A survey held in 2017 showed that 55 per cent of the population had not read a single book all year. Out of the remaining 45 per cent, 9.3 per cent said that they had managed to get through just one book. I have even heard Advanced Level English students ask whether the class was expected to read all three books set for examination. I think it is safe to say that we are not the most literate of bunches.

In a growing sea of despair at the way things are developing in our country, I often wonder if that is one of the reasons why we appear to be so very, very blind in the face of everything that happens around us. I look at certain institutions and think of 1984 and Animal Farm, where some animals are very much more equal than others, but probably half of the people that this piece will trickle down to will not have the foggiest of what I am on about.

Reading comments about traitors and the environment last week, I could not help but think of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Perhaps it was the name of the poem that triggered the thought, for what is Malta if not a paradise perpetually losing just a little bit more of its beauty and identity? Yet suddenly, I was reminded of one of the lines the Devil says when he has fallen from Heaven: “Evil be my Good.” It is a topsy turvy muttering born out of anger and frustration, intended to portray internal chaos, and yet, it fits perfectly with the state of affairs we find ourselves in.

For what is Malta if not a paradise perpetually losing just a little bit more of its beauty and identity?- Anna Marie Galea

I live in a constant state of disbelief at the incredible inconsistencies and juxtapositions that co-exist side by side in our land. The same people who tile over their back gardens and clap at the sprouting of every new building site take nature-filled holidays and post photos of mountains, sparkling rivers and open spaces and see absolutely nothing wrong with this. People with pictures of saints as their profile pictures, who claim that they are devout Catholics, say and write some of the vilest things I have seen about other humans.

I often wonder how their minds can allow one and completely disregard another.

And then the other shoe drops, and you read that over 82 per cent have always voted for the same party. This is not something that we did not all know, but at the same time you are still left astonished. This basically means that the future of an entire country time and time again has depended on around 18 per cent of the population. And if all that was not already enough, the survey found that around 48 per cent of the respondents based their opinions on a number of issues on the positions taken by their political party of choice. How can one read of so much wasted potential and not shiver in dismay?

Most other countries need a coup d’état to happen for totalitarianism to rein supreme, and yet, in our case, we have people praying for it. The mindless sickness of it all, the willingness to be sightless. It’s almost like the Age of Enlightenment simply skipped over our islands and we went straight from the fields into the (fake) turfed prisons of our own minds. Too many of us keep looking for a ruler to tell us what we need to think so we do not have to do it ourselves.

May the day come when our children’s children hold our rulers to higher standards than the rest of us have been able or willing to.