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The dangerous obsession with material things

Oct 16, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
Re-feeding syndrome occurs when some of the underfed are introduced to food and their systems cannot handle it. Upon getting food after starving, some take more than their body needs to have. However, this trait of overindulgence is not confined to the starving. Many who lack independence, freedom, material possessions, recognition and power cannot handle the responsibilities that are attached to these rights and privileges. As a result, these rights and privileges are abused. We can see this by looking at ourselves. Our once humble civil servants self-inflate with their proxy power or recognition and become arrogant. We cannot handle the wealth with which we are blessed. We overindulge by becoming adulterers or the ironically praiseworthy “sweet-man”.
We cannot control how much we consume – food and alcohol. We buy material things that we do not need – defining ourselves through material objects, looking like over-weighted vanity cases. We buy or build houses that exceed our needs – houses that are too big for two wives or even one very big one. We emulate vulgar people and their vices and forsake our forefathers’ teachings of self-respect and self-reliance. We must, as E. M. Forster says, learn how to handle our materialism, carnality, freedom, independence and power. We need to recognise our deficit because Guyana is on the cusp of becoming a model of success or failure in how we handle our resources – our people, land, water, forest and minerals. Will we be but a worthless flash or a beacon for our future generations and the world?
Stanley Niamatali

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