By Peter Polack

Peter Polack

I know a landlord who had a sexual relationship with his tenant which unsurprisingly did not end well. This is the usual conclusion for persons who confuse self interest with common sense. Hotel or business employees or professionals who have carnal knowledge with guests or clients or customers commit immoral, even stupid, but not illegal acts of self gratification. This is the corruption of self interest and the denial of common sense.

Not all self interest is wrong. Venal self interest should be an addition to the deadly sins of gluttony, pride, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and most relevant, lust.

Venal self interest is common unlike common sense among governments, institutions, businesses, civic groups and prominent persons where greed, self promotion or illicit profit are frequent motives, not sexual debasement. Recently in Jamaica, a civic group promoted the decriminalization of sex between minors, oblivious to the foundation principle, and common sense, that minors are unable to give consent in most situations. Mutual consent becomes an irrelevancy. Worse, it joins the removal of juries and appeals on the slippery slope of humanity’s descent into the heart of darkness.

It is sometimes hard for minors and the man in the street to distinguish between right and wrong or self interest and common sense given the behaviour of some politicians, corporate executives, judges, police and teachers to name a few. This is not a case of to whom much is given, much is expected, but a case that a certain code of conduct comes with some positions. Some professions like comics and criminals are exempted.

The young man wielding a gun in the latest robbery will be confused by the venal self interest of prominent persons such as a former speaker of the Jamaican House of Representatives convicted for integrity breaches without any effect on her political career. The prime minister of that country has had years of an unresolved integrity investigation. How can one distinguish right and wrong in that gray morass.

People in glass houses and all that.

It is the time of year when there is much giving and receiving with promises to avoid aberrant behaviour in the new year. Common sense should be like charity , it begins at home. 

The best present for the Caribbean people next year will be an amendment  of the law to allow a recall petition of non performing politicians just like the United Kingdom. The British overlord has precedent for imposing their laws on their Caribbean colonies.

This would be true self interest.

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88. 

His views are his own.