Feeling Safe in the Chains

Few melodies resonate deeper in my consciousness than Bob Marley's wail:
 "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
 None but ourselves can free our minds...."
The lyrics that follow speak of "fear", and of finding false comfort in believing that the way things are, is they way they are meant to be:
 "Some say it's just a part of it
 We gotto fulfill the book...."
What Marley is begging us to do is difficult.
 I once heard a story of a man trapped in a cage for many years. One day he, by some stroke of good fortune, was discovered, led to the mouth of the cave and shown his way to freedom. The man turned immediately around and crawled back into the cave. Light hurts the eyes of those who have been in darkness too long.
 Too many Caribbean people are no longer slaves on the sugarcane and cotton plantations, but we are still not quite free. I doubt that true freedom is possible because chains around the mind are sometimes unbreakable. Let me give you an example of the chains around my own mind.
 I bought a plot of land and am now building on it. I have absolutely no desire for either a wall structure or a large building. I have no taste for debt. I live a debt free life. I like the simple life. In fact, I like the very simple life. But I am a mental slave because I cannot live as simply as I would like, as I find that I care about how my friends, who wear heavier chains than I do (meaning that they are into more "stuff acquisition" and are deep in debt) than I (by nature) am. I care about what they think about my small house of wood, when their houses are large structures of cement. I care what they think about my riding  of a donkey as opposed to the driving of my jeep ( see.... you are laughing at my riding of a donkey, and this is because the chains are around your mind too, so buying and riding a donkey just seems like real backwardness to your "chained" mind). I will never be able to get a date as a traveler by donkey. The woman would most certainly come out of her house with a full bucket of water poised to throw over me if I pulled up in front of her home on a parked donkey going hee-haw, instead of a  Hummer going toot-toot.
 This might sound funny, but we don't make cars in the Caribbean, as far as I know, but we buy and sell them, although they cost millions of American dollars far above what we can afford and which come from elsewhere. The American dollar is not our local currency. The vehicles we drive cost more than most of us make in one year. The more expensive the vehicle we drive, the more "respect" we acquire from our equally mentally chained society peers.
 Our little girls and boys do not wish to grow up and become farmers. They want to be doctors and lawyers who must go to the farmer for food.
Amazing.
 We boast of our brothers, cousins and sisters who are lawyers, accountants, scientists and engineers, and then we apologetically say, "I am the only one who did not amount to much, for I am only a fisherman". Our chains tell us that a fisherman is not as honorable as an attorney.The chains are liars.
 We know our chains are lying to us, but we cannot afford to care, because we love the feeling of thinking that we are rich and successful, when, if  the gospel truth be told, most Caribbean of us in the Caribbean can only afford to be traveling on donkeys.