Addressing the elephant in the room

Feb 14, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I read recently that the West is disturbed about the deforestation in Brazil. They also want us to keep our forest intact. All of this because of climate change. We must preserve our forest to save the planet while our people suffer. A very long time ago I wrote that we can preserve our forest but that there must be some system to compensate us for opportunity lost and for the oxygen we generate considering it is the G7 country that contributes most via emissions.
Their people enjoy a great life style while our people are deprived while preserving our forest to save the planet. The G7 has about 7% of the world’s population but consumes over 50% of the world’s resources. The EU has been subsidizing the production of fossil fuel to the tune of 100 Billion USD annually. This is hypocrisy. Let them use some of that money to pay us to preserve and keep the lungs of the world healthy.
Now whenever someone writes or speaks critically of the present system and I have had the experience, one comes under attack in the most illogical manner. Sometimes I am shocked at the responses of persons who have PHDs and are university professors. In one instance I made some criticisms of capitalism and a friend of mine who is a professor responded by asking me, “Name one socialist country that does not have a dictator?” It is not usual but I was left speechless.
It is not unusual for persons, when capitalism is criticized to respond about the USSR collapsing, etc., etc. This way is common for if one criticizes the PPP or the PNC the response usually is look what the other is doing. I do not blame people because of cultural hegemony. We internalised spontaneously the ideology of the ruling class. Bob Marley called it “Mental Slavery” while Karl Marx referred to it as false consciousness. We all know the term House slaves where they defend Massa.
But why am I discussing capitalism as the topic is climate change. Well capitalist have to maximise profits. While production does provide for needs, the drive for more profits demands ever increasing production and the creation of wants. It needs a consumption culture. So they have to keep on producing and convincing us that we need these things. So we have a very materialistic culture. Shopping is a culture. Keeping up with the Joneses. A new set of clothing for every occasion, nice imported furniture. So we have a large number of dresses, pants, shirts, shoes, a lot of which we do not even wear except for once. As a young boy I heard of the great America where every home had a two-car garage. I later visited and really many houses had the said garages but then I saw the cars parked outside and I wondered why. I found the garages filled with purchases that are not being used. They were manufactured using raw materials while contributing to emissions, bought by people convinced by TV that they needed them and then locked away.
I recall the words of a song sung by Roberta Flack, “Business goes on as usual, the profits are high and TVs boom, in every living room. They tell us what deodorant to buy”.
So if we were to stop regurgitating in response to criticisms of the capitalist system that socialism is a demon system etc., etc., and focus on the issue we may realise that a system that is driven by the need to increase profits would consume the planets resources and contribute to climate change at an ever increasing rate. This is the elephant in the room. I would not at this stage discuss its need for wars so as to increase consumption by producing what I refer to as destructive consumption, making bombs and tanks and blowing them up and another advanced jet while we park the old models in fields.
The beneficiaries of the present system especially the one percent elites who owns most of the world uses the means of disseminating information of which they control about 90% to “educate” us. They educate us to defend the system and to demonise any alternatives. Even when we conclude that both systems are bad, that is good for them because the status quo is maintained.
A good friend of mine wrote that we should do away with isms. This is interesting for the question would be how do we do away with capitalism. I explained to him that if this was the attitude in the past when we had feudalism then there should not have been a capitalist revolution to overthrow Feudalism. Or if the thinking was and we know that capitalism is also bad then why should the peasants have fought to overthrow the feudal order to allow the capitalist to gain power.
The problem is even brilliant professors seem unable to grasp that they cannot use an ideology, a philosophy, a way of thinking and an information base generated by a system to objectively analyse the system. One has to look historically to examine the driving force behind socioeconomic transition.
Which brings me to the present day and the way Guyanese look at our situation? We think in the same way. We criticise PNC and its activities when in power a few years after the PPP gained power. And the response is looked at the wrong things the PPP is doing. The coalition is in power and the PPP is criticised and the response is looked at the wrongs the coalition is doing.
My question is at the time of removal of the PNC when the PPP took power how would you have answered the criticisms? Same as when the elections in 2015 removed the PPP the defence of the PPP cannot be the wrongs of the Coalition.
In the same way let’s say capitalism was being criticised prior to the socialist revolution in Russia and Capitalism was criticised the defence could not have been the ills of the socialist country. One would have had to focus on the specific criticism, comprehend it and respond.
The problem is, our education system does not teach us to think this way. It teaches us to be dogmatic. It teaches us that we have this “Free Will” and even though we know the words socialisation, indoctrination, acculturation and even though we are exposed to Bob Marley’s mental slavery, or Marxist false consciousness, or Gramsci cultural hegemony we never question what we know recognising it is a body of knowledge that we were fed. We treat what we know as absolute truth.
We need to work to change the way we think; the way we view the world. If we continue to defend what we know and reject what oppose then we do not unlearn. We learn nothing new. We do not change and education is a process of change so we are not being educated.
Rajendra Bisessar,
BSc Sociology, LLB

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