Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The movie Hec­tor and the Search for Hap­pi­ness was most in­ter­est­ing in the big ques­tion it raised, and the spec­tac­u­lar­ly hor­ri­ble way it an­swered that ques­tion. Hec­tor (Si­mon Pegg) is a psy­chi­a­trist in Lon­don who tires of lis­ten­ing to his pa­tients squab­ble over minu­ti­ae, his girl­friend whine about whether moth­er­hood fits in­to her lifestyle and ca­reer, and his own gen­er­al cyn­i­cism and over-sa­ti­a­tion.

Di­ag­nos­ing him­self to be un­hap­py, Hec­tor takes off for Chi­na, Ti­bet, a strange coun­try called "Africa" (where smil­ing, cos­tumed na­tives run to greet him and feed him ex­ot­ic food) in search of hap­pi­ness. He finds it and even­tu­al­ly re­turns to make ba­bies with his girl­friend and pre­sum­ably to be hap­py for­ev­er and ever.

This is a sto­ry many Tri­nis, es­pe­cial­ly those in the tourist trade, might get all misty-eyed over. Met­ro­pol­i­tan man es­capes his tech­nol­o­gised, over-de­vel­oped land­scape, and comes to our "or­gan­ic" part of the world to re­con­nect with his pri­mal self. Just like Robin­son Cru­soe, or Pros­pero, or John­ny O'Hal­lo­ran. This is the crux of the ideas of dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor Mil­la Rig­gio pro­posed at a UWI lec­ture ("Car­ni­val Cross­roads") last year.

For­tu­nate­ly, North Amer­i­can and British crit­ics were more per­cep­tive, recog­nis­ing the atro­cious big­otry of the per­cep­tion that the prim­i­tive, un­der­de­vel­oped world was, yet again, re­duced to back­drop in the solip­sis­tic dilem­mas of mediocre met­ro­pol­i­tan man. Hec­tor al­so, al­most manda­to­ri­ly, man­ages to en­gage in sex­u­al con­gress with women of var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties, while find­ing the mean­ing of hap­pi­ness through a se­ries of apho­risms which he writes down.

Apho­risms aside, the ques­tion it­self re­mains–what about hap­pi­ness? Last week's in­stall­ment end­ed say­ing that T&T is a very un­hap­py place. Clear­ly this isn't a pop­u­lar con­clu­sion. Af­ter all–land of Car­ni­val, right? Tri­ni love to fete, Tri­ni love to par­ty, Car­ni­val, that kind of thing. There's even a small sub­set of the in­ter­na­tion­al cul­ture in­dus­try push­ing this for us, from Mil­la Rig­gio, and Jo­ce­lyne Guibault (who wrote a book, Gov­ern­ing Sound, about Trinidad's Car­ni­val mu­sic) to Am­ber Rose and who­ev­er else Machel brings down.

But could it be that Tri­nis are sim­ply tak­ing oth­ers' word for it about what makes them hap­py? Could hap­pi­ness could be some­where oth­er than in the ap­proval of the met­ro­pol­i­tan tourist? Could the whole "good time" fren­zy of Car­ni­val be some­thing else? Has any­one giv­en any se­ri­ous thought to this?

CLR James in an es­say, The Strug­gle for Hap­pi­ness, catch­es the di­choto­my: "Every age has two facets–the one on the sur­face, the frame­work with­in which every­body or near­ly every­body works, thinks, writes, and lives in gen­er­al; be­low is an­oth­er in­ti­mate­ly re­lat­ed to it but some­times for gen­er­a­tions un­recog­nised."

James was de­scrib­ing labour re­la­tions in the US, pre-WWII, but these ob­ser­va­tions res­onate, as he con­tin­ues that men's (and women's) at­ti­tude to their work de­fine their "deep­est re­spons­es to life and whole out­look on the world." Need­less to say, we've got it back­ward, think­ing the fete de­fines us, and work is an evil to be "re­sist­ed."

Naipaul, the supreme psy­chol­o­gist of Trinidad, went at it from an­oth­er an­gle, call­ing it the Mim­ic Man syn­drome. The sur­face mim­ics im­ages and at­ti­tudes from his­to­ry; the in­ner life re­mains emp­ty, filled al­most in­vol­un­tar­i­ly with sup­pressed emo­tion, re­sent­ment and anger, ir­rupt­ing from time to time, as in labour protests, from 1937 to 2015, road rage, po­lice ac­tion and in schools, gov­ern­ment of­fices, hos­pi­tals. Edgar Mit­tel­holz­er, two decades be­fore Naipaul, sketched out the meet­ing of those in­ner and out­er worlds in his in­dis­pens­able Morn­ing at the Of­fice.

So James's in­ner world, it seems, is starved of the ma­te­r­i­al it needs to make us com­plete. This ma­te­r­i­al comes from, along with a com­mit­ment to work and be­ing pro­duc­tive, ad­di­tion­al­ly deep bonds with fam­i­ly, loved ones, and a rich in­ner life of ideas and be­liefs. By be­liev­ing the sur­face is all, Trinida­di­ans seek to fill the empti­ness with de­bauch­ery, noise, re­li­gion and flight, via em­i­gra­tion, al­co­hol and fren­zy.

But this ex­is­ten­tial la­cu­na is mere­ly one process in a dy­nam­ic sys­tem: add to this the con­tem­po­rary un­cer­tain­ties of grow­ing eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty and the at­ten­dant dis­lo­ca­tion, the break­ing up of fam­i­ly net­works, where they ex­ist­ed at all; and a gen­er­al col­lapse of in­sti­tu­tions, schools, se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice, and even health. Then add the in­vol­un­tary con­di­tion­ing from tele­vi­sion, pop mu­sic, the dark­er cor­ners of the In­ter­net.

Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, you have a gi­ant, end­less ma­chine for cre­at­ing stress, un­hap­pi­ness and sick­ness and no counter. The ul­ti­mate con­se­quence of this un­hap­pi­ness is an en­vi­ron­ment which pro­duces men­tal ill­ness. (Not to dis­count ge­net­ic fac­tors, but it's es­tab­lished that en­vi­ron­ment can mit­i­gate ge­net­ic des­tiny.) There are ac­tu­al­ly da­ta that sup­port this. I spoke to Prof Ger­ard Hutchin­son, head of psy­chi­a­try at UWI, and a few oth­er mem­bers of the psy­chi­a­try/psy­chol­o­gy team, and they agree, the rise in men­tal ill­ness is sharp and pro­nounced. In the midst of all the fun and gai­ety, peo­ple are go­ing crazy.

To round this off, it be­hoves one to ask: what to do about it? The an­swers are sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple, and it be­gins with the one word Trinida­di­ans seem to fear more than any­thing: si­lence. Med­i­ta­tion is now list­ed in psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ment sched­ules as a treat­ment for mild to mod­er­ate de­pres­sion. None of this is fur­ther away than YouTube, where you can hear hours or rain­fall, sounds of na­ture, or view free med­i­ta­tion guides. Sim­ple strate­gies can im­prove the gen­er­al en­vi­ron­ment of the na­tion and bring about sea changes in the emo­tion­al at­mos­phere. But it needs a change in the gen­er­al think­ing about pub­lic cul­ture.

This (hap­pi­ness) will be the sub­ject of a more de­tailed ar­ti­cle to be pub­lished in the Guardian in the next few weeks, and hope­ful­ly the launch of an ini­tia­tive to dis­sem­i­nate this mes­sage.