Can self esteem and self love contribute to build the sane relationships in Haiti?

No Haitian people is an island. Even if the Haitian nation had been created and the Haitian state had been settled on a Caribbean island. Loneliness is not an advantage for the people’s growth and must not be constant in their life. The links, precisely the social links are vital for the human specie. So, Every Haitian belonging to this specie need to be linked to others, Haitian people or foreign. Because living into a large or a small group is very fundamental for a man or a woman to be socially emancipated. But, we should be aware about the difference that exists between the groups made by the animals which are acting with only their instincts, without being felt ashamed, having any regrets, when they kill each others, oppress each others, be unjust toward each others. Because, animals don’t know pride, hope, self esteem, self love, as the shame, the blame, and the regrets still being unknown by them into their groups. The instincts are forming the basis of their relationships. But, it is absolutely different for the human beings. Because they are reasonable into the groups built by them. As they could need food when they are hungry, water when they are thirsty, pure and fresh air when they are breathing, home to protect themselves against cold, storm, snow, and warm, security when they are frightened, they need some of these emotions we have named before, to be satisfied of their life. The groups of the human beings are called the social groups, and are structured by the norms and the values. Every individu born into these such groups receives the norms and the values that indicate him the ways of acting and thinking of the other members. This process of learning is named socialization, and it is ruling the interactions between the members of the social groups. And these interactions create some links between the members. This is what the culture of socialization calls social relationships between people. But, these relationships are founded on some moral and social values which should be learned through the different institutions of socialization, like family, school, church, office of work, and group of peers that the sociologist is considering like the social groups . The basic one of the social institutions, into which an individu can learn the social rules of integration, is the family. So an human being starts to discover the social world into the arms of his parents, who had been socialized during their childhood through the same social values that they are transferring to their own kids. Some of the psychological theories say how much love of the parents and the relatives of a kid are important to feed and influence him while he is growing up, and fix some of his future social behaviors. In fact, next to a good communication and the respect of each other into a family, love shared between child and parents, brothers and sisters, can build the self esteem and the self love in a kid’s life. In the other part, violences, disrespect, hate, and insane communication between the members of a family can be the borders that can prevent a kid from developing those such values. Unfortunately, in Haiti, it is more current to observe into the majority of the poor families, living at the popular neighborhoods, a lack of social integration which generates a lack of respect, of love, of sane communication between the members. The violences, under their different forms, influence all the relationships between the members of those such miserable families, socially excluded from the fundamental rights attributed by the Haitian democratic system corrupted by the traditional immoralities. More often, much of the parents of these families are characterized by unemployment, alcoholism, delinquency, and classic or public prostitution. And the stress, the pressure, the depression created by a such life can influence badly the behaviors of these parents, victims of the social exclusion, toward their kids. Therefore, these little kids are growing up with so many silent sufferings into their soul, which contribute to transform them to the violent adults they are in their daily social life. That is a vicious circle which doesn’t stop increasing, during the social reproduction of the actors socialized, but who are living anxiously at the margins of the Haitian society.

As the french Christian psychologist Francoise Dolto says it into her books named “ Tout est langage et La cause des enfants”, two titles that we have traduced in English as “All is language and The cause of the children”, love is a natural language that every kid needs for growing up with a mental health, and for building and keeping the equilibrium of psychism. During his childhood, every little kid must be fed, and ought to experience the conditions of the motherhood with love. Those conditions of the motherhood create his first intimate relationship into and with the world. The presence of love in his life is the first and the crucial atmosphere that ought to be created around them. That can put into his soul the sensation of safety which is necessary to lead him and transfer to him the values of self esteem and self love. But, the question that we should ask ourselves is that: how love can be a part of the life’s culture of those Haitian families who are suffering into the great misery and the infernal poverty generated by the mechanism of the socialization into the Haitian capitalism? Into this capitalism without this heart which had started to create those programs of social policy at USA and Europe, during the decades of the economic theory of John Maynard Kaynes, with the interventionism of the state of providence, in the opposite way of the socialism promoting the economic equality about the incomes. But, whatever the economic system, the needs of the people must be satisfied with the goods created by the industries of production. And accordind to the thinker Abraham Maslow, who brought the theory of the pyramid of the needs, this is that first and fundamental satisfaction which contribute to satisfy the other and secondary needs.

Beside, and that is the second phasis of the psychosocial development of an individu, during his growth, a little haitian kid needs to see his parents sharing love when they are together in their bed, around the family’s table having breakfast, in front of the television watching a movie, or when they are in their car taking him to school, to the beach, to the picnic, or to a park of leisure . Those images of the share of love can print into his mind a model that he will find around him in his future social relationships, when he will become an adult. But, they can also draw into his mind a vision of an Haitian humanism that can help him to respect and love the other Haitian people who are living out his own family in his country, or other people in the world. That means, in the other words, building into the Haitian kid’s soul a vision of a humanism that leads him to respect and love the human specie. But, we can’t expect to see that change in the Haitian social area of the Haitian families, without thinking the change of the economic system, of the public social communication of the moral values through the media, of the market of work. We can’t change the behaviors and the values of the Haitian families, if the other institutions and their social and economic practices into them still being the same as it has being in the history of this society. We don’t have to lose our hope of the change that we are expecting all…We have to wake up our mind and take our hand together for building another society for our kid who need self esteem and self love in their sane relationships.

October 5th 2023
CHERISCLER Evens
Teacher and journalist reporter
We can make the change we need!