The German ambassador is my hero of the day
Read this report on timesofmalta.com:
Thursday, March 14, 2013, 08:15
German Ambassador rejects hunters’ defence
The German Ambassador has rejected the defence of hunting as a traditional pastime, saying it no longer serves its original useful purpose.
“Today, hunting as a sport to kill animals …. is a tradition that is overdue to disappear from our planet,” Hubert Ziegler told The Times in reaction to letters slamming his interview with The Sunday Times.
“They remind me of my childhood when I argued with my parents because my friends were allowed to do things I was forbidden to do – and I wanted to have the same rights.
“The Maltese bird hunters’ arguments go in the same direction when they justify the killing of thousands of birds [and their request for derogations] with the killing of more birds and possibly more derogations.”
He reiterated his opposition to all hunting, including in Germany.
I suppose what he might not realise is that the trait he describes so accurately, and which I have highlighted in bold, is not limited to hunters. It is rife throughout Maltese society.
I have written about this often. What scares me most about Malta, or perhaps I should say what I find most disturbing, is that people here never really grow up. I didn’t properly notice it until I reached my late 30s. Then it became so obvious that I couldn’t ignore it anymore and the situation actually became intolerable. It suddenly hit me that conversations between Maltese adults in middle life are often like conversations between teenagers, that the sentiments expressed are teenage, that the behaviour is teenage. When it is all around you, it doesn’t strike you as weird until you move into a different society, however temporarily, and realise that conversation between educated adults in their 40s and 50s is, elsewhere, properly grown up, that their behaviour is properly adult, and that their thinking and reasoning are too.
Something has gone very seriously wrong in Malta. I really don’t remember our parents’ generation behaving, thinking and talking like teenagers in their mid-life. Of course there were a couple of exceptions, but they really stood out for it.
At some point, properly grown up behaviour and thinking began to be associated with fuddy-duddiness, rather than being seen for the appropriate behaviour it is.
I look at some of these people and I think, OK, they are still behaving like teenagers at 50, 51, 52 – but what happens when they get to 60, 65, 70, which is not that far away given that when you are in your 40s your 20s seem like only yesterday – how are they going to make the mental and behavioural transition?
It is really, really scary.
I was talking to somebody yesterday who made an observation that interested me because I had picked up the same sentiment myself but didn’t exactly know how to put it into words or sum it up.
“Talking to people I know and observing what’s being written on Facebook and said elsewhere,” he said, “has made me realise just how much this general election was about kicking against the perceived establishment. There’s this huge anti-establishment feeling out there and people actually wanted to kick against it regardless of what it was. Anybody perceived as being part of the establishment has become unfashionable. Anybody perceived as anti-establishment has become fashionable. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the perceived ‘anti-establishment’ forces have automatically become the establishment by forming the government, while the perceived ‘establishment’ are now technically and prominently anti-establishment themselves. Will they continue to kick against, or will they shore up their emotional investment in the ‘movement’ by now becoming pro-establishment? Because if you are pro-government, you are pro-establishment, even if you put those people there on an anti-establishment wave.”
As I said, I found this fascinating, because I had observed the same sentiment but had summed it up differently. What I had picked up was the need to destroy, to shake things up, to cause chaos. The essential message in Muscat’s ‘movement’ was out with the old and in with the new, and it plugged right in to Josef Stalin’s words that to create you must first destroy (and most people who quote those words do not realise they are the voice of totalitarianism).
The sentiment, I find, is borne of boredom. People engaged in real revolutions about proper causes have no time or reason to be bored. But when a society is very bored, it searches around for reasons to shake things up and creates them where they do not exist. This is actually what the movement was: the underlying sentiment was the need for distraction from utter boredom and tedium.
It’s also the reason that Muscat caught up young people – every generation needs some kind of revolution and this generation is noticeably lacking in real reasons for one. He created a situation in which they could feel they were shaking things up, that they have brought about change. To those of us who had properly serious things to revolt about in the 1980s, it looks weird – but it served the adrenalin rush purpose and now it’s a question of where do they go from here.
But back to the teenage traits in older people: because of the latent/overt immaturity in so many Maltese adults, this anti-establishment movement that was intended for the young actually caught tens of thousands of much older people in its tide. What this election did, frighteningly, was divide the people who have developed to age-appropriate emotional/intellectual maturity from those who remain emotionally and intellectually arrested in their teenage years or early 20s despite being biologically old enough to have grandchildren, which you are when you are in your 40s.
One of the most upsetting factors of this general election was seeing people my age – and it’s still going on – expressing the sort of sentiments I left behind in my 20s (because that is when they really should be left behind) all over Facebook. I’ll be honest: it really frightens me. Because when you are emotionally and intellectually arrested at that age, you are so for the rest of your life. Malta’s disease has now become rampant and apparently incurable midlife silliness. People kicking against the establishment at 45? At 50? Please. It’s too late for that. If you didn’t do it at 18, tough. It doesn’t follow that you should be doing it at 48, still less at 58.
There is also no shame or embarrassment in admitting to stupidity, precisely because it is not recognised as such. I noticed a flow of women my age saying that they get all their news and information through Facebook. How much news and information can you get through Facebook? You can’t. Facebook is not designed for indepth knowledge or proper communication, so if you’re getting all your news through Facebook, it’s the equivalent of earlier generations getting it at the village pump or the trakk tal-haxix. Don’t women my age realise that it’s embarrassing to admit to this? Apparently not, because they are surrounded by others who do exactly the same.
Men used to be different, but now this brain-dead Facebook silliness is also affecting their news-and-information gathering and they are becoming as bad. Try to remember when you last heard a conversation between two men that didn’t treat gossip as fact.
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Never underestimate how easy it is to herd sheep around a small island.
One jumps over the cliff and the rest follow .
I hope that all PN councillors read this part:
“Talking to people I know and observing what’s being written on Facebook and said elsewhere,” he said, “has made me realise just how much this general election was about kicking against the perceived establishment. *
Blaming one person, or group of persons for the defeat is a panic response, and any knee jerk reaction should be avoided at all cost.
There is much that is still good in the PN, far outweighing the bad. In other words, prune away certainly, but the garden is still healthy. Mistakes have been made, but like I wrote elsewhere here, even if the last government would have turned Malta into an Eden, the PN had no chance.
Couldn’t agree more, Daphne. Revolution as a remedy to boredom, indeed.
Just look at who the poster (literally) revolutionaries for Malta Taghna Lkoll were – Kenneth Zammit Tabona, Ramona Frendo, Albert Gauci Cunningham, Ray Pitre. Hardly starving oppressed victims of a regime.
Great analysis! I have thought so much of this to myself for such a long time and it feels good to realise others have also noticed this.
I always felt I was the odd one and not vice versa. Keep up the great work.
I am waiting for the day when Joseph (secretly) phones Lawrence for advice. Of course we will never hear of this – Lawrence is too much of a gentleman to reveal anything like that.
Bang on, Daphne. You’ve explained something that I’ve noticed, but never quite managed to put my finger on, with superb clarity.
You put my thoughts into words in the most accurate way, Daphne.
My husband, who is not Maltese and from a civilised country, used to think that I am exaggerating when I used to tell him more or less what you are saying in this article, when we first got to know each other, years ago.
Now he admits that I was right all along. Last Sunday he could not contain his disgust at the electorate for voting out the government when the country was doing so well and yesterday he was utterly shocked and amused at the same time as soon as he heard about Joseph Muscat’s new cabinet – numbers, relics et al.
One thing is certain, after just a few days of Labour government we have already become the laughing stock of Europeans.
Joseph should have the balls to hold a referendum on this issue and the hunters and trappers will know exactly what the people want. AMEN to the German Ambassador’s remarks.
Il-Lejburisti spent five years bitching about the City Gate project having been started ‘before people had their say’, so Joseph, in a show of one upmanship, should hold a referendum on hunting and trapping, thus avoiding the same criticism as leveled against Dr Gonzi.
dan minn hu ghax ma baqax il germanja. Ahna kacca is sena kollha irridu u oqodu spetaturi hemm
Malta Taghna Lkoll.
Jigifieri, il hobby tieghek nirrispettah imma ahna ghandna l-interessi taghna wkoll ghax Malta ma ddurx bil-rota tal-kacca biss.
Every so often I visit my 83 year old grandma the care home in Attard where she resides.
I haven’t been in many care homes but I’m told that this is one of the “poshest” care homes in Malta.
I’ve noticed immature behavior among my grandma and the group of ladies she hangs out with. They gossip and bitch about the other people in the home just in the same way kids in my secondary school in Sliema did when I was 10-15 years old.
It’s literally as though they haven’t matured past that stage and it is indeed scary.
Regarding your comments about getting news from Facebook, it only depends on who your friends are and what Facebook pages you “like”.
I “like” the timesofmalta page for instance, and they frequently post links to their news articles on their website.
I live in the UK and don’t have access to printed Maltese newspapers, my only feasible source of getting the news is online so Facebook is really not all that far off.
[Daphne – All the Maltese newspapers are on line; you don’t have to go through Facebook. Just make it a routine to click through them all every day, that’s all, or pick the couple you think best. Facebook is way too random. You end up with huge, gaping holes in your knowledge base.]
I also have smart friends from all over the world who post news articles from news websites all over the world. With my busy schedule it’s impossible to keep up with news all over the world and Facebook is great to hear about something interesting happening on the other side of the planet. Before Facebook, I would not have known.
I didn’t mean that I don’t go through the newspaper websites myself. My browser has my favorite news websites bookmarked and ever morning I can automatically open all of them in different tabs. It’s easy to go through the tabs one by one to get all the news I’m interested in.
And still, I find facebook useful in keeping up to date with the rest of the world. If I’m not one timesofmalta hitting refresh constantly and happen to be on facebook and I see an interesting news article, it leads me to the website in a time when it is out of my routine.
Sure, I may set up RSS feeds or the like and get the full feed.. But I don’t care to do that really, I enjoy facebook.
Moreover, the people who now only get their news from facebook are people who previously probably never kept up with news. In my view, it’s better that they now know “something” of what’s going on than nothing at all.
I do agree that most Maltese are irresponsible voters. Friends of mine who voted labor voted with the only reasoning being “I want a change” and “I want to try them”. Just as if we’re changing clothes, you know. Yet, it’s difficult to change their minds. I have a friend who did not even know any of the names on the ballot in his district and no idea that you have to number the candidates. Then when I said “just make sure you put numbers in the blue boxes” he said something of the sort “we don’t believe in red or blue”. I said “Oh, wait till you see the ballot” then I get a “REALLY?!?! :o”
We will know how well off we were when we start discussing more serious problems than holes in the roads and queus in hospital emergency.
And you don’t just see this in their political stance, you can see it in the way people dress, getting tattoos at ridiculous ages and still going to Paceville every week.
Some people I know should really not be wearing mini skirts, no matter how much of a killer body you’ve got. Being over forty with two teenage children should give you a clue.
Or fifty-year-olds wearing those horrible tight tops that are meant for twenty-year-olds.
And some of my friends look at me funnily when they invite me to Paceville every week and I politely decline. It’s no longer the place for me to socialise, but I’m looked at as the fuddy-duddy.
I totally agree about the anti-establishment argument.
I too made similar observations that the Labour Party fabricated an anti-establishment wave, which is actually an easy job against a government which has been in office for so long.
It makes people paranoid as to how and why they want to keep governing. It’s an easy button to push.
That and corruption theories – which again are a consequence of paranoia because we all know that corruption will always exist and to think otherwise or believe that it will be diminished to almost negligible levels, is totally naive.
I’ve been thinking that if this is an easy consequence of a long-serving party, how can that party avoid the perception? Does it need to change its faces (almost totally) “often enough”?
It’s an interesting study indeed.
As for the teenage traits – well, over-protection by parents is truly a huge factor in this.
Adults living at home until they’re almost in their 30s. Gee whiz.
We go to university and get paid for it whilst living with our parents and (most of us) not paying a dime.
There is no necessity to get a job, think tactfully about how one is going to cope with rent + paying for their studies + working + doing all the other things when living on your own. These things mould people into adults.
And to think that in other countries, parents *ask* their children to leave home at the age of 18.
I read this piece and they’re my feelings exactly, been through it myself.
In the end, the only way to maintain sanity was to get these individuals down to size.
It was untenable, I was mistaking these people for a sample of the population. Given my activity, it distorted my idea of any potential audience and subsequently my work.
A rut, indolence that comes with stability, horrible.
Imagine dreading being invited to a birthday party.
I noticed that on a one-to-one basis there’s still an amount of curiosity, but why it’s not socially fashionable, (you couldn’t put it better) is troubling.
I think social networks have accentuated the density and the resulting claustrophobia might cause their collapse.
In a bigger place, people don’t use Facebook like kids. Their life would be made of relations across hundreds of miles.
Teens wouldn’t have that developed yet.
Given that Facebook is an interface designed with seventeen-year-olds in mind, Maltese ‘adults’ gladly obliged.
Is there anything more insipid than having the faculty to ‘like’? I bet any study will conclude its abuse in Malta.
May I add something else, the silliness and boredom can be defined by the challenge posed by the outgoing administration.
Gonzi posed a major upset, an extremely destabilising one, to be countered at all costs. He had the gall to define quality outside this place, ‘world class’.
Remember the shrill panic once Piano came to stay?
It was the decision itself which ruined their pretence to have their neverending say. It was taking the decision which made him perforce guilty notwithstanding anything else.
If they thought they’re qualified when most definitely they’re not, it was necessary, respectful, to tell it to their faces where they belong.
The problem they have now is if it makes the ‘others’ like me intolerant or arrogant. I’m afraid it’s not causing me any serious problems, I thought it would.
Shocking really.
I was talking to a non-Maltese lady today who attends English mass in Malta every Sunday.
Her main complaint about the sermons delivered by several priests over the years is that they are all so infantile.
The explanation of the gospel is very simplistic and in spite of an abundance of social issues that the priests can choose to talk about, the only thing she has ever really heard them talking about in depth is divorce. Everything else either gets glossed over or ignored altogether.
One of the reasons she enjoys going back home to see her family every now and then is to go to mass and listen to well thought out and presented sermons addressing adults about real and apposite topics.
Isn’t the original Al Qaeda (not the multiple byproduct organizations that exist today) the result of bored rich boys in Saudi Arabia who had no scope in life, and filled that void with religious fanatism.