Peter Espeut's recent lecture, "Public and Private Morality," (Gleaner, July 10) reminds me of passages from James Michener's Hawaii, where the European pastor, in what sounds to many in the audience like a madman's diatribe, tries to alter the moral compass of the native population through what he thinks is careful and logical persuasion.

Espeut's modern, parallel effort simply runs down the same misguided path: convince the public it's time to be more morally upright, this time not to get into Heaven, or avoid the fires of Hell, but in order to succeed in developing oneself into a more modern nation. Well meaning, no doubt it is, but isn't it also possible that such a form of culturally biased, high-mindedness was also all too typical of colonial days within Jamaica's more successful churches? And what good did it do there?

obvious results

The obvious results are all around the island today: rising crime rates, increasing corruption, and an inordinately high reverence for power, money, greed and success. Has it ever occurred to us that the goals we seek may simply be too shallow, our efforts too fleeting, or that even the more "secular" direction we're now taking may well be reflective of a meaninglessness that will never satisfy us for long?

Moreover, if he is correct in stating that the Jamaican church's hierarchy of leadership is the only sector where such morality is rigidly enforced, what does that say for the hypocrisy of Jamaicans in general or for the worth of that morality itself? And who, indeed, has failed to teach the lessons of such hypocrisy if it is not those same, albeit righteous, leaders? No, I think this approach is just another twist on a populist, secular argument that is doomed to failure.

What needs changing are not the moral standards of the nation, but the private and public goals of its individuals. The lessons being constantly taught by those who seek fame, money and power, like the Bushes, the Maddoffs, and the Jacksons, to name only a few, are not the enduring, noble, and heroic examples we think they are. They are the sounding brass of what Espeut calls a "First World" and surely will not survive the test of time and truth.

I am, etc.,

ED MCKOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia

Florida