Dear Editor,
To say that because something has never worked before in a given set of circumstances, it can never work, is the definition and quintessence of defeatism.
In 1903 when the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, told friends and admirers that they were about to make a controlled sustained flight in a powered heavier-than-air machine many laughed or scoffed in disbelief saying it had never been done before and couldn’t possibly be done.
Against all the odds the brothers flew 852 ft and proved their detractors wrong. Since then man has put heavier machines on the moon (240,000 miles away) and can travel through air faster than the speed of sound, not to mention that man has sent 6 spacecraft rocketing their way to Mars some 235 million miles away from Earth.
Of course there are myriad examples of achievements that defied all the odds at the time: in literature (Shakespeare’s plays), in art (Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’), in politics (Obama’s presidency), in music the Beatles from Liverpool), in medicine (Dr Christian Bernard’s first open heart transplant) and so on.
Had history’s greatest conquerors proceeded diffidently on the basis that their military ambitions had never before been realized and could never be, names like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Alexander the Great and Lawrence of Arabia would not now be familiar to millions the world over.
Every day I listen to fellow Guyanese for whom the status quo is the only reality, and who are convinced that initiatives or actions which may have failed in the past are condemned to perpetual failure.
I also suspect that many Guyanese who refuse to vote or even register as voters are of the view that nothing can change in their lifetimes in Guyana. That what was, is, and always will be.
Yet this belief of interminability is often based on just a few years’ history or precedence in a world that’s 4.6 billion years old. How can what happened in a clutch of a few years ever be a harbinger of certainty in the future? Life is simply not like that and not that simple. Things change, situations evolve and little remains the same despite the odious French maxim about ‘plus ca change…’ The SN editorial ‘Guyana 5.0’ of January 14, 2010 says in its final paragraph that, “The tools to upgrade Guyana and the simple instructions exist in each of us. The will and verve to do it is what we lack.” I believe Guyanese have also lost hope, and that it is this paucity of hope which creates the inertia that has taken the place of will and verve.
I am reminded of the lyrics of Sinatra’s hit song High Hopes:
Just what makes that little old ant
Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can’t
Move a rubber tree plant
But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes
So any time you’re getting low
′stead of letting go
Just remember that ant
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant
Yours faithfully,
F. Hamley Case
