Raphael Trotman’s call for a Council of Elders to mediate decency and good sense in our nation, as inspiring as the idea is, does not consider the contribution, talent and wisdom of our gifted young.
While we respect the experience of retired politicians, while we salute those who uphold noble characters of moral and ethical choices, while we definitely need these folks to play a role, we must consider that the future of Guyana stands with the young generation.
So we would benefit from a ‘Society of Future Leaders’, rather than a Council of old heads steeped in out-dated ideas rooted in the past.
The new generation thinks radically different from the old. Young people see the world in a different light. The new generation, now growing up, looks at the global village from a globalist viewpoint, with a humanist outlook.
They no longer see tribal divisions, ethnic differences, cultural clashes and even dichotomy of ideas.
The American scholar, E. O. Wilson, in his thesis titled ‘Consilience’, published in 1998, advocates a world where synthesis plays the key role in shaping the 21st century.
This kind of spirit embodies our young people today.
A Council of Elders, as exists in South Africa and many nations around the world, fails to generate that new outlook, a new feel, a new way of being, for humanity.
Even the global Council of Elders, with Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and other “wise old heads” serving as guiding lights, fails to generate a world order where every global citizen wakes up in the morning an inspired person.
In fact, younger leaders, in Bill Gates, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and others, work to create the new world.
The old guys talk philosophy more than action. Though their talk produces an atmosphere of workability, we need the younger people to dream dreams and create inspiring new spaces.
The young create the new world: look at Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon, etc.
Do we see this kind of thinking in our nation? Even the Information Technology Faculty at the University of Guyana lacks futuristic thinking, and sits trapped in old ideas.
So, in Guyana, as we laud Trotman’s initiative and his statesmanlike vision, we must work alongside him to shape the future of our leadership reservoir.
One deficiency we suffer from is this lack of shaping of leaders. On the political front, we saw the complete demise of decency, ethics and morality in all the political parties.
Forbes Burnham, Dr Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Desmond Hoyte, Walter Rodney and others seem to have failed to train leaders of vision and character. They all left mediocre leaders in their wake, who not only destroyed their vision and their hard work, but also dragged our nation to ignoble depths.
So we look for teachers, mentors, coaches who would reach out to our young people, take them in hand, and identify the gifted ones. We need our mentors and coaches to mould these young souls into future leaders, to generate in them a love for literature, for the study of human nature, for moral and ethical living, for visionary insights and moral courage and leadership strength.
How inspiring it would be if our Education Minister, Priya Manickchand, and our Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony, embodied this spirit. Alas, our Government fails on this scorecard.
We need more leaders like cycling coach Hassan Mohamed, who made lasting and lifelong marks in the lives of so many young people.
Young people walk around today convinced that the world does not work out well for the average person because the older folks messed it up. While the world sees a few leaders, a trickle, of noble characters, most world leaders – and today in our own Guyana we see this at play – are of frightening mediocrity. Most world leaders made their societies worse off rather than improve the conditions of their citizens.
How are we, Guyanese, in this 21st century Knowledge Age, as a society?
This is the big question facing us. We can sit around a table and regurgitate endless possibilities for solving the ethnic insecurities, the political quagmire, the shameful corruption that cripples good governance. We could pontificate all manner of possible solutions.
None of this makes an impact significant enough to transform how we are being as a people, as a nation.
We instead need to look deep into our hearts and see how we are being, how we see the world, what is our worldview and our outlook.
Get a group of young people to brainstorm and generate ideas, and they may very well completely ignore those insecurities and divisions and crimes against the State. Instead, the young, who see the world in a different light, may very well draft a blueprint that synthesises the society in a symphony of inspired social cohesion.
Indeed, we do face a crisis in our young people, many of whom lack depth of reading, get plugged in to a culture of superficial existentialist nonsense, and indulge in excessive extreme behaviour.
We cannot see the young as utopian, or as an anchor.
But our future is our young people. This is the paramount idea that must drive us forward.
Our current crop of leaders, coming out of the old school, lacks futuristic thinking.
While, for example, futuristic societies like Canada work to embrace this new Knowledge Age, and inspire their young with such initiatives as building an entrepreneurial culture (see StartUp Canada online), we in Guyana remain caught in the trap of old thinking. We still seek to generate a jobs-culture for our young people, and still train them in Industrial Age ideas of conformity and passive participation.
Still a very young leader himself, Trotman, who as Speaker makes genuine moves to reform Parliament, could be the kind of catalyst to generate a national forum of young people, and then match each of these with mentors, life coaches and experienced, proven men and women of noble characters.
Out of such a forum, we could transform how we are being as the Guyanese nation.
