THE FORCED AGE OF THE FUTURISTIC…

WHETHER we are prepared or not, another age is shaping our values and way of living. For years, authors of fiction have heralded drastic changes that will not be subject to just warfare. The question will be the realisation and understanding of what this means to populations and leaders rooted in the accustomed way of conducting business, failing to understand their own habitats and the creeds and values of trade and barter and how the conduct of previous engagements have subtly evolved, since we’re concerned and prioritised by ingrained methods and contentions that have changed regardless, ignoring the dangers of the comfort zone much like the theory of the ‘Time Warp’ remains frozen in its own particular space. We must reflect on the references of the sages of our day, for substance, right or wrong on the prospects of the enveloping inevitable. The astronomer Carl Sagan outlined the ‘Type 1 civilisation in theory. He implied then, that with the internet we (humanity) began on the path of a type 1 civilisation. “The internet is an emerging type 1 telephone system. It has the capability of becoming the basic of a universal planetary communication network.” We are there now, the next prediction was- “The economy of the type 1 society will be dominated not by nations, but by large trading blocks resembling the European Union, which itself was formed because of competition from NAFTA (The North American block)” and the last significant analytical prediction relevant to our situation would be –abridged “Nations, although they will probably be around for centuries to come, will become less important as trade barriers fall and as the world becomes more economically interdependent.” But Carl Sagan is American, born in Brooklyn, he’s not talking from my perspective as a Guyanese, because his analogy does frighten, when examining the environment that envelopes me. All we trade in today, as in yesterday, is still rooted in the export of raw materials, except for rum, so Guyana on the large national scale cannot compete in the rich niche markets that will envelop a small, to medium business cadre, that will hold the participating interests of citizens through employment.

Through to fact, years ago, I filled a company with my late brother, inspired by the profession of our father, Hubert Braithwaite, a contractor and joiner who designed furniture. However, neither of us grew with him due to a broken family. We always had his audience, I more than John. The company was to earn and maintain a TSA, and execute many of the ideas that our father had expressed to me, and later in my conversations with my brother, that our father could not accomplish in the creative wood product industry because of circumstances beyond his control. I received some of the documents of my brother’s endeavours with the company after we had a principle fall out, I realised that I was right, my brother hardly understood the fractured nature of our society. The closest to what we had in mind was Precision Woodworking, owned by my friend of years, Ronald Bulkan.

The fact is, we understood back then that it will take much more than the harnessing of raw materials to gainfully employ the population of any country today on the standards of modern living. This is not a new story either. The smelting of iron ore, that is said to have begun in ancient Africa, did not serve the accomplishment of a new technology alone, or it would have quickly died as a craft, had it not been transported into the creation of tools for the sculpting of religious iconography, weapons for war and hunting, and the enabling specialist tools for the sculpting of royal and religious jewellery. With its proliferation across the human world ( humans traded, exchanged learned methods whether in ancient cosmology (Astrology etc.) were shared and exchanged between peoples; these sciences have remained with our ancestors across human variations because of the extension of their usefulness into military, cultural, religious and propaganda artistic industries (before printing). That human ingenuity has transcended time into areas we can hardly recognise, because it has become so casually accepted due to necessity that the intricate process involved can easily evaporate under the argument of why explore–why what is? When it just is. The first tracks, and rotating upper bodies on heavy-duty vehicles, bulldozers, cranes etc., no doubt emerged from the same applications on the combat tanks. The problem in Guyana is where is the considerable volume of products that with our human and natural gifts that Guyana knows it possesses, that are visually transferred into cottage and small industries?

The reason for this predicament can be fitted into the arena of our politics and its ‘Insurance Slates’ that entitles supporting citizens to positions of authority, regardless. Somehow if we are to compete in Sagan’s Type 1 civilisation, criteria will have to change and the landscape of national management evolve, or be consumed, or limp along as a prime case study of Social Anthropology on the Comfort Zone syndrome.