Ian Boyne, Contributor
On the weekend that the Jamaican spirit was bolted to the stratosphere, we murdered almost 20 persons. In the week that Bolt created Olympic history by winning both the 100m and 200m events in world-record time, the Planning Institute of Jamaica reported that economic performance slumped for the last quarter. That's the paradox called Jamaica.
Job Number One is how to utilise the lightning bolt from Beijing to extinguish the negative elements in our society. How do we harness all of this burst of nationalistic pride, sense of unity and purpose, this sense of 'manifest destiny', this surge of personal and national confidence and conviction of our worth?
Bandwagonists
How do we create golden opportunities from our golden moments in Beijing? This is not just a question for the Government or our political leaders.
Jamaicans are bandwagonists. But we can use that trait to our advantage. At least, now we have the people's attention. Now people are in a mood to believe in their greatness, in their capacity for excellence and for world-class performance.
Lessons
We can teach some lessons which desperately need to be taught. Lessons like the fact that we don't need loads of money to be excellent.
Despite being the richest and most powerful country in the world, with a population of approximately 305 million, the United States has been thrashed in track and field competition by tiny, economically challenged Jamaica - and largely by home-bred athletes to boot (no pun intended). This sole superpower which dominates the world militarily, politically and culturally has been whipped by a group of Gully Creepers from the working and peasant classes. It is as astonishing as it is an inspiring feat.
People are saying that we must put up multimillion-dollar sports facilities, pump vastly more money into sports and equip first-class, state-of-the art sporting facilities. And we should. But note - we who have accepted the culture which says 'money answereth all things' - that Jamaica stamped its supremacy on the Beijing Games, though it's a poor, vastly under-financed sporting nation. That is not an argument to keep us in that state, and we might have achieved more with more resources.
But it is definitely an argument which says obstacles and deficiencies are not necessarily deterrents. The indomitable human spirit survives and thrives in any set of circumstances. People prove that every day and we proved that to the world in a spectacular fashion in Beijing in the last few days.
Wrong address people
The sensation we have created from Beijing - but felt over the globe - was largely engineered by those whom Mutabaruka celebrated last Wednesday night on his Cutting Edge programme as "the wrong address people", taking his cue from the Etana song. These same "wrong address" people, despised and marginalised by a classist society, are the people whom all of us have to rely on to pull the nation together and to parade us before billions.
I thought about Edward Seaga as I watched the Games last week. Several times in our intense discussions he has remarked to me that "The people who have really achieved anything for this country and who have put Jamaica on the map are the ordinary people of this country. What have the upper classes done?"
The point came back to me poignantly in the last few days of glory. It is the people from below - from country and the inner cities - who have brought us fame. The uptown people are largely profilers.
The 'gully creepers', the downpressed, the social outcasts, the 'wrong address' people made Norbrook, Cherry Gardens, Beverly Hills and Stony Hill felt proud last week as they saw their country dominate the
websites of the New York Times, The Washington Post and the other prestigious media, both print and electronic, in the United States and Britain, among other countries.
Through our television screens (what a golden coverage TVJ gave!) we saw the conditions in which Shelly-Ann Fraser and Melaine Walker lived. It was from these conditions that such world-class excellence came. Those conditions proved daunting but not deterring.
They were stumbling blocks used as stepping stones. Money is good and money is important, but money is not all. The people with an abundance of money have never given us the worldwide recognition which these sons and daughters from the working class and peasantry have given us.
To this Jamaican society which has now become intoxicated with money-lust and money-obsession as we have succumbed to American cultural influence through media, migration and Moneygram, Beijing is saying it's not money, it's the mind.
No one should trivialise Bolt's playfulness, child-like antics, and daring self-confidence or separate it from his stunning successes. His composure before games, his palpably relaxed features and sense that he owns the track play a major part in his sense of invincibility.
Contrast that with Asafa Powell's stiffness, glum features and clear inability to deal with intense psychological pressure and we don't need to detain ourselves with technical reasons for his performance.
Yes, we must try to assuage his hurt, but we must learn the lessons from his failure as much as we learn from the success of the others. The power of the mind, mental mastery and what one psychologist calls our "adversity quotient" carry enormous weight in the race of life.
Marcus Garvey, that brilliant philosopher-political leader, said that if we lack self-confidence we are twice defeated. We, as black people, need to pay greater attention to psychological issues, for the real battles are in the mind.
Power of mind over matter
This is not to be Pollyannaish and to be idealistic to the point of stupidity in denying the real, material constraints on life, but it is to say that our athletes in Beijing proved the power of mind over matter; the power of will, determination, grit and resourcefulness over real, concrete material and technical limitations.
Our tradition of excellence in sports, our solid work over the years prepared us for Beijing. And this is a critical point, for we tend to be so overwhelmed by the now and the immediate that we lose sight of the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Our athletes might break world records but had they not been a part of a great sporting tradition and a heritage, they would not be able to do so. One of the things Jamaicans are losing is this sense of process; of historical motion. Our sound byte generation gives the illusion that 'the now' is everything, or that the world was created in the last five minutes. It was not!
As we celebrate our athletes, let us also celebrate those who paved the way; those who set the pace when the tracks were rocky and the challenges many.
Our society needs to understand process. We focus on the finish line, the glorious endpoint; not the rugged, ruthless, rigorous process. The sacrifices made by our athletes, their postponement of gratification, their discipline, hard work, lonely practice, etc, is missed by us. We are there for the hype, the celebration, the glory. Not for the pain, the frustrations, the headaches, the struggles.
It's not the yam
Our athletes must begin to tell this nation what it took to succeed. It's nothing about the darn yam! It's nothing about any Trelawny water. Our athletes themselves must tell youth and youth what they had to give up to get the glory which they/we are now basking in. They need to tell the mothers and fathers the role that their parents played in their lives, and how that support was important to their success. They need to talk about the role of mentors, the role of community support.
One of the traditional strengths of Jamaican society has been its strong communal bonds. That is breaking down rapidly but it still exists in a number of communities. We need to talk about how this community support is crucial and the part it played in the lives of these athletes.
Sadly, more and more Jamaicans have become sucked into a narrow individualism and 'me-ism' that is destructive of community as it is of personal flourishing. For a life focused on itself is an existentially empty, meaningless life. The success of our athletes - which would not have been possible, irrespective of talent, without support and facilitation - gives us an opportunity to inculcate values of caring, sharing and a revival of the community spirit.
The importance of family. This is one of the sharp lessons brought out by the success of our athletes. The words of Shelly-Ann Fraser's mom, Ms Simpson, on that Sunday morning of her daughter's victory will for long resonate in our minds. She needs to speak to the nation again and again.
Garrisons
Good can come out of the garrisons, Ms Simpson reminded us passionately last Sunday. I have always believed that. That is why I have so relentlessly fought those defenders of negative dancehall music for their implicit view that those promoting murder, mayhem and bigotry in their music can't really do better for "is ghetto dem come from and that is their reality".
"They can't sing about birds and trees. They must reflect the murderous conditions in which they live for, after all, they are not uptown like you Ian Boyne."
Nonsense, scream our athletes from Beijing. Good can come from the ghettos, and there is no excuse for it not to.
I say of those in the garrisons, yes, they can achieve their dreams despite the odds. I chastise those artistes who through their lyrics project the worst of the ghettos, rather than celebrate the best.
Despite our euphoria over the Jamaica Games in Beijing, let us keep in mind the sobering words of the Observer editorial of August 21: "Critical will be the creation of a just society - a society in which people will be respected by the state and its agents regardless of their status."
Don't limit it to the state. The big people in this society - those who wield economic and social power - must know that respect is due to the gully creepers.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com. Feedback may also be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.
