Look at the letter columns and opinion pages in 2009, and they could be from 1999. The story lines are the same. With rare exceptions, mindsets are mired in a quagmire that envelops, as it comforts. Far too many seem incapable of movement towards a new direction, or of the desire to abandon the old. No, the individual status quos are just fine. This has become the cycle of our stories, and our visions.
Through endless repetition in the printed streams, the fears, prejudices, perceptions, misconceptions, and judgments are regurgitated reflexively. There are no hopes, no dreams, no belief behind the jaded postures and tired arguments. The totality of conversations and confrontations can be encompassed by who did what and when.
Quasi combatants use the history of one group to justify the excesses of another; crimes with carmine flows are seen as mainly black originated; those of the white variety are perceived to be primarily at the hands of brown perpetrators. From one corner of the General Assembly of Guyanese discourse, the most pressing problems have a black face within an overarching black political milieu. And from the other corner, there is the inevitable counterclaim that it is the other way around, and it is the brown skinned who are the real demons in the hell that is Guyana. And so we continue to battle, and battle again, in a convenient civil war of our own making and within the increasingly limiting confines of stultified minds. It is how the tribes find unity, reinforcement, and empowerment. Listen to the same stories near the communal fires: rigging and turn, exclusion and inclusion, and darkness and light. Listen some more to the suspicions concerning those who dare to be different: he is a closet government man; she is an opposition spy; and neither is genuine or to be trusted. Here are two sets of people rushing to point fingers; two mentalities harbouring deep-seated memories of ills inflicted. And two groups of leaders who sing about addition, but who celebrate from the quotient of division. It is the same story, day after day of historical antagonisms perpetuated through visceral animosities.
The devil and the deep dark sea of the political determine the alpha and omega of the mental, and lead to the sound and fury of the social. Such is the state of our visionless future. Or is it a futureless vision?
Time stands still for us. The echoes of yesterday reverberate today, and ricochets already lie in wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a new day, but still the stories and stands will be no less ancient, and no more progressive. The windmills of our minds are yoked to treadmills revolving ceaselessly to nowhere. It is 2009, but it just as well could have been 1979 or 1959.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
