It is as if we in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty have com­plete­ly lost the prac­ti­cal and philo­soph­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue of hu­man life above all else, and there­fore do not know it should be cher­ished and pre­served. Crim­i­nal­i­ty to­day is about killing as an en­try point and ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive. Po­lit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, as prac­ticed in many parts of the world, leads to the slaugh­ter of tens of thou­sands, even mil­lions of hu­man be­ings as a means of fos­ter­ing an agen­da of con­quest, vengeance and ac­qui­si­tion.

But the care­less­ness with hu­man life is al­so very much at­tached to the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices, what­ev­er the risks. There have been in­ci­dents right here in T&T, in our re­cent past, which il­lus­trate such a point. Large in­dus­tri­al “ac­ci­dents” in the pro­duc­tion of chem­i­cals and oth­er such dan­ger­ous liq­uids hap­pen with an un­ac­cept­able fre­quen­cy across ma­jor economies.

Crash­es of air­craft, com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al, are far too fre­quent; on oc­ca­sion the re­sult of hu­man er­ror and/or in­suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion by man­u­fac­tur­ers. Per­sons in coun­tries stran­gled from be­ing able to cre­ate space and op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves and their fam­i­lies, take their lives in hand in an at­tempt to cross oceans in un­wor­thy sea ves­sels. It’s as if the dan­ger to hu­man life runs a poor last in the cal­cu­la­tions of those mak­ing a trip for ma­te­r­i­al de­sires.

In the in­stances of the many wars be­tween and amongst na­tions and peo­ple against peo­ple, the sub­or­di­na­tion of the val­ue of lives in the name of ide­ol­o­gy and the de­sire for world dom­i­nance have be­come nat­ur­al choic­es.

It must not, how­ev­er, be for­got­ten that in many in­stances, ac­tions tak­en by in­di­vid­u­als, groups and na­tions, are in the con­text of the be­lief that there are lives which car­ry greater val­ue than oth­ers.

In ex­am­ples right at home, the killing of one gang mem­ber can and of­ten trig­gers re­tal­ia­to­ry killings of the many. The in­hu­mane killing of an es­ti­mat­ed 250 Is­raelis and per­sons of oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties must be paid for with the un­con­scionable and con­tin­u­ing mur­der of a yet-to-be ac­cu­rate­ly re­port­ed, tens of thou­sands of Pales­tin­ian civil­ians who had noth­ing to do with the ini­tial mas­sacre.

So too, the pur­suit by Rus­sia of ter­ri­to­ry which does not be­long to it, has re­sult­ed in the con­tin­u­ing killings of tens of thou­sands of Ukraini­ans and Russ­ian sol­diers, and civil­ians, sac­ri­ficed in the quest for ter­ri­to­ry and glo­ry.

In con­trast to the above mass mur­ders, in­di­vid­u­als are be­ing killed over an ar­gu­ment of some triv­ial mat­ter and in re­tal­i­a­tion for a per­ceived of­fen­sive act of “dis­re­spect.” With­in fam­i­lies, killings are tak­ing place; amongst friends gath­ered for a lime; some slight of one kind or the oth­er and/or an ar­gu­ment about an ir­rel­e­van­cy can and of­ten lead to cold-blood­ed mur­der.

Be­hind it all is a loss in the con­scious­ness of the val­ue and sa­cred na­ture of hu­man life.

Re­li­gious teach­ings, ed­u­ca­tion in schools, and nur­tur­ing in the home amongst fam­i­ly mem­bers have to once again, in this age of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, of greed and over vault­ing am­bi­tion, be re­in­stat­ed as be­ing sa­cred and pre­cious.

For Chris­tians, Hin­dus, and Mus­lims, as with all vi­able re­li­gions, sim­i­lar­ly for the non-re­li­gious, hu­man life must re­main para­mount, oth­er­wise we re­turn to the law of the jun­gle where on­ly the fittest sur­vive.