We didn’t care about the Cold War
My contemporaries and I were children of the Cold War and of the OPEC oil crisis. Our parents were children of a war which killed many millions and destroyed much of Europe. Their parents were children of the Great War and lived in an incredibly dangerous world where life, limb and well-being were always at risk, where infant mortality was sky-high, a simple fever would kill you, and there was no welfare safety net. Yet through all these generations, children’s drawings have been the same: houses and clouds, families and dogs, rainbows and flowers and trees, and a great big happy sun, smiling down on it all.
Today’s children are the safest, most secure and best-fed in all of human history, at least in the developed world. They also have the brightest future. Their lives cannot even begin to be compared with the childhood of their own parents, still less with that of their grandparents and great-grandparents. By comparison, they are in heaven. No children have ever had it so damned good. But what are their parents, teachers and other adults doing? They’re spoiling it all by making sure that these children are even more worried, pressured and preoccupied than even their grandparents were, scurrying back and forth in perpetual hunger as bombs rained down and buildings fell, burying friends and relatives. The problem isn’t only the pressure exercised by incredibly dim and short-sighted parents and teachers who set far too much store by homework and annual performance in secondary and even primary school. No, the pressure is much wider than that and comes in great part from the new religion called environmentalism. Children are being encouraged to think that as a result of human action or inaction, the world is about to implode and they and their parents are personally responsible and accountable. They are being made to grow up with the fear of Armageddon.
You would think that their parents, having grown up under the true and actual shadow of Armageddon through nuclear warfare – would the Russians press the button first? – would know better what real danger is. But no – shallow thinking is the name of this particular game. Though my contemporaries grew up with the threat of a nuclear holocaust, and still never worried or gave it a second thought, they find it necessary to aid and abet those who would wish to browbeat their children about global warming.
To me, a child of the Cold War and of impending nuclear doom, it is all quite risible. I don’t remember ever having the fear of earthly destruction and wholesale death put into me by the adults around me, and it was certainly never mentioned at school. Was that good? Of course it was. Children shouldn’t have to worry about these things, but that’s not how adults see it today. Now, adults think that children should be suitably worried and concerned, and berate them with reasons to be fearful, presented in the guise of education and information.
The problem is not at all peculiarly Maltese. It is global, because environmentalism, like religion, spreads beyond borders and breaks through reason. The children of the two world wars, of hunger and destruction, of the Cold War and massive recession painted dogs and trees and flowers and rainbows. But the children of today paint – what? Around 30 children’s paintings from the United Nation’s Paint for the Planet competition are being shown at St James Cavalier. This is how one newspaper reporter described them: “A monstrous dark cloud of smog oozes out of a factory and mercilessly forces elephants, giraffes and other wildlife off the fertile land that was their home. Meanwhile, in the Arctic, a family of polar bears weep at being stranded on the last remaining block of ice as the world around them melts away. The world, afflicted by global warming, has fever and does not have the energy to keep on spinning. And in a desperate bid to save the planet, children climb onto ladders floating in space with buckets in hand, to wipe off the grit and grime that has cast a dark shadow over the once beautiful blue marble.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. If any teacher had asked me, as a child, to paint a picture of nuclear holocaust, I would have asked: “Nuclear what?” And the Cold War, as far as I was concerned, might as well have been an ice-lolly. Did I grow up to be an unthinking moron? No. There is a time and place for everything, and the time and place for worrying about global warming and where the polar bears are going to live is not when you’re 10 years old and in school. When you’re 10 years old and in school, you’re supposed to think that polar bears are cute, and not that polar bears are crying on ice floes because mummy and daddy are driving an SUV.
The Maltese are jolly tolerant, says Muscat
The Labour leader visited the Mariam Albatool Islamic School in Corradino and told the press that, because the school has a Maltese Catholic head and Maltese Catholic teachers, it means that the Maltese are tolerant.
You know, I really wonder how he got that PhD. If a Muslim school employs Maltese Catholic teachers, it doesn’t mean that Maltese Catholics are tolerant. It means that the Muslims who run the school are tolerant, as otherwise they would not have employed them to teach their children. I somehow don’t for a moment imagine that the Catholic convent where I went to school would ever have engaged a Muslim North African head or Muslim North African teachers – precisely because it was an intolerant system run by intolerant religionists for the children of intolerant parents. There were, however, several Muslim North African girls there, and they were extremely tolerant about being made to go along to horrid Friday mass at the freezing cathedral.
The Maltese, Joseph Muscat insisted at the Islamic school, are tolerant of differences but “cannot accept illegality”. Really? I would have thought that this society is one of the most tolerant of illegality anywhere in Europe, as long as a large enough number of people have a vested interest in that illegality or might wish to do the same one day.
Muscat can dream on. The Maltese are hugely intolerant and one look at what is being written on the internet is enough to reveal the full horror of that intolerance. Illegality is by the by. If the Africans in our midst had all the right papers and came down off a plane, Mr and Mrs Joe Borg would still hate and fear them. Even black people with British passports have a problem on this potty little island, though they have as much right to be here as you and me. Africans with refugee status are completely legal, but that doesn’t mean they’re welcomed or befriended or even helped by anyone other than NGOs and a few individuals.
The only consolation that the Africans among us might wish to take from this whole sorry saga is that the Maltese hate and fear each other even more than they hate and fear Africans. Given the choice between putting a bunch of Africans into a boat and towing them towards Libya, and handpicking a bunch of fellow Maltese for the same treatment, I’m quite sure that most would go for the latter option.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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I was a child of the Cold War and of the Vietnam War. At our village school we were not protected from the horrors of war; all we painted were military aircraft, played with soldiers and at home on Redifussion all we heard was: “five soldiers were killed … a helicopter crashed …. Saigon … Kmer Rhouge … Vietnam ….Cambodia ….. Iron Curtain…. Gromyko……Nixon….” Children nowadays are more exposed to the media than we were in the 1960s. They are being ‘caught’ younger.
If the comments on http://www.timesofmalta.com are anything to go by, then maybe Muscat will change his opinion after taking a look at unedited comments on http://www.maltastar.com once it is up and running (ie, by “mid-March”)
One should read Michael Crichton’s book “State of Fear”. It’s a really good book. Crichton’s Message calls a “State of Fear,” a “near-hysterical preoccupation with safety that’s at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism”.
Our generation had plenty to worry about much closer to home, Daphne, even basic things like where to have a bath (for years I frequently washed at the Union Club because water didn’t reach our roof tanks) but I think John Schembri’s right – the media are far more invasive now than 40 years ago.
I’m extremely sceptical about this global warming crap. My understanding is that climate change is a continuous process on our planet and no one can explain why we have ice ages and ‘tropical’ eras and nobody really knows what’ll happen next but instil enough worry and it becomes a huge multi-billion dollar business – ask Al Gore.
Anyone read the book ‘Scared to Death’ – very British-focused but despite that is an excellent expose of the fear industry – asbestos, HIV/AIDS, global warming, millenium bug, satanic child abuse ….and all those other fears that cost and cost and cost (and allow the fearmongers to earn and earn and earn).
I believe that we are destroying our children’s childhood completely. I am also from the generation that grew up during the Cold War years, but I can also attest that I did not have the slightest idea about global nuclear warfare before the film Wargames was produced (or maybe a couple of years before that).
But apart from the global pressure, I think that we as Maltese are increasing this useless pressure on our children to the extent that we seem to be masochistic (or sadistic) in getting pleasure out of all this. Today I heard that there are plans to increase the level of the Sec exam in Maltese – basically a level of 3 would be a 5 (just a pass mark) in two to four years’ time. Are we mad? Is it true that we want our children to be able to compete in this globalised world? And then we issue policy after policy and strategy after strategy proposing to increase our tertiary education and our literacy rate. How? By making it harder for the children to pass in Maltese? It’s a good language and a useful one, but only in Malta.
The first environmentalists of the 19th and early 20th century were generally thoughtful and balanced in their views but not always popular. In the 1960s environmentalism became a movement but was associated mostly with hippies and lacked impact with public opinion. In the 1970s the pendulum started swinging to the other side and by the end of the 20th century every mainstream politician and journalist was required to be environmentally-friendly, at least superficially. Today everyone and everything has to be green and one of the problems is that these issues attract so many attention-seekers that it becomes difficult for an individual to emerge above the rest and make news. This explains the increasingly catastrophic and sensationalist statements as everyone strives to be the greenest of the greens. Many dream of being another Rachel Carson and desperately need to denounce something, no matter what.
In Malta, environmentalism was spearheaded by birdwatchers and anti-hunters. In the 1970s and 80s, while the subject was gaining in popularity in the rest of the developed world, it was still very much on the fringes here and, for a long time, MOS and Din l-Art Ħelwa were the only NGOs to speak about the environment, with the former being the more militant. Those who took part in public protests risked assault and often were assaulted, and the only politicians who took notice were those who organised the violence.
After 1987 political and social tensions eased and the public could afford to start worrying about something else: environmental problems were ideal. With the presentation of the first-ever Structure Plan and the setting up of the Planning Authority, public attention was focused on land use and has remained so to this day. We are catching up with other countries now and, as elsewhere, any person who yearns for some media attention sets up a mini-NGO and starts issuing vehement press releases. I don’t want to generalise but it has become a very competitive field and it’s common knowledge that some environmentalists are more at odds with each other than with developers.
OK, so what’s the alternative? Teaching kids to live as if there were no tomorrow? Instilling in them the idea that we can use up the earth’s resources as we like, as much as we like, not even thinking of the generations which will follow? Is that it? And dear Steve M. the scaremongerers, as you call those who would advise caution, earn millions, do they? Then what do the giant oil companies whose interest it is that we consume more and more oil earn?
Do you call information about HIV scaremongering? So would you also call campaigns about the risks of smoking, or drink-driving as scaremongering? [Daphne – That’s just my point, Albert: those campaigns address adults, not children. And so it should be with global warming. A child can do nothing about global warming, just as a child can do nothing about HIV.]
I am sorry, but all this seems neo-conservative fundamentalism to me. And with Bush’s defeat at the last US elections, it is all rather old hat now. [Daphne – Rather, it is an argument against fundamentalism: the fundamentalism of environmentalists.]
This environmental fundamentalism is gripping also our politicians who sometimes make illogical decisions in the process and grab the opportunity to tax their citizens. Some time ago, Daphne, you nearly convinced your readers that solar water heaters are not economically feasible in Malta. You were rightly looking at the capital output and comparing it to returns. Let’s put the same argument to energy-saving lamps and tungsten filament lamps:
1) an ESL costs €5 and a filament lamp costs €0.50;
2) a lamp’s life is shortened when it is switched on and off frequently – for example, in a corridor;
3) unlike filament lamps, energy-saving lamps take a long time to give their maximum light and dim with frequent use;
4) burnt energy-saving lamps have to be disposed of carefully (more cost) because of toxic waste.
So it is unwise to install an energy-saving lamp in your corridor. A filament lamp is the ideal lamp; it costs less and it gives you bright light instantly.
What are our politicians deciding in our name? They are giving us free energy-saving bulbs and taxing and planning to abolish filament lamps. In other words, in a matter of years all burnt bulbs will be causing a toxic waste problem, and will be replaced by expensive (€5 + environmental tax) energy-saving lamps.
The same argument holds for plastic bags. What’s wrong if on Tuesdays we put plastic, paper and metal in the plastic bags we get for free from our grocery store? Why should I buy a bag which is intended for the Tuesday collection?
I nearly forgot to mention old cars, which are taxed on the assumption that they are the biggest polluters. If our politicians wanted to be fair they would have taxed us on the exhaust emissions of our cars when they are VRT tested together with the mileage on the speedometer.
If only our politicians would focus on educating us rather than on taxing us, we would have a ‘win win’ situation. So Daphne, our children are being educated so that they will pay these environmental taxes willingly without much questioning. When they grow up the polar bears will probably adapt to their ‘changed’ environment.
Daphne – “A child can do nothing about global warming”
I’ve had to put up with one of the kids asking if my deodorant contains CFCs this week, because they were learning about the ozone layer at school. (I have to admit that I said “no” though the answer is probably “yes” – simply to avoid being lectured by an 8-year-old about harming the environment. Having said that, I am quite religious about recycling …)
You are exaggerating. I was taught environmental science by a fundamentalist (a real green) to the point that she took us on a Greenpeace ship and showed us their propaganda videos. I thought it was comical, funny even, as the rainbow warriors attacked the whaling ships (whalers throwing shit at them to keep them out) on their dinghies battling the waves to the tune of “it’s the end of the world and we know it and I feel fine”.
To be honest, I didn’t mind it, neither did I or anybody I knew care about the rain forest being chopped down to make tooth picks.
Talking about scarring our children, a religion teacher showed us a filmed abortion. So should we remove religion from our schools?
With the internet, 11-year-olds can watch American infidels getting beheaded, so I don’t really get your point unless the child’s got OCD.
One kid can’t do wonders but together they can. What’s wrong with telling them that plastic harms the environment and their health?? Is it nice to see dead turtles because they choked on plastic bags? What’s wrong with telling them that if they walk to school and not use the car it’s good for their muscles and air quality? What’s wrong in telling them that actions have consequences?
Why not give them sweets and burgers all the time…children are so sweet and adorable…why tell them no? Then, when they are adults with high blood pressure, they can think about solving their health problems (if they haven’t already died of a heart attack aged 20).
[Daphne – What melodrama, honestly.]
Having served in the RAF, I lived with, drank with, laughed with and argued with blacks, yellows and every shade in between, and I never saw them as anything but mates. Many coloured people reach levels that we can’t, but I am just as happy for them as if it was me. Unfortunately many Maltese still consider refugees as people who came here to live off our hard-earned cash. This isn’t true. They finished up here by a combination of circumstances which they could do nothing about. Once here they have no choice.
I do care about the environment and I try to be as green as possible. How we live affects the environment and in turn our health too. In Malta, hundreds of children (and old people) suffer from asthma. We all know that pollution causes it. Who causes pollution? The adults who, when at school, were never taught about the environment and just drew clouds, dogs and a happy sun. How can’t you understand the importance of such a ‘topic’?
[Daphne – Don’t be so crassly simplistic. Pollution is not caused by people who drew suns at school. It’s caused by everyone who isn’t living a Stone Age life, including you.]
That’s what I tried to tell our environmental studies teacher all those years ago. Something to the effect of “Why not crap in the fields then?” It is never wise to open your gob, Daphne. I used to be the outspoken one, pointing out the fallacy of things instead of drawing suns at school, and look where it got me.
Got this mail the other day which, in my opinion, is a breath of fresh air in a world of pseudo-science, expert opinions and political correctness ! Please read on –
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1920’s, 30’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses which used
asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a tin, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention,
the risks we took hitchhiking .
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of an estate car on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC or Subway.
Even though all the shops closed at 5.00pm and didn’t open on the weekends, somehow we didn’t starve to death! We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the local off-licence and buy sherbet sweets and ‘locust beans’ and liquorice sticks.
We ate iced buns, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because…… we were always outside playing. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, only going home when our tummies rumbled – and no-one worried as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old pram wheels and scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and ‘camps’ in the woods and played in stream beds with matchbox cars. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms………. we had friends, and we went outside and found them.
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. And only girls had pierced ears. We ate worms and mud-pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You could only buy Easter eggs and hot cross buns at Easter-time…….no, really.
We were given cap guns at five or six and catapults for our 10th birthdays. We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass supposedly covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing in 1956. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them.
Mum didn’t have to go to work to help dad make ends meet. [Daphne – That wasn’t such fun for the mums. Money isn’t the only reason women work, which is why that was the Valium generation: they had to drug them to keep them quiet. Things may have been great for the children, but they weren’t so great for their mothers.] Our teachers used to larrup us with big sticks and leather straps and bullies always ruled the playground at school. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Our parents got married before they had children and didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like ‘Kiora’ and ‘Blade’.
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
@Mark Ellul : how nostalgic ! I still don’t want to go back to those times, though. A friend died riding his scrambler motorbike because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. When I was young, children with dyslexia were considered stupid, handicapped children were kept indoors, children were sent to work in the fields, and we were bullied about by teachers and fellow students.
Mum didn’t swallow Valium; we used to drink an orange soft drink, “tal-Qattus”, which was produced in Safi, “hobz biz-zejt u l-kunserva” or “bit-tadam” was our snack. We built our go-carts and scooters, and there were fewer cars on the roads. Some of my classmates used to go hunting or bird-trapping with their fathers (today’s hunters), and the father of one of them used to to go “il-kazin l-iehor” to make fireworks. He died and had a hero’s funeral. I even tried my hand at making fireworks and was slightly injured. I was lucky I didn’t lose an eye.
I don’t miss the “caravan” of dirty and smelly carts with 14-year-olds on top of the sacks which were filled up with domestic waste intended as food for pigs. These horse-driven carts passed through our road everyday at around one o’clock. They used to collect this “pig food” from the nearby “barriera”. I don’t miss the bus conductors and I don’t miss the horse-driven hearses.
We were street boys. We used to play “xixu”, “gwerra Franciza”, “harba”, “noli”, “campella”, cowboys and Indians, and with marbles and toy soldiers. Girls used to play with beads and at “passju” and with their “pupa”. We used to make our “wadab” (catapult) from twigs, strips of car-tyre tubes and old shoe leather.
Yes that kind of life produced risk-takers and inventors but also a lot of unskilled and illiterate people. It doesn’t mean that today’s children won’t be as good as their parents’ generation.
Good points. When I was at school in the UK we had a four-minute drill every so often. Apparently we would have four minutes’ warning of incoming Soviet missiles and we dutifully dived under our desks when the siren sounded. How strange that sounds in this day and age. We have relative calm in the world now, no cold war, no IRA attacks every week, no PLO hijacking and blowing up planes, and yet people seem to be more tense and worried than ever about ‘the state of the world’. I blame the media for hyping everything 24/7 and governments for keeping the tension up so that they can pass legislation that would never see the light of day if people felt secure. An example is the Patriot Act in the US. There are many other examples in different countries.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090316/local/plans-for-new-residential-complex-in-sliema
I wish the owner of this plot had lessons about the environment…probably now he would have other ideas in mind what to do with that ‘wasted’ land of his.
[Daphne – A chunk of land in Gzira surrounded by buildings does not constitute ‘the environment’. If it were yours, you would want to develop it, too.]
People worry, apparently, about climate change. What is the alternative – climate constancy? In the history of our planet the climate has never been constant. Sounds like a King Canute wish to me. What about the great global warming after the last ice age. I don’t think 4x4s were to blame.
More comedy!
The planet is fine, the people are **cked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw&feature=related