-
Blog Stats
- 7,454,110 hits
-
Search Blog Entries
-
Pages
-
Top Posts
- Airports closed; houses collapse under the weight of La Soufriere ash - St. Lucia and Barbados affected
- The Duke of Edinburgh Dies: A look back at Prince Philip's life - VIDEO
- MUSIC: Motown Greatest Hits - 70'S SOUL - video
- St. Vincent: La Soufriere volcano explosions and eruptions continue
- COVID-19: New requirements for travel to Suriname including quarantine
- RECIPES From Guyana and the Caribbean - From Guyana Outpost archive
- MONEY: We Are Living Through The Scariest Economic Experiment In History Right Now - Video by Jack Chapple
- St. Rose's Alumni Association USA Inc: Virtual Garden Party - April 17. 2021
- BUSINESS: The Rise And Fall Of The Cruise Industry - Business Insider
- Do We Have Enough Stuff? - By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
-
Recent Posts
- The Duke of Edinburgh Dies: A look back at Prince Philip’s life – VIDEO
- Airports closed; houses collapse under the weight of La Soufriere ash – St. Lucia and Barbados affected
- COVID-19: New requirements for travel to Suriname including quarantine
- St. Vincent: La Soufriere volcano explosions and eruptions continue
- MONEY: We Are Living Through The Scariest Economic Experiment In History Right Now – Video by Jack Chapple
- BUSINESS: The Rise And Fall Of The Cruise Industry – Business Insider
- MUSIC: Motown Greatest Hits – 70’S SOUL – video
- VIDEO by Sadhguru: What is the Greatest Evil on this Planet? – Opinion
- Caribbean: OECS Central Bank – Get Ready For DCash
- The Bahamas Moves Towards Commercial Roll Out Of A Digital Currency
- Ken Corsbie: The Caribbean’s Quintessential Theatre Celebrity – by Francis Quamina Farrier
- VIDEO: Georgetown Guyana– A Guided Tour
- GUYANA: A Walk around Stabroek Market in Georgetown. Guyana – video
- This is Guyana – Georgetown | UltraHD Drone RAW Footage | Video
- COVID-19: UN report warns of corruption risks in vaccine procurement
- First batch of Russian COVID-19 vaccines arrives in Guyana
- USA Senate Politics: The Filibuster Was Grounded in Slavery and Now Threatens All Life
- Commentary: A second look – the first SO IT GO: – By Dave Martins
- POLITICS: Comments on politicians that withstand the passage of time
- OPINION: No! the idea of CARICOM is not dead – By Sir Ronald Sanders
-
Recent Comments
- Brother Man on GUYANA: A Walk around Stabroek Market in Georgetown. Guyana – video
- Dennis Albert on VIDEO by Sadhguru: What is the Greatest Evil on this Planet? – Opinion
- guyaneseonline on Airports closed; houses collapse under the weight of La Soufriere ash – St. Lucia and Barbados affected
- WIC on COVID-19: New requirements for travel to Suriname including quarantine
- Brother Man on Do We Have Enough Stuff? – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
- Dennis Albert on Do We Have Enough Stuff? – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
- brandli62 on BUSINESS: The Rise And Fall Of The Cruise Industry – Business Insider
- Patricia K on St. Vincent: La Soufriere volcano explosions and eruptions continue
- Brother Man on Do We Have Enough Stuff? – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
- Dennis Albert on Do We Have Enough Stuff? – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
- Dennis Albert on MONEY: We Are Living Through The Scariest Economic Experiment In History Right Now – Video by Jack Chapple
- wally n on Do We Have Enough Stuff? – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
- Bernard on St. Vincent: La Soufriere volcano explosions and eruptions continue
- guyaneseonline on St. Vincent: La Soufriere volcano explosions and eruptions continue
- dhanpaul narine on Do We Have Enough Stuff? – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
-
Categories
-
Viewers Online
-
Monthly Blog Posts
-
Affiliated Partner Links
-
Caribbean News Links
-
Cricket Websites
-
Guyana - History
-
Guyana - Other Links
-
Guyana Government
-
Guyana News Links
-
Other News Links
-
Guyanese Online
WHAT HAVE WE BECOME? – By Norman Datt
WHAT HAVE WE BECOME? – By Norman Datt
What have we become?
We call ourselves civilized
Maybe to some
We’ve left the mechanized
Become so dumb
Become so computerized
But our minds numbed
Still cluttered with evil
With sparks
To lend an ear to the devil
How so-called civilized are we when
From bottom to top
We’re ready to criticize our fellow men
At a hat’s drop
Before we can count from one to ten
We can’t stop
So illogical
To pass judgment before a trial
So quickly
Reinforcing it with every denial
Look at us
We see ourselves as sophisticated
More than plus
But our brains are still mechanized
Full of pus
And old biases still to be eradicated
In space
We’re proud of our every achievement
On earth
And we’ve destroyed our environment
Some of us are advanced and powerful
Yet they moan
Use their position and become hateful
Like a bad bone
It’s scary when power becomes spiteful
On their own
Bringing the downtrodden
Down to their humble bent knees
Becoming blind
Seeing the forest and not the trees
We wrap ourselves in our own compartment
In invisible cages
We have come far yet lack good judgement
Behaving like sages
Achieving less in the thinking department
And other stages
As we idle
Drooling and end up doodling
Paying no heed
Whom do we think we are fooling?
Even the young and innocent
Becoming real asses
We are always sheer hell bent
Making obscene passes
For our own selfish fulfillment
Trampling the masses
Abusing our women
Coloureds and natives
Abusing children
Using many superlatives
We’re trying to find out what’s up there
With A1 technology
They say it’s the survival of our welfare
Yet no one can see
Our numerous earthly problems here
Like the economy
Like the rich
And the haves and the have-nots
Like politicians
Using words, promises and buts
We try hard to make contact
With the unknown
But down here we fail to act
With our very own
We can’t communicate is a fact
We can’t set the tone
We’ve come a long way looking fine
But look behind
At the bread-line and the soup-line
Trying to find
Whilst the above thinking only of mine
Turning an eye
Scorning the homeless in city shelter
And the handicapped
As the sick and lame run helter skelter
Some have hearts as black as tar
Inept gov’ts. neglecting their population
And spent most money on war
Let their country-men die of dehydration
And aid has to come from afar
From others to prevent mass starvation
What have we become
Are these men or weevils
To turn their backs
On their wretched peoples
When the Hippocratic Oath is discarded
By our medical doctors
Behaving as if they are mentally retarded
Becoming abusers
Abusing women who once regarded
These professionals as healers
It’s more than a medical shame
When in this field we lose respect for those
Whom we can unequivocally blame
For our medical and all emotional throes
Do we only feel when we are hurting
When the ones involved
Are our own kith and kin that are dying
Do we feel absolved
When we help ’cause it’s embarrassing
Or let it be resolved
By the living
When folks of our own native land
Are dying
And we can’t give a helping hand
What have we done to our history
When the truth we do twist
To give heroic pictures to our story
Clouded by an irreligious mist
As we colour our patriots with glory
Ridiculing the others on the list
Making the Battle of the Little Big Horn a curse
As the General Custer made his last stand between
Defiant Sitting Bull and the cagey Crazy Horse
Wiping out 261 soldiers, Majors Reno and Benteen
What have we become when we change
Documents to please our command
When we still can’t find the range
The big damage a little bullet did and
How after over 55 years, so strange
Experts are still trying to understand
What happened that fatal day
When in Dallas they shot Kennedy
Even the experts would not say
It was a disgraceful conspiracy
The Neo-Nazis are forming their bases
Preachers of the non-existence of the Holocaust
Making a come-back in some places
These apologies are repeating the painful past
And many are turning away their faces
At the awesome Auschwitz memories which will last
The same kind of belief which gassed 6 million Jews
Are camouflaged today as ethnic cleansing
The poor folks of Sarajevo and Bosnia can’t choose
And evil prosper when good men do nothing
Can we teach our kids about decency
When our leaders die by assassination
Because of their civil rights policy
When we do not like their pigmentation
Trying to turn back the hand of history
Just because some have might
To stifle his dreams
The Rev. Martin Luther was murdered
When he told the truth
Then Malcolm X’s belief was destroyed
What have we become when we clamour
With no shame
For Gold from rich Brazil without amour
To you it’s the same
But to others who never tasted the glamour
It’s more than a game
That gold was mined with chemicals
That gold on your neck and your fingers
Has already taken million lives
By poisoned mercury in the Amazon waters
Look what is the result
When we worship the devil and the dead
A real ungodly insult
When we moved away from the Godhead
To a no-name brand cult
When to witchcraft our souls we shed
Making it the order of the day
Is this the end of the world?
When lesbians, homos have more say
As their LGBT flag they unfurl?
Man the killer
Who destroys everything
Man the eater
Who eats anything
Who leaves nothing
Who destroys the fauna
Kills the whales and dolphins
Man the taker
Who destroys the flora
Will have to pay for his sins
What’ve we become we’ve changed
So very little
Is it because we are racially deranged?
Becoming brittle
When Negro-lynching was not so strange
As we whittle
At disadvantages
Now it is encouraged surreptously
As we whoop, holler and shout
As heads are turned as churches burn
As disadvantages are carried out
How careless can man become
To have eyes and not see
When the gov’t look after only some
Only worrying about the invisible enemy
As the same rhetoric they hum
Promising 4 more years to prosperity
Yet will now have to spend billions in aid
More costly than some flood defences
More costly than the priceless Free Trade
What have we become when
Wives are addicted to soap operas
Where men run around with other women
As watchers try to imitate the actors
And when the kids reach the age of ten
They too try to be young imitators
Whereas time spent watching soaps
Can be used to mould the young
Making them good decent citizens
Disciplined with a civil tongue
When blind-faith is in question
When we lose faith in the military
With botched investigation
Like in the Iowa in the US navy
With a blundering explosion
When young servicemen were killed
Mothers can’t get the answers
How can you have a trial for the evils
By those who think they are above God
With leaders as obnoxious as weevils
How dumb or heartless can we be
When we sacrifice our own for politics
Sell our mother in the name of ideology
As in the case of the SS Lusitania
Or using the SS Greer
To lure Americans in World War II
Or to defy the above
Calling the Titanic unsinkable
Trying to play God
Such acts are unpardonable
I grew up in another land as a lad
I had looked forward for the time
When I can be glad and not sad
To the future which looks sublime
Many like me felt we’ve been had
By leaders who are slippery slime
By merchants not from Venice but every city
Who judge everything by the dollar sign
Have forgotten the basics of life in this society
Who never think of ours but only of mine.
Share this:
Related