Dependency syndrome

Nov 20, 2008 Editorial

Earlier this week, there was a meeting of stakeholders, convened by the Office of the President, in which the participants – representing almost all the social and religious organisations of Guyana – offered their views on the problems that beset our society, and of possible solutions to those problems.

If one were to cull those views, almost uniformly a common thread emerges – an insistence that it is the role of the Government to cure all the ills of society.

Luckily, there were a few contrarians, who pointed to the critical intervention that many of the groups present at the table could also make in the construction of a more just, humane and happy community.

The latter is a position that this newspaper has attempted to advance on many occasions. It has been said that “If men define things as real, they become real in their consequences.”

More and more of us are placing all accountability on the state to deal with ever increasingly smaller and local predicaments; and in the process, not so coincidentally, exculpating ourselves from responsibility.

We have defined ourselves as having almost no agency, and then inevitably become exasperated when the “big brother” we have created, just as inevitably falters. The consequence that has become real is that we are reduced to whining and whinging, even as the problems metastasise to overwhelm the society.

For it is a myth — and an insidious one at that — to define the Government as the most suitable agency for resolving people’s problems, and that we as individuals bear no responsibility for sorting out our own lives.

For as long as this myth persists, ‘social problems’ will continue to grow; and just as surely, Government budgets will continue to expand, and job opportunities for “social policy experts” will continue to multiply.

In the development of stable democratic governance in the West, a key innovation was the spread of voluntary organisations throughout the populace that identified services that were necessary for the better functioning of society – and then went on to provide those services.

This volunteerism among the ordinary citizens fostered a spirit of independence that was a crucial counterpoise to the inevitable predisposition of public officials to throw their weight around.

The more opportunity that citizens offer to those officials to exercise power over their lives, the more one can be assured that, to that increasing extent, their liberty can be curtailed.

Take, for instance, the social problem of alcoholism that we identified in our editorial of yesterday, captioned “Rum till I die”.

Every religion has taken an official, text-sanctified position against this cancer in our society; every social group has railed against its anomic effects on group solidarity, yet there are only two private groups that have made an effort to deal with alcoholism in this country.

What is worse is that many of these organisations, even religious ones, permit alcohol at their fund-raising functions. We have to do better than that.

One group among which alcoholism is endemic is sugar workers. This is primarily because of the historic provision of alcohol to them by the plantocracy as a weapon of control – rum-shops were permitted not far from every pay-office in the sugar industry, and a broke worker was more motivated to return to work the next Monday.

In Trinidad, before their sugar industry would down their operations, the sugar workers’ union had an alcoholism rehabilitation program which was offered free to all its members.

Surely, our sugar unions can replicate that intervention here. The most effective programme to confront alcoholism is the support system of regular meetings pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, which reinforces the alcoholics’ commitment not to drink.

Such programmes can be sponsored by the religious and social groups that are ubiquitous in our midst. We can extrapolate the problems of domestic violence, drug abuse, truancy etc. into the above framework.

We want to stress that we are not advocating the abdication by the Government of a role in the treatment of social problems. But that is all it must be – a role, and not the sole role.

A society in which we actively cultivate the spirit of literally caring for each other – not by mere exhortations, but by concrete actions – will eventually become one in which we can live out the true meaning of the freedom for which our forefathers fought so heroically.

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