There are plenty of other examples of lack of empathy in the west.

The ‘F U Jack, I’m alright.’ attitude is quite a general one, from the typical candid camera videos of people walking right past an injured person or a lost child, to the way we can’t bring ourselves to change our habits and look after what’s left of the planet for our own children.

You cannot use the migrant crisis to illustrate your point.

That is a special case.

The values of which I speak are taught as the basis for the maintenance of a properly functioning society – in other words, to help the society which exists already to keep steady without disruption.

An influx of migrants is seen as a massive destabilising influence which disrupts that, and they are considered to be outsiders to that society anyway.

Malta is indeed at the extreme end of the selfishness scale in many ways, but western culture as a whole is very much self-centred.

Sense of perspective notwithstanding, look at how politicians in western countries, even Nordic ones, are finding it incredibly hard to win popular support for intervening in the migrant crisis.

Even in Sweden, you now have a far-right, anti-immigration political party leading in the polls.

You have too look to the far east (Buddhism and all that) to find proper compassion and detachment from one’s own problems. And even there, it’s nowhere near universal.

How? They’re obviously dead.

“It’s human to feel our own problems dwarf everyone else’s.”

No, it isn’t, actually. It’s typically Maltese. Other cultures teach what is known as ‘a sense of perspective’ or ‘a sense of proportion’. Northern European culture is, in fact, defined by it. This is how it goes: you are not the centre of the universe, there is always somebody more badly off than you are, the world does not revolve around your navel, get a grip and carry on. Or, as Humphrey Bogart famously said in Casablanca – the final word on a sense of proportion – “In this crazy world, the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

People who commit suicide are, by definition, mentally unbalanced. The world is full of people who cope in terrible situations without killing themselves.

A court case is not a life or death situation. Because I have had to wait for news about whether somebody has been found dead or alive, I would never make the mistake of comparing that to any other situation, still less a court case.

You are confusing people who routinely do wrong in what they see as ‘victimless’ crimes with people who are accustomed to giving the police the slip in drug deals and similar.

The give-away is your last line, in which you reveal that you see reading as “frittering away time”.

In any given situation, you don’t need to think about your master plan ALL the time.

You generally need to get away from it lots of the time to return to it afresh.

That is causing it, in a sense, because without the cannabis trigger, those young men could have gone through life without schizophrenia.

The bright light coming off a computer screen is a killer.

Something tells me he’ll get away with it. I hope I’m wrong.