Dear Editor,
I wonder if this society can ever rise above the worst of its primitive impulses. Ever rise is open-ended and fatalistic, and I am not inclined to use such lightly, especially in a serious matter, like social cohesion.
Elections are one year old; the Jubilee celebration one week ago. Yet again, to my agonizing regret there is daily discovery and broadening discernment that One People, One Nation, One Destiny, while sweet and mesmerizingly seductive, might just be unrealistic and unworkable for this society. Stated differently, this inspiring social and political Nirvana just might be beyond local mentalities, local capabilities, and local probabilities.
In view of the population composition, and the cast-iron political allegiances and resolves, that embracing comforting motto might be, at bottom, un-Guyanese, because it is that distant from individual and collective encircling and self-identification. When local history, circumstances, practices, and visions are considered, the motto is definitely inspiring, but is inhuman to recommend. It should be the lodestar, except that almost every citizen’s back is turned away from it, with faces set in stone, and lips drawn in a thin tight line. Yes, it is soothing in sound, but convulsing in the demanding that would make it possible.
In the past year, I have observed from the perch of the periphery victory and defeat; rising and retreating. Along with these come the swaggering chest thumping and the slump of head bowed. The chest thumping and head bowing grow; and so, too, do the widening arrogance, the sullen resentments and the pervasive reciprocal animus from hard irrepressible memory, and now new ones.
Editor, one does not have to look hard or far. Daily, if not moment-by-moment, the auras, verbalizations, body languages, and attitudes first sweep all, and then channel them in the consuming cauldron of a boiling stew that quickly settles into enduring viscosity. Why are you here? What are you doing here? You do not belong. These are the spiraling paroxysms, sometimes muted, but never unrecognizable, that grace day and space and all. Pick a place; any place will do, for this is the emotion and sentiment of the time. Too many are delighted to lurch sideways and backwards, but never forward.
If this is today, what could tomorrow hold for harmony and unity? The grand concept, soaring arc, and embedded vision of this motto of ours collides with messy reality; reality refuses to adjust, to yield, to reach for that which eludes. And so, I ask of myself yet again: what then, how then this fantasy of social cohesion and national unity in this place of One People, One Nation, One Destiny?
What I am seeing, hearing, learning, and examining all point to the dreadful devastating continuum of an ugly monopoly hardwired into captive mentalities: race; of oligarchies dedicated to one immovable objective: race; and of citizenry, almost without fail, committed to one love: race. What was started way back led to short-term success; now no one knows how to turn the runaway bus around; or even how to bring it to a standstill. The systems are not responding at any level. Call it catastrophic failure.
Rather unnervingly, I find myself in a bleak place: Guyanese like things the way they are. The motto is an illusion, a cruel joke, a promise perhaps not intended to be fulfilled. Ever!
Thus, what chance social cohesion? What likelihood national unity? What relevance, and whither accuracy and achievability of One People, One Nation, One Destiny? I answer: the road is long and endless and each step is unbearably heavy. There are no brothers along the way. And yet, the journey must be undertaken and endured.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
