The message is important

‘Don’t kill the messenger.’ So said Sophocles (496-406 BC) and the advice is thus doubly weighted. The message itself is weighty and it was pronounced by one of the greatest playwrights of all time, a philosopher of distinction too. It has been extended by others but here is a definition Cass came across: “‘Don’t kill … ‘is a metaphoric phrase used to describe the act of lashing out at the (blameless) bearer of news and information that no one wants to hear.”

With the second of the two relevant cases in Cass’ tale, she changes that last bit in the explanation to read – “that certain persons don’t want to hear.” In the other case she is inclined to blame the messenger of unknowingly conveying a damaging message without verification.

Instance of deforestation

Listening to MTV Channel One news on Monday night, Cass sat up straight when she read on screen a notice issued from the presidential secretariat informing that a private TV station had highlighted an area where trees had been wantonly felled in the name of development and since the news item was untrue and damaging to the government, the station that screened a large area laid bare with massive fallen trees strewn all over, once identified, would be dealt with. Cass does not sit watching TV with pen and paper at hand, hence her inability to name the place and what the development project was. But she’s seen recently on TV, forest acreage laid bare to cultivate vegetables! Deforestation and illegal culling of trees to get bare land or to sell timber goes on apace, gathering speed, one would say, as greed increases. A large number of huge trees were felled to renovate a wewa. The peasants said it was wanton destruction. Sand mining has become a rapacious menace, with imbalance to ecosystems and creation of dangerous water holes.

We had the case of a woman facing a barrage of verbal abuse but remaining defiant in the face of a couple of important officials including a politician. She was defending an area of mangrove that was marked for removal in the name of development which was the building of a hotel by an individual with political clout. Though the woman officer of Wildlife was a messenger carrying the message of wanton destruction of an ecosystem, she was not killed nor punished; rather was she praised and held up as an example for emulation by other public officials.

In this very recent case too, it should not be a direct ‘off with its head!’ – killing the TV Station messenger but a slow and thorough investigation and if that particular news item was fake or exaggerated, to exonerate the TV Station since its message is wider: the rape of forests goes on unchecked and often instigated or encouraged by persons with political clout. This investigation should lead to further investigations. A forest cut down is almost its final end, after a hundred or more years of its growing to be a forest. And this with the world facing a disaster more serious than Covid-19 in the way of global warming and its sure destruction of Earth itself, if not stalled. The messenger may have (Cass emphasizes the doubt) got its news incorrect, but instead of punishing the film clip producers, the presidential secretariat should make a wider circle of its investigation on the ground, island-wide. Cass repeats: blatant deforestation occurs more than ever.

Another message and messenger

Would Cassandra be guilty of disrespect when she says Prof A H Sheriffdeen seems to have inadvertently turned messenger by speaking on behalf of an absent father who has protested about the treatment his 10-year-old son received from the surgical staff of the Lady Ridgeway Hospital? The surgeons of the hospital collectively wrote back to the College of Surgeons of Sri Lanka to which body Prof Sheriffdeen as messenger had directed his relayed message for due investigation. Here in this case, however learned or respected Prof Sheriffdeen may be, he seems to be a messenger who can be faulted as he pitted an absent father’s complaint against the specialist surgeons of the premier children’s hospital in Sri Lanka. The surgeons explained matters clearly. Cass and thousand others know of the dedicated, professional medical and surgical care given patients of the LRH.

Ban on cattle slaughter

Cassandra sat up bolt upright again when she read in Wednesday’s The Island this heading on page 1 “Cattle slaughter banned.” “The Cabinet yesterday approved a proposal for banning cattle slaughter immediately.” One reason was “that traditional farming had suffered due to an increase in the slaughter of cattle.” That to Cass was ludicrous even though she knows nothing about animal farming. Cattle are now known to cause atmospheric warming through emission of poisonous gasses. If milk is the question there must be means less drastic that will increase output.

Banning hardly ever works. What about Muslims and Christians and others who eat cattle flesh? Is it fair to deprive them of an important component of their diet? Buddhists, particularly politicos and Cabinet members, should stop eating flesh. Then automatically killing of cattle would reduce drastically. Banning is too drastic and partisan an act.

And so we seem to be lurching from one ban to another, from one controversial issue to another. Good luck to poor ole Lanka!