Out of the inferno

Oct 17, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Last week, in the article “Don’t cry for Neesa, Guyana: Cry for ourselves”, I made a linkage between greed, which seems to be our dominant value today, and the steady descent into the inferno that is consuming us all. I contended that, “we (Guyanese) are all literally in the same boat and we will sink or swim together. Our obsessive focus on personal wealth, however, subverts that lesson. Bereft of any social conscience, it guarantees the moral depravity that defines us today.” This is not to say that there are not other factors that have brought us down, but simply that avariciousness is the wellspring of so many other transgressions.
“Development”, it would appear, is to be measured entirely in economic terms: we regularly tout the increase in “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP) or even “per capita GDP”. This is rather sad because three decades ago, even at the level of vulgar economism, there were rather robust debates right here in Guyana about the vapid conflation of “development” and “growth”.
We may have differed with the founding fathers of our country but at least in embracing socialism, they declared overtly on whose behalf they were seeking power: the poor and the powerless. Their stated ideal was an egalitarian society: “comrade” was supposed to be more than a greeting. Greed and acquisitiveness were frowned upon, to say the least.
We can, of course, point out that many of these leaders used these slogans to mask their drive for power simply for their own selfish aims. But their declaration of egalitarianism did two things: it forced them to at least strive to appear to be working in that direction and secondly it provided a platform from where they could be criticized. Today our universal acceptance of the neoliberal model – which has been so normalised that our politicians can declare that they cleave to no ideology – proclaims that “greed is good” and “selfishness is superior”.
How can one criticise anyone for wanting more and more? One woman? Mook. One Lexus? Crazy. One million? Piker. One house? …And this, four decades after Rawls suggested that inequalities in a society should be justified only if it works to the benefit of the least advantaged. I suspect the riposte today would be that the latter would be benefitted from the crumbs that trickle down from the tables of the haves.
We have to decide, as a people, what kind of society we want in our country. Only then we will be able to decide what values are positive (those that move us towards our desired society) and those that are negative (those that move us away). We might then be able to choose institutions that best encapsulate those positive values and then enact policies to create such institutions.
But if we as a people are so enmeshed in the ideology of cupidity and rapaciousness, how are we to ever agree on how to move out of it? It is not for nothing that it has been said that a people get the leaders they deserve. The answer, on the other hand, is not for a group of leaders to somehow seize power and enact laws that will create the Promised Land.
Dictators, benign or otherwise, seldom fail to oppress. Then again, laws that are not in consonance with the mores and morality of a people will at best be observed in the breech and at worse, be flagrantly flouted. Witness our domestic violence laws, for instance. This is not to say that legislation that offers incentives for particular activities might not be of some value – for instance, tax deductions for charitable activities.
We will have to initiate change by starting with ourselves. Values cannot be imparted through nice speeches (or newspaper articles for that matter). Values are performative, that is, they can only find and offer meaning through action. Those that want to change the decadent morality of our society will have to practice the values they espouse and live and work among the ordinary people. We have spoken about “organic intellectuals” in the past: not intellectuals in the commonly accepted use of the term but individuals from all walks of life that are willing not only to play with ideas, but to put them into action.
We are obviously talking about a long-term project and one in which there is no guarantee of success. In human affairs there are always the unintended consequences and contingencies that may subvert our very best intentions. But act we must: this is the essence of the human condition. It may give us some emotional release to rail against those that foster immorality, but that is not sufficient to engender change. In the end it is up to each one of us to make a commitment for change and to act upon that commitment.  At least we would be heading out of the inferno.

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