We used to be a generous, kind, friendly nation.
Today, however, we harbour a sort of cynical hardness of heart, with economic exploitation for personal gain, sadly, an accepted norm.
Across this land, the general attitude is that everything involves a money transaction.
Acts of kindness and generosity, without expectation of gain, seem to be an alien idea.
Now everyone expects a “lil raise” for assisting someone with a need. In fact, anyone in desperate need of a helping hand can expect little humane kindness in our Guyanese society, unless that “lil raise” is forthcoming.
Thus, the grossly poor and oppressed in the 21st century Guyanese nation suffers, simply because he or she lacks the means to pay, to ditch out that “lil raise”.
We have become an exploitative society. As we embark on the economic imperative, we throw aside such humane necessities as good conscience, kind acts and a generous spirit.
This social aberration showed up in stark ugliness when that taxi driver demanded US$20 from passengers he rescued from a crashed plane at the international airport.
Over and over again, that story comes to mind as one encounters the brutish focus of our people on exploiting each other for a thousand dollar bill, or several bills.
From the cop doing duty on the street, to the destitute helping an old lady traverse the chaotic roadway, our society has descended into such unethical, immoral and selfish exploitation of each other that we have lost our humane spirit.
Across the country, internet cafes do brisk business as citizens use cheap internet phone services to call their overseas family to send a “lil raise”. They tell sorrowful stories, begging and cajoling.
Inevitably, the US$100 shows up at the local money transfer place, only to be spent and consumed, not put to really good use. The cycle becomes a perpetual routine, fuelling a sad dependency syndrome.
Our society has now perfected this modus operandi of the dependency syndrome: we have learned how to exploit others through sad stories and sorrowful tales.
Even the Government, after declaring this nation a Least Developed Country, knows how to tell woeful tales to secure international aid, grants and loans. We wallow aloud in our self-degradation, and others feel sorry for us and give us a “lil raise”.
This might not be such a bad thing if we actually put the “raise” to good use. But so many of us, especially the young, turn around and purchase expensive smart phones, brand name clothes and expensive consumables with the “lil raise”.
In fact, the drama around buying “credit” for those smart phones is quite hilarious.
Across this country, people daily play out a tragi-comic game of acquiring phone minutes. They then proceed to talk, text and surf social media with deft abandon, until they need more credit.
We exploit each other for little things. While the local population lives this small life, lacking vision and purpose for the most part, foreign visionaries like the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians come in and set up the big businesses.
Local rich folks learn how to dance the exploitative dance, factoring into their accounting systems such expectations as employee theft, lazy workers and a work force looking to exploit every chance they see for petty economic gain.
We no longer plant our yards, or work at hobbies, or dream of building a life of worth and value. We no longer look at each other as neighbours and fellow Guyanese in a struggle to build a world class society.
Instead, we go about our days occupied with making a “lil raise”, and any situation that presents even the glimmer of an economic opportunity we grab with eager brutishness.
From the taxi driver who doubles his fare because someone is in a desperate situation, to the village drunkard salivating at the expectation of a thousand dollar bill from the poor widow on her meagre pension when he weeds her yard, our society has descended to crassness, to this brutish behaviour.
Economic exploitation on this personal level is shocking.
As a people, we embrace a crass materialism, a selfish focus on “what is in this for me”, rather than a selfless reaching out to another. It’s a sad place for any society to be at.
This economic exploitation runs through the society, from high officials to the lowest of citizen – even the homeless and destitute, who expect their “lil raise”, and even become angry when it’s denied.
Maybe it’s human nature. As we seek to re-build the devastated economic fortunes of this land, maybe we sacrifice our humane spirit to gather capital, to build a marketplace where consumers spend and trade.
But in the process we become ugly and sickening as a people.
When all that matters is money, at the expense even of relationships and reaching out to each other in neighbourly love and kindness, the Guyanese society stands to lose its nobleness, its civilized place in the history of the 21st century. But do we even care about such things as building a noble society?
When all that occupies our mind and heart is how to extract a “lil raise” from someone else, how could we build a humane society of beauty and class?
From the touts at the international airport and the bus parks, to the exploitative lawyers and doctors – who refer patients from the public to the private hospitals just so they could make a “lil raise” – our society smells really bad.
This incredible exploitation of each other for a “lil raise” causes us to become brutish, ugly, a deformed nation.
What would it take for us to become again one of the friendliest, kindest nations on the earth?
First, we need to become conscious of the state we are in, and determine to transform how we go about building our lives. We must again see ourselves as our brother’s keeper, instead of, like a brute, living to exploit our neighbours.
