By Dave Martins
A recent editorial in the local press lodged a strident complaint about various social deteriorations in Guyana (manners; office practices; driving; family values; morality; etc.) and delivered an impassioned plea for a return to the good old days when there was much less of this slack behaviour around.
The editorial recalled a time when salutations between people on the street, even between strangers, were a common practice, and it bemoaned the absence of male role models as positive influences on the young. It also cited the breakdown in family discipline with today’s parents apparently handing over control to their teenagers without a whimper, and it also pointed out the lewd public behaviour and use of obscenities now common among young people. It spoke of the speeding on our roadways, of teachers being disrespected in schools, and of sloppiness in the work place.
The week that editorial came out, a man from LBI, standing in line next to me at the bank, showed me the comment and said, “Buddy, dis place gan tuh de dawgs.” On the surface, one has to agree; nothing that the editorial discussed was exaggerated or contrived, and on the surface it is indeed a depressing scenario.
However (and this is a big “however”) to step back and look at the picture from a wider view is to see that the deterioration referred to is not peculiar to Guyana; it is worldwide. If you travel, and take time out from the photos and the partying to listen to people, you will hear that very complaint, and, indeed, the replication of the very examples mentioned in that article, in every corner of the globe.
I have heard it in boomtown Toronto, and all over the State of Florida. I have heard it in Barbados – “Look at all dese young chil’ren wukkin’ up.”
I’ve heard it in Castries – “Yuh cyan even walk in de street in peace, mate.”
I’ve heard it in Trinidad – “Hear na padna; Trinidad gone, you know.”
And so when I hear it in Guyana, I recognise it as something that is happening wherever mankind lives. Let me be clear that I am as distressed by it as the writer of the editorial, and I am equally at a loss to explain how this came about, first of all so suddenly and, more intriguingly, all over the world at the same time. The editorial is right to see it as an astonishing shift, but it is a gradual deterioration we are caught in – it’s global.
I recall about three years ago speaking with a group of teachers from England who were holding workshops for teachers in Cayman, and how shocked I was to hear this group complain how completely unmanageable the students in their own country had become. “These kids have no respect for you. Many of them actually scare you.” In England? The cradle of good manners and “propah” behaviour? You know the disease is universal when the English catch it.
So that’s the first thing to accept: this is a world problem; it’s like overweight pickney; it’s everywhere. That’s a daunting prospect, but the other part of this condition, and the even more daunting aspect, is that hoping for a return to the behaviours or values of these bygone years is a vain hope.
The way we act now, as parents, as youths, as business people, as teachers (you can go down the list) is markedly different because the forces acting upon us, and the circumstances of the world, are markedly different.
Time for simple contemplation; the pace at which we do things; the volume and availability of media; the electronic communication capabilities; the impact on us from images in print and on the tube (and now handheld devices); the mania for materialism; have radically transformed us into the creatures we are now. To wish for us to behave as we did in 1960 is absurd because we are not living in 1960, and to wish that we will voluntarily abandon the current milieu is equally absurd.
Nobody is going back to a telegram exchange with someone in the Pomeroon taking 10 days, when a cell phone is available to cover it in five minutes.
Nobody is going back to taking 6 days on a sailing vessel to get to London, when you can do it in 12 hours.
Nobody is going back to one old movie a week at a cinema in Vreed-en-Hoop, dealing with bed bugs, when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch current movies endlessly on your television set or laptop.
Nobody will accept a 2-hour bus ride on a red-dirt road to the airport when you can get there in 30 minutes on an asphalt strip by car.
It’s somewhat simplistic to put it this way, but it’s essentially true that you can get the behaviours of that earlier time, only in that earlier time. They’re not coming around again.
And that leads to my final point, which is that the graph showing patterns of human behaviour over time, in almost every society, is downward, to less restraint, and the borders are always being pushed. Consider the use of four-letter words in public entertainments. I recall as recently as 35 years ago, fierce debate in some countries about the use of the word “damn” in print or on radio. Compare that to what you hear as daily fare on North American television programmes; as for the comedy specials, or the rap concerts, put the children to bed and fumigate the place. Compare the acceptability of bared breasts, and thonged backsides, commonly seen in public today. Consider the different attitudes to marriage; promiscuity; drug use; sex changes. In every case, the trend is downward toward ever fewer taboos; ever more immorality; ever more “slackness”.
The arts, always a good mirror of what is happening in a society, is a good place to look. Open today’s magazines; listen to today’s dancehall and gangsta rap; go to a soca or a reggae concert and see what audiences today expect from their performers.
Ultimately that mirror is a very revealing one. It shows us that our people today clearly wish to stay on that downward slope of less restriction and less inhibition and less control. To hope otherwise is to be disappointed. History doesn’t show mankind ever turning that clock back to any enduring degree.
And by the way, let me give you some more bad news: 15 or 20 years from now, somebody will write in a newspaper complaining about social behaviours then and wishing we could go back to how things were in 2009.
