The relentless, seemingly unstoppable, senseless uglification of the country is a phenomenon currently on everybody’s mind. Even His Excellency the President of the (entire) Republic woke up from his slumber to complain–when somebody decided to erect a multi-storey soulless building a few doors away from his personal residence, that is. Be that as it may. Point is, we can now safely say that everybody, from the meekest to the most powerful, is aware of the country’s slow death by asphyxiation.

The problem seems to have two faces: the non-descript nature of most contemporary architecture and the suffocating height of new buildings.

Old, aesthetically-pleasing buildings are relentlessly being pulled down to be replaced by drab blocks lacking any appreciable aesthetic. There could be two remedies to this: (i) preserve beautiful buildings and (ii) change the laws to impose that the Maltese architectural idiom be used for new constructions.

But what is this architectural idiom? And should we preserve it? Or – like language – is it constantly evolving?

I believe that language, law, morality, and aesthetics all evolve together, as different facets of the same diamond. As Darwin remarked, there’s a tendency over time to depart from the original. But, in our case, I see that departure as a shift toward deformity.

Good news is, we don’t live in a philosophical-legislative vacuum. We do have guidelines, at least for architecture and urban heritage, and they’re found in articles 9 and 18 of the Constitution. All that’s needed is an aggressively creative interpretative implementation in favour of Beauty.

The other problem is the soaring height of new buildings. Here the current philosophical-economic assumption is that demand for new apartments is infinite.

Truth be told, there is the need for comfortable, up-to-date dwellings. People would rather move into a new, possibly fully-furnished apartment than an old dwelling needing refurbishment (implying not only funds, but also mental energy and physical effort).

The free market operates on a micro-scale, and high-rise buildings follow the free-market logic. The problem lies in the relationship between demand and supply: being free (as opposed to centrally planned), the relationship develops organically; it’s therefore disorganised and messy. The only way to avoid this is for the State to designate whole areas as ready for re-development, and then to allow the private sector to demolish and re-develop entire neighbourhoods. But this would stir up a hornet’s nest as it would lead to widespread accusations of discrimination.

So, given that not all old buildings are simultaneously available for demolition and re-development (which would be the rational and ideal approach to satisfy the demand for modern, comfortable dwellings), then the market has to respond by demolishing what is available. It seems to me that at any given moment in time the market supply of ready-to-be-demolished buildings is smaller than the demand for new, modern dwellings.

The country needs a thorough debate on these points. But there seems to be none. Instead, there are complaints. Which only help to create awareness, not solutions.

Robert Abela’s government seems uninterested in Beauty. And much of public debate is concentrated on corruption, the hallmark of two successive Labour administrations. We need to pull up our socks and tackle the pulling down of beautiful buildings. Before it’s too late.

The Robert Abela Prayer Team

Whereas Joseph Muscat vehemently denied he engaged the services of Cambridge Analytica, Robert Abela will probably equally vehemently deny he’s got anything to do with the Facebook group called “The Prime Minister Robert Abela Prayer Team.”

At least Muscat went to the number-crunchers. But to have the gall to ask people to pray to God for your political mission to succeed when your Deputy Leader dreams of legalising euthanasia and your immediate predecessor, abortion, then you really must be brazen-faced!

The members on this team describe themselves as “a group of independent Christian intercessors praying on a regular basis for Malta’s Prime Minister, in order to honour him in our lives. Our desire is to create a culture of honour toward civil authority established by God in Malta.” (The English translation maintains the same level of lucidity as the Maltese original: “Aħna grupp ta’ interċessuri Kristjani indipendenti li b’mod regolari nitolbu għall-Prim Ministru ta’ Malta, sabiex nonorawh fil-ħajja tagħna. Ix-xewqa tagħna hija li noħolqu kultura ta’ unur lejn l-awtorità ċivili stabbilita minn Alla f’Malta.”) 

There are at least three hypotheses that could cast some light on this phenomenon.

One. It’s a hoax and these pranksters are taking Robert Abela for one helluva ride.

Two. These people are ahead of their time and keep more than four cannabis plants at home, knowing full well that the State won’t be checking on them. They probably smoke the grass in front of minors and don’t keep it stashed away where minors can’t find it.

Three. This group is phony, just like other phony, deceitful groups, e.g. Catholics for Divorce, Catholics for Choice, and so on. These phony, stooge groups confuse good souls who take religion seriously.

The Prime Minister should do the mature thing and distance himself from such groups… What will Labour’s next electoral manifesto be called, “Best Theocracy Yet to Come”? L-Aqwa Teokrazija Għadha Ġejja?

Police, drugs, porn

I’m shocked, like everybody else I suppose, by the case of the police officer who was arrested on charges of rape, who seems to have declared to his alleged victim that he produces porn, and who seems to have been high on drugs while allegedly engaging in non-consensual carnal connection with an alleged burglary victim.

Whereas the three elements are shocking, they are not so in equal measure. In the sense that I’m sure that the vast majority of police officers do not go about raping and declaring they produce porn. But the drug allegation seems to me to elicit more attention. Is there a drug problem in the Corps?

I know of a case, for instance, that happened a few months ago, in which a boisterous, heavy-set male police sergeant stationed in Ħaż-Żebbuġ bullied with aggressive verbal assault a respectable member of that town’s community even claiming that he knows what riff-raff all the Żebbuġin are. The superiors of this little bully are fully aware of the incident (though I’m not aware if disciplinary action has been taken). I wonder whether the over-the-top, outrageous, abusive behaviour of this particular officer is typical of people who are high on drugs and lose their inhibitions, and whether the problem is widespread.

Indeed, one has to ask the question whether police officers will be allowed to smoke cannabis. Responsibly (it goes without saying).

New book

My dear friend André P. Debattista – intellectual, researcher, and man of extraordinary kindness – has accepted to edit a collection of my essays that have been published here.

The book will be appearing soon under the title Flying at the Fall of Dusk. It is a collection of commentaries on Malta during the Muscat years. I would like to thank André publicly and profusely.

My Personal Video Library (12)

The Young Sheldon (2017–) can be sentimental at times, but I like it nonetheless. It’s a TV series that “mythologises” the formative “adventures” the genius Sheldon Cooper lived as a child in Bible-belt Texas.

(Sheldon is one of the protagonists of the hit series The Big Bang Theory, that narrates the “adventures” of a group of four socially-inept but high-flying scientists and their better halves. In this series, Sheldon ends up winning the Nobel Prize.)

But I find myself asking time and again whether the protagonist of the show isn’t really Sheldon’s father, George Snr., an average man who lacks the tools to deal with a genius son but somehow, somewhere finds the wherewithal to adapt to his son’s special needs as he’s growing up. In those moments, the show stops being sentimental and becomes moving.

However, it’s expected that soon George Cooper will become a bad character… pleasures yet to come.

My point, however, is that in this age of feminisation, father characters in popular fiction seem to satisfy a huge, solid consumer demand. This happened with The Simpsons: the creators of the series expected trouble-maker Bart to be the sitcom’s hero. Instead, it turned out that the public warmed up to his father Homer.

Historians have noted that ever since the beheading of King Louis more than 200 years ago, there has been a steady shift away from the father figure in popular literature. And yet, as psychoanalysts are prone to remind us, the need for a father figure – a lawgiver who, however, isn’t subject to his own law – is a deeply-rooted need of humanity.

Readers interested in psychoanalysis will have probably noted that I’m writing this during the week marking the tenth anniversary of my own father’s journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem. As I’m writing this sentence, I can hear the funeral tolling of a church’s bell in the background, reminding the community that we all have our tickets booked for that final, unscheduled journey.