GUEST POST: An alternative view of the year ahead

By Matthew S.

It is perhaps understandable that anyone who reads the screaming headlines published daily in newspapers would conclude that the end is nigh but this is nothing more than hyperbole. On the contrary, I would argue that the world has never been in such a healthy, happy and peaceful state as it is in today.

In 2011, Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist, published a book called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. Using a mountain of statistics, he argues that, despite the hellhole that is the Middle East and other several hotspots, the world today is a much safer and more peaceful place than it has ever been.

There are several reasons for this, among them the rule of law. When there is a security force and justice system which metes out justice relatively fairly, people are less prone to starting tribal and familial feuds which last for generations, taking out each other’s eyes, teeth and lives. They are also less likely to serve out mob justice and hang spinsters for being witches and black men for being rapists.

Another reason is the ever growing collection of international bodies. Many of them function at a very slow rate (the European Union), many are often derided as mere talking shops (the United Nations), some are thought too tame (Association of Southeast Asian Nations/ASEAN and the African Union), others too elitist (the G7 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development/OECD), and others are thought of as completely pointless (the Commonwealth). But wherever you have countries coming together to discuss politics and business, you are less likely to have them starting wars against each other.

A lot of it comes down to not bombing the hand that feeds you. The United States and China might not like or trust each other very much, but trade between them keeps both countries purring along nicely so they are unlikely to start a war. Free trade really is the best elixir. That is why the agreement which world powers reached with Iran about its nuclear programme, and the United States’ relaxation of its (ineffectual) embargo on Cuba, are two of last year’s most significant achievements. They open the road for goods and ideas to pour into these benighted countries, eventually making the Islamic and Communist governments in those countries weaker.

The world will never be completely rid of evil and incompetent rulers, but an ever more interconnected world makes the wickedness and atrocities of rulers of the past, like Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, much less possible.

That’s not to say that countries such as China and the Gulf states will stop being menacing and repressive, but even there, we have seen some improvement. For the first time, in 2015, women in Saudi Arabia were allowed to participate in regional elections, both as voters and politicians. Many women were elected. In China, the Communist Party finally abolished its one-child policy and parents can now have two.

China has vowed to take more responsibility for the environmental harm it has caused and towards the end of the year, many countries came together to try and come up with a (sort of) workable policy on reducing harmful emissions.

In 2012, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for having instilled peace and democracy in its bloc for over six decades. Not bad for a continent destroyed by war less than seven decades earlier, and under the totalitarian boot of communism until the late 1980s and fascism (Greece and Spain) into the late 1970s. The postwar dream lives on. In spite of its many trials and tribulations, the European Union remains one of the most peaceful, democratic and universally wealthy regions on the planet.

One could point at the never-ending stream of refugees pouring into Europe and say that the European Union is doomed. But is it? As German Chancellor Angela Merkel (the strongest, most pragmatic and most competent leader in the EU) said a few days ago, the refugees are an opportunity. The population of the EU is getting old and many people are not having enough children to replenish society.

I have never seen anybody as eager to work hard and show gratitude as a newly arrived migrant or refugee. As Germans in the United States, Turks in Germany, Poles in Britain and Asians everywhere show, multiculturalism works. Sometimes it works beyond people’s wildest dreams. A man of Kenyan descent is now president of the United States. A man born in Jamaica who lives in the United States was in 2015 the first Jamaican to win the Man Booker Prize. The son of Polish Jews – Ed Miliband – was Opposition leader in Britain until a few months ago. The son of a Hungarian refugee, Nicolas Sarkozy, was president of France until Francois Hollande replaced him.

None of that takes away the short term problem of finding housing, medicine and provisions for people escaping the horrors of war, but we did it before when people escaped from the communist east and we will do it again for people escaping from the south or wherever it is they come from. We will do it not only because it is ultimately beneficial to them and us but simply because it is the right thing to do.

Make no mistake about it. Helping refugees will not encourage more to come. They will leave their country anyway because they would rather die en route than live for one more day in a country being terrorised by the Islamic State, bombed by their own government and held ransom by several international military forces.

Even through the bloody violence of the Caliphate and the destruction of Palmyra, one still sees rays of civilisation shine through. Benedictine monks from Minnesota are helping to restore, preserve and digitise ancient and important Islamic texts which would have been destroyed by Islamist extremists if not snatched up in time. The monks are not even at all bothered by the fact that it is texts pertaining to a different faith than theirs that they are helping to keep for perpetuity.

Sometimes violence declines because fighters admit defeat. In 2015, the Colombian government came as close as it has ever come to making peace with the FARC, for example. Pakistan, meanwhile, has started tackling the terrorists operating on its territory and even showing signs of getting closer to its eternal enemy, India.

On a more mundane level, crime and violence have decreased in many communities simply because people have better things to do and more disposable money to spend. A lot of young people would rather steal cars in virtual reality, while playing the video-game Grand Theft Auto than go and nick a car for a real joyride.

Maybe the biggest contributors to peace and stability are science and technology. Despite the alarming gluttony displayed by the newly rich eager to compensate for their deprived heritage, doctors and surgeons are still making happy, relatively healthy and gray-haired people out of folks suffering from diabetes, AIDS and several other illnesses. Several strides towards curing or alleviating the pain caused by brain, breast and lung cancer were also made in 2015.

Rural farmers in Latin America, meanwhile, check the prices of crops on their smartphone to see whether it is worthwhile going to the market. Africans who have never had access to a bank account use M-Pesa to transfer and borrow money. Americans use Uber to find cheap and ubiquitous taxis and travellers hopping all over Europe use Ryanair and Air BnB to keep their costs down. Travel nowadays is so cheap that many people everywhere, even those of limited means, think nothing of working or holidaying across state borders.

It is all so quotidian that it never makes the news, even though it is very different to a decade ago, let alone two decades or more. This is not to say that the world is not full of problems. From Venezuela to Zimbabwe, one can easily find poor people living in unstable countries. In Europe, Greece, Poland and Hungary have unsavoury governments, and in France, the far right is making strides, but whatever wrong they all might do, it can start to be changed the next time people vote. Voters in Spain, for example, were tired of the corruption found in the Centre Right and Centre Left parties which have ruled Spain since the fall of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, so many people voted for the refreshingly liberal (in the traditional sense of the word) new party Ciudadanos and the neo-socialist, Thomas Piketty-inspired Podemos.

In Malta, we are lucky that we don’t need to take such radical steps. The Nationalist Party is, strangely enough, and despite its 100-year history, the new party. Its 2015 alternative budget and good governance document seem to be a radical shift borrowing both from the new right and the new left. I don’t like everything the Nationalist Party has proposed but it is certainly much more inspiring than the filth, cronyism and corruption that Joseph Muscat’s Labour has engendered in less than three years.

Life in present-day Malta is financially comfortable but very dirty. We have definitely seen a regression in public life since Labour came to government, but this can be rectified in 2018 if we vote the right way.

The Archbishop has, surprisingly, made himself a force to be reckoned with, calling out misdeeds and injustices wherever he sees them. The Ombudsman has not been cowed despite the government’s (and Manuel Mallia’s in particular) best attempts. This website uncovers more scandals than Kurt Farrugia manages to fudge. People like David Thake and Claudette Buttigieg take note of what the government’s misdeeds are and drive them home with wit and keen observation on radio and in The Malta Independent, and some people are starting to rise up to tell the government that enough is enough, the ODZ Front being one example.

A cynic might say that he is politically agnostic and does not like any party because all will make promises they might not be able to keep, but that is both naïve and untrue. There is no such thing as political agnosticism. Anarchy or indifference to how things are run are also political choices which have consequences on people’s lives.

Also, we have to admit that there are no perfect solutions to our problems. In a politically complex world, solutions are messy, imperfect and driven by pragmatism as much as ideology, but they do exist. he future is bright as long as we fight for it and make the right choices.