24 May 2001, 818 words
Virtually all cricket-as-metaphor commentary is intellectual drivel. Even if I hadn't been convinced of this before, Hilary Beckles's article in last Thursday's Express ("Is Hooperisation a sign of the times?") would have persuaded me beyond any shadow of a doubt. But his linking of cricket with globalisation wasn't the only pseudo-intellectual element of Beckles's article.
Beckles is a university academic, so it is not surprising that the most dismal aspect of his piece was the prose. "My political philosophy as a West Indian living in the age of globalisation is based on the belief my nation state as a development device is even more vital than before." Yes, he really wrote that. But he still managed to trump himself in the very next sentence: "I feel not to see this is to be duped by the messianic mirage of universal openness and ideological rhetoric about level playing fields and what have we."
It is no mystery why the majority of academics feel constrained to write this way: the ideas they spout are often so trite, or so simplistic, or so plain wrong, that they need the heavy armour of bad prose to conceal their lack of substance. And Beckles's ideas were certainly hollow enough to demand the straw of his emotive adjectives, forced metaphors, and convoluted sentences.
Here is his opening sally: "Persons who offer uncritical, wealth-creating economic arguments in praise of globalisation and who do not see it also as a contradictory and divisive political process that pits strong nations against weak ones, would have no difficulty with the current state of captaincy in West Indies cricket." Yes, friends and neighbours, a 47-word sentence with exactly two commas.
Now the connection between globalisation and cricket is, of course, Beckles's alone, not these unnamed persons. What Beckles wants to say is that he thinks globalisation is incompatible with social development. But, in order to make that argument, you have to say exactly what you think social development is and how globalisation undermines it.
What makes his cricket linkage more absurd, though, is that the "nation" he says globalisation is undermining is the West Indian one. "Citizens now feel stripped of a developed sense of belonging and ownership." Eh? These islands haven't even figured out how to let labour move freely between them, but this man is writing tata about a "nation" and "citizens". That alone tells you that Beckles's main argument is completely without substance.
However, he was at least not dotish enough to deny that globalisation creates wealth. But his argument is just a variation of the standard one used by all globalisation critics: that the process serves the interests only of the rich and powerful, widening inequalities and excluding the poor and weak.
In fact, that position has been comprehensively refuted in a paper by World Bank economists David Dollar and Aart Kray. Looking at data from 80 countries over four decades, they found that when a country experiences growth, the incomes of the poor rise equivalently. They also found that openness to trade spurs growth to a statistically significant extent and, contrary to the critics' argument, does not skew income distribution in favour of the rich.
But Beckles, rather than do his research or even define his terms, prefers to write euphemisms like "only a strong and viable nation will enable citizens the world over to survive with honour in the new circumstances" and "the health of a nation is as vital as its wealth".
It seems to me that such opinions require a comprehensive refutation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs which, logically, begins with physiology (freedom from thirst, hunger, pain) and ends with transcendence (community, purpose, social responsibilities). And, while one could reasonably argue that the quest for material needs must be capped in order for the individual citizen to be truly fulfilled and happy, that is not the argument Beckles is making (nor, I suspect, is capable of making).
Now the kind of nonsense Beckles writes is standard in Caribbean public discourse, especially among our over-45 intellectuals, who seem trapped in ideologies which were wrong even when they were in vogue. As a sometime intellectual myself, though, I found Beckles's article atypically distressing, because this man is the Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies.
Intellectuals don't enjoy much respect in Caribbean societies, and people like Beckles help justify that contempt. But, at the same time, no modern society can progress without a cadre of genuine intellectuals: by which I mean persons whose only ideologies are truth (defined by empiricism, rigor and logic) and humanitarian values.
I can only hope that what the late Davison Budhoo said about the university is true: that there are more politicians than thinkers there. For that, at least, could mean that Beckles attained his elevated position through political acumen, and not by his relative intellectual superiority.
Copyright ©2001 Kevin Baldeosingh