What is an activist? I dunno much, but I call myself an activist as 'militant' sounds too much like ISIS who are also fundamentalists, but of a different colour. Mind you, if today you are not an activist, there is definitely something wrong with you. A nagging spouse is also an activist as activists must nag, not sit and stare like a cheeselet.
Well, as a tentative explanation, I believe an activist to be a cocktail of a number of origins. Firstly, an activist is a person who, since childhood, was identified by mummy and daddy, seeing him/her build great projects with toy blocks as a toddler as a preparation to improve the world's infrastructure. Mummy and daddy took hundreds of photos of their prodigy who would save the world from droughts, floods and social conflict. As s/he became a teenager, they tearfully allowed him/her to travel the world and offer solutions to the natives, to teach them lots of things, though these ungratefully thought that s/he was a pain in the apse.
An activist is also a nostalgic believer in the old mission of the hippies and its reactivation today i.e. wash a little, smoke a lot and drink beer when milk is not available. A nostalgic hippie activist will tie his/her hair in a bun to choke the nits and visit different countries requiring advice and assistance, thus proceeding to philosophico-pedagogical plans to save the world from what is good. An activist may borrow a coffin and/or an animal costume and walk around Valletta trying not to look ridiculous, but managing quite well. The idea is to project determination, though cartoon puerility seems more likely.
An activist may also be a product of a very conservative education that convinces all round that the simple and naïve masses require lessons in morality. These activists make about a growing ninety-five per cent of the population but state, with solid Christian fortitude, that democracy means belonging to a tiny minority but deserving authority by divine left, right and centre. But, before you jump to conclusions, it's good to know that an activist can be a conservative communist with a nostalgia for collective measures.
The most entertaining group of activists are those who belong to a massive organisation of two people, who in turn belong to other massive organisations and so on. Thus the serious, legalistic activist has his/her own closely knit group that bridges out to other similar groups. A collection of these groups of activists is called a major world influence consisting of many massive groups making, in all, three people who may be pains in the apse but so correct in their upright decency.
Activism may simply be a compensatory activity to bury nagging realities from history. (I had mentioned atrocious colonialism in one of my articles.) An activist may have a guilt complex, having discovered that his/her great grand-parents were vandals who descended on cultures across borders to destroy and burn their places of worship and culture. Their great grand-parents and beyond may have participated in atrocious barbaric tortures and massacres. Thus, being an activist now may be a defence mechanism to erase a nagging guilt complex. So the great grand-children may proceed to the areas of their former victims to be nice to them by being a source of arthritis in the joints.
You may be awed at discovering that all the groups of social activists put together may look very different, but they have a strong common bond - that of constituting one single great collection of irritants in the toes. I tend to approve of ecological activists though socio-political 'activists' seem to have just hysterical explanations of situations.
Above all, when tiny groups of activists cough individually or collectively making three persons, some journalists may be duped in calling them 'sources' - with the massive percentage of the population not deserving the appellation of 'source'. A cough by one person is even sometimes referred to as a 'call' by activists consisting of one person convincing a far-left writer of being a 'source'.
Once I read somewhere: 'Activists call for...' I read the story and found that the activists (plural) who called for something or other was just one person. I have the right to like some journalists more than others. I don't like those who use the plural when they mean just one person. It is misleading. It also reminds me of those who like to holler: 'We want...' Who exactly is 'we'? I give credibility to elections, referenda and survey results whether I like them or not.
But to go back to 'activists', it is the foreign busybodies pretending to be activists that I don't like. If you have the opportunity to speak to any of them and ask about their 'activism' back home, they just shut up and freeze. However, when they travel, they forget their cowardice and hurl advice and criticism at 'the natives' who require basic education expressed by busybodies to improve their culture.
Which brings back the mathematical argument of whether a zero is a number or not. If it is, maybe one activist may actually be a crowd!
As a mostly optimistic person, I like to believe that 'activists' have a social conscience. I also like to know about the origin and evolution of this conscience - apart from toy building blocks provided by a proud mummy and daddy.
In any case, I shall be hiring a lift to hold a meeting of activists. I hope that you will not come up with some excuse not to come.
Dr Anthony Licari has an academic background of Human Sciences from various French universities.