During the past hundred years, the Maltese people were witnesses to traumatic changes that transformed the face of the earth. Our destiny seemed, at times, to be intertwined with some of these changes.

During this crowded span of time, Malta stood rock-like on the periphery of the evil Nazi-Fascist empire. It 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 run-down of its fortress-economy, and were overshadowed 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 keep, and to secure a decent place in the sun.

Survivors who are over 60 years had the opportunity of studying, at comfortably close quarters, some of the greatest tyrants in history, and many lesser ones. 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 young generation

The younger generation knows little about the past. A good many people seem to care even less. The younger generation has its own set of values. It considers its inheritance as its birthright and is inclined to look at the future with a mixture of curiosity and disillusionment. Those who believe in work, justice and social solidarity wonder why the problem of law and order has become more, instead of less, intractable.

Those who were inspired by idealism and who now dream 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 have not sorted out our environment, transport and other problems.

Above all, they seem to suspect a loss of nerve having gone rather far under the 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. There is evidence that these qualities strengthen its moral fibre and have the potential of enabling the forces of democracy to surmount such 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 to dissemble discord and disillusion. This is crucial to a nation built on religious conviction and moral purpose.

Pertinent question

Can it be done? Asking this fundamental question is a first step towards answering it. This question is most pertinent in relation 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 often religious in impulses.

Some of the zealous, and no doubt sincere, Johnny-come-latelys, and a few of their elders, see in their iconoclastic and anarchic 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 civilization.

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?

Taking new bearings

Ours is a notoriously unprecedented age. It is not comfortable to rest on déjà vu assumptions.

Lord Acton once said that the student of history is the politician with his face turned backward whilst 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 good deal of history to escape from.

José 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 bearing and to chart a course with the help of the stars that never, never led us astray.

The daring 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 with devastating results.

jgv@onvol,net