How the Guyanese people lost their ‘groove’ and how we can dance in rhythm again

Sep 13, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Free Guyana ought to be the slogan adopted by those seeking to achieve the reins of government in 2011, whether it is the incumbent party or one currently in opposition.  Freedom here refers not to the traditional democratic, liberal and idealistic sense of the word.  The freedom I speak of is the ability to creatively live one’s life through the expression of creativity without hindrance, crippling fear and insecurity.
It is the ability to live an empowered life with the realisation that you are not a victim of the systems in which we live but a subtle creator and cooperator.  No method of social organisation, no plan, no vision can adequately function without compliance from its members.
We are not victims as is reinforced by bureaucratic practices and the seeming all power structures that influence our behaviour, aspiration and world views. To the contrary, we are powerful creators and enablers of these very systems and structures. Therefore we possess the power to transform these systems through subtle, creative action.
This is what I mean by Free Guyana, it is not a personal indictment against anyone or any group rather the ethos of free Guyana is recognition that many individuals and groups in Guyana are creatively inhibited and inauthentic in our daily action and inter-action.  Freedom as expressed through creative behaviour in our daily lives is not of the arts, it speaks of the ability to positively act authentically and individually in ways that do not prop up and perpetuate the systems (governance, political, social, economic, inter-group and community relations, cultural expression, etc.) which oppress us (read limit and direct our capacity, potential and opportunities) in order to control us by maintaining power in the hands of the controllers.
Vaclav Havel (1978) referred to our inability to creatively express our freedom, in other words those actions which help sustain certain rigid hierarchal and often oppressive systems as automatism and collusion. The latter speaks of our compliance with systems that limit and oppress us and the former demonstrates our compliance comes in the form of daily actions beating our children, while proclaiming and fearing the unacceptable levels of violence in our society. Havel believed that the power of the powerless, as his now famous work is called is a recognition and ability to creatively behave in ways which illuminate our surroundings.
He called this behaviour, “living in truth”. That is to live each moment authentically and creatively. In the context of Guyana’s existing state of affairs, Havel tells us that action and inaction by the ordinary Guyanese is responsible for the myriad challenges we face.
Our action and inaction, according to Havel is also the key by which we begin to unlock our bountiful potential and transform the overly paternalistic, restrictive and conflictive limits of our political, governance, economic, cultural and other systems and structures. Basically, without agreement and acceptance by the Guyanese people, these rigid mechanisms that claim to protect our freedoms but really limit our creativity and growth could not exist in the form that they currently do.  Havel argued that there is power in subtle, strategic personal action because this action operates on the principle of the butterfly effect.  Although he didn’t use the term butterfly effect, he understood that every action has the potential to having a cascading transformative effect on the system in which the action occurs.
For some time, there has been a lot of talk and speculation in the electronic and print media about the need or current inappropriateness of street protests in Guyana.  I believe that this form of collective resilience is not the only, preferred or best form to demonstrate collective power and creativity.  In fact it is a highly rigid, growingly predictable and automated expression of creative freedom.
Many pundits have sought to capitalize on this decision of the Guyanese people to resist from engaging in mass political and social protest by situating their perceptions in either of four discourses: (1) Guyanese are not interested in street protests because we are overly concerned with bread and butter issues; (2) the opposition is uninspiring and de-motivating, uncooperative and haphazard; (3) the development plan and level of services provided by the Government of Guyana satisfactorily meet the needs of Guyanese, so no urgency to protest or (4) the history of social and political protest in Guyana is unfavourable, Guyanese have learnt from these often violent episodes and are currently not interested in mass protest.
I believe that if we take a deeper, more contextualized view of this situation, we will realise what Havel learnt some 30 plus years ago, that is that power does not exist in a vacuum and it is always relational and dependent. In other words there is a deep sense of powerlessness underlying individual and collective decision by Guyanese to presently refrain from mass protests in the streets. This powerless is not only relevant to street protests, it is of greater importance because it indicates a general pessimistic view on the part of Guyanese regarding our belief in our ability to meaning transform the systems and structures which govern our daily lives, creativity and freedom.
Summarily speaking, the contextual factors I believe responsible of this pervasive and largely invisible sense of powerless are: (1) the inter-generational political, physical and psychological fatigue owed to many years of struggling against internal and external forces of power, including ethnically motivated violence and discrimination; (2) the emergence of violent, clandestine and complex criminal enterprises; (3) a heavy-handed, overly paternalistic and visibly bourgeois national government; (4) an unified and uninspiring opposition that does not have a campaign to effectively influence various social discourse in Guyana while highlighting the plight of the Guyanese people and the inadequacies of our system of national governance and the practices in inspires and (5) a dysfunctional and handicapped security sector in terms of investigation, protection and dispensation of justice.
It is within this context that many Guyanese feel and display powerlessness in our daily lives.  However as Havel taught us  with the example of the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, it is counter-intuitive to believe that power resides only in structures and systems of control as well as in the jurisdiction of the controller. Each one of us, through individual and collective creative action, has the potential to exemplify the butterfly effect by creatively expressing our shared desire for a less violent, more prosperous and harmonious Guyana. In fact, many of us have already demonstrated this by our decisions to not take to the streets in mass protest. The challenge and the opportunity now is to creatively express our existing and desired social realities with actions that go beyond themselves to illuminate its surroundings.
R. Small

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