Moral hypocrisy breeds physical barbarism

Jun 10, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Why was the world overrun by the counter-culture of the sixties, commonly referred to as the Age of the Hippies? The rebellion of the young in the sixties came about just fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The young generation of the post-war period was weaned on a world of pacifism, peace, equality and unrestrained freedom.
For them, what happened from 1939 to 1945 was the biggest threat to civilization, and they wanted to fashion a world that would never see such immorality again. It was no accident that the slogan of the sixties was “Peace and Love.”
The Vietnam War, the rise of big corporations in Europe that was devastated by war, the French brutalities in its North African colonies, Western governments’ support for apartheid and the cruelties of the Cold War, drove the young to rebel. This is a sociological law. Once a society practices extreme class prejudice and the elites are known for their moral turpitude, the deprived classes will seek revenge on the society because they are driven by extreme anger, out of feelings of helplessness. Their outlets inevitably take the form of bestial and nihilistic violence.
In the same context, but with different dimensions, we are witnessing a rebellion among the lower classes against the ruling elites, the super-rich bourgeoisie, and their exasperation with widening gaps between rich and poor in every European country and more so in the US. Without exception, Europe is witnessing a deluge in the electoral popularity of the extreme right.
And its climax in America is the irony of Donald Trump. The lower and middle classes are rejecting moneyed domination in the US, and its control of the US Government by the paradoxical embrace of a member of the rich class itself. These Trump supporters are looking at him to shake up the system that they feel was encouraged in the first place by status quo politicians.
How do we apply this sociological law to Guyana? There is no deterministic direction a society goes into when its economic and political elites degenerate into moral hypocrisy and ethical lawlessness. In countries with strong traditions of democracy, it can take the form of elected dictatorship as what nearly happened in Austria and could have happened in France, and the US in the presidential election in November. In weak states that have no experience with democracy like Guyana, bestial violence can be the outcome.
I am convinced that the extreme sadism that is present in many homicidal robberies stem from people from depressed communities seeking revenge on the society that they feel treats them as lesser human beings. They feel that their acts of illegality are mild compared to what the elites do and the elites can commit the worst type of legal violations and get away with it. They feel they are hounded and hunted down for petty crimes while the powerful classes are untouchable.
The Stabroek News in a recent editorial captioned, “Civilization and barbarism,” lugubriously lamented the willingness to use violence and the total breakdown of discipline. In many of the examples the newspaper offered, it referred to the crude behaviour of certain strata of society. Unfortunately, the editorial did not offer theoretical arguments for the genesis and continuation of this social and societal descent into sadistic vortex.
The resort to animalistic violence is a frightening emergence in Guyana and criminals from lower economic classes seem bent on forms of bestiality that are scaring every resident. But the infamy has to be studied. Its causes have to be adumbrated.
My contestation is that this country’s Georgetown population is too small for the moral and illegal depravities of the elites to be hidden from the people who live in poor districts. The announcement that some financially comfortable lawyers got an education through state loans which they have not paid back, is certain to fuel the anger of many in the labouring masses. Imagine a magistrate that refused to pay his/her loan, jailing people for stealing ten thousand dollars from their employers.
If it wasn’t so serious it could have been hilarious, the huge quarrel between a number of companies and the Correia family at the Eugene Correia Airport. These companies have no moral right to condemn any human in Guyana for unfair treatment. The complaints against them by workers are horrendous. One of these companies has employees who seem to like to trade in cocaine.
In small Georgetown, judges, magistrates, business people, politicians, gold miners, police officers, high-priced lawyers, exploitative doctors and other professionals, high state officials etc., have frightening skeletons which you can easily see even in the darkest of night.

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