Pessimism is one of the easiest of dispositions to adopt.  There is always more than enough evidence to suggest that while things are bad, they will likely get worse even much worse.  The weather, price hikes, traffic mayhem, construction chaos, today’s cache of Castille corruption, the sweeping success of Trumpism, the nightly international news etc, all seem deliberately designed to reinforce that disposition.

In many popular viewpoints, trying to improve things or change them for the better is a waste of time and energy and only fools (or knaves) believe otherwise.  We have internalised the notion that, as individuals, there is precious little we can do to promote positive change. 

Researchers and analysts often refer to this state of mind and its associated behaviours as learned helplessness. This sense of helplessness is often temporary and contingent on circumstance but can also be long-term (or even permanent) generating an allied disposition of ‘inescapability’. 

We are where we are and there’s not much we can do about it.

In primary and post-primary school and, to a significant degree in university, the teaching and learning I experienced did little to mediate or change this perspective. God, the Church, the Government (and its ‘big’ leaders) were the dominant changemakers. Individuals and local communities could effect change but only at a very minor level.

In short, we were ‘trained’ to look down rather than up.

Slow learner that I was, it took me some time to know differently. Reflecting on the struggle for civil rights in the US and in Northern Ireland (and elsewhere), on opposition to the rule of the ‘Generals’ in Latin America (heavily supported by the ‘superpowers) and on the ever-present campaigns for women’s rights, my perspective was turned upside down.

The total collapse of Apartheid in South Africa in the face of popular local and international campaigning by those who refused to give up strengthened my worldview and my determination to engage with history, rather than to simply observe it.  

While looking down, I began increasingly to look up.

My changed disposition was not just about ‘big’ events but was also about local neighbourhood, extended family and schooling issues.  As we came up against entrenched interests and agendas (conservative ‘catholicity’ in every aspect of Irish life, state-sanctioned physical violence in school, sexuality etc.), ‘learned’ or ‘taught’ helplessness had to be challenged. 

In order to live, grow or flourish, we simply had to discover and shape our own ‘agency’ – our capacity to engage and to challenge. As so often stated, we had to become architects of our own lives rather than its mere consumers. We had to leave aside helplessness and instead embrace capacity.

This traditional and often taken for granted ‘learned helplessness’ routinely makes us susceptible to simplistic and banal answers to complex questions, to conspiracy theories and to demagogic politics (as was obvious in Ireland then and in Malta now). 

Not only that, but our assumption of helplessness also facilitates and supports the duplicity and criminality that accompanies such politics, as is so woefully evident in Malta’s cabinet at present. In fact, learned helplessness is a sine qua non for the success of such politics and criminality, locally and internationally.

The more we embrace the ‘helplessness’ syndrome, the less likely we are to participate positively or progressively in the political process writ large, either by being properly informed, engaging with civil society or even by voting. 

Many will be familiar with the assertion what’s the point, nothing changes – we actively collude in our own ‘helplessness’.

At every stage of our lives, we all face choices, and we have to engage in choices: sometimes at a basic level (shopping, consuming, working), other times at a deeper level (health, family life, sexuality, relationships etc.). The claim of helplessness in these contexts would be rejected by most of us, and rightly so.

It is deeply frustrating to engage in conversation on the subject of Malta’s widespread acceptance of corruption and criminality whether it be minor or major. Invariably many with whom I speak express their dismay at the direction of development and politics in this land.  They are disturbed at the scale and impact of current behaviour and the ramped-up dismissal of the law and of accountability.

But, and it is a constant but, they argue there is little they can do. They wish for ‘radical’ change as regards criminality, construction, traffic etc. but they resist ‘radical’ change from the current political duopoly.  Refusing to consider the many alternatives, they opt for powerless pessimism.

Such pessimism is the easy option. Hope, resolve and agency require strength and resilience.  They are in short supply in Malta today…but they are by no means absent.