That Doggie diary

Ian Boyne, Contributor

For those who believe that criminals are not human beings with deep emotions, but are really just dogs to be hunted, the Doggie Diary, ironically, should be an eye-opener. In that intercepted diary, widely published in last weekend's papers, we glimpsed a deeply sensitive, emotionally scarred but highly reflective and deeply philosophical person. A dog-heart who keeps a diary and who journals.

Reading excerpts from the Doggie Diary was an emotionally moving experience for me. For a while, I reflected on the phrase: "there but for the grace of God go I". I also reflected on all I have read on the matter of free will, ranging from psychology to philosophy to theology. When one considers the number of factors which influence a person's life - genetics, historical, cultural, environmental, sociological (including race, class) factors, gender, etc - it takes a lot of faith to posit free will. I recalled the eminent Harvard behaviourist B.F. Skinner's landmark book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, describing the human condition.

If he had only come under different influences, been born in a different class, had access to certain amenities and facilities, and had different role models, that same person would not be known as Doggie. There are other Doggies out there walking about as little children, being moulded every day, bit by bit, into the cold-blooded, ruthless and savage monster that Doggie was. And it might be hard to imagine the placid, debonair and cerebral Ian Boyne being a gangster, but all you would have to do is to change my circumstances, and that could well have been my lot! If you are agnostic or atheistic, simply say, "there but for different circumstances go I," when you hear about some criminal or some heartless 'shotta'.

It can't be coincidental that gangsters and criminals are more likely to come from certain socio-economic backgrounds than others. It can't be magical that the people who end up as a terror and a menace to society share certain common sociological features. It is true - and let it be said early - that most who share those backgrounds don't end up as a threat to society and lead quite normal and productive lives. It is true that poverty does not deterministically "cause" crime and produce criminals and terrorists. But it is also a fact that economic deprivation and social alienation are associated with certain types of outcomes.

The Doggie Diary tells a lot. It shows that even brutal, fierce, and seemingly irredeemable murderers are not beyond psychological rehabilitation. We don't even have to bring in the issue of being "touched by the Lord" - just touched by human empathy, caring, and human solidarity. Doggie cared about his woman and his children; wanted to spend time with them, and was anxious over his relationship with them and what his children would think of him.

Doggie writes: "My life right now is a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece, my woman. I am in great distress and agony. I am watching my love life fall right apart and can't stop it. When does my pain end?" This guy is not just writing about the "wickedest slam". He is not just distressed that his "sorting out" has not been up to scratch when he talks about his love life falling apart. He is concerned about the quality of his relationship with his woman, and he is pained because things are not going right. This is a guy with strong emotions - and someone who can be pulled by love.

self-confession

He is concerned that "she make me happy and I make her unhappy". This is his own self-confession. Not just something he says she claims. "I miss my kids dem so much," he mourns in another place. In another place, he celebrates, "me and my son is chilling. I just put him to sleep. He is six months old and he has never slept beside me one night since he was born. My life is very intense but I must always find time for them even an hour." He wonders how his children will feel when they grow up and learn what a brutal murderer their father was.

What if Doggie had met someone who could have reached him emotionally, pointed him to another away of life and showed him a path that could have given him the peace and stability he desired? Perhaps that person would have had to catch him before the multiple murders, which would certainly have landed him behind bars for life. A soul which had retained such sensitivity even after his display of viciousness and cold-bloodedness must have had greater amounts of that before he pulled the first trigger.

How many people dressing up in suit and tie today and going to church would have been Doggies had it not been for just one person who touched their lives - just one person who took the time to care, to compliment, to express hope and confidence in them, to show them love?

The coldly rational Marxists and other revolutionaries who give primacy to blind historical forces and who talk incessantly about "inexorable laws of history", with their deterministic blinders on, masking their own smugness from themselves, downplay agency and volition. They foolishly ridicule religion and see all religious involvement as either destructive or diversionary. But religion can be life-saving. There are many youth today all over Jamaica's inner cities who, but for the work of the church and individual Christians, would be monsters like Cedric 'Doggie' Murray.

When people say the church is not doing anything in Jamaica and ask in frustration "what is the church doing?" they are unaware of how many Doggies Christians have rescued in this crime-ridden society - and how many lives, consequently, they have saved. Perhaps they have even saved the lives of some of these humanists - perhaps even your life.

Criminals are human beings, after all. Human beings are not just biological specimens. They are creatures of history and society. They are created not only by God, as religious people believe, or through natural selection, as naturalists believe. They are also crea-ted by society. They are created by us. And then, when some go rogue, they are destroyed by us. We incubate them in ghettoes without basic amenities. We condemn them to poor-quality education, substandard health care, condemn them to filth and squalor in their communities, keep them on the rubbish heap of unemployment, victimise them, exploit them, and sell them pipe dreams and frustrate them with hopelessness. We helped in the creation of the Doggies.

Of course, many escape. Of course, many resist the pressures and "hold di struggle". Many turn out well and are well-adjusted, despite all our efforts to frustrate them as an unjust society. But let us not comfort ourselves with that. Let us not appease our consciences. It is true that some of these monsters revel in all kinds of excuses for their gruesome behaviour. Some don't accept any responsibility for their actions and blame everything on "society." Their psychopathology is totally warped.

But society cannot similarly engage in a one-dimensional analysis. We have to look at our economic structures to see how they perpetuate social dysfunction.

twisted cheap grace

The Doggie Diary also manifests the twisted cheap grace of Protes-tantism which has inundated Jamaica. Disgustingly, the dog-hearted butcher talks of his love of God and Jesus and praises His lord for helping him escape police dragnets. "I am a real gangster all out, but I love the Lord with a passion. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. That means I can repent and change yet my faith is weak. My life is a book of puzzle."

Years of misguided evangelical preaching which demeans the importance of works and which exalts cheap grace leads many to rationalise their unethical and corrupt lifestyle. I have met many people, even professing Christianity, who make excuses for their transgressions and failings, resting securely in the grace of their Lord. I have met people comfortable in their sexual looseness and sexual exploitation, but who felt comfortable once they were following their denomination's pet doctrines. Doggie was just an extreme version of them. "Why did I do the things I do? SIN." That's the excuse; that's the way to escape personal responsibility.

unbalanced and perverse

Too much of our religious teaching has been unbalanced and perverse, and the Doggie Diary is a painful reminder of that. Importantly, too - though I have heard no one comment on it - the Doggie Diary proves beyond a doubt that it was not all angels who were killed in the Tivoli invasion, despite the propaganda of its detractors. The former 'Dudus' loyalist mourns that "those who went to war in Tivoli have not returned and I suspect most of them were killed". Tivoli's criminal network was spread throughout the island.

The Doggie Diary should be used by social workers and religious activists all across Jamaica to show the other side of the gangster life. It is not as glamorous as it is portrayed on the streets. The Doggie Diary shows that a life of crime does not really pay. Doggie could say that his gun was his best friend, for, chased all over the place because of his gangster life, there was no constant companion but his gun. Is this the best we can offer our ghetto youth?

"I long for that real fellowship with others when I will trust." Human solidarity, human bonding, trust reposed in another human being. These are things we can give without money. Perhaps we could intercept some future Doggies.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.