Our nation sits in a slump, a sort of non-progressive stupor, and those who care talk of change. We want to change things, thinking this would make our lives “better”.
But this drive for change fails. We invented a national political party around the concept of us all joining hands to change the way we do things.
Our governance of ourselves, the way we manage our city and our environment and our national affairs all need change, this mantra says.
We want to see people change, the government change, the way we live change.
Never mind the fact that we saw change actually happen in Parliament, that made absolutely no real difference for us. Of course there’s a lot of noise from the “new dispensation”, with the uncomfortable Executive President shifting about at the Office of the President, throwing a tantrum, and with the Opposition roaring its toothless bark at the closed Cabinet.
We become like the student of life who asks the incorrect question. What kind of change do we need, we ask. And the instinctive, reactive answer is that we need all kinds of change, to the extent that we become overwhelmed with the mammoth amount of change we should implement.
In the US, President Barack Obama embraced this idea of change. He talked constantly of change. But his idea of change came wrapped up in hope. His book he named not after change, bur rather ‘The Audacity of Hope’.
Change of and by itself becomes the incorrect question, the invalid worldview.
So instead of seeing ourselves needing to change, let’s start thinking a different question. It’s not what we need to do as a nation, or even as an individual Guyanese. Rather, how should I be as a Guyanese? How should our nation be? It’s not about what we should do, but rather how we should be, as one people, unique upon the world stage.
One answer comes easy: we ought to transform ourselves. This idea of transformation inspires the kind of action plan that would see the nonsense going on at City Hall, for example, become silly and stupid.
The Mayor and his loyal staff protest and walk out of meetings, with Central Government backing a rebel manager seeking to change how we do things at the collapsing City Hall.
This quest for change sees head banging instead of garbage disposal.
At Parliament, we see the Opposition, so paranoid about change, and the Government, so psychotic about not changing, clash in anger over the money laundering bill.
The scenario leaves the citizen uninspired, fed-up, disgusted and distinctly divorced from being a constructive Guyanese.
So our leaders seek change, and the nation drifts from one quarrel to the next, like disgruntled kids bored with everyday routine. We fight about Linden electricity rates one year, to the extent that three lives are lost, and the next year we forget that and move on to money laundering laws.
And the result? We drift into a demeaning society that refuses to work as a 21st century nation. We see a public downtown ‘mall’ employ a security guard to stand idle watch at a public washroom door because patrons would steal the toilet paper. We ask customers to pay to use public washrooms, and pay extra for toilet paper.
This is the sordid society we harbour, under the banner of “change”.
Instead, we must seek to transform how we live, how we see ourselves, how we are being as citizens of a 21st century world.
This kind of message seems lost on our leaders, though. The ones at Parliament, and Cabinet, look at such a message as this with blank stares, unable to comprehend. We have lost our ability for original thinking. We copy easily.
We copy the original idea we saw in Trinidad and Tobago to form a coalition of the opposition, in that quest to change government. We copy even the message of change itself, from President Obama, thinking this would make a difference in our land.
We must start thinking transformation, a radical moving away from the old order of things, into a new order, creating a society that builds a social structure where every citizen makes a mark.
The idea that we must transform our nation, rooted in action that genuinely works outside of tribalistic self-interest, could see the average citizen inspired and motivated to play a dynamic role in building our nation.
Whereas change is a shallow, cosmetic repainting of how we do things, transformation is a deep surgical operation that reforms how we are being. While change seeks to make or become different, transformation remakes the form, nature and appearance of how we are as a society.
Were we to walk around talking to the nation about transformation, rather than change, we would stir the hearts of people with inspired motivation for action.
These subtle differences, which may seem as mere rhetoric, make a huge impact on the psyche of people.
In communicating an idea, we must flesh out the idea, think it through, exercise intellectual effort.
We cannot just pick a word to express a concept.
Our nation needs to transform the Constitution, not just change it.
So, in our language, in the way we formulate the idea, we may be losing the impact of the message on the audience.
At the end of the day, the transformation of our society is in direct proportion to our ability to use language, to communicate ideas and concepts with clarity, impact and authenticity. In other words, as we become an increasingly illiterate society, unable to compose complex thoughts and ideas and insights into comprehensible language, we face a dismal future.
Our language is English. We must study and read works of English, from England. We must re-engineer the way we educate our citizens, and ourselves.
Our oral form of English, known as Creolese, cannot teach us to become deep thinkers and communicators.
Our only language is English. So we must comprehend the subtleties of our mother tongue.
When we understand the difference between seeking transformation rather than mere change, we would set ourselves on the path to real progress as a Guyanese nation.
