“Man was made to mourn”

May 13, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

The title above is that of a poem by the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns, in which age confronts youth, and introduces us to the phrase ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ – a recurring theme in literature.

Dissecting human behaviour, the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, eventually grew disenchanted with the human species, while philosopher Thomas Hobbes had earlier stated that the life of man in his natural state is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ It seems pointless to continue chronicling the unending trail of bloodshed and misery left in the wake of Homo sapiens arrival on this earth; but frequent reminders are necessary. For now, think of the word piracy.

The Atlantic and Caribbean waters have had their fair share of this mixture of avarice and adventure. To the best of my knowledge, Guyana had been spared the phenomenon; not so other West Indian territories, particularly Jamaica and The Bahamas. The notoriety of Port Royal in the former, and the Bahamian capital, Nassau in the early 18^th century, is the stuff of legend, and pirate villains were often glamourized.

Even now, pirate costumes are still popular with children around the world, while tales of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan have had their terror diluted with romance and heroism; Morgan was actually knighted. But there’s nothing remotely glamorous about the recent ‘pirate’ attacks off the Guyana and Suriname borders.

Reason falters as we try to fathom the kind of barbarity reported in the media. Whether it was a coldblooded scheme or an act of opportunistic revenge, we balk at the savagery of its execution. One incidental recollection by a survivor stands out in my mind. It was when he recalled the words of one of the attackers, “Don’t mek no fish go overboard, ‘cause them snapper is gold. We gon chop out (you) neck.”

Fish, equated with gold, was obviously more precious than a human life! What thoughts and emotions must have entered the mind of a victim as, bloodied and encumbered, he sank beneath the waves with the certainty of death just seconds away?

As suggested earlier, man’s inhumanity to man appears to be a natural inclination. History tells us that in the ancient Rome, men fed their fellow men to wild animals in a carnival of adrenaline and bloodlust. Between that period and the beginning of the 21^st century, hundreds of millions of men, women, and children were dehumanized and killed by other human beings often in religious or political/ideological wars.

Some of these were the Christian-Muslim Crusades, the Mongol invasions, the Inquisition, witch hunts, New World slavery, the Armenian genocide, World Wars 1 and 2, Stalin’s Holodomor and Hitler’s Holocaust, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the Middle East conflicts. Modern day slavery, ethnocide, and trafficking in persons account for millions more.

Against this backdrop of inhumanity, the pirate attacks which resulted in the deaths of maybe a dozen fishermen, (almost all Guyanese) may appear insignificant by comparison. But that is a relative point-of-view, and one which the loved ones of those murdered and many others would find abhorrent.

Not surprisingly, this recent atrocity has stirred strong emotions among Guyanese, and once again there is a call for the return of the ‘cat’ and the gallows in the execution of certain convicted killers. How far this will go in curbing the sadistic impulses of others and the innate instincts of the reptilian brain relative to murder, remains to be seen. Past evidence isn’t that compelling.

History, as just noted, presents us with a number of examples that suggest human beings are generally more inclined to selfishness and aggression than altruism.

For example, data from something called the Polynational War Memorial, shows that some 237 wars were fought between 1900 and the present, from the Boxer Rebellion in China to the current war in Afghanistan, making the 20^th century one of bloodiest ever.

We are reminded of the innate violence of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the so-called ‘warrior’ gene passed down to more than one-third of Earth’s population, entertainment violence, (Mixed martial arts fighting is dubbed the fastest-growing sport in the world) and similarities between our guerilla warfare and the vicious organized ambushes, (including cannibalism) launched by chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

It continues with a disclosure on how early in life these aggressive and selfish instincts manifest themselves, partly negating the presumption that babies, for example, naturally lean towards goodness. Although a Yale University researcher believed his studies proved that was so, it was shown in related experiments that infants can be easily ‘bribed to do wrong’ if the price was high enough.

At first, it was noted that toddlers would go out of their way to help others even when it offered no incentive to them. But when crackers entered the picture, they would quickly side with a ‘bad guy’ or become unhelpful if it meant getting three crackers instead of one.

Now this revelation based on a video made at London’s Centre for Fetal Care: “Our instincts to stay alive and compete for resources start … really early. Recently, high-clarity MRIs have shown twins fighting for space in the womb by kicking and pushing their sibling out of the way. Doctors initially used the MRIs to study twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome where one identical twin siphons blood away from the other.” And in cases of vanishing twin syndrome, a fetus absorbs its weaker companion until it miscarries or simply ‘vanishes’ – described as ‘a legitimate survival of the fittest situation.’ Food for thought!

So what does this journey into the past tell us about the state of humanity today relative to violence? I’m not sure, but it does seem that over a very long time humans, in this respect, have not come a very long way – we are more often than not, still selfish and savage at heart.

Fear and intolerance complicate things further, and in some instances, the distinction between perpetrator and victim is blurred so that confusion is added to the picture. It’s a dilemma, which to me is eerily captured in that iconic set of paintings by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch titled ‘The Scream’ – a collective and unending exhaling of human agony echoing through the ages.

Yes, there are millions of decent, empathetic people around the world, but just pause, and reflect on this stanza from the Robbie Burns’ dirge referred to at the beginning of this article: “Many and sharp the numerous ills/ Inwoven with our frame; More pointed still, we make ourselves/ Regret, remorse and shame; And man, whose heaven-erected face/ The smiles of love adorn; Man’s inhumanity to man/ Makes countless thousands mourn.”

I’ll try to end on a more optimistic note to blot from my mind the description of the recent pirate attacks, and other equally heartless atrocities in our country and elsewhere – The sun bathes our planet in radiant light, and silver linings still emerge from behind the darkest clouds.

Even in Burns’ pessimistic poem, he lightens his lament with an acknowledgment of man’s ‘heaven-erected face’ adorned with ‘smiles of love’ and at the end, welcomes the relief of death. It may sound paradoxical, but it’s a hint that in the final say, humanity will (hopefully) defeat its nemesis.

 

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