Small village living comes easy to us. Big global thinking comes hard. Marshall McLuhan taught literature as an eccentric professor for most of his life in Toronto, Canada. But he became a pop star academic, after coining the term ‘global village’ to describe the concept of a world that technology shrinks from a big remote globe into a small revolving village.
We understand small village living. Little villages line the roads that link the three counties on the coastal plain. Even our capital city, Georgetown, is small. We, of course, are not alone in our small living spaces. Throughout the Caribbean small communities define the people.
Yet, in the Caribbean people know the bigness of the Caribbean Sea. They look around them and see small land space but vast potential in the massive blue waters surrounding them, with golden sand making lovely beaches, where massive tourist cruise liners berth.
Our population lives cramped, caught between dense forests covering 80 percent of its landmass, and the angry, muddy Atlantic Ocean threatening the below sea level coastal belt. We know small village living.
And in a land accustomed to small village living, the concept of a big global role comes hard. In village after village it’s hard to find persons who believe they can make a difference in the world. Most people feel the weight of that enormous despair crying “what can one person do?”
McLuhan’s groundbreaking book ‘Understanding Media’ shows why one person can make a big difference in the world today. In fact, one person has always made the difference in the world.
Look at Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela.
Look at Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook. Single-handed, he transforms the world, linking 300 million people through one website.
Look at the website Google and how it transforms the world we know today. Google revolutionizes how the world deals with knowledge.
Look at Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, and his idea for Microsoft.
Look at Oprah Winfrey launching the newest TV network in the US as a global media project.
One person can make a big global difference. History teaches us that lesson.
McLuhan came up with his ‘global village’ idea after his brilliant insight that we live in a “mediated society”. The world today comes together into a cuddling little village because of media technology. Through media, one person can instantly reach the world with his or her idea. Through media, available to us at our fingertips, one person can make a big global difference. Indeed, the newest billionaires in the world – several from India, Brazil and China – are all making their money with ideas for new media enterprises that go global overnight.
Guyana’s time has come. Anyone with a good idea in Guyana can aspire to go global, to reach the world, to make a big difference.
President Jagdeo’s initiative to launch high speed wireless Internet technology across the country could be the best thing yet for democracy to really take root in the land. Government could also use the tech platform to wipe out chronic poverty.
Equipped with a computer with relevant software, a desire to learn media production skills, and high-speed Internet hook-up, anyone anywhere – from Pomeroon, Lethem, Linden, New Amsterdam, Albouystown, Crabwood Creek, Black Bush Polder, Mahaica, Orealla – could launch a global initiative that transforms the world.
We live in a mediated society that shrinks the earth into a global village, where billions of people are reachable. One person can instantly communicate across the global village, speaking to billions of others.
We have a lot going for us: our language is the new world language of this global village, English; we are a people of western culture; we have easy access to the global knowledge field – books and ideas; we have a high level of literacy; we have developed a sturdy Internet culture.
The only thing that may be stopping us as a nation in this 21st century mediated global village from creating world billionaires and impacting people everywhere – in Africa, in India, in China, in Europe and the US and Canada – with spanking new ideas that improve life experience for multitudes of people, is self-belief. Do we believe we can ever be a great people, a great nation: global citizens?
Government goes about the world with begging bowl in hand, protesting that we are a least developed country. President Jagdeo bemoans the lack of forest-preservation money from Norway. Yet, McLuhan’s idea grants us the status of most developed society, if we see our ability to ride the information highway to accelerate our society into 21st century living.
Instead of begging for money from overseas, should we instead be spending our time and resources in those little villages searching for and developing a love of new, innovative thinking?
In Bangladesh, that’s what Muhammad Yunus did. Himself a university professor like McLuhan, Yunus founded the Grameen bank with its microcredit programme. This programme has seen millions of people living in chronic poverty improve their living standards, all over the world. He’s won the Nobel Prize for Peace for alleviating so much poverty across this global village.
This is the kind of thinking we need to see in our land. For this country is a global society. We have a Diaspora living all over the world, whose population is estimated at more than a million people spanning just two generations. We are already a global society.
Let us see that. Let us step out of the small village mentality, with full humility of heart, and cease trumpeting to the world that we are least developed.
Let us gather ourselves with resolve and fortitude and take our place on the world stage. One of the benefits of our British history is that we are well-equipped for the culture that makes up the global mediated village. More than someone in India, China or Brazil, we know the language and culture of the new world. Let us arise and shine, for we are a global people, the Guyanese nation spanning every corner of the globe. In that, we are ready to make a big difference in our world. It is our responsibility, each one of us.
Indeed, we have produced global sons and daughters. Sir Shridath Ramphal became a world leader, and served on the Commission for Global Governance. He co-wrote the report called Our Global Neighbourhood. And he had a hand in the Millennial Goals of the United Nations.
Carl Greenidge, former Finance Minister, served at the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Mohamed Shahabuddeen served at the World Court.
Singer Eddy Grant joined world famous stars in South Africa for Nelson Mandela`s 90th birthday party in 2008 where he performed his world number one hit `Joanna`. We all know of Clive Lloyd`s single-handed transformation of West Indies cricket, and of Gibbs, Kallicharran, Kanhai, Chanderpaul, Hooper and Fredericks.
This global aspect of our national character, already enshrined in the Diaspora, stands out with outstanding excellence. Yet, we go about the world with our small village mentality. Let us aspire to our big global thinking again. Let us come together as a global Guyanese nation and join hands – the Diaspora and the villages and towns and city of the homeland, forgetting the differences and embracing our Guyanese nationhood.
May this big global thinking define us in 2011 as we start the second decade of this century. May we aspire to make a big difference for good in the new world order, each one of us.
This writer can be reached by email at beingshaun@ gmail.com
