Trinidad and Tobago

The implicit premise of any self formed government, grown from society itself, is that there are people that can be trusted that create systems that can be trusted. And for the generation that creates such a government, assuring that this is true is paramount. Generations later, society is lulled into a sense of security - be it false or otherwise - and eventually there are those who would turn government toward their own private gain. And then, eventually, people learn to distrust the government and should society care enough about itself, they will create a new government. This used to be violent but with democracy it is not as violent. In fact, one would hope it isn't violent at all. I see this in the United States. It can be made more complicated, I suppose, but at the end of the day it falls down to people being able to trust the government to protect their interests. And those interests - those common interests - are a commons.

And then there are governments that are imposed on people.

It's fair to start this off with the fact that before the end of August, 2010, I will be leaving Trinidad and Tobago. I'll be moving on to Beloit, Wisconsin. There it is.

So, some will ask me 'why' - and there are many reasons. Life has taught me to never do something for a single reason and in this decision - made some months ago - I weighed many things. I'll write of some of the reasons over the course of time on KnowTnT.com and other sites as appropriate.

Living in Trinidad and Tobago, if you remark on the idiocy of something there are a litany of responses that come. When you thwack all of them out of the way, you get to the common explanation:

'Dis is Trinidad'

As if that explains it all. And, to a point, it does. It's usually said in an exasperated tone, though I do encounter it off and on in a defensive tone - as if doing something stupid in Trinidad and Tobago is a right. Judging by Trinidad and Tobago parliament, this may well be true. But it doesn't make it... right.

Going out to the smoking area in Miami, having lost my lighter to a cult of security in Trinidad and Tobago (who probably have a shrine of lighters that they have found), I bummed a light from an American Airlines employee named Geovanni. So we start talking - something the healthier and less social non-smokers wouldn't understand. We talked about all sorts of things; he on his break and myself awaiting a connecting flight while drinking coffee and trying to singlehandedly decrease the percentage of damage that bovine flatulence does to the climate of the planet.

We talked about Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba (where he was from), Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia, and many other things. We talked about how people can never simply get along. We laughed about life, smoked our cigarettes and blew smoke at the universe. We spoke of places we'd been, people we've met - be they Palestinians in Greece or Jews in Miami or Barack Obama or Fidel Castro. We agreed that the world made less sense than people generally thought it did because when you peek under the soft lace that the media dresses many things in... it's naked. And naked, despite what testerone powered adolescents may think, is not always good. But to see the world naked is a passion for some of us, and by pure chance and addiction to nicotine, we sat there and talked for about an hour. An hour passed idly between strangers at an airport discussing the world, the people of the world, and so forth.

He was a teenager when he left Cuba; he tells me the first 10 years in the United States were hard but that his dream was being fulfilled: by working with American Airlines and the nature of his work, he traveled the world. He and I are alike in that we don't stay on the beaten paths - we want to see how people live, how they think, what they think and why they think it. The world is an open ended question.