When the dust has settled (I)

I still have to watch Reno Bugeja’s program that aired yesterday and dealt with the aftermath of the referendum but I do think that we can begin to draw conclusions on the effect of the Great Divorce Debate on society as well as on the Maltese corner of the ether. As the referendum results are read out and Malta begins to come to terms with it’s latest snapshot for it’s collective ID card there may be carcades and hooting, there may be strings of Ave Marias and novenas of gratitude elsewhere but things will never be the same.

Beyond divorce

A divorce debate and law tends to be a landmark moment in a nations’ history as documented in this book review.

Of course we have been thinking, speaking and most of all joking about (more about that later) divorce but the first assessment of the aftermath has to be that this Debate was much larger than its original purported subject. Interestingly we managed to reaffirm a trait of our society – it’s inability to think beyond two. There’s black and there’s white, there’s Good and there’s Evil, there’s Us and there’s Them, there’s the Secular and there’s the Confessional. Then there are those with a “sense of humour” and those “without”.

As soon as it became clear that the issue is much wider than the right to remarry then it became time to dig the trenches… and dig them deep. There would have to be a victory of some kind: of good over evil, of one lifestyle over another – and a loss for the idea that somehow two ways of life can coincide. That is why voting YES or NO notwithstanding the apparent  inevitability of the shooting down of the bill by our spineless and unrepresentative parliament is still a matter of life or death. We have confirmed that this nation is destined to be bipartisan.

I hope God has a sense of humour

As the trenches formed the two sides emulated the tried and tested ways of doing politics – the billboards, the half-truths and the mediatic ploys and gimmicks. Nothing new there. We could be tricked into thinking that the individual was more “active” than before because of the flourishing of blogs, communities and pages mostly dedicated to asserting ones position for or against an idea. Then came humour. Again, the biggest effect has been the facility of the spreading of “jokes” and what in Malta passes as “satire”. Josanne Cassar described it as a Survival Kit a concept that unwittingly (or maybe purposefully) implied the need to survive (and be above or extraneous to) the discussion itsel.

Witness Josanne’s other creation: Moviment Tindahalx – a snowball effect of sorts led it to (currently) 3,513 members. Tindahalx (don’t interfere) is again less of an assertion of a position and more of a declaration of detachment – neither here nor there in the bipartisan sphere though ultimately  the ideal platform for roping in those whose first reaction to the ugly word “politics” is “Thanks but no thanks” – until they realise how it also can mean that others are determining your way of life.

I asked Josanne where she wanted to go with Tindahalx and the answer was quite emphatically “nowhere”. Which is unfortunate – because if there ever was a promising platform for gathering that snowball for the critical mass beyond the bipartisan fold then it was in this community. What might have diluted the original message “you take care of your soul and I’ll take care of mine” was the tsunami of humour that followed.

From Divorzistan to Mazzun to the rest the Maltese habit of “nervously dealing with the lighter side of life” spread to the net. I am the firs to click around and have a good laugh or two on these sites. There is also a political element in the humour itself this time round – and mocking the serious side is after all J’accuse’s unofficial motto (castigat ludendo mores). It’s not new though: the fact that it is more easily spread does not make it new. It began with the jokes at the grocer in the eighties (joking about Mintoff , Agatha et al was one way of coping with the sadness of daily life), moved on to email virals and youtube videos in the last two elections/referenda and is now settling in communities on facebook.

Critical Mass

It is easier to see how many followers a facebook page has than to count exactly how many people stepped out of the Zejtun parish church (unliked) last Sunday. Read the MaltaToday report and you’ll see what I mean: the heading mentions a “Mass Walkout” but the article starts with the word “several parishioners”… which will it be?

J’accuse continues to question whether the critical mass for change has been reached? Without intending in any way to minimise the importance of the newfound tools of engagement the question is what will happen when the dust subsides? Has the argument and discussion been provocative enough to provoke the necessary thousands into deciding to use their vote in order to bring about change and reform in the future? Or is this just a passing fad in which laughter has popped up as a temporary panacea for our argumentative colic?

James Debono gave us his interpretation as to why YES will prevail. His argument makes a lot of sense – particularly in the ability of a voting population to react positively in the face of quirky vs common sense. What that also means though is that we have done it before and we will do it again (choose common sense). 1987 and the EU are witness to that. Common sense has given us a confessional government, an opportunist opposition and a general set-up of actual or perceived laws that seem out of synch with the 21st century.

When the dust settles this time round will the critical mass still be there to fight the next battles for change to come about? We’ll just have to wait and see.

“In un paese pieno di coglioni, ci mancano le palle” – j’accuse 2011