The lights that killed a nation’s collective psyche

May 22, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In my career as an analyst, I have done three columns on the uncivilized descent of a country in the 21st century in relation to a particular attitude – the depraved insensitivity of not dimming your bright lights when signaled to do so from the oncoming driver in the opposite direction, so he/she can see the road ahead and avoid crashing and dying. They are as follows – May 28, 2006, “Lights that kill;” December 29, 2014, “Lights that kill and kill and will go on killing;” November 5, 2015, “Lights that create blindness; only in Guyana.”
The US State Department’s Country report for Guyana has pronounced on the anomaly of people not dimming their lights. I love this country. I have never left it, even though I had two chances to. My wife and daughter have only Guyanese citizenship. But in all honesty – there is no longer a collective soul in Guyana. The national psyche has broken down. Something is eerily wrong with the people of this nation.
Do not think even for a fleeting second that this dim light depravity exists only among taxi-drivers and mini-bus “bad eggs.” No! Guyanese from all walks of life have become so psychically jaded that they have lost all sense of what constitutes the national ethos of a modern nation. The report focused on uncivilized (my word) driving. This country has the worst type of usage of the road compared to any other country.
Why is this happening? And by happening, I don’t mean the dim light abomination or the driving insanity. The psychic breakdown of this nation is complete. It takes in all dimensions of human existence. We are a mere 750,000 souls, yet this country per capita has one of the highest rates in the following; incest, child molestation and rape, wife battery, road fatalities, suicides, homicides, robberies, court litigation, animal cruelty, police harassment, poor and insulting public service, death from medical incompetence in public medicine, technological backwardness, high school dropouts, unemployed youths.
When you look at the statistics in these categories they are staggering and shocking, and they numb the soul when you know how small a population we are. What explains this descent into waste, toxicity and nihilistic putridity? My theory is that with the zero sum battle between Burnham and Rodney that ended in tragedy, Guyana never recovered its collective psychic integrity since then. The Burnham-Rodney confrontation ended in 1980, but since then enlightened, philosophical, transformational leadership which could have started the resuscitation was never there.
I think Hoyte failed because it was outside his intellectual capacity to understand the damage that the Burnham-Rodney war did to Guyana and what was required to pull it back. Jagan meant well, but, from the fifties onwards, he was never in possession of the required leadership qualities to allow for the survival and expansion of the national psyche.
Jagdeo and Ramotar exacerbated the soulless rut that began from the eighties to the extent that I think they have sent Guyana back about a hundred years into the primitive wilderness. David Granger and Moses Nagamootoo are nowhere near any attempt to save Guyana, and come 2020 if they are reelected, these men will run a thoroughly rudderless land.
Something deadly has infected the collective psyche of Guyana and I fear the worst. I see behaviour in this country whose irrational manifestations are hard to find elsewhere. People have no sense of belonging in this country. Their souls are dead and in their vacuum minds, they accept any deprivation, loss of dignity, inhuman insult.
It is unthinkable that in the 21st century, you have a Caribbean country where the one and only criterion for a citizen to complete any financial transaction is the presentation of a post office envelope. The latest victim of this is a well known businessman and Muslim preacher.
The entire society is paralyzed. The next macabre scene is when you go to open a bank account and on the form you put you are married and you name your place of employment, your wife will be required to be present and so is your boss. When you go to register your child, the school official will want to see in person your spouse and will require the other children to be present.
If you think that is getting weird, then where are you living? Weirder things are happening. No other document except a post office stamp can help you at a bank or an insurance company. Now for your car insurance, you have to state your political affiliation. I really do believe Guyana will disintegrate and die in thirty years from now. I really do.

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