The first time I watched the film Dr Zhivago I was in the Seminary. That takes me back at least 45 years. But there was a scene that accompanied and inspired me all through my life.

One scene showed a train packed with people. Only one was in chains and under guard. People commiserated him. But he shouted back at them saying that he was the only free person on the train. He really was. They had freedom of bodily movement within an imprisoned mind. His body was in chains but his mind was free. He was the only one who dared speak his mind. They pitied him but they were the ones that should have been pitied.

This story happens all the time and parallels can even be drawn with Malta today.

The worst enemy of freedom is the restrictive concept of what being human is all about. Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov believed in such restrictive and limited vision. (Watch on YouTube John Gielgud’s masterful interpretation of the Inquisitor’s part.) He believed that freedom was too high a target for most humans while bread was more immediate and desirable. Today, some would say that people prefer certainty and stability to freedom.

The Inquisitor burnt at the stake those who considered freedom to be an essential part of being human and lambasted Christ for preaching freedom. Many crude enemies of freedom similarly use violence or the law to control dissent. The gulags are just one example.

The nouveau serfs

The spirit of freedom in our country is challenged by more subtle means. The saddest restriction of freedom does not come from above but from below. Many have sold their freedom for government grants. I do not refer to people on the poverty line who need to eat. I refer to reputed firms, accountants, architects, board members, NGOs, band clubs and church organisations, to mention just a few.

We have entered a new age of serfdom. “Don’t muddy the water you want to drink from” and “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” are the mantras repeated by these modern serfs while they humiliate themselves grovelling at the feet of the lord who hands out money.

The language of serfdom is unfortunately becoming widespread, if not already mainstream. This demeaning attitude of the new serfs reeks of a colonialised mentality well explained in Memmi’s timeless classic The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957). We became politically independent almost 60 years ago but the colonial mentality keeps marching on.

Then, these serfs, in a pathetic attempt to justify their stooping, attack those who fight for the enhancement of the freedom of all of us. They accuse activists of exaggerating and being too negative. I do not principally refer to trolls on the internet but to people who should be intellectually equipped to know better.

Fortunately, most media outlets have not been contaminated by the spirit of this new age of serfdom. The media should not accept any government help unless it is given in the most transparent and independent-from-government way possible.

We became politically independent almost 60 years ago but the colonial mentality keeps marching on- Fr Joe Borg

Freedom is also threatened from above. Laws are enacted to ‘defend’ freedom’, say, the right for freedom of information. But the process to get it is so cumbersome that, by the time the information is given, it is no longer relevant. Laws enacted purposely include loopholes from where the powerful can wriggle out while still saying that the laws are supreme.

Institutions are set up to ‘guarantee’ freedom. However, those who abuse take comfort in the fact that these institutions disadvantage more the seekers of freedom not those who abuse it. The office of the attorney general is one such disgrace.

There were instances when the ‘chosen’ who are arraigned were accused of breaking a law which does not apply in their case. Mistakes on charge sheets are the get-out-of-jail card for criminals. Shoulders are shrugged saying that “ħeqq, everyone makes mistakes, isn’t it so?”

Too many of such mistakes have happened to credibly accept the attribution just to human error and not to a deliberate strategy to get the gods’ favourites off the hook.

It seems that those who lord it over us have taken to heart the advice which Screwtape, a very experienced retired devil, gave his nephew Wormwood (The Screwtape Letters, 1942) and recognised that the mother of all weapons is the corruption of the human language. Doublespeak is now their official language. As per Screwtape’s advice, they avail themselves of the ambiguity of words, which they use purely for their selling power without allowing a clear and definable meaning.

Consultation, for example, means listening and instantly ignoring. The government has bragged that it adopted 87 per cent of the proposals made by its appointed media committee, knowing very well that the 13 per cent discarded were the most important ones.

Never lose hope

However, one must resist the temptation to lose hope.

Vaclav Havel, dissident turned president, said: “Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.”

When you are tempted to lose hope, remember that working for what is good is, in itself, a value and a reward. Always take strength from the prisoner on the train in Dr Zhivago.