Like many St Lucians—although not nearly enough—I was both horrified and embarrassed by the photos and videos of the slaughter and dismemberment of a juvenile orca by a Vieux Fort fisherman. While the purpose of this piece is not to rehash the bloody episode, the fisherman, best known by the nickname Teraflex, made some defensive comments I consider worthy of analysis.
“Going fishing out there is not easy. Sometimes you go fishing and for a whole week it’s just gas burning, and you don’t catch anything.” Referencing directly the hordes of critics on social media: “Unless those people were in my shoes, they could never understand.”
Now, what Teraflex is implying here is that he believes his killing of the endangered baby orca was justified. Why? Because Teraflex was desperate. He had bills to pay. He needed money to purchase food. He had hungry mouths to feed. I’ve decided to name the logic of the bus driver turned fisherman. Let’s call it the “Teraflex Justification Theory.” TJT for short.
While we can debate the morality of killing a juvenile orca, and whether or not it was technically legal, I think we can all agree that it was, morally and legally—at the very least—questionable. The main question I’d like to pose, however, is How elastic is the Teraflex Justification Theory? How far can it be stretched? Is praedial larceny justifiable? Is robbery at gunpoint? What about murder? Would robbing a small bakery be justified if the bandits claimed they had hungry mouths to feed? Small children who had nothing to eat? According to the Teraflex Justification Theory, not only would the bakery robberies be justifiable, the perpetrators deserved to be offered up as examples to be emulated by dead-beat dads. Worthy of Dad of the Year awards.
I think about Teraflex Justification Theory, not in black and white terms, but rather on a sliding scale. The more economically desperate an individual, the more justified his actions—regardless of legality. The problem here, though, is that each of us has our own made-to-measure sliding scale, by which to justify our actions. Judging by the heated social media exchanges about the orca, even in a society as small as ours, there are many sliding scales. Visually, I think it looks something like this:
Now let’s ask another question: How justifiable is robbery?
While each person has a different sliding scale, when we aggregate them all we can get a nation-wide sliding scale of the Teraflex Justification Theory. From this simplified illustration, we can see that at a country-level there is a large degree of ambiguity about the question Is Robbery Ever Justifiable.
Great, now let’s return to the original question: What is the most pressing issue facing our country today: Crime or the Cost of Living? According to our latest philosopher-king Teraflex, these issues are intricately linked. The higher the cost of living, the more justifiable the crime. And so, presumably, the more crimes will be committed. Intuitively, this makes sense. In other words, Teraflex is suggesting there is a relationship between the cost of living and the justification for crime.
As we’re all aware, the cost of living in this country has been on the uptick and is heading only in one direction for the foreseeable future: Sky high. Two of the key components of cost of living are electricity and food.
In response to the rising cost of electricity, here’s what Trevor Louisy, managing director of the island’s monopoly electricity utility LUCELEC, recently pronounced:
“. . . Despite our renewable energy efforts to date, the sharp increases in oil prices will result in increases for electricity bills. This is caused by external factors over which LUCELEC has no control. But there is something customers can do: use less electricity.”
Talk about passing the buck! Basically, LUCELEC is attempting to wash its hands of any responsibility for its shameless years of profiteering at the expense of Saint Lucians by telling us to revert to the dark ages of candles and kerosene lamps.
I find it difficult to believe that a company that has held an exclusive operating license since 1964, which guarantees it annual profits, should be permitted simply to shirk all responsibility for the current state of this country’s over-reliance on fossil fuels and our skyrocketing electricity rates.
Speaking of which: what are these “renewable energy efforts” of which Mr Louisy speaks? The 3MW solar panel farm in La Tourney, Vieux Fort? Some context: in 2014, Dr James Fletcher publicly announced at the United Nations Climate Summit that Saint Lucia is committed to generating 35% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Well, how are we faring so far in the year 2022? I’ve found figures that put Saint Lucia’s total electricity produced from renewables to be anywhere from 2% to 8%. How would you rate that performance? What do you think the current administration’s perspective is on this topic? I’m certainly curious.
And before we use the usual cop-out excuse that LUCELEC is controlled by foreigners, not by Saint Lucians, let’s have a look at the shareholders-of-record according to the company’s annual report, shall we?
Finally, we come to the rising cost of food. In much the same way LUCELEC’s Trevor Louisy directed Saint Lucians to just use less electricity, so our caring Prime Minister has prescribed the panacea against rising food price: Eat more bananas. Quite a mouthful to chew on!
The Saint Lucia Labour Party ran a campaign focused on rescuing the country’s most vulnerable. Do you know which section of society is disproportionately affected by rising food and electricity costs? Hint: a great many of them live in Trou Rouge. PJP country. They are living evidence of how much Philip J. Pierre cares!
