

The immediate response to this was: “What foolishness are you talking, Joey? Today’s world has reached the zenith of communication. “We are almost constantly in contact with lands near and distant, as well as almost constantly in communication with friends and acquaintances. So what do you mean that our biggest problem is communication?”

We text, we BlackBerry, we Facebook, but we seldom speak to each other. Our tongues are now replaced by our fingers, and our eyes have become our ears. We no longer experience the passion emanating from one another’s voices.

We have lost the God-given ability to reason together, which has created unwarranted violence. Brutal action has now replaced the caring thoughtful, attitudes and values that were once a symbol of Barbados.

There is no longer the joy of physical contact, as we danced and whispered the words of romantic music into each other’s ears, sharing the experience of the ever present parent or guardian looming protectively offering words of warning; not in anger, but with love, ever guiding, to which we did not always respond as we should. But the message – subliminal or not – we always got.

Yes, things have changed, small pleasures like 1:30 and 4:30 and 8:30 at the Globe, Plaza, Empire and Olympic theatres have been replaced by “six thirty” in the dub fetes.

Sunday School, once a must, is now just a forgotten memory. Where did the negative transition begin? Where did we the young boys of yesterday, now old men of today, start the change? Were we really the architects of the corruption of our morals, of the decay of our values, of the destruction of ambition, which are now a part of our once beloved Barbados?