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Dear Sir

We as a people, all races, must work together to instill in our families the best moral conduct so we can function as intellectual, moral citizens within the community.

Our children learn moral conduct and intelligence in the family community first, no matter how large or how small it may be, whether raised by a single parent, two parents or a parental figure.

Children bring with them into the community all they have learned from the family - a set of either good or bad skills.

The outer community has its influences on the development of a child as well.

If people in the neighbourhood see evil and keep quiet, this conduct will be learned by the child.

They learn evil can prevail and that no one will address it.

A child spends eight hours per day, five days a week at school.

If the moral conduct and intelligence they have learned at home and in their neighbourhood is bad, teachers will likely encounter a student who is troublesome.

This student will receive counselling and be separated from time to time from their peers so the school can try to teach the child the moral conduct he or she should have been taught at home.

Nevertheless, once school is finished, the child returns to their normal environment, which can erase all they learned.

As this child grows, their moral conduct and intelligence gravitates towards what is considered bad in mainstream society.

As the saying goes, birds of a feather, flock together. So he or she will hang with children who curse, whose parents use drugs, who are alcoholics and so on.

As the child becomes an adult, this community they are in is society's greatest problem and society, in their eyes, is their biggest problem.

But he or she still has to function within society - they have to make money, eat and have somewhere to live.

Their moral conduct pushes them in the direction as to how they are going to make money, eat and live - drugs.

It's easy for them to start dealing. It gives them a false sense of authority by having others come to them for substance.

It empowers them and provides the things they want, things every other hard-working person strives to get.

Not only do they sell drugs, they use them as well to take away the sting of the reality they are in.

Their life is not what it should be. They are lowered to animalistic behaviour - young men are having sex with as many women as possible, babies are popping up all over and women are becoming whores looking for security and financial stability, taking drug money to buy the latest fashion.

Just like animals they are territorial creatures fighting to establish and claim their territory.

What we are witnessing is human beings behaving worse than animals - shooting and killing one another, getting drunk and dying in a car crashes, fighting, robbing... all the negative stuff you read about in the paper

We are not animals. What places us above animals is our moral conduct and our intelligence.

The men and women we see hanging outside smoking dope and selling drugs have made a conscious decision to adopt this lifestyle. Only they can pull themselves out of the clutches of evil.

Bermuda is like a body and, like when a body gets sick, it struggles continually to purify itself of poisons.

It tells the brain something is wrong. So I say to all decent people of Bermuda, speak out.

We cannot control what goes on in people's houses but we can make sure that whatever dirty, nasty, poisonous, unmoral and unintelligent conduct that is practiced in a bad home does not manifest itself in our neighbourhoods.

If a child's home life is garbage they should see their neighbourhood is not like home.

They should see that people care and want the best for their country.

If we neglect our responsibility as neighbours to stand up for decency then we add to the negative foundation of a child growing up in a bad home.

Nashid Shakir

Southampton

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