When a country like Malta is underdeveloped and overdeveloped at the same time, it can appear to be simultaneously underpopulated (‘we still don’t have enough workers’) and overpopulated (‘there are too many of ‘them’).
The experience of daily life on the ground is now completely disconnected from the ‘big story’ of ongoing national growth – ‘Malta’s success story’.
We are constantly regaled with reports and PR on the country’s many ‘successes’ – airport and tourist arrivals up, bed nights up, ferry numbers up, new hotel builds up, apartment construction still booming, car sales up, average income increasing and so forth.
The Prime Minister and his fellow cabinet ‘suits’ (image is everything) never tire of telling us how ‘we’ outdo most other EU countries, thus proving the adage that one should never let a fact get in the way of a feel-good story.
Despite some hiccups, all is good, brand Malta is robust and healthy, and it continues to punch above its weight in the key metrics of what passes for ‘development’.
Yet, on an hourly and daily basis, we experience something entirely different. We feel, smell, see and ‘know’ how that story of ‘success’ is actively underdeveloping our country. Vital infrastructure continues to collapse as do key national institutions under the weight of the economic and political pressures and demands piled upon them.
We are in very real danger of being buried by our ‘success’. While we are being ‘developed’, we are also being actively ‘underdeveloped’. For anyone familiar with the literature and debates on growth in many Latin American countries since the 1960s, we are experiencing the realities of the ‘development of underdevelopment’.
Our land and our society are being systematically underdeveloped – we are in so many ways going backwards. The fundamental reason we pursue development – the furtherance of human, environmental and societal well-being, in short human flourishing – is dissolving before our very eyes.
Political and ‘business’ hooliganism, construction chaos, rampant environmental destruction, air and water pollution, traffic mayhem, ‘rule’ enforcement anarchy and a general dissatisfaction with the quality of life endured by the majority are our daily lot.
It seems we have ‘too much’ of it - crude growth - and yet we can’t get enough of it - crude wealth. We flail about politically, socially and culturally in search of a ‘silver bullet’ that will resolve this shared conundrum.
In such a context, when things cease making sense, senseless ideas rush in to fill the void.
Currently, Malta is dominated (and plagued) by three specific senseless ideas.
1. The belief that with more of the same – the same failing ‘growth’ model, the same tired, devious and corrupt ‘leadership’, the same culture of grand and petty criminality and law-breaking, the same culture of impunity – we will ‘magically’ achieve a different and better result.
2. The belief that ‘foreigners’, especially those that have come to service our economic, social and cultural demands are somehow responsible for this mess. Despite the evidence of their own eyes, they like to insist that if such ‘foreigners’ were sent home, all would revert to normal and all would be well.
A related and increasingly popular piece of nonsense is that we should now search for the ‘right kind’ of foreigner (the ‘quality’ ones) with the ‘right’ kind of attitude. Many like to believe that we currently have the ‘wrong’ kind of foreigners.
3. There are no geographical, environmental, resource, or capacity limitations that place boundaries or restrictions on the scale of what can be achieved on the tiny, miniscule islands that are Malta. Growth, ‘development’ and wealth are deemed boundless.
Our growth model remains senseless. Our political culture and behaviour remain senseless. And our collective delusion that all will be well, somehow, remains strong.