26 November 1998, 954 words
Readers who are familiar with my column in the Weekend Independent will know that I usually take a topical topic and get very sarcastic about it. This Express column will not be like that, so those people who were here just to see me pound the government or bigots or religious fundamentalists can turn the page now (or, better yet, go and buy an Independent.)
I use humour in my other column for very specific reasons. The pre-eminent reason, of course, is that I just get a real kick from mocking the morons amongst us. (The mother of a young friend of mine once commented that I attack everyone. This is not true. It only seems that way because there are so many morons to attack.) The second reason is that I think satire can be a very effective technique, especially in a society like ours where, as Dennis 'Sprangalang' Hall puts it, we don't treat serious thing serious.
But it is exactly this attitude which makes life so hard for Trinidadian politicians. Indeed, perhaps a main reason we have never descended into the banana republic status of Latin America, Cuba, Grenada, Guyana and Suriname is because of our tradition of calypso and picong. V.S. Naipaul himself admits that he first found his writing voice because of that tradition (and that was within the Trini-Hindu background he grew up in.)
Nabokov has an interesting passage on the role of literature in combating totalitarianism: "The twinkle in the author's eye as he notes the imbecile drooping of a murderer's underlip, or watches the stumpy forefinger of a professional tyrant exploring a profitable nostril...this twinkle is what punishes your man more surely than the pistol of a tip-toeing conspirator. And, inversely, there is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassuming, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam."
Here, that gleam is provided by the calypsonian, but also by the average Trinidadian for whom picong, satire and jokiness is just an ordinary way of talking. In The Society of Mind author Marvin Minsky writes, "...jokes are not frivolous at all, but reflect the most serious of concerns...Laughter has a curious ambiguity, combining elements of affection and conciliation with elements of rejection and aggression. Perhaps all these ancestral means of social communication became fused to compose a single, absolutely irresistible way to make another person cease an activity regarded as objectionable or ridiculous."
Now, obviously, the gleam has had absolutely no effect on Mr. Panday, since he continues to be objectionable or ridiculous, often on the same day. Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works, defines the role of humour in this way: "Humour is the enemy of pomp and decorum, especially when they prop up the authority of an adversary or a superior." Humour, he says, is actually an anti-dominance weapon. It is therefore not surprising that the would-be fascists amongst us - religious fundamentalists, political activists, ethnocentric columnists - betray a complete and very un-Trini-like lack of humour. It is also not surprising that Mr. Panday, once considered our wittiest politician, is now capable of nothing more than snarling venom.
But, although the politicians and culture vultures give me enough material for two or more satirical columns a week, even I have my limits. So in this space I will deal mostly with issues such as literature, psychology, science, history, anthropology and philosophy. Now don't rush off to buy your Weekend Independent just yet, unless you're really anxious to find out "How to be a UNC fanatic" (sneaked in that plug with great subtlety, don't you think?) There are many fascinating aspects to all those topics I have just listed, as you will find out in the coming weeks, and politics is bound up with all of them. But part of this column's intention is to serve as a remind that there is a larger, progressive world out there which we should be part of. As things stand in our country right now, intellectual life seems defined by persons like Pastor Cuffie and the Maha Sabha columnists and Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe - which is the same as no intellectual life at all. And I think a real life of the mind is important, not only in the social sense, but also for the individual. In fact, the mental life becomes more, not less, important when one is overwhelmed by the essential pettiness of politics and the many mundane concerns we face every day.
The topics I propose to deal with may seem very abstract and impractical; and I certainly don't overestimate the importance of a newspaper column, which can only be a very small window in a very large house. But everything is connected. It is the apparently abstract concerns of philosophers and scientists, from the existence of Perfect Forms to mathematical axioms to dinosaur fossils, that have created the modern world where human beings now speak to one another across thousands of miles, where we can cure diseases that used to wipe out whole populations, and where most of us live twice as long as our ancestors. To grapple effectively with this world, it is necessary to at least understand its underpinnings.
In a private letter, Bertrand Russell, a philosopher I will be quoting frequently, defined his purpose this way: "I want to stand for life and thought - thought as adventure, clear thought because of the intrinsic delight of it, along with the other delights of life...The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes [and] the main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are: knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relationships of friendship or affection."
Words to live by.
Copyright ©1998 Kevin Baldeosingh