Inconceivable

I am driven to write a few words about the train of events since our very important decision of March 8.

Ninety-one per cent of the Maltese and Gozitan electorate felt it their duty to cast their vote. That is a percentage probably seen nowhere in the world when it comes to elections or referenda. The people voted and with a majority of over 19,000 decided they wanted to join the European Union.

The vote was hypothetically supposed to be followed by jubilation for all those who wanted to see Malta form part of Europe. Alas!! There was an anti-climax, driven by the Malta Labour Party leader who, for some unknown reason, decided to start a new shrewd way of how to interpret election and referenda results.

Sadder still was seeing Malta Labour Party politicians, previously admirable in their moral and political standards, support this preposterous state of affairs.

Where are we going?

The real versus the unreal; truth versus falsity. Since time immemorial, when humans began to brood over their world and the philosophical pen first met paper, this conceptual dichotomy has pervaded reasoning and dominated argument. Nearly every intellectual within virtually every field, whether religious or secular, has been fascinated by questions of what truth is and whether it can be attained.

Truth has been traditionally divided into two domains: the larger domain of truth and falsity of life in general and the more circumscribed moral domain of intended truthfulness and deception. In fact, a central topic of debate is the rightfulness or wrongfulness of a person's deliberate employment of the faculty to deceive.

Friedrich Nietzche wrote in The Will to Power:

"There is only one world, and that world is false, cruel, contradictory, misleading, senseless... we need lies to vanquish this reality, this 'truth'. We need lies in order to live... that lying is a necessity of life is itself a part of the terrifying and problematic character of existence."

In the opposite ethical corner have been such thinkers as Nicolai Hartmann, who argues that because lies distort the information upon which man must rely, they interfere with free choice and the quest for moralistic growth. In his treatise Ethics, Hartmann argues that a lie "injures the deceived person in his life; it leads him astray". Enough said about this very sore topic. I will not interpret this in any way, leaving each mature individual infer what he/she wants.

I will, however, end with a fable, which speaks for itself. This is Aesop's The Fox and the Scarab Beetle.

All the animals agreed Fox was clever. If only, they said, he would use his brains well, instead of playing tricks and doing harm! Perhaps, said Mother Nature, if she made Fox king, he would have to act with dignity and behave himself. Fox was pleased, especially when he got a fine carriage with satin cushions and the royal crown painted on the door! One day, he was giving orders to his driver and footman, when a scarab beetle got inside and began buzzing under his nose. Fox, quite forgetting himself, began grabbing here and reaching there, inside and outside the carriage, shouting and bawling, trying to catch it. That was when Mother Nature knew Fox could never be king! Away went the carriage, the crown, the driver and the footman. And the fox once again became... just the fox!

I encourage all Catholics reading this article to carefully read the pastoral letter for Lent 2003, which our beloved Archbishop Joseph Mercieca and Gozo's Bishop Nikol Cauchi sent us. I heard it in the magnificent Mosta church and Archbishop Mercieca's recorded voice still echoes in my ears. Let us all pray for peace because what has happened a few days ago, with the Malta Labour Party leader misinterpreting a democratic result, threatens its very basis.

Dr Cassar is a Nationalist Party electoral candidate on the 11th district