GUYANA is about to enter a new year. What will it bring? The future is promised to no one. Life is unpredictable. But the philosophers, especially the existentialist school in philosophy, argue that we, humans, have and make choices in a large world where there is limited time. A journey superbly described by the best philosophy book I have read, “Being and Time” by Martin Heidegger.

If we have room to make choices, that time allows us, then those choices must be designed to maximise the essence of being. Can homo sapiens successfully accomplish what Heidegger proposed when he wrote his magnum opus a hundred years ago? The jury is out on that. Look at the world today. Look at our country and the dark minds that are willing to tear it down.

In 2028, we will have the Olympics. Its enduring motto is mankind’s love for each other. The perennial theme of the Olympics is love of humanity and the equality within mankind. But every four years, when the Olympic Games are finished, homo sapiens return to what Arthur Koestler describes as the inherent brutality of the human being.

The last Olympics occurred four years ago, and look what has happened in the world since then. Is there anyone living in today’s world who believes that the motto of the Olympics was not torn to pieces by the occurrence of genocide in Gaza? But it is not just the occurrence of genocide; it is the incredible truth that a huge part of mankind supports it and also denies the perpetration of genocide in Gaza. In the world today, some countries refuse to acknowledge that genocide is taking place in Gaza and are happy to trade and send arms to the country committing genocide – Israel.

It was an unfriendly world last year. Non-white immigrants who have been brutalised in their own countries for centuries by White European empires are being treated as pariahs by these European empires. Do you know that France occupied Algeria for almost a century? Yet this year, France passed sweeping anti-immigrant legislation. These same drastic anti-immigrant measures, the Labour Government had enacted even before the ink had dried on the swearing in of the new government.

These same empires are refusing to pay compensation for the hundreds of years of misery they created in the countries of the immigrants they do not want. It was in France that the last summer Olympics were held. The next location is the US in 2028. It is in the US that the World Cup in soccer will take place next year, and what is taking place in the US right now does not give any human in the Global South the hope that, based on skin colour, they will get visas to see the game.

I am planning a column either this year or early next year to take a revisionist look at Adolph Hitler and his Nazi government. How true is the description of that regime that has been forced upon us since 1945? Was Hitler a more terrible human than the current Prime Minister of Israel? Not in my opinion.

I leave you with a moving song in the hope that it moves you in Guyana, and you make every effort to make our country better than those empires that once colonised us. Though I like every song Johnny Mathis sang, I prefer the version below.

If we only have love
By Gary Puckett and the Union Gap

If we only have love
Then tomorrow will dawn
And the days of our years
Will rise on that morn
If we only have love
To embrace without fears
We will kiss without eyes
We will sleep without tears
If we only have love
With our arms open wide
Then the young and the old
Will stand at our side
If we only have love
Love that’s falling like rain
Then the parched desert earth
Will grow green again
If we only have love
For the hymn that we shout
For the song that we sing
Then we’ll have a way out
If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names
If we only have love
We can melt all the guns
And then give the new world
To our daughters and sons
If we only have love
With our arms open wide
Then the young and the old
Will stand at our side
If we only have love
Love that’s falling like rain
Then the parched desert earth
Will grow green again
If we only have love
Then we’ll only be men
And we’ll drink from the grail
To be born once again
Then with nothing at all
But the little we are
We’ll have conquered all time
All space, the sun, and the stars

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.