By *Jomo Sanga Thomas
(“Plain Talk” June 27, 2025)
“I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely — or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!” — Oscar Wilde
We are at a crucial point in our society, where the cult of personality and political correctness have become permanent features of the political landscape. The sole intent of the power elite is to intimidate a large swath of society, friend and foe alike, into reluctant obedience.
All of us must decide what kind of future we want for ourselves and our children, our neighbours and the nation we call home. We must choose to speak up now or risk being enslaved by an overbearing orthodoxy that desires strict conformity; speaking up does not mean blind and mindless opposition. As Ta-Nahisi Coates says, ‘it must mean placing our leaders and nation under unrelenting scrutiny because they are all we have got.’
We must never become so complacent as to allow extreme minority voices to rule over the reasonable majority. It is a truism that the world will not be destroyed only by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Many of us attended the best schools, pursued outstanding careers, and achieved success. However, we have been indoctrinated to believe the opinion moulders and mind benders. The sad truth remains that we were trained, rather than educated. We cannot be educated if we never question prevailing reality or take life-altering risks in pursuit of what we believe.
How many of us are afraid to speak our minds? How many of us have seen friends, acquaintances, family members or anyone shamed and intimidated into submission for speaking their minds? How many of us practice self-censorship, afraid to rouse the tyrannical mob, even when that mob is perceived, often incorrectly, to be the majority? How many of us are too scared to have our lives ruined, simply for standing up for what we believe in?
The people who try to silence those who dissent against popular belief are scared of individual thought. They attempt to silence opposition not because their ideas are intellectually superior, but because they are fragile. They don’t know how to coherently and confidently defend their ideas against scrutiny. They offer rage and slander instead of enlightened conversation. Their mantra remains, “Wrong forum;not here, not now!”
They want to shut down debate and conversation so that they can stay safe and confident in their conceited and deceitful bubbles. They don’t want to doubt their current beliefs; they refuse to grow and to acknowledge that they might be wrong. They confuse and conflate their views with what is right for the nation and its people. They have a complete disregard for informed debate and policy opinions.
We need people to speak up, now more than ever. We need more people to be vocal and question the authority of those in control of our financial, educational, religious and power corridors.
Don’t be fooled, as Noam Chomsky insightfully said in his book, “The Common Good”, “the smart way to keep a society passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum”.
Many of us in modern society fall for this narrowing public space because we are cowards. We never speak up and say what we want to say because we all believe we will suffer alone and be ridiculed. We think we will lose everything and gain nothing, so why speak up at all? We are all waiting for the hero to emerge and save the day. However, if we all sit and wait, the intimidating and oppressive force of the mob will dominate our lives.
We are allowing other people to think for us. The time has come for us to examine our own beliefs. We echo whatever we have seen or heard before and insist that they are our own. We look confident on the outside, but we crumble under critical examination. We are the herd, led mindlessly, unwilling and unable to go the distance.
We are afraid of adversity. We lack confidence in our ideas and principles because we don’t spend time thinking about what we believe.
We have a general understanding of the kind of life‘s rules we live by and what we might believe in, but when push comes to shove, we are willing to abandon everything and betray everyone, just to save our skin.
The important thing to think about here is to pick our battles. We don’t want to say something completely outrageous to rile up controversy. We want to present our ideas carefully and minimise mistakes, so that our detractors will have nothing to criticise.
Avoid mindless debates whose only result will be plenty of heat and little light, but do not shy away from conversations that may bring enlightenment to others with an open mind. Always be ready to defend your ideas and never apologise for stating your beliefs.
We can only hope that, sometime soon, more of us who are fearful and unjustifiably choke on our thoughts, will grow tired of being silent.
(This is a revised version of a piece published on April 12, 2019, titled, “It’s crunch time, Vincentians”.)
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].