The fruitful appreciation of complexity

“Malta is for the Maltese.” “We cannot move forward without foreigners.” “The Church is the bedrock of our culture and identity.” “We should develop Malta as a cosmopolitan country where different religions flourish together with people of no religion.” “We should have another mosque.” “Definitely not another mosque – there are already enough prayer spaces Muslims’ use.” “We need more civil rights: more gay rights, euthanasia immediately, and abortion in two or three years.” “LGBTQ+ issues should not be discussed in primary schools.”

The ethnocentric and nativist right-wing forces – many times, unfortunately, masquerading as the paladins of Christianity – battle against a “woke” mentality that generally treats tradition as something to be despised and often makes Christianity the scapegoat in a reductionist reading of history.

From migration to governance, from national memory to the daily ethics of public life, Malta is confronted by questions that defy easy answers. Yet, our public conversation too often collapses these questions into binaries: for or against, loyal or disloyal, progress or decline.

Ours is an either/or culture which confronts and excludes not an and/and one which dialogues and includes. A glance at social media is enough. There is no middle ground. On every argument, each side claims the “right” and “only” solution.

And, yet, in the middle of this noise, Pope Leo – speaking not in Malta but in Spain – offered a different way that cuts through our national habit of binaries. What he told diplomats and political leaders on June 6 in Madrid’s Royal Palace could just as easily have been spoken to us:

“For the love of truth, I invite everyone to set aside the divisive and polarising narratives of your societal reality and history, so as to overcome sterile simplifications through the fruitful appreciation of complexity.”

His warning was simple but strong: simplifications are sterile. Societies that reduce every question to a slogan lose the ability to understand themselves. This, to a certain extent, recalls Isaiah Berlin’s image of hedgehog societies – those that cling to one big idea, one big fear, one big enemy, while ignoring the many-layered reality in front of them.

Pope Leo continued:

“Appreciating and studying complexity, learning not to deny it but to embrace it as a blessing and fleeing from identity-based approaches that seem to explain everything yet only fill the world with ‘ghosts’ and enemies are the tasks of those who are heirs of a great history.”

In the cacophony of contrasting voices – concurrent monologues without dialogue – is there anyone among us ready to listen, reflect and act on the pope’s address?

One of the main obstacles blocking the way forward is that we often prioritise the argument over the person making it. This turns reality, and living together, upside down. We accord persons the dignity we believe their arguments have – not the other way around. If an argument is not, in our view, dignified, then the person making it is not dignified either.

In such a scenario we build walls, not bridges; a silo, not an agora.

A person’s mistakes should not define that person’s dignity. Dignity belongs to every human being simply by the fact of “having been willed, created and loved by God”, Leo told prisoners in Barcelona. He raised the stakes further when addressing parliamentarians in Madrid: the dignity of the person “precedes any concession of the state” and cannot depend on shifting majorities.

Societies that reduce every question to a slogan lose the ability to understand themselves- Fr Joe Borg

At the Movistar Arena in Madrid, Leo proposed a method to “overcome sterile simplifications through the fruitful appreciation of complexity”:

“Dear friends: I invite you, then, to be new protagonists for weaving new networks that harmonise all areas of life. To weave a renewed society where time is imbued with eternity, culture safeguards memory and fosters dialogue, education promotes the search for truth with a critical spirit, art awakens wonder and generates noble emotions, business recognises the dignity of the person and work remains a source of hope.”

Easy? Definitely not. But the alternative would be disastrous.

It is paradoxical that the technology meant to unite us, divides us instead. New technologies have become a dominant environment in which prejudice is inflamed and critical thought grows weak.

As Leo told dignitaries in Madrid:

“New technologies have created an artificial environment where our fundamental choices are put to the test, prejudices are magnified, critical thinking is weakened and dominating interests spread death wishes.”

He explained the risk in his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, published on May 25:

“Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted, and fraternity is made possible. Yet, every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world” (para. 1).

Pope Leo’s analysis and strategy present us with a dignified way forward. Malta cannot afford to keep navigating its future with the blunt tools of suspicion, tribalism and instant certainty. The challenges before us – demographic, cultural, ethical, technological – demand a deeper moral intelligence than the diktats of the algorithm or the uncouth instincts of the crowd.

The fruitful appreciation of complexity is not an abstract ideal; it is the only way a small nation with a long memory and a fragile social fabric can hope to flourish. It asks us to see persons before positions, dignity before disagreement, truth before tribe. It asks us to build bridges where habit tells us to build walls. And it reminds us, as Leo writes in Magnifica Humanitas, that every generation must choose whether it will shape history toward dignity, justice and fraternity or allow fear and simplification to shape it for us.

Which way forward will we choose?