Of hope and dystopia

Listen to this here: Wesley Speaks

Every day now we witness the unfolding of what the late Morgan Job contentiously diagnosed as a dystopian destiny - the product of a toxic concoction comprising political depravities, acquired ignorance, and the teetering infrastructure of increasingly impotent social institutions.

Yet all the time, as was the case two decades ago, bastions of resistance emerge as countervailing forces in the form of youth creativity, skill, and achievement. From the very heart of a so-called “failed generation” and “failed race” come the main pillars of substantial hope.

Jereem, Nicholas, our Kids Sooo Amazing, Leandra, Mikhail, Teneka, Adrian, Chantal, Aviel, Duvone, Gerelle, Vaughnette, Johann, Brandon, Justin – a fuller list requiring much more than mere column inches or finite time.

Social and political movements founded on the notion of the chronic failure of others themselves slant toward extinction. It’s not all mystic parable if we countenance the daily decay on the public stage. We know it when we see it. We all know who you are. Laughing emojis jeering tragedy on social media have real and fake names attached.

These days, I have been driving on potholed roads past copper lines hanging as limply as the slothful, impotent official and public responses to them. No time found by some for outright condemnation of such acts or a prescription to address them. We hear the silence.

Little energy left to prosecute except by way of disproportionate vigilante justice – kill them when you can. Or worse, leave them to the quiet consent of those who do not wish us well … at least for now.

Abandon legitimate protest and effective civil disobedience and burn some tyres or destroy public property for good measure. Bust the water pumps, smash the fittings and the lines. Cut the poles and let’s see how they feel. Mash up de place good and proper.

Kill them. Or let them die. No COVID-19, no masks, no vaccines. Monkey pox as “jokey” as they come. “Ventilation” as singular remedy in poor, small, over-crowded spaces. And, by the way, there’s no climate crisis. Flat-earth science versus fact.

After all, whose are the public faces of CARPHA, WHO and PAHO? And why, indeed, should they be ignored in favour of others? Look at them. Look at them. Look at us. Look at us.

“Because, you see, they walk up to each other in broad daylight and shoot each other in the head.” The way, in full public view, hope is torn from the hearts of those who simply need a break.

Just a slither of space to bring flight to fanciful ideas. Not a new car or a home mortgage. Only a fantasy with the promise of financial surplus to take them through as people in their own right. But they’re better off now, they say, than under thatched roofs far away. Still “no head for business.” An inability to convert “sense/cents” into dollars, they say.

Those of us who have chosen to stay and fight, with both feet inside, cannot but believe that through all this there are more than tiny glimmers of hope. This comes from living here and knowing about us and what makes us tick from both sides of the burglar bars.

Had our world been smaller, we would have mistaken all of this for total collapse. Had we not known that from Guayaguayare to Chaguanas to Toco to Speyside there is life and living, and people making things, achieving, hoping, we would have fallen for the myth, expressed as tacit political slogan, of tribal and thus a form of collective failure.

The real risks come when we concede to a conclusion of collapse. How, at that point, can we continue to call here home? But there is no yearning by most of us (who have chosen to remain both physically and emotionally), despite forceful alternative mythologies, for second class citizenship. A relinquishing of sovereignty, ownership, and responsibility.

This is a small space with many wonders. There is also joy we should not allow anyone to take from us. I see the great promise of the young folk. My son’s personal creed is “keep making things.”

I am prepared to embrace these young citizens. They bring us hope.