Philosophy and the mind of the PPP supporter

Apr 19, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was always attracted to the study of philosophy even though as a semi-literate boy on D’Urban Street, Wortmanville, I never dreamt in my wild imaginings, I would graduate at the university level in the subject and teach it to students at a university.
I was first introduced to the subject when I was just sixteen. My mother’s cousin had a gambling den at the corner of Bent and Hardina Streets in Wortmanville, and while visiting to beg him for money, I would see the philosophy books on the table and pick them up. I read a couple of pages, didn’t understand a damn thing, never understood a word until he took me in hand.
Back in those days, the eccentric brother of the famous Dr. Rawle Farley used to visit our yard on D’Urban Street and that was the beginning of my own discovery of what I wanted and who I wanted to be. He liked philosophy too, and so he spent virtually countless days helping me to understand the contents of philosophy books.
As an unemployed sixteen-year-old youth, my sister got me a job at the Michael Forde Bookshop of the PPP under Freedom House. It was at that point I knew I wanted to go to university and study philosophy. I stole Socrates, Plato and Aristotle while working at the bookstore, read them, didn’t understand a thing and kept reading them over and over.
Karl Marx and Bertrand Russell were easier to understand. From those days at the bookstore, I knew there wasn’t anything that would stop me from going to university to study philosophy. My favourite philosopher is Friedrich Nietzsche. My favourite philosophy book is Martin Heidegger’s “Being and Time” (one of the most fascinating books ever written). My preferred philosophical thought is existentialism.
Philosophy is a very dark and disturbing journey into the nature of Homo sapiens and the purpose of life. Once mastered, it drives a pessimism into the inner recesses of your soul that is irremovable.
Once you study philosophy, your mind becomes a permanent windmill tilting forever between a pessimistic comprehension of the Human Condition and a sempiternal optimism that one day, life will have a meaning that provides salvation for civilization. Nietzsche calls it the coming of the Übermensch.
The distinct advantage philosophy has over many other forms of knowledge is that it prepares you to understand nature and people. You get a better insight into the frailties of the human mind, than say, the sociologist or historian.
The human will never surprise you in what they do, no matter how iconoclastic or unimaginable or deceptive behaviour becomes, once you have a philosophical background. I believe it was my philosophical training that deterred me from ever having a 9 to 5 job or ever wanting to join a political party or ever judging someone because of his race or religion or culture.
It was my philosophical outlook that caused me to remove any barrier in my choice between white people music and the sound of Motown, rhythm and blues and reggae that I grew up with in Wortmanvile. I admire and enjoy the philosophical songs of the Beatles as much as I am a fanatical embracer of Bob Marley.
Philosophical musings have overtaken me since the 2015 election campaign began. And no matter how saturated you are with the thoughts of all the great philosophers, let no one fool you; humans are inexplicable creatures. Can we ever understand Homo sapiens?
Since the campaign began, I had to travel often to Berbice in the nights to appear on Berbice televisions as a guest. Always we travel back to Georgetown way into the midnight hour. It never fails to lacerate my mind how Berbicians can tolerate and vote for a party that has been in power for twenty-three years yet they live in darkness.
There is a mile of road before you come to the bridge that is enveloped in complete darkness. Surely, Berbicians cannot miss that contempt. Didn’t they deserve to have a lighted road on the way to and from the bridge?
From the time you hit Mahaica going to Berbice or leaving Berbice, Region Five, and huge chunks of Region Four have no lights. The Corentyne highway is a dark monster waiting to get you.
One of these nights before the campaign ends, I am going to dirty my underwear because I am always nervously scared when the driver is negotiating those long miles of darkness at midnight. I saw these parts of Guyana when I was a tiny tot. What has changed since then? And on May 11 people will vote for such heartless politicians. Philosophy has failed us.

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Philosophy and the mind of the PPP supporter

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