Noisy jubilation

People were having a good time, true, but did this necessarily have to turn a crowd into a rabble? This was the naïve question asked by Brigid Garroni (April 15). Well, our answer to that is that the crowd is a rabble by definition.

An individual has feelings and is capable of rational thought and, hence, is someone you can speak sense to, although at times with difficulty. But a crowd is a monstrously powerful beast that lacks any sort of logic or sound judgment, especially when it is fuelled by beer and a sense of partisan triumph. It is also interesting to note a predilection that the Maltese seem to have with noise.

Horns and fireworks galore appear to be the mainstay of Maltese jubilance and confirm our extroversion beyond any shadow of a doubt. When we were in Sliema, taking part in the celebrations, we could not but laugh at the irony that this kind of unrestrained revelry could be one of the first things that EU membership might bring a halt to.

However, all things said, there is such a thing as freedom of association which will inevitably bring about revels of the sort we witnessed over the weekend whenever a side prevails.

That is the way it has been since Caesar's time and, we are afraid, that is the way it will always be. We dream of a day in which festivities will be ruled by a sense of peaceful, judicious unity.