The life of Miriam Pace was snuffed out in a second’s instance. Her bereaved family lost their mother, wife and companion. They also lost their family home, where so many precious memories were undoubtedly made throughout the years.

It is hard for our society to come to terms with what happened on that Monday afternoon in Ħamrun. We are in shock. There’s also a sense of uncomfortable complicity; after all, how many have benefitted from the ongoing construction boom?

There seems to be consensus over the fact that greed triumphed; that this is the only guiding factor in our society. There are two interviews, widely circulated on the internet, which can help us understand why greed is so prevalent.

In 1979, in The Donahue Show, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman had much to say about greed. He argues that all societies run on greed, even those totalitarian states which claim not to run on greed. He then went on to say, “The world runs on individuals pursuing their self-interest. The great achievements of civilisation have not come from government bureaucrats.” One cannot take issue with this line of reasoning.

Phil Donahue prods further. He argues that the system advocated by Friedman “seems to reward not virtue as much as the ability to manipulate the system.” Friedman replies with a series of questions: What rewards virtue? Do totalitarian regimes reward virtue? Do American Presidents reward virtues? Do democratic governments choose their appointees based on political clout or on the attributes the individuals possess? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler, somehow than economic self-interest?

The questions are pertinent, but they do not offer a  legitimate answer to the problem of greed in any given society.

Another thinker went further than this. Ayn Rand went so far as to argue that it is wrong to equate selfishness with evil and that greed, when understood as the pursuit of one’s interest, is good and beneficial for it leads to greater creativity in society. Rand articulates these thoughts both on Donahue’s television show and in a book which she published some decades earlier with Nathaniel Branden entitled The Virtue of Selfishness.

Joseph Ratzinger does not mince his words; to isolate oneself from ethical foundations is akin to committing suicide

These two positions posit a fundamental problem. Since greed is a basic instinct, and if self-interest is man’s natural orientation, how can the individual coexist in a society made up of other individuals who also seek their own self-interest? The economic problem, thus, becomes a political issue.

As time goes by, it is becoming more apparent to me that the most fundamental problem in politics centres around how we view personhood. If the individual is seen only as a consumer who seeks to maximise his economic well-being then, naturally, self-interest and greed become ‘virtues’ (or a parody of what a virtue is). However, if we accept that the individual is worth more than the sum of his economic value, then these definitions are skewed and dangerous.

As individuals, we pursue other activities away from our economic ventures; we seek to build families and friendships, we try to turn our houses into homes, we have hobbies and social relations, and we strive to share some of our strengths and talents with others. These activities help us to make the quantum leap from being anonymous economic actors into fully developed human persons.

In order to do so, communal life must be subject to two principles: that of the law and the common good. In an excellent lecture delivered by the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, entitled ‘Freedom, Law and the Good: Moral Principles in Democratic Societies,’ he makes a fundamentally important point: “Freedom keeps its dignity only if it stays connected with its ethical foundation and mission.”

If we limit freedom to that of satisfying one’s own needs, we would be entering dangerous territory; we would be shifting from the law of man to the law of the jungle because “freedom needs a communal content” which could define and guarantee human rights.

Ratzinger develops his argument further. Institutions – as guarantors of our freedoms – “cannot be maintained and work without common ethical convictions.” These ethical convictions can only be strengthened if one believes in a “core of humanity” and in fostering “the genuine common good”.

Thus, if we have a skewed version of humanity, and if we fail to understand the importance of the common good, the pursuit of all other rights is hindered. Ratzinger does not mince his words; to isolate oneself from ethical foundations is akin to committing suicide:

“To cultivate the essential moral judgements, to preserve and to protect them as a common good without imposing them coercively seems to me to be a condition for the continuance of freedom as opposed to all sorts of nihilism and their totalitarian consequences.”

That Monday’s tragic loss of life is a sign of the nihilism we seem to be approaching, and of the totalitarianism we seem to be embracing – the tyranny of a world view where one should get rich quick or die trying. The subservience of our political class to some lobbies leaves little hope that things will change.

Yet, for one family, this reluctance to change meant that their lives changed permanently, and for the worse. If we value our shared humanity, and if we believe in the common good, we cannot remain neutral before this inhumanity.