The coronavirus has jolted people into soberness. It is silent and ruthless, hard to detect and creates havoc. The traits of the COVID-19 are synonymous with a déjà vu experience for us in Malta. We are still healing from the trauma of a political virus that created permanent damage to our small nation.

Similarly, we have seen a ruthless administration infecting a system of decent governing, scrapping away all kinds of responsibility, destroying our environment, decimating trees, wiping out entire tracts of good agricultural land to raise horrific structures.

We have seen corruption institutionalised and we could no longer distinguish between the legal and the illegal. The image of our island was rapidly transformed into one of distrust.

The COVID-19 exterminates and we too have experienced the death of a journalist. The planet too has succumbed to ruthless political governing. We have witnessed catastrophic scenes that are constantly ignored. Nothing could stop man from his unrestrained abuse, just an invisible microscopic virus managed to freeze his actions. It is time for some serious introspection.

The behaviour of people has changed radically over the last few decades. People lost the ability to think independently. They behave like automates programmed by algorithms.

Identities are rapidly merging into a pre-established format while entire communities are cloned. Facebook is the absolute governor since it is in a position to influence, dictate and decide.

We are living in a world where madness prevails over common sense, where violence predominates and ugliness and vulgarity is fashionable. Cacophony is the song of the day. For too long everyone has been rushing in all directions not knowing where one was heading and money-making became the only goal in life.

Innumerable distractions have been fabricated to steer people away from reality. By now, the distractions have turned into a spectacle and despite ‘the entertainment’ the young generation expresses boredom because the ‘me’ has disappeared in a vacuum.

The social media gave scope for narcissism to evolve. Freud had coined the term Narcissistic Personality Disorder, describing a self-loving character with grandiose feelings of uniqueness. Freud refers to a pathological narcissism that consists of wanting to overwhelm others like the political elite that desperately employ any means to increase their power, the likes of Trump, Putin and Johnson.

Nowadays, the new pond of Narcissus is the devices that dominate the lives of everyone. Many gaze for hours and days, risking drowning like Narcissus in the abyss of their screens.

One may witness the obsessive display of the ‘self’ everywhere.

People emulate impulsively without understanding. Consider the surge of tattoos that so many people of all ages display with great pride like a fashionable suit.

This is a desperate call for attention, a need to be identified.

Selfies are an attempt to confirm one’s existence and prominence. What matters is not what you are, but what you imply that you are.

Today’s society has lost its sense of cohesion

The vulnerable narcissus struggles against the shame of not being what he would like to be and then he protects himself by creating a false image of himself, that others may find attractive. Eventually, everything ends up being a caricature, a big lie.

It is not enough for the narcissist to be ‘good’. He needs to be ‘better than’.

This may imply violence because he always ends up needing scapegoats and gets together with other people who hate the same people with whom he is unable to compete and social media is the arena where such violence is exercised.

But violence is also the result of so much injustice because modern society has failed to strike a balance and to offer justice. People have become so capricious and pampered that all discipline is lost. People are insatiable, there is never enough of anything. They are living beyond our means.

What the capitalist system promises is that there will be “more and more of everything” every time: more comfort, more progress, more personal success, but simultaneously more suffering is created elsewhere, more inequality since someone else is paying for your benefits.

The system makes you feel you are a winner because the one who is not a winner is a loser and there is no place for losers in modern society.

We live in a system that selects the most narcissistic and leaves out those who do not serve. A system in which to succeed you have to claim you are the best, the cleverest, the most handsome and intelligent. You need to be a showman so people would believe in you, loud so many may notice you, provocative so they can be attracted by your stance. Social networks are bursting with such claims.

Today’s society has lost its sense of cohesion and has become more fragile. A generation ago there were social obligations, collective commitments, prohibitions, family ties, a whole series of structures and social habits that made society completely formatted.

Nowadays, psychiatrists claim that they treat patients who suffer loneliness and depression.

They see professionals who consume huge amounts of drugs to perform because they are unable to cope.

Our society needs to heal desperately by stepping out of the virtual world. Curiosity must be revived because it leads to creativity. One should explore oneself before discovering the world.

Hopefully, once these turbulent times are over, soberness is retained and all those who found once again the time to read, to reflect and observe will never abandon this awakening experience.

Luciano Micallef is an artist