Why is there this madness?

May 30, 2010 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

Life is hard but it is nice. I have always heard that statement, especially from people who survived serious injuries, right up to the point of losing a limb. I have always known that there is nothing better than to live, even if one is hungry. There is always tomorrow when things would be better. And even if things are not as good as expected when tomorrow comes, there is always the next day.
People go to church and experience a high. They come out feeling on top of the world. They credit that feeling to being touched by the Holy Ghost or some deeply spiritual being. That may very well be the case, although scientists credit the feeling to mass euphoria.
These scientists would say that the buoyant mood spreads in a crowd in much the same way there is mass panic in a crowd when people are confronted by fear. Mass hysteria is the thing they say predominates in the church. That is when people firmly believe in life after death; in heaven and hell.
A popular Jamaican in the movie ‘Smile Orange’ said, “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.” And that is true except for the person who commits suicide who does not think about heaven or hell, except for the suicide bomber who is promised seven virgins when he dies.
Of course there is a joke about that. There was this bomber who asked for his seven virgins in advance. I am not sure whether he concluded that these seven virgins would be of no use to him when he dies.
Why am I so philosophical? This past week was especially horrendous for many. There were so many violent deaths. A man was shot and killed as he stood on Camp Street. I am in no position to say why he died or who shot him but suffice it to say that this was a horrible bit of news to greet the nation.
Soon after, there was the security guard who got killed at Linden. Some say that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, that he was where a robbery was to have been committed.
Hours later, another security guard was killed. He, according to reports, was targeted as a victim for a robbery. His killer literally beat the life out of him with a chair.
In the wake of the murder at Linden there was another death. I got the call that there was a road accident on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway. It turned out that there might not have been a road accident. The dead man’s relatives believe that he was murdered. People around them suggest that the man was doing something illegal when people caught up with him.
Some say that he managed to escape but returned to the scene of his previous activity. I am not sure what happened but I know that he died a young man at 23. I cannot remember what it was like at 23.
There were more deaths this past week. A young boy going home from the Independence flag raising ceremony died in a car. Another car hit his vehicle. He might have been sleeping, but at 11 years of age I doubt it. I think that he opted to bully his sisters for the window seat, perhaps to look outside and to feel the breeze on his face. He died.
Then there was Friday. A minibus conductor got caught between the minibus in which he was travelling and the road. His brains were left on the road. In a country with so few people I would believe that there were simply too many deaths, but there are those who hold an opposing view. Bright Saturday morning someone killed a woman at Hague.
If one were to count the Linden death as a murder then there were four this week alone. And when we add the road accidents, six people died this past week—almost one every day. Of course, I deliberately ignored the man who disappeared at sea while out shrimping. And I also deliberately left out the deportee who hanged himself.
Man’s cruelty and stupidity did not start or end with these deaths. By now everyone knows that someone gave Freddie Kissoon a bath with faeces. Such treatment was something that not even people in tenement yards would do, but someone took things to a new level in Guyana.
My friend Jaigobin did not escape the madness. A man hurled a quantity of sulphuric acid into his face. Jaigobin later said that had he not been wearing his spectacles he might have been blinded.
Something must be wrong in the society. We are so few and getting fewer each day. There is so much space that we need not rub against each other and so create discomfort. Why then are we killing ourselves? The other day I picked up a newspaper and learnt that for all of March, in a city with nearly five million people and one known for its violence, there was not a single murder. That city was Newark, New Jersey.
The population of that city is about six times greater than all of Guyana but we had four in one week. We must be among the cruelest people on earth.

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