Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 15, 2020 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
I have no interest in any ongoing wrangling over elections controversies, regarding who did what and all the rest of that sordid 19-month interval in Guyana’s history. I distance from that, and do not wish to delve into any of that and stain my hands. But there is a single post elections postmortem on which I comment.
I think that the worst thing that ever came down this side of the equator must be the modern technology that powered the phenomenon called social media. Despite its potential for great good, in the starkest terms, social media brought out the very worst in us. Both sides of the divide are guilty of savaging excesses that maim the mind. We have mangled, pierced, shredded, and brutalized adversaries from within the confines of a raging and dangerous electronic mob totally out of control.
Some may name it the rights of freedom of speech and assembly. That may be so, but I wonder about the obligations of individual and group responsibility. Although I am nowhere near social media platforms, what came to me secondhand brought shuddering and recoiling; it was bad, and it continues. I am a little thicker skinned than most, view things more benevolently, and have a much tolerance for the frailties and follies of my fellows. This is partly traceable to my passage in life and has a lot to do with my belief system.
But what came to light in the racial frenzies and hysterias which took center stage and pride of place in the quarrels that blazed across cyberspace caused sickening. We took a revolutionary development and profaned it. We took Facebook and Instagram and Twitter (and whatever else there is) to batter each other hatefully and grievously. I would venture even mortally, which times may confirm.
It was obvious that Guyanese relished the occasion and opportunity to dish it out to racial obstacles and racial enemies (that was opponents degraded to) in endless salvos and fusillades. It is not accidental that I settle for the language of conflict and war to register the in-depth character of what went on with such electric energy. Almost all participants seized the moment to jump on a soapbox and make destructive speeches. Everybody was on show and made a production of exhibiting to the world how destructive the passions raging.
Regrettably, there were few cooler, sober, and tempered heads to slow down comrades and the likeminded on either respective side. Of course, the anonymity contributed mightily to righteous wrath and furnished the camouflage for borderline criminal conduct. From raw bigotry to naked hating and the worst of demeaning language, it was all hung out in public in prideful authorship. Everybody was an expert, every functional illiterate and epitome of those who could be derogated as dumb had their many moments with posts that celebrated their appalling stupidities. It was playing to the crowd and sticking it to the other side. Tit for tat and on and on were the gutting stories that came to me.
With so many maddened people around, how can we have a country? With so many reckless and uncaring, what probability, what options, what room for healing and rebuilding? I know of situations where some are no longer attending their regular places of worship but have switched locations because of the vitriol and venom that were exchanged, they were privy to, or want no part of going forward.
It is enlightening that in our houses of worship this is the reality. That is, the sanctuary that should serve as a bulwark against the excesses and seepages of the secular has been reduced to the garbage of the political and racial. If we don’t have that, then what do we have? Where are we as a nation? As individual citizens? As Guyanese who thrilled to the wantonness of the heinous via cyber channels that now leave us without a clue as to how to take the first indrawn breath to live again?
To be clear, the political powers cannot offer solace or save us from ourselves, as we struggle to coexist. So, now what do we do? Perhaps, since we are so far gone, we are unable to stop or separate. Unfortunately, this is how I see and measure matters. It is harrowing and alarming. If this is the price of victory, then we are all losers. And this is my last word on what went on before, and which I try to purge from consciousness. It may not cooperate.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
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