THE AGE OF INNOCENCE IS AN ILLUSION

Nov 27, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – What is often nice-sounding and inspirational is often out of touch with reality. At a gathering at Queen’s College, 11 years ago, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine made an appeal for a return to “those ancestral values that accorded great importance to such inclusive values as sharing, solidarity and togetherness.”
One newspaper editorial observed that the good man was seeking out those essential and enduring principles from the past that would help us to confront the challenges of the future and reduce divisions. It was said that the former co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance harked back to a former era of sharing, solidarity and togetherness.
I hope that someone would edify us as to this age of innocence, because it could not be the generation of Dr. Roopnaraine nor it couldn’t be the generations that preceded it. In short, what this article is positing is that there has never been an age of innocence in Guyana, just as some like to claim there is no one guilty race.
Dr. Roopnaraine could not hark back to any era when ancestral values of sharing, togetherness and solidarity existed in Guyana because no such era has ever existed in the history of Guyana. Ours has been a history of suspicion, mistrust and tension. However, effective colonial rule was in bottling up these tensions from manifesting themselves in open conflict; it never quieted these ill-feelings which were generated by the colonial system and by the fears of the various groups in their co-existence with others.
The divisions in our society were not confined to race alone. There were also contempt and scorn across class lines. Anyone who has read CLR James’ seminal book “Beyond a Boundary” would appreciate that even with certain groups there were those who by virtue of their class, saw themselves and held themselves to be superior and better than others of their own race.
Where therefore is this age of innocence to which the good professor refers? Where is the age of togetherness, solidarity and sharing? It certainly could not be the generation of Dr. Roopnaraine because it was during his youth that this country turned upon itself, or to put it more accurately, when Guyanese turned against each other in the deadly violence of the sixties.
His generation tried to redeem itself by reversing what it had heaped about this country, but no sooner had the manners come down that the same generation abandoned ship and returned to their respective flocks.
These divisions have persisted all along. In 1997, they exploded when there was an attempt to bully a legitimate and democratically elected government out of office, a terrible shame which has led today to deep antagonisms within our society.
The problem which has existed is not going to go away by inventing some illusory era that has not existed. And even if it is conceded that no such era ever existed in Guyana, it is not going to go away simply by invoking an appeal to solidarity, togetherness and sharing. These things have never been absent from within our society but they have also hardly ever dominated the economic and political relations to the extent that we could claim to have had an age of innocence.
The problem is not confined to political competition. Any Marxist would know that the very economic system that we embrace fosters competition, rivalry and the pursuit of individualism, values that fly in the face of togetherness, solidarity and sharing. These constructive social values exist in relations between our citizens; they have always existed at a certain level but they can never, without reform of the political and economic systems within our midst, allow for the sort of constructive social change contemplated by John Paul Lederach.
Constructive social change cannot be left to human benevolence. Constructive social change requires fundamental change at the institutional level, which however, must be preceded by an honest analysis about our history, one that recognises that every single generation has failed to bring about positive change in Guyana and that without reform of our political and economic system every succeeding generation will fail.
Those who wish to delude themselves that constructive social change can still come about under a contentious political and economic system are free to engage in illusion. But if they are serious that illusion is the pathway to progress, they should at least urge that solidarity, togetherness and sharing begin at home and therefore all those individuals and firms that export their profits out of Guyana should commit to returning these proceeds back to our country and that all those politicians who selectively have amnesia about the context in which certain events took place in our country should retire to their armchairs.
(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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