Offering remarks at the Annual National Diya Commemoration, in the midst of our oil-fuelled economic growth, I suggested there are challenges posed by the promise of wealth just as up to now they were by poverty. One of the challenges is how we would use the increased income that would be coming our way. In the past, Indian Guyanese were noted for their willingness to save, as noted by George Lamming.
“They are perhaps our only jewels of a true native thrift and industry. They have taught us by example the value of money; for they respect money as only people with a high sense of communal responsibility can.”
This capacity to save, by people who were at best grubbing out a day-to-day existence from cane cutting, farming or fishing, was sustained by a willingness to delay their gratification. Conspicuous consumption was not a part of their repertoire. The old cultural trait to look to the future to ensure that their children lived ‘better’ was reinforced by the newer immigrant mentality adopted after their arrival in Guyana. They were here to “make it” economically.
Today, this willingness to inculcate self-control, plan for the future, and defer gratification to ensure that the plan gets accomplished in the face of new circumstances is fast disappearing. We are now generally living and consuming for the moment, but still want to see our lives improve over time. We want to “suck cane and blow whistle at the same time.” It can’t be done, so we end up frustrated; sink into despair, or demand handouts.
Some, of course, use force and take what they want.
From whence have we imbibed this new ‘don’t give a damn’ attitude? For one, in any group, there will be some that go against the grain. But, generally, it’s as a result of outside pressures and influences – cultural and otherwise. In the Caribbean, there are aspects of the dominant Creole culture, reinforced by western hedonism, that present some of these pressures and influences.
Back in 1988, there was an International Roundtable in Guyana to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Then PM, Desmond Hoyte delivered an address, “Towards 2034: A Deeper View of the Horizon”, in which he made some pertinent remarks about our Creole Culture. I quote rather liberally from Mr Hoyte’s address.
“…one of the most pernicious consequences of slavery was that it bereft the slave of a vested interest in the future by imposing upon him the need to be constantly preoccupied with the exigencies of the moment. Indeed, the African slave on a WI plantation found himself in a world without horizons. His condition circumscribed within very narrow limits not only his physical, but also his spiritual, being. It deprived of the cohering and creative influences of his social organisation and his culture.
“Uprooted from his natural milieu, no longer able to fulfil his civic and religious duties, he was robbed of his spiritual points of reference. His personality disintegrated and, in a word, he suffered “social death”. It is not to be wondered at, then, that his outlook was little informed by any curiosity beyond the immediate; by any speculation about the distant future.
“And so, lacking a social motive, he developed no interest in, or aptitude for, making long-term arrangements. Moreover, the colonial polity which succeeded the era of slavery did not provide the former slave and his descendants with significantly greater incentive or opportunity for cultivating these pursuits. Thus, there persists in our society, even to this day, a reluctance to focus too intently on the future. It is critically important, I believe, that we should analyse and understand this phenomenon of our lack of interest in the future, and our failure generally to plan in a serious, methodical way with respect to it.”
It is important to note that, while we must start at the individual level, Mr Hoyte’s address focused on the need for planning at the country and international levels. And it is here that, I believe, thirty-six years after his warning, we must begin; especially since, at least for the next two decades, we are assured of an influx of funds from oil.
The question is, “Can we teach ourselves how to live for the future?” As this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics acknowledged, we must have the discipline to create the facilitating economic and political institutions, and, as individuals, live by their logic.
