“Poverty: the next threat; there are 400 multimillionaires with more wealth than half the world’s population,” Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1987, former President of Costa Rica. A cultural inheritance of 2,000 years of forced poverty can inflict a process of unique sober insanity, to drive by all means the reachable possibility to own the saleable resources of a nation using devious, divisive and whatever callous means necessary to possess and fulfil with insane destructive urgency what should satisfy an ancient nightmare that can only be appeased by wealth, indifferent to the ‘other’ citizenry– towards no other purpose. Elections in Guyana are a crescendo of cultural undercurrents fuelled by an emotional symphony of incredible myths, tangible experiences, truths, nurtured feelings and perceptions, all within the nature of schemed aggressions compiled through time into a doctrine to protect and enable supremacy survival, one cultural being of values against the other.

David Hinds accused especially the middle-class leadership of the PNC of skirting around the question of race-“they acknowledge and rail against racism in private, but run for cover when they are publicly confronted by it,” Guyana Chronicle, October 6, 2016. David is correct, as most of the article was, but there are facts not recognised. The roots of racism cannot be analysed from a political or the traditional tertiary education, that produces to a greater number, a clerical approach to matters, whether lawyer, manager or technical administrator. Worse still in the context of Afro-Guyanese, whose original pre slave trade cultural ethos does not have a mythical or religious doctrine based on racist superiority and converted hatreds, which accommodate with a smile, but conceal intense resentment and divisiveness at the same time, as doctrine.

Racism can be understood better through the combined studies of social Anthropology, History and Psychology, towards the exploration of that tremendous topic, and for the mature mind, the course and the restricted books rather than the classroom will suffice. Therein dwell answers that can enable a greater sense of enlightenment, rather than secret whining and the mirage of optimism.

References to Guyana’s problems from that background can become much easier to articulate, explore and subjugate. A greater understanding of behavioural antics and functions will be an asset, not in a stereotypical sense, but explanatory with respect to values and priorities at different levels. Knowledge allows a mental transference to see through the mist to the other side, instead of interpreting the world according to one’s own cultural values and tenets.

Our world functions on suspicions and speculations, thus we can be fooled and tricked. The ‘LIE’ is a force that absorbs those who practise it frequently. I knew a con man named ‘Jubal’ (now deceased), who told me one day of a scenario that I knew was a plot he had created; he was puzzled and seemed not to recall it. That condition was explained to me by another friend who referred me to a movie on the subject, titled ‘Blue,’ that conmen after a time throw themselves into “boards” and are consumed by their own lies. This also applies to people who develop personas to enable them to coexist, while attempting to remain loyal to the original world view and its values. This has happened to many politicians, group cultures and nations.

I expressed to a senior politician some months ago in a particular public engagement, because I suspected that he had begun to conduct a chameleon act that required it. A personal position developed over the years, that -‘I listen to what is said to me, but I remain loyal to what I have experienced, witnessed and know’. That was related on the grounds that I acknowledge areas of grey, of stereotypical paradoxes, betrayal, honesty and dishonesty and have cultivated a mental guideline based on sensible human levels of awareness. So I expect nothing from promises, thus, I avoid the bitterness of disappointment, because disappointment is not always intentional, though I value gratitude, for I have benefitted from unsolicited kindness, and do practise loyalty to the pursuit of realistic ideals.

I am the sum of a good childhood, then a totally unsheltered, almost shipwrecked adolescence onward, acquiring those knowledge skills that could only have come from experience. The modern era of Guyana is divided into two eras: that of post-emancipation and pre & post-independence. All were riveted in schemes, betrayals and fatal conflicts revolving around racial, social, political, but predominantly economic agendas, where we have failed, is to understand beyond our emotions, envies, treacherous accommodations, optimism, good intentions and egos, the nature of the monsters that hover in our midst, with opportunistic self-destructive suggestions and incitements, crafted in logical displays, as much as is the conclusion of the reality of the broken bridge before you, which does not always in truth translate to the obvious fault of the contractor.

We came from diverse experiences, African tribes, Indian caste systems, and levels of extreme privation in Europe and Asia that facilitated amidst some groups a loss of self-esteem that prevent empathy, principles and fairness from being an innate value in the active consciousness, overwhelmed by the hunger of self-survival. These assets and inflictions are with us and will morph continuously. The politics of over the past four years reveal a dangerous disconnect and contempt over the sensibilities, humanity and values of the other masses, or the No confidence motion, devoid of logical grounds, the incident with the President at the Manufactures Association and before that, the assassination plot would not have happened, in the straight display of its ethnic divide. The future will require the need for the nation’s most enlightened sons and daughters to heal the injury caused, but those who are the architects will never leave the shadows of our negative contemplations.