For those unfamiliar with Latin, caput mundi is a phrase used to describe a global city as the capital of the world. Some major cities since ancient times have been described as the caput mundi. They include Rome, Paris, New York City and Washington. So, is Malta unwittingly claiming to be the new caput mundi?
One needs experience in psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to delve into the national psyche of a small nation hardly the size of a European small town.
We are proud of our millennial history, even if most of it is characterised by colonial domination. Some still think that Malta is the bulwark of Roman Catholicism. They oppose the liberal civil rights that are now taken for granted in most other Catholic countries.
More recently, we have projected ourselves as the most liberal country concerning LGBT rights, proving that we are ‘the best in Europe’ – an abused political slogan.
When experienced historians write about the social history of Malta, they will undoubtedly describe the characteristics that define the Maltese stereotype.
We see ourselves as a friendly nation where family values come first and like to think that we are exemplary Christians who do not suffer from prejudice, hate, discrimination and xenophobia. At least, this is how tourism policymakers pitch their marketing campaigns to attract the lower end of the tourism market.
An honest, soul-searching exercise will soon uncover the shallowness of our self-assessed exaggerated excellence. Such an exercise would also reveal how a long phase of British colonial rule has not been enough to instil in many of us the lasting virtues of civic responsibilities like the duty to hold our societal leaders accountable for their behaviour.
We remain a Mediterranean nation with a mindset often similar to our North African, Greek and Italian neighbours.
Wise guys believe it is naïve to rely on honesty, hard work and good civic behaviour when aggressiveness, an inflated sense of entitlement and a friendly local politician can give you unearned rights
We undoubtedly master what our southern Italian friends call l’arte di arrangiarsi. One can translate this phrase as the art of ‘figuring it out on your own because, in life, no one else will’. The cultural interpretation is much more complex. It signifies our ability to make do, citing everything from our cuisine to our indomitable spirit in the face of adversity.
However, arrangiarsi also has negative connotations. It also means breaking the rules, doing things illegally, and finding ways to get around your obligations. Like so many terms, the cultural significance of arrangiarsi has changed as society has shifted around it, ping-ponging from one meaning to the next and oscillating between virtue and vice.
Just look at how some corporate land grabbers expropriate public land to have a private beach on the scarce seafront space available for ordinary people. They claim that by doing so, they are philanthropically helping our tourism industry by providing jobs to low-paid workers imported from third countries.
Who can deny that so many of us are no more than the ‘furbi’ or the ‘wise guys’ that are so common in Italian society? Some local wise guys believe that the rest of us are really dumb. That is why we do not use our tactical cunning to grub public land to park a caravan on the shoreline as they do on the pretext that they pay their road tax like everyone else.
Wise guys believe it is naïve to rely on honesty, hard work and good civic behaviour when aggressiveness, an inflated sense of entitlement and a friendly local politician can give you unearned rights.
Despite our size limitations, we often behave like an island continent wanting to expand its economic activities even if this means every square metre of land to open shops selling bathrooms, pastizzi or overpriced designer goods. Fast food outlets encroach on public spaces in city cores contributing to the obesity pandemic. Vehicles keep increasing on our roads and the most prominent strategy focuses on building even more roads with bus and bicycle lanes rather than upgrade our public transport system to acceptable levels.
We also suffer from the cultural equivalent of the Napoleon syndrome by compensating for our small geographical size by being excessively belligerent, hostile or quarrelsome in our interpersonal relationships.
Despite being one of the smallest independent nations in Europe, we are certainly not a shining light of how to manage national affairs. Small is indeed beautiful as long as illusions of grandeur do not blare our vision. Our limitations are what they are, and it would be puerile to ignore them.