In these mid-summer days, when festas succeed each other with their annual regularity, when people get out and about and meet, instead of staying indoors and watch television, when people meet far more of the rest of the population than they would probably like to do (and when it is next to impossible to avoid doing so), a careful eye would find much to see and notice about the real state of the country and of the people.

At ground level, one can probably see the increasing loutishness in general behaviour, from the way we drive to the way we dress (or undress) to the way we deal with each other. It may be part of what is going on beyond our shores – and people do indeed say it’s worse out there – and it might also be due to the pervasive influence of the media. But to those who remember different times, we have come down a long way, a very long way indeed.

Our people is a people on the move, with social problems escalating, marital and family problems increasing and more families breaking up as if it’s an everyday occurrence. It has often been said, but bears repeating, the fact we do not have divorce does not stop any family in trouble from breaking up.

We also have a huge amount of hypocrisy and cant, smoothed under a pall of observances, which not only do not solve any problem but also incredibly complicate matters more.

The bulwarks of our society are not holding any more. They may speak the truth to those inside them, but the rest of society gives, at best, lip service. Had it been otherwise, why then would our festas be orgies of drunks, feuds, dangerous fireworks and general mayhem when they are meant to be festivals in honour of saints?

Away from anything even remotely connected to religion, society is today completely, totally, out of control: there are no established standards, no commonly accepted ethical boundaries. The old order has disintegrated and there is nothing instead.

It is not just on the personal level that this amorality is evident, but also in the ordinary dealing of person to person, and in the more structured ways of society. Money is the only god many people adore, however they come by it, whoever procures it. Money opens doors, removes obstacles – you either have it and move on, trampling the less fortunate as you do so, or else you do not have it and are trampled on.

Business, which used to be run on self-made rules and regulations, has become mostly a rat race in which no rules exist. There are people and companies of integrity, and they are honourable, but there are many operating scams of all kinds, speculating and tricking their way through life, and generally, with the help of complacent professionals, getting away with it.

It is worse, far worse it seems, where public money is involved. The calls for the moralisation of our society – even if they have become somewhat rare, or linked to political expediency, and sometimes too accompanied by a blithe disregard of what is true and people’s reputations – are all very welcome. All the regulatory frameworks that have been put in place have not eradicated the suspicion that some people seem to get mysterious help, that it’s always a matter of who you know rather than what you know, that promotions, opportunities and the like seem mysteriously piloted to favour some but not others.

This present state of affairs, a decreasing level of ethical standards, cannot be solved by a change of government, though in some ways that can help by at least removing the perception that power is eternal and assured. The problem is that a society, which does not understand how sick and how corrupt it is, can hardly generate the will power to change. For change has to come from inside the people, rather than from above it.

In the meantime, however, it would help if those who feel enough is enough get together and act together to reduce the rot, to refuse to become accomplices of what is wrong, to refuse in the adoration of the ‘furbi’ and those who know someone who knows someone. At least such people, however few they may be, can make a last stand in defence of values the rest of society deems irrelevant today.