INDIGENOUS CULTURES that have inherited perhaps thousands of years of continuous development exist on our planet alongside relatively new groups and nations.
All are eager to retain what they believe are the valuable aspects of their established customs as there is understandably a movement for appropriate change and improvements.
We are living in times where materialistic societies are constantly pressuring for newer, faster and larger or more dramatic changes as they look to the future and rely upon immediate satisfaction in relation to their plans and desires.
There are few cultures and nations that have escaped this current driving force and the tendency to greed that is bound to follow.
There is need to establish a balance if we are to maintain cultural integrity and prevent total destruction by extreme technologies to the neglect of the fundamental principles that determine human progress and our very existence.
To focus upon Western culture reveals obvious social improvements and progress in welfare in our country. We possess a general affluence that allows material comfort and also contentment, if we should choose. But there is growing dissatisfaction at the extent we are rejecting values of supreme importance.
Papua New Guinea was once a nation with a healthy sense of pride in what it stood for and what our people had achieved. This has been tainted by an artificially grafted perception that ‘multiculturalism’ is better and we are in danger of becoming a mongrel mix of many foreign influences.
This is happening in other countries also. We could undertake to strengthen and cultivate our natural traits. In doing so, we would retain respect for our forebears to whom we owe our good fortune, our nobler characteristics and cultural heritage.
However, there are severe and powerful influences that allow us to be weakened as a nation. We are in danger of becoming a pawn in unknown and unrecognized outside plans and designs. In our country, governments sway under an adolescent tendency to ‘show off’ and allow politics to over-rule the wisdom of statesmanship.
The fearsome strength of trends and fashions in thinking causes certain attitudes to dominate in the community to serve as ‘thought police’ curbing free expression of what we really think as individuals.
This freedom of expression of thought is suffering alongside licensed behaviour and actions that should not be tolerated. There exists a reduced sense that what is natural is right and a greater acceptance of unnatural and violent, devious ideas and expressions.
We make basic mistakes in allowing immigrants to side-step the discipline of learning our English language upon entry to our country, leaving our social services to extend to a need for translators. We do not insist upon any oath of allegiance nor can we be relied upon to act to punish displays of sedition or anti-national loyalties whether from new or indigenous members of the community.
We freely give the privilege of the right to vote without requiring any commitment in return. We suffer from over-generosity that disadvantages our taxpayers and detracts from a general sense of security that the welfare of the population is being considered as a whole.
There is a gross error growing throughout the countries that have been over-considerate and protective to those of foreign culture and religion whilst allowing the detriment of their own traditional beliefs.
In Christian countries like ours, if you like it seems that nothing sacred is unaffected by deliberate or unconscious attempts to destroy the fabric of our democratic principles and Christian principles, moral codes, and even our beautiful Tok Pisin language through changes and distortions.
The dangers we face by our casual indifference to the need to correct the destructive trends are obvious in the unnatural sterile homosexual partnerships that are being considered lawful.
The consequences of this are numerous. Not only does it represent a flagrant undermining of the family unit born from healthy male/female loving union and demolish population but is an affront to Nature that will cause collapse of civilization as we know it.
If these and other numerous other negative issues proceed in PNG and other developing Melanesian countries, they could prove fatal to our culture.
Sioni Ruma is a Development Associate with the Provincial and Local-level Governments Program