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This is the Year of the Tiger. But in Bermuda, I hope 2010 becomes the Year of the Human Being. Homo Sapiens - the "the wise human" - has been none too wise in Bermuda these last 12 months, and all too ready to disregard the humanity of his fellow Bermudians.

Gang violence is the most obvious example, but it does not start or end there. Almost every aspect of Bermuda life, from the way we run our schools or build our buildings, to the way we play our political games, reveals a tendency to dismiss the humanity of other people.

It is a long tradition, whose highlights include slavery, segregation, the denial of equal rights to women, colonial rule, and the economic domination of the many by the few.

And it includes a wide variety of secretive and oligarchic ways of running a country that continue to this day.

In the short term, it is easier to categorize, stereotype and condemn than it is to understand. It is easier to shun or attack than debate. It is easier to act unilaterally than to negotiate.

This has long been true in education, where for years we shuffled a huge percentage of kids out of the academic stream when they reached the age of 11. We didn't worry too much that we put them in inferior schools, because we had already condemned them.

Even today, as we struggle sincerely - if not too successfully - to reform public education, our children are often stereotyped by the schools they attend, and thereby stripped of some of their humanity.

Elected autocracy

This has long been true, too, in government. For all our efforts to democratize Bermuda - one person, one vote of equal value - we still content ourselves with a brand of elected autocracy rather than anything approaching real participatory democracy.

Often our leaders really do know what's best.

But often they don't trust people with information, don't conduct business openly or fairly, aren't open to debate or discussion, and demonize their opponents.

When this happens, they are treating Bermudians as something less than intelligent, reasonable human beings.

Trying to sort through a complicated mess of grievances, rivalries and resentments is hard.

It is easier to shoot and kill, and then shoot to get even, and then shoot to prove you aren't intimidated, and then shoot to get even again.

This obviously applies to gang violence.

But it's an apt description of the way we conduct a lot of our politics too.

Each time another man is shot dead, people ask: "Where will it all end?" It sounds simplistic, but it's absolutely the right question to be asking.

There is no end when we dismiss other people's views as unimportant, when we use other people's wrongdoing to justify our own, or when we respond to shootings with more shootings.

The only way out, in the end, is the hard and complicated way of treating other people like the human beings they really are.

There cannot be progress without the hard slog of discussion and conciliation.

So in all our public actions, we need to make 2010 the Year of the Human Being.

Murderers must be caught and punished, but gangs will only be dismantled in the end through negotiation. Neighbourhoods that are marginalized must be drawn in to the Bermuda community, economically and socially.

When we make public decisions, educate our children, celebrate culture, create new businesses, build new buildings, we should always be asking ourselves if we are treating our fellow human beings as real, sentient human beings.

Are we doing what's right for them, or only for ourselves? Are we listening to their views, or only our own? Are we helping ourselves succeed, or helping others?

We often feel powerless in the face of gang violence, and in many ways we are.

But all of us through our individual lives, and our Government through its public words and actions, can do much more to bring about powerful change - by treating each other as real, live and important human beings.

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