It’s One Blood – ours!

Apr 15, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

Have you ever wondered if we, Homo sapiens, have become so resigned to bloodshed that we just accept it as a disconcerting part of life? I do. From time immemorial it seems, the bloodletting of humans and animals has kept pace with the march of civilization. I sometimes wonder how much of it took place in this country prior to the 16th century New World advent of colonialism and slavery, and how much since then, especially in this technologically-savvy 21st century; per capita of course.

Our country is haemorrhaging badly.  Guyana’s 83,000 square miles of mud, sand, and water, continues to absorb the blood and tears of her people; and that’s neither melodramatic nor metaphoric. It’s real. Think about the bludgeoning, shootings and stabbings, the hacking and butchering of flesh, bone, and sinew, and the human road kill that, with no exaggeration, is happening every day. And the grieving disrupted survivors. The newspapers and television screens hardly tell the whole story.

Blood is the most vital and significant of all fluids, physically, psychologically, spiritually; even metaphysically. In Goethe’s ‘Faust’ the devil’s representative, Mephistopheles, enjoins him to sign a devil’s pact with his own blood, reminding him that “Blood is quite a special fluid.” In the Christian bible the blood of Abel is given voice as it cries from the ground to God for vengeance. And of course, according to the Good Book, the most powerful blood symbolism in human history is the redemptive blood of Jesus in atonement for the sins of mankind.

Guyana’s record of bloodshed may pale in comparison to what has occurred in other countries and at other times, but in a nation of less than a million people, the surge of killings is a tragic indictment of our society, and our inability to stem the tide. But the real tragedy goes much deeper, like the bullet or knife that tears through skin, muscle, arteries, and organs, releasing that red flow which severs body from spirit, and the temporal from the eternal. But I guess that depends on whether or not you believe in the existence of an afterlife and the premium you place on human life along with the right to enjoy and prolong it indefinitely.

It is said that the life of every creature, including human beings, is in the blood. It’s an axiomatic statement that evidently means very little to some Guyanese, and maybe even less to thousands of reckless, uncaring, cold-blooded killers ‘out there’. They wield the instruments of death – from scalpels to swords; from guns to bombs; from cars to passenger jets, with indiscriminate ease.

In Guyana, the knife, cutlass, gun, and the vague blunt object are the chief means of execution, primary to cars, mini buses and motorcycles piloted by men and women with too much alcohol in the blood stream or, as we used to say with somber wit, by men with too little blood in their alcohol stream. And so it goes!

But lest I sound too hypocritical or self-righteous, let me hasten to add that I know how easy, effortless, and justified the shedding of blood can be. If a rabid dog is about to bite my child, I will kill it without qualm. If a gun-packing intruder points his weapon at a family member and I have the means to take him out, I will do so with but a fleeting thought for the legitimacy of my actions. And if I am antagonistic-ally provoked beyond human endurance, I may well commit savage homicide with later remorse mainly for my inability to temper my emotions or for the grief my actions may have caused loved ones.

However, what I feel is impossible for me to do, is to deliberately and cunningly scheme the death of another human being, or even an animal, with selfish, envious, or greedy motive, or from base pride. I would rate a sociopath or even a psychopath with more humanity than such a person; at least sociopaths and psychopaths are diagnosed with a disorder which gives them a poor sense of right and wrong and a general inability to understand and share another person’s feelings. And that is why I am still often baffled at the thinking that goes into planning of some of the more heinous and inhumane killings in Guyana.

The word ‘victim’ is not so popular nowadays because it connotes a ‘poor-me’ or ‘I didn’t deserve-that’ mentality, but when you read about or understand why and how some human beings were killed, it is a fitting and necessary label. And the word ‘blood’ itself, apart from representing life, has for many, a mystical and divine quality to it. Its links to the magical and supernatural are also tied to such human notions as bloodlines, blood brothers, blood baptism, flesh and blood, blood is thicker than water, and ‘in one’s blood’ – all of which should lend to it a significance and respect that helps perpetuate, not waste, its essence. But then of course there’s bad blood, draw blood, cold-blooded, a rush of blood, and blood money. Maybe ‘blood victim’ should be introduced into this family of idioms.

It’s funny, but I feel even the worst and most reprobate killers have some respect for life, mostly theirs, but it’s layered over with so much avarice, envy, and fear, that it allows the primitive part of the human brain to override conscience and reason. And for the fact that those ‘civilized’ parts exist, there’s hope, even within our (at times) seemingly hopeless society. For some reason I like the way comedian Charlie Chaplin put it in what he perceived as the fast-paced days of the first half of the 20th century.

He said, “The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in; machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity, more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost.”

Chaplin was addressing the wars and the fascist ideologies of that period, and although Guyana has never descended to such political and military misery, his words should be a source of reflection, apprehension, and resolution for all of us. The kind of bloodshed I have made reference to is a reality of life. But it may just help a little if somehow we are forced to see blood itself as life – ours. And remember that the word has no plural. In humans it relates to one species. It’s One Blood – ours!

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