On average, our life has been extended from what it was say fifty years ago – or even twenty. The improvement in living conditions as well perhaps the absence of wars (at least up to now) in the European region were the leading factor accounting for this.
Still that same extension of human life has placed new pressures on how humans should organize their life: how long schooling should last; how long to keep on working and consuming. By the same token, similar huge pressures are building up on the natural and other resources that must be used in daily life. The improvement in living conditions automatically triggered an increase in individual consumption. That must have affected as well the natural environment.
All this has had the greatest impact on the years that people need to go through with their education; and more controversially, on how long they need to keep on working. It sounds logical that these two periods of one’s life must become longer if society is to sustain its growth and development. But that logic encounters huge resistance.
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FEEL GOOD
The feel good strategy and how it works out is what I have been observing for a long while, and sometimes even written about in this blog. It is still current practice in Malta and beyond. The strategy was first launched here by the Fenech Adani administration post-1987. Subsequently almost all governments replicated it and did their best to make it more effective.
It consists of a “feel good” approach by which the government aims to paint a rosy picture right through about what’s happening while striving to sustain a climate of optmism, no matter that from all sides, dark clouds are building up. Incessantly, efforts are made to minimize what seems threatening or too challenging in the surrounding reality. It is shown as an occurrence that can be easily overcome.
To sustain feel good, the first Fenech Adami administration had at its disposal the financial reserves that its predecessor, the Labour government, had accumulated. Having duly spent them, it still persisted with the strategy. Its successors have shown great creativity in their efforts to maintain a similar performance.
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SOCIAL JUSTICE
In a parliamentary democracy that functions well, one expects that some acceptable level of social justice is preserved. Those who suffer from injustice have a vote or can have one. Such citizens and their like can mobilise or be mobilised in order to achieve a political standing which they could then activate to ensure that their interests are suitably protected.
Actually in Europe and elsewhere, social rights came to be exercised as the result of political action and not just via trade union pressures (which can mostly be effective in work and employment situations).
Problems arise though when the victims of social injustice have no voting rights. This happens when they live and work in a society where they do not enjoy the rights of citizens. In Malta at present, about 20 per cent of our community find themselves in this position. What protection covers those among them who are being exploited?