It was right that the Archbishop, on Independence Day, highlighted the issue of solidarity with present and future generations in particular. It seems that in Malta, as in other places in the world, we are creating two castes of people – the untouchable caste who vote and the slave caste that do not. The new rule for slavery rather than being humanity is now enfranchisement. If you are disenfranchised, if you cannot vote for one reason or another, you are in a pickle. Society will throw its worse at you and trample on you and your human rights. The unborn, the immigrant population – legal and illegal, low paid cheap labour foreign workers, even mental health and physically frail patients are treated badly by the State and society just because they have very little bearing on the shaping of the political scene. The neoliberal policies of the present government where the top god is Mammon, find little resonance with the virtue and charity of solidarity. White man cannot jump (for basketball) they say, these people mentioned above cannot vote. Many whites (in the USA) are not considered fit for basketball as much as people of a dark coloured skin and here the persons mentioned above are not considered to be fit for personhood, humanity and civil society even though the examples mentioned are both built as sociological concepts based on societal prejudices!
Together with these children of a lesser god, one finds future generations. We are supposed to show solidarity with future human generations by building a social and ecological environment which respects both present and future generations. What is the shape of society and the environment we want for our future children and grandchildren both living and those yet to come? Is it a case of out of sight, out of mind as they often say? Is our obsession with financial and social success so entirely blinding and consuming that we are unable to see beyond the predicament of the present? What future are we building for our children? Will they be able to see the sun, never mind the sunrise, from their homes; will they have the space to run and play in; will they have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink or clean seas to swim in? Will they be able to enjoy, interact and see the wild animals on the ground, in the sky or in the sea? Will they live in a healthy social environment, or rather one which is cutthroat and throws people away? It seems that the present generation is not only oblivious to the need of future generations but also possibly even oblivious to the needs of their own present generation.
Last week I was on the Granaries in Floriana to commemorate the founding of our State on Independence Day, which should without qualification, become our national day. It was the day that the modern Maltese state, not the nation, was born. I was speaking to some friends of mine on what moves and motivates a society which is rabidly engulfed in blind ambition and making money. It seems we have a government that only needs to dangle the carrot of financial prosperity for many to abandon their principles and values to pave the way for greedy gratification and financial endowment. We asked whether the way forward out of this vortex is to continue to feed individuals and groups with further financial incentives as a sustainable way of stoking the normal alternation of power in a democracy. Of course, I was reprimanded for being the altruist that I am, but I wondered aloud whether just offering monetary incentives perpetually is what people finally want and whether it can be the way out of the current political situation. Granted it's an attractive incentive, but when one has all the money and things one wants, at the end of the rat race, is one happy? I was told to forget virtue, as it would not win elections, but I am very sceptic of this view. After all, Aristotle's rational answer to the question of what makes a man happy, was not money nor power; it was the seeking of virtue, ultimately meaning the distinction between seeking and doing what is good and avoiding what is bad!
Coincidentally, Malta’s coat-of-arms on gaining independence from Great Britain was Virtute Et Constantia! The way forward had to be by virtue and constant determination. Could our founding fathers of the Maltese State have had something to say to us all here? Could it be that many men are perhaps blindly ambitious for power and money but it is not what finally moves the populace as a whole? My father used to say that he never remembers asking for anything from a government official and if he did, he always voted for the common good. Could it be that ultimately man does not live on bread alone because there is in man more than meets the eye. Yes, of course there is the attention needed to satisfy our physical needs to live, not to say anything of the recurrent gluttony and the craving for physical advancement and endowment, because we are also physically constituted but we are also human and that is not all we are. Is there something else that motivates us after achieving and sometimes in spite of achieving all this? We are not just a physical body because there is in us a yearning for more, the yearning to co-create, to associate thoughts, to consider moral issues, to consider the good and proper behaviour, and one of the means by which we evaluate the considering of the good is by the consideration of virtuous behaviour as opposed to vicious behaviour. The consideration of virtuous behaviour depends much on the building of character and good habits and that has to be achieved through dogged determination. If I could suggest, I would re-introduce the motto of Independence back into the national coat-of-arms under Repubblika Ta' Malta!
There will be many who descend into gluttony and blind ambition. The majority of people overall do not. Most of us do not ask anything of our government except good governance and that is definitely what we do not have now. Because man is not only body, but body and spirit, this greediness cannot last because ultimately, we cannot be happy that way and we literally have Aristotle to thank for that, not to mention those who came after him.
Therefore, the way forward considers the proper use of money and ambition but cannot stop there. It has to encompass more, much more. It has to encompass the virtues, and solidarity being one of them has to be extended to fellow human beings, even the disenfranchised. It has to be extended to our physical environment, the air we breathe, the soil, the seas. It has to be extended to include the ecology of other living things on which we ultimately all interdepend, because only in this way can we really be the extension of ourselves which we are through our spirit. Man does not live on bread alone was not Aristotle's saying although he implied it. It comes from a much more divine source and encompasses what we fundamentally are, human beings capable of self-reflecting rational thought and therefore able to tap the future both for us and for those who come after us.
Dr Asciak MD M.Phil. (European Studies and Genomics) PhD (Bioethics).
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