It is vision that inspires

As the worldwide economic downturn takes its course, Malta faces the future with a mixture of anticipation and doubt. During the past half century, the Maltese people were witnesses to traumatic changes that transformed the face of the earth. Our destiny seemed, at times, to be entwined with some of these changes.

It is necessary to restore sufficient moral consensus and to dissemble discord and disillusion- J. G. Vassallo

During this crowded span of time, Malta stood rock-like on the periphery of the evil Nazi-Communist empire. It had endured an epic siege, aerial bombardments of hitherto unprecedented intensity, widespread destruction and hunger that brought it close to the point of surrender.

The years of post-war reconstruction coincided with the rundown of the fortress economy and were blighted by an interminable Cold War.

Along this tortuous way, Malta achieved independence and has, ever since, been busily structuring and restructuring its economic, social and political framework to earn its own living and secure a decent place in the sun.

Survivors who are by now approaching their 70s had the opportunity of studying, at uncomfortably close quarters, some of the greatest tyrants in history and many a lesser one. They have also lived in an age when nuclear power overshadowed the destiny of the whole of humanity.

The advent of the “bomb” and its terror has disturbed the emotions and politics of mankind to this day.

The younger generation knows little about the past. A good many people care even less. They have their own set of values. They consider their inheritance as their birthright and are inclined to look at the future with a mixture of curiosity and disillusionment.

Those who believed in Work, Justice and Liberty wonder why the problem of law and order has become more, instead of less, intractable.

Those who were inspired by their idealism and dreamt of a bright new world for the post-independence generation wonder why the drug problem has proliferated, why criminality has been unchecked, why modern forms of organisation and technology do not seem to have helped the powers-that-be to sort out our environment, transport and other problems.

Above all, they seem to suspect a loss of nerve, having gone rather far under the combined weight of these multiple problems and the permissiveness characteristic of modern times.

Yet, Malta has ample reserves of human and material resources and deeply-rooted democratic traditions and habits.

There is evidence that these qualities have the potential to strengthen our national moral fibre and to enable the forces of democracy to surmount formidable threats provided there is the will and the resolve

It is vision that inspires. Without vision, people perish. It is necessary to restore sufficient moral consensus and to dissemble discord and disillusion. This is crucial to a nation built on religious conviction and moral purpose.

Can it be done? Asking this fundamental question is a first step towards answering it. This question is most pertinent to the younger generation.

Today’s world shows many of the symptoms that accompanied past revolutions of human consciousness. We are witnessing a frantic search after new millennial hopes.

New ideas and sects are proliferating under the impact of half-baked philosophies, often secular in intent but clearly religious in impulses.

Some of the zealous and, no doubt sincere, Johnny-come-latelies, and a few of their elders, see in their iconoclastic and anarchistic lifestyles the dawn of a new consciousness that promises to transform society. Others fear that the seeming rejection of reason and the rejection of traditional values is the beginning of the end of our civilisation.

If history is anything to go by, these are extreme views. The middle way lies between the pessimism of one side and the optimism of the other...

But is history a reliable guide?

Ours is a notoriously unprecedented age. It is by no means comfortable to rest on déjà vu assumptions.

Lord Acton once said that the student of history is the politician with his face turned backward while the political commentator is the historian with his face looking forward. The latter must recognise the differences in values, standards and practical possibilities that distinguish the present from the past. There is indeed a great deal of history to escape from.

Ortega y Gasset asserted wisely that ”we have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it but to see if we can escape from it”.

At this point in time, the Maltese electorate would do well to summon its innermost qualities and deploy them in one national act of purpose: to build a new edifice on the foundations of the past. We need to take our bearings and to chart a course with the help of the stars that never, never, led us astray

Lone spirits seeking strange gods throughout the past decades have proved to be a destabilising force and tended to weaken the strong moral consensus necessary for the cohesion of a free, pluralist society. They must not be allowed to erode the Maltese social fabric as their counterparts have done elsewhere with devastating results.

jgv@onvol.net