Belief and reality

Jun 17, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

When the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) first appeared, it amounted to a virtual death sentence. Once you got the virus then you knew that you were going to die. The treatments now used to prolong the life of those infected with HIV were not available back then. Infection with HIV thus meant death within a short period of time.
It also carried a stigma which many tried to escape by either concealing the disease or claiming that they had other fatal conditions. There were many persons whose relatives claimed that they died from cancer when in fact the real cause was complications from the virus.
A friend of mine was tested positive in those early years. The doctors told him that he had been infected with the virus. He knew that this diagnosis meant that he would die young. But in his mind, he did not want to accept that he had the virus. And this belief led him to be in denial. He died believing that one of his former lovers had placed an omen on him and it was this evil spirit that was responsible for his illness.
He was not an unintelligent man. He was highly educated. But he wanted to believe something other than the truth. The doctors had told him that he had tested positive; he had all the classical symptoms associated with full-blown AIDS. But that was not a reality which was acceptable to him because it shone the spotlight on his numerous sexual indiscretions and promiscuity. He took another way out: the way of denial. He died believing that his illness was as a result of an evil spell. His belief became his reality.
There was another woman from the same village. She was an extremely religious person. She believed in her heart that she was the beneficiary of divine protection and there was no personal challenge which she could not overcome with the intercession of God. She insisted repeatedly that she was “washed with the blood of Jesus” and no disease could prevail against her.
It did not dawn on her that perhaps the same Jesus whom she loved had his own plans for her. And so when she got sick, she refused to take her medication telling her doctors that God would cure her. She died in hospital from a curable illness. What she wanted to believe had become her reality.
When the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak first occurred, there were some persons who felt that it was all a hoax concocted by the large pharmaceutical companies. Some of them are still of the belief that there is no coronavirus in Guyana. They do not wish to be restrained in their lifestyles and so they have internalized a belief that there is no virus. They have made it into their reality and are denying the existence of the coronavirus.
When what you want becomes your reality, it can lead to denial and delusion. And this manifests itself even when it comes to politics.
There are persons out there who may seem irrational in arguing that the APNU+AFC won the elections. It seems brazen, barefaced and contemptuous for anyone to have such a position. But there are many intelligent and respectable persons who desperately wanted the APNU+AFC to win the elections. They are struck with this blind loyalty to the Coalition to the extent that this has become their reality, the source of their present delusion.
They cannot accept that the party which they support has lost convincingly and fairly. They cannot accept it because they do not wish to accept it. And like the man who could not accept that he was infected with HIV or the woman who could not contemplate that God would allow a disease to get the better of her, these supporters of the APNU+AFC are clutching at straws.
The truth is there in front of their faces but the reality, indeed the truth, is too hard for them to accept this. This is not what they want. What they want has obsessively become an obsession; it has become their reality.
They have to find a justification for that reality. And so they continue to parrot the debauched narrative that the dead got up and voted and that migrant people voted even though not a single such case was reported on Election Day in 2,339 polling stations across the country.
It is not that these people are stupid; it is simply their desire becoming their reality. Their belief has become their reality. When they claim that the elections results were flawed, it is not always a case of dishonesty. It can be a case of delusion.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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Belief and reality

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