Since childhood and all throughout life, we are offered lessons and we often like to say: I/we have no lessons to learn from anyone. Lessons are offered and or refused at all levels of society – individually and collectively.
During a radio discussion recently, I heard a listener complain about her own relatives and friends who regularly ask her and her husband when they are going to have children. This couple becomes sadder and more isolated each time this happens. Persons claiming to be among the family and friends of this couple are really enemies, since they are victimising and hurting the couple. I do not usually propose aggressive language in people.
In this case, the harassment would stop if a hostile answer is given. I know many of this type of answer but I will not be pedagogical. There are so many beautiful expressions that may be used starting from the simplest “Mind your own business” to, well, “Why don’t you do this, the other and all the rest?” For, in reality, busybodies expect couples to behave like ‘normal mammals’.
A few couples I know decided not have children unless one of them changed his/her mind. I see no problem in this. However, some moralisers say that couples not wanting children are selfish as the main reason for people getting married is to have children and sacrifice everything for them. Well, this may be true for some, but not for all. In many cases, the reason for a couple to get married has nothing to do with biological procreation to make sure the world does not end up childless. Couples not wanting children may actually be scolded for not contributing to the survival and permanence of the species. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, especially if busybodies tend to produce other busybody persons who start giving advice to one and all in between bouts of breastfeeding.
A propos to breastfeeding, there was once a time when mothers who did not breastfeed, were also scolded by busybodies for not going about their business outside the home with a kid or two extending from themselves and drinking to their heart’s content while indulging in enthusiastic bonding. This may indeed be the etymological origin of the expression: “My namesh’ Bond, Jamesh Bond” since one cannot pronounce the ‘s’ properly while breastfeeding.
Unfortunately, the art of busybodying is also practised at national and international levels. A cohabiting, unmarried couple years ago could easily hear a knock on the door and a scolding from a holy man for living together without being married. Come to think of it, the answer could be another question: “What makes you and your organisation think that only men have the right to be holy?”
At international levels, busybodying carries on. There was once a democratic exercise in the UK which resulted in a referendum producing a programme called Brexit. I am not personally involved in approving or disapproving of Brexit as IT IS NOT MY BUSINESS. However, while there must be positive and negative things about this decision, it is up to the British to reflect and express themselves on the benefits and disadvantages of Brexit. Unfortunately, so many foreigners visit Britain and pontificate to the British about Brexit. Just leave them alone and let them a handle the matter. Do not be a socio-political busybody.
Incidentally, while immigration seems to be one of the instigators of Brexit, there are other things that must also have played a role. Is it not true that France and Germany have for years been behaving as the big brothers and sisters of the rest of the EU countries? Is it not true that France and Germany have so many times held meetings on important EU matters without including the rest of the EU countries? I have many times spoken to Europeans, including Maltese, holding a grudge and nurturing a resentment about this busybodying of two countries producing solutions for over twenty-five others. Was the initial agreement not that all EU countries sit together, shoulder to shoulder, and deciding on important matters without receiving lessons from just two ‘cleverer’ countries intent on teaching political ergodynamics?
I have also met many people from the Visegrad region demonstrating the metaphorical middle finger to Western European countries who have, for years, been harassing the internal and external policies – and the democratically elected administrators - of Central and East European EU countries? Do Western EU countries have the right to teach lessons to their central and eastern counterparts who “have so many things to learn from the West?”
As if democratically elected governments and other political and administrative structures were not enough, we also now have busybody NGOs who may decide to cooperate or not with Mediterranean governments. In a recent case, decisions agreed upon at the southern part of Europe and the northern part of Africa, thus two important Mediterranean stakeholders, were ignored by ships registered as “pleasure craft” ferrying immigrants up and down the Mediterranean, as the NGOs decided that their rational reflexions and careful considerations were superior to those of Mediterranean countries and their administrative structures.
The busybody, independent sort of second-government interference in European affairs, based on the qualifications of being a crew on a pleasure craft, may have contributed to friction between Malta and Italy, but also between Italy and France. Do we now have to abide by the decisions of the international and maritime law expertise of pleasure-craft crews? Would my friends and I be allowed to decide important Mediterranean issues if we bought a pleasure craft, registered it in Holland and ploughed the Mediterranean looking for persons on rubber dinghies pleading for our philanthropism?
The staying away of the Visegrad countries from the mini summit on immigration in Bruxelles on 24th June, should have taught us a lesson Matteo Salvini already described before being arrogantly called a fascist for simply refusing busybody pseudopolitics.
Dr Anthony Licari has an academic background in Human Sciences from various French Universities.