Dear Editor,
Despite a disappointing, disquieting and scary year for Guyanese many are now in a restless search to find the perfect gifts to give to the kids, the spouse, and very dear relatives and friends. Some are focusing on home improvements and aiming to go well beyond the traditional paint and lino job as they convert a house into a home where all the family can gather, be jolly and enjoy the best the season has to offer. As a year of endless worry, fear and darkness (both psychological and GPL real) recedes we see a fairy light at the end of the tunnel and we embrace it.
This, of course, is what is taking place at Christmas. We forget that the refuse collectors consistently did not turn up to collect our smelly waste and on the few occasions they did collect they ignored the bigger, more troublesome garbage we left in plain sight near the regular rubbish as if dead branches, old wood, rotting furniture, widow mesh and condemned toilet fittings do not constitute garbage. We forget the postman knocking 4 times not twice every time he delivered a GPL invoice or leaving cherished mail out in the rain wedged unnoticeably in the gate metal work.
All these perennial offenders are forgiven once a year and rewarded too. Ignore their little envelopes at your peril.
Surely Christmas is a standing offence to the idea of rational behaviour. Almost the entire population seems to launch upon an orgy of gift-giving, card-sending and party-throwing, abandoning any rational calculus of self interest or economic good sense.
Here is a whole array of unpriced economic acts in which people are doing no more than trying to please, to earn goodwill, create social obligations and cement their relationship to generate, in its broadest sense, mutual regard. They are pitching into the world of social horse-trading and gift-giving without any robust means, except a combination of trust and instinct, of assessing whether their sallies will pay off.
But will next year’s unconventional garbage be collected and disposed of with the normal household rubbish? Will the postman forget to put the GPL bill in the letter box, return it to sender, or simply tip it into the trench? While plainly a gift or contribution is the first step in a hoped-for exchange, with no prices and with psychic rather than monetary gains sought, there is neither a predictable equilibrium nor an internally consistent model to explain what is going on. Christmas is nonsense in economic terms. There is no real reciprocity. Whether you put $1,000 or $10,000 in the little holly-decorated envelope fiercely marked “Garbage Men” your battered Christmas tree will still be studiously ignored and left languishing in plain sight by the garbage bin taking root when Easter comes. We call that forced recycling.
As for postie she will continue to drop GPL invoices in your letter box, along with water bills, GT&T bills and if you’re really unlucky, a few of those horrible long, brown legal envelopes that only Guyanese attorneys-at-law still use.
Nevertheless, the economy of good will is the essential glue of both a society that respects itself and one seeing to better itself. This is understood, if only subliminally, by all Guyanese. As a caring people, we are not adrift. Reciprocity, trust and giving without calculation underpin our sociability. So don’t get angry when you’re broke in January and GPL sends the men in black to plunge you back into darkness. You have been playing your part in the economy of goodwill, and your lack of certainty about whether it is all going to be reciprocated is part of the human condition.
So stand your friends another round of drinks or preferably a grenade each. A happy and prosperous new year in the economy of goodwill and remember… gift and you may receive.
Yours faithfully,
F Hamley Case
