Dear Editor,
Jeff Dujon, a man who played many cricket test matches at the highest level, said that we have “lost the art of conversation.” He was referring to the sharp fusillade from cricket legend, Chris Gayle, aimed at Guyana’s own Ramnaresh Sarwan. I agree with Mr. Dujon on that lost art. But I think we have lost much more than that, as leaders, as a nation, as a people, as individuals.
Maggie Thatcher could be sharp, but she was always scrupulously civil, the epitome of what it takes to be unruffled. Ronald Reagan was all over the place, but still had some dignified bearings, despite not operating with a full deck; it was the many lessons from a long performing past. I urge a longer look, if the stomach can handle, at the standards present today at 1600 Pennsylvania. Indecorous falls way short; indecent is much more applicable, with insipid and unstable trumping everything else.
In Guyana, we have found our feet, only to carry ourselves at the leadership level like barbarians mangling taste and social ambience, all that is sacred; like vandals overjoyed at being given free rein to trample upon and desecrate everything and everyone in sight, we profane at every level. This has made possible only one kind of conversation: that of the liquor shops cum flesh shops cum the shops of vulgar political excesses. The proof is in the vicious and the malicious, who pretend at insight and the profound.
Our words are intended to dismiss and demean, with sharp and sharper edges; and when the piercing does not suffice to bring the visceral relishing expected, then the bludgeon is quickly unsheathed to deliver mortal wounding. Men and women lacking in the nuances of what it means to be articulate and delicate give short thrift to the patience required for the intricate and the appealing. They rush for sledgehammers and battleaxes, when a dangled glove, even a mere wisp of cloth, would more than deliver the coup de grace appropriate to the circumstances. Gone is the subtle message with embedded insult that conveys telling message, while putting down more embarrassingly than any resorting to the vindictive and vituperative could ever achieve.
As leaders go so, too, do their progeny, their worshippers, their docile doltish, probing for any way to find favour, even if it means outdoing those who have mastered the art of stripping themselves naked, without so much as the benefit of a spoken word, or a lifted finger. There is neither time nor interest nor patience for the lost art of conversation, of the civilizing graces of ennobling communication, of not allowing oneself to be dragged down into the cesspits so beloved today.
Social media has provided the perfect outlet for almost all within the massed armies of anonymous shortchanged proud to exhibit how bereft of any saving graces they are, of how retardation is found psychically prospering, and of how making a tawdry national spectacle of one’s pathetic self is felt to be so self-empowering. It is more than grandstanding and showboating; all of this is only of the plain common and downright vulgar.
Yet this is what sells, is found to be cool and stirring, this playing to the crowd, this willingness to be heard and seen around the world for the utter knaves that some take pride in demonstrating endlessly. A lack of eloquence is not deemed to be limiting in any way; in fact, it functions as the perfect springboard to make a splash through appalling verbal sprawls. Who cares (excuse me) the slip is showing, which necessitated hurried remedial attention and action? That was then, and in the now of today, there is absolutely no care if there not a stitch left to hold things together, to provide that minute and momentary fig leaf of covering to save the day, to carry with dignity to another day.
There is no learning, since there is nothing that is left to be learned; everybody knows everything, and no one else does. So, we slash and lash, paw at and maul each other with zeal and vigour, and then declare ourselves prouder and wiser at the end of it all.
A sign of the times, it might be said. I disagree, since there is nothing that can be seen, for such is the darkness of the age. It is so much easier to batter and shatter, to blast and outlast. It is so much more difficult to care and share, to forgive and forget.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
