Jamaican music’s planet wide popularity is surely one of the late 20th century’s most intriguing cultural phenomena. For reggae may be the only music not of European or North American origin which can be heard in every country on earth, and is arguably the first example in modern times of a non-western nation exporting its culture around the globe.

As a shopkeeper my job is to make readily available to customers whatever they want. Still, I never cease to be amazed at how many seemingly unnecessary things people not only desire but apparently can’t do without. But then I’m a man, and apart from pharmaceuticals probably 90% of the stuff in my stores is either bought by or for women. It’s incredible really how different male and female needs seem to be. Left to our own inclinations all most men really require is enough food, shelter from the rain, and occasional sex. Which is why bachelor homes usually resemble bear caves with furniture.

Every August we hear dewy-eyed imperialists nostalgically lamenting how much better off we were under the Union Jack. And the recent Stone poll showing that 53% of Jamaicans feel we would have been better off if we had remained a British colony was certainly food for thought. Yet suppose a referendum had been held in 1962 and a majority of Jamaicans had voted against independence. Would Britain have continued to support us as a colony?

“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.

“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.

“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”.

“There’s no humourist like history” the American author Will Durant once wrote, a truth confirmed yet again by recent events in Cuba. Who in the heyday of communist solidarity could have predicted that then staunch “socialist” allies Cuba and the Czech Republic would one day be embroiled in a human rights controversy? But last month Cuban authorities jailed two Czech citizens on charges of subversion. Their “crime” was meeting Cuban dissidents. Predictably Cuban officials condemned the two men as “American agents” and the dissidents as “counter-revolutionaries”.

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.

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.

Jamaica is not a country of comfortable certainties. Take the recent Braeton shootings where police killed seven youths. Like most people my first reaction was “Yes, seven gunmen less on the streets!” But when some reports cast doubts on the police version of events I began to wonder if it had indeed been a case of extra judicial murder.