Dear Editor,
These days as we prepare to embrace Christmas, happiness is predicated upon consumption and the only virtuous activity is material enrichment. There are pleasures to be derived from consumption, but they are nothing compared to reaching out to those less fortunate than we are and in greater need of the basics for survival purposes. This is the essence of goodwill towards man as opposed to goodies for self, family and friends.
The caring society is under assault. As usual we will seek to please family and friends at Christmas but no one else. We are being less and less generous to those on the breadline or in financial difficulty. Many choose to think the poor have no one but themselves to blame for the state they’re in, but this is a mere justification for selfishness and greed. The consumer society and too much exposure to imported values, it seems, are part of the process of weakening our community spirit and our willingness to give without reciprocity. If giving to those we don’t really know does not generate a feel-good effect, the debate about why is essentially sterile. The lack of a feel-good factor betrays a fundamental malaise in Guyanese society: that while we pretend to care and to want better for our fellow citizens, it remains, in our way of thinking a government responsibility and not our own. It is the very march of the perennial blame game that is letting us off the hook as our brother’s keeper and lies at the heart of the current mood.
The lack of tangible growth in the economy, with the increasing difficulty of securing and holding a full-time job, does not merely make us aware of just how vulnerable we are, just how careful we should be with our money and how expensive everything has become; they are entering the very marrow of human experience, and impacting on our readiness and capacity to treat others as our own, which is the prime purpose of our being.
It will be Christmas in a few weeks. This Christmas we must give and give generously without expecting to receive. Giving without calculation underpins our sociability – so don’t get too angry if your son gives away the ham or your daughter bakes black cakes for the poor people down the road. And don’t be too hysterical if you’re out of pocket come January when you survey the financial ruin of another Christmas. You have been playing your part in the economy of regard, and your certainty that it is not going to be reciprocated is part of the human condition as we extend goodwill towards man.
Yours faithfully
F Hamley Case
