Think of a national conference on the economy which, however, excludes any discussion of money, given that it’s vulgar, indecorous and could give rise to class war. Think of a conference on the family which, however, excludes any reference to male and female, or a conference on religion without any reference to creeds, since binary differences and concrete beliefs are divisive and exclusionary.
On a first impression, President George Vella’s announcement of a conference on national unity sounds just like these proposals. He wants to exclude discussion of party politics and blame games, even though there’s plenty of concrete evidence that behind the disunity and incivility that bother the president lie the organised fratricidal networks of political parties.
So what? Think again. What’s wrong with a discussion of the economy without any mention of money? By eliminating the dominant feature of exchange, we could finally focus on the extent of gift-giving, barter and redistribution. Thinking about the family without reference to gender will get us to look more closely at families as environments of eating, rest, nursing and bathing. Discussing religion without creeds gets us to examine how much religion is really about our inarticulate convictions.
A discussion of national unity that excludes partisan identities and networks might not get far. But if that happens, something important would have been demonstrated: just how deep and extensive the partisan divide is.
By excluding partisan politics, the conference could end up building a platform for people to say they need less of it. There is no other forum for such a collective statement to be made.
There are many ways for the conference to go wrong. But even going wrong may be a way of getting it right. We cannot be disappointed by failure unless we desire success. Deep disappointment would establish that we care deeply: we’re not indifferent.
Experience also shows that there is no talk of identity without a profound sense of crisis- Ranier Fsadni
Listening to Vella I was struck by two elements. First, several paradoxes proliferated in what he said. On the one hand, he described us as divided across the various spheres of life; on the other, he says many of us are sick of such divisions. He described us as ready to rise to the occasion when charity demands it, while being routinely prickly and prone to fission: a nation of fractious altruists, if you like.
Such contradictions are not impossible or illogical. It suggests a country where people are constantly pressured or induced to be their worse selves, to opt for plan B. It’s a dysfunctional country where self-interest demands we are conscientiously stupid.
Other paradoxes will haunt the discussion. Vella spoke of identity as what unites us all. But experience everywhere shows there is no identity without difference. The two go together, like night and day, male and female, wet and dry. Unity without opposition or critique? That’s fascism.
Experience also shows that there is no talk of identity without a profound sense of crisis. The very talk of national identity, across Europe, began when the first signs of contemporary globalisation appeared. A way needs to be found of handling these paradoxes without being trapped in their hall of mirrors.
Second, these paradoxes arise in part because of the multiple meanings of unity. Vella spoke of cultural belonging, economic equality, attitudes towards migrants and minorities and village identities. In other words, unity as integration, unification, solidarity, cohesion, reconciliation and as a community of destiny.
These are very different relationships. They have different kinds of identity at stake. Vella sometimes spoke of a required ‘mentality’ but recognised that unity is not only a state of being. It’s a relationship that needs constantly to be built and maintained.
It helps to organise these relationships in relation to the three main values of the state. There is unity as it relates to liberty. What unites us here is commitment to public freedoms – of speech and association, among others.
The virtues needed for liberty go beyond tolerance, which is governed by law. We also need civility, which law cannot command. Perhaps the president’s platform can, eventually, include a public definition and pledge of non-violence for whoever wants to sign up to it. It will, of course, be breached. But breaches and hypocrisy will be noted and responsibility can be allocated.
Unity in relation to the value of equality calls for solidarity. Real solidarity, not just expressions of sympathy. It requires a return of the ‘common good’ to our public vocabulary as something that transcends the cheapest bid and that does not consider the grand public simply to be a consumer market.
Unity in relation to fraternity is the trickiest. I suspect that the appeal to identity is misguided. Real families don’t appeal to identity. They appeal to character. Siblings, particularly in larger families, tend to think of themselves as unmistakably different from each other but strangers see a family resemblance – no single feature uniting them all but an aquiline nose here, a posture there, the way anger flashes and a voice that sounds the same over the phone.
We cannot be a pluralist society and insist on sameness. We cannot be a society that’s changing and introduce, in our school curricula, traits and customs that are already being transformed when the textbooks are approved.
What we can insist on is an education that imparts both intelligence and character to our children. If we impart the skills they need to practise the civil virtues – tolerance, responsibility, solidarity, empathy. National character will take care of itself. We will be different and plural but by our public virtues they will know us.