Promises of real change

In the post-electoral strutting, everyone is promising change. But what would real change address? There is no denying the radical changes that Malta has undergone in the last few decades. We sometimes have difficulty recognising the country as it was only a few years ago. Yet, taking a longer historical view, it is striking how little has changed.

Like 1,000 years ago, land ownership continues to be the chosen marker of wealth and envy. Today, it is wanted as real estate, not agricultural land. But it continues to be the economy's key resource.

The sea, too, continues to be important for our economy. But, as in the Baroque period, we still largely use it for fishing, traditional maritime services and the pleasure of seeing foreigners lying on the beaches close to it.

Granted, there are differences. A lot of our fish is farmed not hunted. Back at the beach, some centuries ago we would have wished the Turkish pashas would just lie down and not get up again. Today, we cannot wait for them to disembark from their cruise-ships; to provide them with cold drinks and hastily-made souvenirs of the Maltese cross; to urge them to enjoy our hospitality, and offer timeshare.

But these are pale differences. Historically, our ports were places of open international exchange. The Church's inquisitorial records suggest many "Turks" (or "Muslims") served as fortune-tellers and counsellors on how to procure love. Is it a major shift if today, according to TV's inquisitions, the function appears to be served by Greeks - and Maltese with a smattering of exotic experience?

The shift to fish farming does make a difference to fishing communities. In the case of tuna fishing, it sometimes means that it makes more sense for fishermen to become employees of an entrepreneur rich enough to own the necessary capital equipment and to pay armed mercenaries to protect the pens from other entrepreneurs, flying a different national banner. In other cases, fishing quotas are bought, or cajoled, from impoverished African countries.

But while such developments make all the difference to fishermen, they bear a sufficiently striking resemblance to feudalism to make us wonder at the extent of the break from the distant past.

The suspicion of long-term continuity persists even where we would expect radical change: culture. Yes, it has been transformed in profound ways. The shift from the colonial culture of a military outpost to the nationalist culture of a service economy is hardly superficial.

But is it not striking that so often we continue to look at ourselves through foreign eyes? Paul Sant-Cassia once noted that 19th-century foreign landscape painting of "typical Maltese scenes" has interesting parallels in how the Maltese tourist industry tries to exoticise the "typical" scenes of contemporary Malta.

Almost 20 years after that acute observation, the "revival" of our capital city is almost entirely conceived in how to turn it into a tourist trail and "experience". Valletta continues to be a city built by foreigners for foreigners.

A conservative philosophy of history might settle for a conclusion of Plus ca change or la bidu, la tmiem... But this would mistake our predicament.

For the very dynamism of aspects of our culture underlines the stagnation of other aspects. In 21st-century Malta, the "rites of spring" - the celebration of new life - find their true season in the summer. Our feasts and holidays have attuned themselves to the industrial and tourist cycles, rather than that of nature. Our weddings, renewal of friendships and acquaintances (all those BBQ invitations!) and self-renewal - slimming, tanning, exercise and recreation - take on a special intensity and zest during this period.

Commerce has caught on. But the religion of the overwhelming majority continues to express itself in the idiom of the agrarian age (despite the fact that its own scriptures chart the transformations of the religion's self-expression from that of desert tribes to Middle Eastern village and urban dwellers, to that of the Hellenic world and Roman citizenry).

It would be facile to blame only the men of religion. Most of the (overwhelmingly) men of politics still try to persuade us of the strength of their principles by boasting they will not move our social security net to where their predecessors tied it up 50 years ago.

Meanwhile, our lives have moved on. They are punctuated by different crises and rites of passage. The middle class is increasingly becoming part of a global middle class - in ethos, not just job mobility. Working class jobs, even when nominally still in manufacturing, increasingly belong to the service sector - with correspondingly different needs for security.

So, a progressive view of history would be struck by the existential contradiction between the real springs of our life today and what we live by; between what we are and could have, and what we settle for. Who will be the men and women who will attack this contradiction?

ranierfsadni@europe.com