A RECENT set of obligated encounters which ‘the obligation’ prohibits me from relating verbatim what has convinced me that the ideal of National Cohesion requires exploring in the context of peering into the existing cauldron. For too long, ‘the prominent guilty’ group of politicians and social authorities has fed their supporters its psychotic brew generating fragmented hallucinations that keep them fettered to the philosophy of the cauldron where only blind hate and its legion of deceptions of scorn and treachery persist. A soul must evolve out of the truth of self, with a greater understanding to come to terms with the physical and invisible currents that compose the organic humanity we are manifest within.
The challenge to cohesion is not the human variations that encounter and engage each other on ‘civi-street’ daily. The challenge against cohesion ferments among the power seekers, in politics, business and even among professionals who recognise that what cohesion entails is not merely smiling with each other at arranged functions, but a deeper understanding of each other along timelines that explain the pockets of history and pseudo history so often extracted and hyped to represent the whole.

The Guyanese nation evolved along different experiences, from different backgrounds and cultural tenets. Details that remain unknown about each other from group to group, as they fell into the model the colonial state constructed for them, compounding already existing confusion into functioning stereotypes and subliminal hostilities. The influences that mainly shaped our self-perceptions in 1890 were not all devised by colonialism, most of the views of ‘the other’ common with some groups, harkened to doctrine and ancient biased views inculcated centuries before arriving in British Guiana (Guyana).

Cohesion is today resuscitated, in 1973, just out of school and along with former GYC members. I was a pioneer at the Kuru Kuru College, the KAYS (Kuru-Kuru Agri-Industrial Young Settlers) cooperative society was just launched. This was a multi-ethnic group of youth. Some things were rumoured to be happening on the coast since it was an election year. We approached the manager Skipper Gordon, from Buxton, questioning why, since the PPP had started the troubles in 1961/4 (still alive in our young minds, minus a holistic comprehension). Why did the government not charge them and place them in jail? He looked at us and smiled at us informing us that Guyana needed all its ‘sons’ to build it. He referred that we were in charge of the facility (farm, chickens, pigs, cash crops block-making and water supply to contractors) because we were not old enough to vote, but were responsible.

The concept of cohesion; the intention was alive in that system back then, but only in the philosophy of the administration. A different opposite doctrine haunted the provincial constituency of the opposition because the objectives of political power required the sacrifice of nationhood. Political power insisted on the myths of rigged elections, economic sabotage, ethnic collective defamation and the extraction of the selective areas of history devoid of the complete story, to ferment victimhood. This was politics for the sake of power, greed – selfish purposes, at the ultimate sacrifice of the nation.

It can be concluded that this capacity to contrive lies and misguide can eventually convince one’s self of deliberate fictions, separating through mantra self-brainwashing, any ability to relate to the pursuit of balance, self-examination and closure. The danger is, when you create a cult of hate, double standards and intentional treachery as a practice, imposing it on others outside of the collective historical and cultural timeline, malevolence cannot be turned off, ever, without consequences. It must be confronted, worn down and beaten when confronted and whipped with the manicole broom of factual exposure, as all cult cycles do. If left unchallenged, it will damn, inflict injury and death on the ‘other’ then control both perpetrators of doctrine and its captured victims, until the eventual emergence of indelible truths. Human history is full of episodes of faith-in-faction obsessed madness, our modern history in Guyana included.

The simple effort to realise cohesive inroads is to identify and dispel the idols on the altars of political intended fictions. Most of the misused historical, cultural, religious and political topics and dogma used for propaganda were left to ferment by the very human material targeted, in a simplistic optimism that they will eventually fade away because they are not true, this is not objective nor realistic, it will not happen. For example, the Judeo/Christian philosophy and mysteries are grounded in African realities because they were extracted from African templates. Try telling that to most Afro Guyanese Christians, after 500 years of slave-trade and colonising biblical manipulation, that historical memory is buried too deep.

Guyana needs to tell its history of politics, culture and specific economic periods in simple formats so that access can behave without the challenging stress of a thousand page academic intimidation. Yes, there are citizens who will tell you that literature that is more than a 24-page booklet, and without graphics, that they’re not going to try to read it, and they are the majority. But to lift the political-ethnic fabricated original sins from weighing down their self-esteem. They need to know. There must be a reference pool of relevant information; illustrated booklets on [A] the 70’s Oil crisis impact on Guyana [B] A timeline of dates on events from 1961-64] [C] The story of Venezuelan economic strangulation from 1962 to 2015 [D] The history of Sugar- up and downhill’s from 1832 to 2015] among others. Cohesion must begin by planting the seed of informative truths, to grow into formidable trees bearing liberating fruit.