Death by any means is still death

Dec 12, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

On Saturday morning, I was south on East Street when I parked a few yards away from Church Street to buy fruits at Merriman’s Mall. My eyes caught this huge billboard right in front of my car but on the parapet. It is an anti-suicide advocacy. I stayed in my seat and fixed my eyes on the message. I don’t know what happened but there and then I saw something invisibly subliminal on that sign. It was the psychological death of my country.
I stared at it for a few minutes. And I simply felt ashamed to be a part of this nation; a really lost culture and country. I came out of the car, looked at the billboard once again and said to myself, “Freddie, you have a column right here.” And here I am writing on the subject I conceived of while looking at that anti-suicide advocacy. Everywhere you turn in this country, you see signs of the nihilism buried deep in our collective psyche.
I always wonder if I didn’t study philosophy if I would have been so maudlin about Guyana’s existence and pessimistic about the future of this culturally shambolic and mentally disheveled nation. About ten years ago (August 21, 2007), Forbes Burnham’s daughter, Ulele published a letter in which she wondered why I would want to dissuade my daughter from “the rigours of philosophy and philosophical thought.”
That was in response to my August 6, 2007 column in which I admitted I didn’t want my kid to study philosophy because it is about dark subjects, dark things, dark life. But Ms. Burnham disagreed. In her response she wrote; “It seems to me, however, that he (Kissoon), and others who care about Guyana, should embrace rather than jettison a philosophical approach. Philosophy is not concerned only with human malady. Much philosophical writing focuses, for example, on the pursuit of long-term happiness by the process of learning to defer gratification. So philosophical education, as my cousin Gary Lam reminded me recently, might do wonders for young Guyanese….”
I didn’t succeed in stopping my daughter from an immersion in philosophy, but I would have liked to. I wish her well in her philosophical studies, but for me, I wish I did take an interest in that discipline because it is always in your focus when you contemplate the failings of people and nations. Philosophical reflections about Guyana’s demise ran through my mind as I gazed upon that anti-suicide message. The billboard was about suicide, suicide is about death, death is the removal of life from existence whether by homicide, suicide, medical malpractice, vehicular accident.
So there you have this billboard that seeks to drive awareness into our minds that suicide can be prevented. But how strong is this country in trying to prevent other forms of death? Do we care? Road accidents are causing a staggering loss of life. But drunk drivers get bail. And when convicted very, very few get more than two years in prison. Youths get remanded to Camp Street jail for possession of a few grams of marijuana and if found guilty are automatically sentenced to four years of imprisonment. Is that how we care about the loss of life?
I was asked to take up a case of a wash-bay attendant given 45 consecutive years in jail for inserting his fingers in the vagina of an underage girl. Very few, and I emphasize, very few murder convicts get such a long sentence. A convict, last week, pleaded guilty to killing twenty persons and he will serve sixty years; fifteen more than the man who violated the underage girl.
In this country, a sizeable number of poor people have died because of medical incompetence. To date, not one doctor has been charged with manslaughter. The editor-in-chief of this newspaper, Adam Harris wrote; “It is the medical field that has me worried. I fear that too many substandard doctors are in the system and our people die sometimes after entering the hospital with minor complications.”
Nigel McKenzie told me that his father-in-law went to the Georgetown Public Hospital following a vehicular accident. He sustained a broken arm and died. Nigel McKenzie is the deputy editor of this newspaper.
The father of KN sports journalist, Eddison Jefford, went in to hospital for a damaged ankle, and died. These are relatives of two prominent Guyanese names. Think of how many poor folks have died because of sheer medical incompetence. They paid with their lives because they couldn’t afford better treatment. Where is the billboard warning us about death from medical incompetence? My study of philosophy leads me to declare that this is a psychologically dead country.

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