Is Jamaica a good place to live in? Anyone who regularly reads our newspapers regularly would find it difficult to answer yes. More often than not the headlines speak of violent murders, roadblock demonstrations and economic decline. The fact that the Gleaner has a column called “What’s Right With Jamaica” tells us that people are not used to seeing positive stories written about this country.

The Caribbean Court of Justice debate has been an excellent exercise in the democratic exchange of ideas. Every conceivable point of view has been expressed in the media, and anyone interested has been able to contribute to the discussion via radio talk shows or newspaper letters. But then Jamaicans and West Indians are used to nothing less. The idea of our governments making important changes without extensive public discussion is a completely alien concept.

Black history month is a natural time to celebrate Jamaica’s national heroes, and to discuss possible additions to the official pantheon. Now there are those who argue that the entire concept of national heroes is unnecessary. But the truth is that every nation needs figures of excellence who their countrymen can look up to and admire, of whom they can say “They are great, but I am like them and they are like me”. In countries with long and rich histories such figures are thrown up naturally and there may be no need for official recognition. The British government for example certainly does not need to tell its youth that Shakespeare, Newton and Churchill are great men. But in small young countries like Jamaica there is certainly a strong case for the official nurturing of heroes. Would those who argue against national heroes be happy if our youngsters had only foreigners to emulate?

''The icons of the past relied on political instinct. Now, Presidents can use scientific polls and focus groups.'' So wrote Dick Morris, former political strategist for Bill Clinton, in ‘The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-first Century’.

“It's not true that life is one damn thing after another - it's the same damn thing over and over”. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s quip pretty much sums up Jamaican politics. For while the names and dates might change, political events here always seem to point to the same conclusions - the PNP continues to be incompetent, the JLP remains disorganized, and the NDM is still incoherent.

“If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.” So wrote Edward Bellamy in his 1888 utopian novel “Looking Backwards : 2000 - 1987”.

“When I grow up I want Jamaica to be a first world country” says a child in a popular billboard ad. To most people of course “first world” means rich, though in concrete terms it basically covers Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and maybe Singapore, Hong Kong, and Israel.

To many it is an ethically repugnant system based primarily on human selfishness and greed. But market capitalism is unquestionably the most successful economic system ever invented. It has given the western world the highest material standard of living in human history and made the United States in particular the richest, most technologically advanced and most powerful nation of all time.

“Liberal political and economic institutions depend on a healthy and dynamic civil society for their vitality” wrote Francis Fukuyama in his book “Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity”. If a society has a culture of trust and particularly if its members have the capacity to trust people outside their families, it generates “social capital” which is “critical to prosperity and to what has come to be called competitiveness”. In short, Mr. Fukuyama argues, countries where people trust each other tend to be richer than countries where they do not.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind? 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And days o’ lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne,

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet

For auld lang syne!”