There is a lot in a name, much more than Shakespeare ever thought there could be. In fact there is a lot of meaning in every word, and more so in a metaphor.
George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s study about metaphors – Metaphors We Live By – amply showed that metaphors are not just the stuff that poets dabble in, as many think. Metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, while shaping our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
A change of metaphors is important to reframe public discourse and achieve social change. Metaphors are an essential part of public discourse and are very important politically.
I am not advocating a change of metaphors based on spin or manipulation. Such a thing would be immoral. Politics, on the contrary, is eminently moral.
What I am proposing is the use of metaphors that can access the best of what people already believe unconsciously, making it conscious and helping to change policy to build a better world.
The underlying metaphor used by Pope Francis to described Earth in Laudato Si’, his encyclical letter about environmental issues, is an example.
Conservatives generally use such metaphors as ‘resource’, ‘property’ or an ‘adversary to be conquered’. The environment is thus something that we can exploit. It is just a potential financial resource.
St Francis, on the other hand, talked of “brother sun and sister moon”, while many others refer to “mother earth”. Within this perspective our environment is something to be loved and nurtured, not exploited.
Pope Francis used some of these metaphors. But his underpinning metaphor is different. The very subtitle of the encyclical – “On Care for our Common Home” – proposes a paradigmatic shift.
Earth is not something we exploit or sentimentally love. It is our common home. We – all humans irrespective of nation or ethnicity – live in this home. Pope Francis frames his thoughts on the subject through a relationship model as one expects to find in a home. He just transports it to the world stage.
‘Malta, our common home’ should be the adaption on our national level of the metaphor the Pope uses at the level of the world, as this could provide the underpinning essential for the new kind of politics that our country needs to move forward.
This metaphor distances us from the sentimentalism of the national anthem’s metaphor “l-omm li tatna isimha” (the mother who bestowed on us our name). It would also bury once and for all the accompanying metaphor of government as ‘our father’. That frame is so damningly paternalistic and hopelessly outdated.
The metaphor I am proposing taps the best of our collective unconscious: relationships
‘Malta, our common home’ also distances us from the pre-electoral slogan ‘Malta tagħna lkoll’. The metaphor I am proposing taps the best of our collective unconscious: relationships. The ‘tagħna’ (ours) in the second metaphor is based on the concept of ownership or property. It taps into greed and possessiveness, particularly when property is defined as something over which one has absolute domain, so much so that one can use it or destroy it.
This mind-frame taps into the lowest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as is also evidenced in the post-electoral policies based on the cynical attitude that money is the measure of all things.
Besides, it is now known that the ‘tagħna’ really referred to the big-moneyed bullies who concluded pre-electoral shady deals. They are now reaping millions while distributing peanuts to us uncouth peasants (as this is the way they treat us). ‘Tagħna lkoll’ was just a well-marketed cynical spin followed by behaviour in government which is light years from the concept of moral politics.
Truth be said, this is a special kind of home; one without blood relations and without a father and a mother at its head. This home houses a family of equals who voluntarily and periodically choose some to serve the others by taking care of its good governance.
In a home, in contrast to a house, relationships matter more than possessions. But as happens in other homes, members should care for each other and take responsibility for each other. A home is more than just a physical place since the bond between those who live in it is both physical and emotional. A home is something inherently worth maintaining and protecting.
The ‘common good’, more than the individualistic, egoistic ‘good’, should reign supreme. The ‘common good’ frame is about interdependence, shared responsibility and shared benefit. Society as a whole, and the State in particular, are obliged to defend and promote the common good.
All Maltese care for their homes but traditionally care very little for all that is outside their home. If the reference to ‘Malta, as our common home’ becomes part of public discourse, people could start considering the space outside their private home as part of their collective home, hopefully caring for it as much as they take care of their private homes.
People would be encouraged to do something when their common home is falling into serious disrepair on the physical level (e.g. the ravaging of ODZ and the building of Priapic towers) and at the moral level (e.g. rampant and institutionalised corruption at the highest levels). One would fight to save Żonqor Point, for example, as one would fight to defend one’s back garden, since Żonqor Point would be considered as the collective garden of present and future home dwellers.
In a home, one expects to be treated with respect. While all have the right to equal treatment, those who are weaker than others have the right for more solicitude. Bullies are anathema and preferential treatment of already powerful individuals disrupts good relationships. Members feel and are responsible for one another. These are not fanciful sentiments but should be the basic of the country’s social policy.
If Malta is considered to be our common home we can, like Voltaire’s Candide, strive to take care of our common garden, resisting the plundering by the kings.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt