Post No. 25

Whether or not a play called Stitching by one Anthony Neilson is to be staged is currently the topic that’s got our island’s attention by the short and curlies.  At least that was what the 20-02-09 edition of Xarabank was about. Apparently this Stitching is one sick puppy of a play, and the local classification board decided to veto it.

The guest panel was divided, obviously. Divided in two, in case you were wondering.

“Nobody should tell me what I can or cannot watch”

“You can’t have Tom, Dick and Harry staging anything they like”

“Yes”

“No”

And so it went on for about an hour. It felt like a rehash of the divorce debate.

I think that the heart of the matter is whether or not one accepts absolute values. And the implications for the fabric of society, to borrow a cliche’.

People who reject absolutes necessarily reject society and their place within it. You cannot have boundaries that others will have to respect. Because the establishment of a boundary is an absolute act in itself.

A nice freshly painted fence is a clear indicator of where my territory begins and ends. You know you should not leap over it and walk on my lawn – even though you can. If you do, then you can’t complain when (and if) I do the same. Because if you complain you are being discriminatory (against me). You are allowed to do something that I am not allowed to do. Not good. No sir. We either skip over each other’s fences or nobody does. In which case, what’s the point of fences?

This brings us back to life and real people. We all have fences. Some of us take offence when we’re called stupid, others hate it when somebody forgets a birthday, most find it unacceptable that our spouse plays the field, etc …

This is where morals (including law and religion) come in. Law-abiding citizens and adherents to a particular set of religious beliefs have one thing in common. They live their lives (or should that be life?) within the defined limits that are the same for everyone wherever they stand.

Although it is possible to modify these limits it is highly inadvisable, because if everybody decides to bend the limit a little, the perimeter will be deformed out of recognition. That is a problem.

If I throw my chocolate wrapper out on the street and someone told me that I’m polluting the environment I’d think he was crazy BUT if everybody disposed of their chocolate wrapper in the street … see what I mean? And if I may throw my stuff out on the street everybody may.

Same goes for morals, law and religion. Censorship can only make sense if we believe that our actions  will affect society at large. At the end of the day this is a numbers game…

Toodle-oo.

 

Post no.24

Watching Xarabank – Friday 9th Jan 2009. It’s about prostitution. The panel:
a) John Busuttil reason for being there: BOQ?
b) Dr Mary Sciberras reason for being there: probably because she knows a thing or two about STIs
c) Marica Mizzi reason for being there: BOQ?? Perhaps because she conducts a health-related programme
d) Dr Adrian Vassallo reason for being there: he hates prostitution because he lives in Ta’ Xbiex
e) Rachel Cachia/Cauchi reason for being there: she’s reasonably good-looking
f) Censu (??) in white tie format reason or being there: he was brought up in Strait Street (I’m assuming in its heyday)
The discussion is of the highest standard imaginable – which is what we have become accustomed to with this programme … NOT
They keep getting clips of this “Ukrainian” prostitute banging on about who does what to whom and how much it costs in Maltese Lira (in the age of the €, mind you)…
I wouldn’t be surprised if I opened the papers tomorrow to learn that the government announces plans to tackle prostitution …

Vox Xarabank vox dei …

Exculpation: I only watch Xarabank because I like to know what’s currently gripping the average Maltese person’s imagination

 

Post No.23

Simply irresistible

 

Post no. 22 (Power to the people – NOT!)

I’m still fuming. The steam is condensing on my glasses and I can’t see a thing.

Michael Brooks – a consultant for New Scientist, no less – said that “The public complain that science is just too difficult and boring”. Then he suggests that “We should take a risk and canvass public opinion about where society wants science to go – then act on the results.”

The reason: “More lay people find it hard to accept that their taxes are used for research in which no one but the scientists involved can judge or appreciate progress and merit.”

I think that “Bollocks!” is a suitable interjection. Let me rephrase what I think he means.

Many people think that science is abstruse, yet it is funded from their taxes. It’s not fair. Why don’t we ask them what they want to see so we give them more of it?

Let’s try it with something else, shall we?

Many people think that the law is abstruse, yet its administration is funded from their taxes. Why don’t we ask them what they want to see so we give them more of it?

It is a downside of specialisation that one tends to lose sight of the big picture. The activity we call science has become so vast that progress can only be made if one directs one’s efforts at a single target – or a limited set of targets. The days of the polymath are long gone. Brooks argues that specialisation is perceived as dull, so if we really have to specialise we must specialise in something the public is interested in… can anyone spot the inconsistency here or is it just me? Specialisation necessarily means doing something that not everybody can or wants to do. This means that however interesting (haha) or broadly appealing the subject is, a point will be reached where few people will be interested any more. Electronic gadgetry is something most of us love, but how many of us can really understand the physics and chemistry behind our games consoles or Blu-Ray disc players?

Brooks also quotes Erwin Schrödinger (he of the cat in a box fame):

“Never lose sight of the role your particular subject has within the great performance of the tragic-comedy of human life. If you cannot – in the long run – tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.”

Very rich that, coming from someone whose contribution to science cannot be described in words. Schrödinger gave us the wave equation, which describes how the probability of finding an electron at a particular energy level varies in time. Very appealing, don’t you think? But science has made huge steps in unlocking some of nature’s secrets through that concept. Would we have arrived at it if we had to ask the public what they want to see? Resoundingly no.

To be fair on Brooks, he also warned about the possibility of scientists using convoluted logic to justify their research funded out of public funds. There are also hubristic tendencies to contend with along the way… but we must bear in mind that science is, after all, a human activity – riddled with our inherent imperfections.

Brooks’s piece really got my goat because I do not hold public opinion in high regard. Let me rephrase that because it sounds a tad rightist. Certain jobs are best left to experts in the field. A plumbing job is no different to the chosen course scientific research should take. Both will come to grief if left to unskilled hands. Respecting other people’s opinion doesn’t mean having to hold all opinions in equal regard.

I feel that this relates to Post no. 15.

OK. That’s that for today.

Toodle-oo.

 

Post no. 21 (Parenting Skills, Lack thereof)

A few weeks ago we (my baby son, my wife and I) went to Gozo, to visit her relatives. As it happened, a friend of hers had just had a baby girl and  the friend’s mother insisted that we visit her.

We were reluctant, at first, because having just been through the experience ourselves, we knew that “other people” is the last thing you’d want to see in your house in those first few days of struggling with nappies and aiming breasts at your baby’s face… but I digress. To stop the nagging, we went.

Her friend and her husband are two of the friendliest people you’d want to meet. Never a frown or a harsh word. (Just to give you an example: He sides with Milan AC and I side with Liverpool FC. Remember Istanbul 2005. He still speaks to me and offers me beer. Can you be nicer than that? I think not). They welcomed us as though they had been expecting this moment all week… I mean … they were smiling. Incredible.

We chatted a bit about this and that when the doorbell rang. It was the priest who wed them. He came to congratulate them on their baby.

“Hmm, there’s something in the air I must say, what with all these babies around,” he said after congratulating us on 2 jobs well done “Don’t they bring joy and unity to a family?”

*CLICK*

“Yes, on TV, they do.”

He spun round on his sofa, his facial muscles fighting among themselves about whether to reorganise themselves into a look of shock and horror or remain frozen in a photo-op grin.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you know … you come home after a day’s work … all that crying …”

“But it’s what babies do, my son”

“No, I was talking about myself.”

“Ah…”

“It takes all my self control not to join in.”

Patronising nod.

“You get sleepless nights, dirty clothes, you end up washing the floor at 3 am because that’s when baby decides to bring up the milk …”

He looked at the other pair of new parents for support.

“But when I cradle her, I forget everything and everybody.”

“There, see?”

“It’s all very true, but it’s the bits in between I’m talking about”

“How do you mean?”

Back to square one.

“Babies require a mental and physical stamina the likes of which I would never have thought possible. You’ll have pick yourself up and go on, even when you don’t have the strength for it.”

“Yes, there’s that too.”

“You’ve got to support your wife in her most important job to date. You’ve got to keep a stiff upper lip when you know it wants to wobble all over the place … you’ve got to be there when you’re not and pretend you’re not there when you are …”

“Yes … yes … but …”

“A baby is THE test of the strength of a marriage. It breaks you and her. It’s only pigheaded determination that pulls you through…”

“Yes, yes … we call it love, where I come from.”

*CLICK*

It was my turn to look at him with my mouth open.

“You know you’re right?”

Patronising nod no. 2.

“Why do you think we bang on so much about love? Don’t you know we’ve heard all this a trillion times already? All you need is love, love, love. Love is all you need… Now let’s drink to that. Cheers.”

I was speechless. He was right. You only persist in all this because you love your wife and your incipient  family. For no other reason. I’d like to thank him again for reminding me.

It’s so easy to miss the wood for the trees.

Toodle-oo

 

Post No. 20 (It’s me again and again and again and …)

I’m currently reading Kil’n people by David Brin. The story is set some time in the future where means of communication are implanted into human bodies and computers have personalities. The really interesting thing about this story, however, is the fact that people can create colour-coded “clay-y” copies of themselves. Greens are good for chores, e.g. The more elaborate the task for which the copy is intended, the more expensive it becomes. At the end of a 24h period the ditto (i.e. the clay copy) has to return to base and inload the day’s memories into the original’s brain. The fantastically good thing is that you can create several copies so you can get several jobs done at the same time e.g. a grey copy to go to work and a black copy to think for you … or something like that …

It’s an entertaining story – easy on the mind and a very good break in between more involving reads. But I still struggle with the concept. Look at it this way. I’ve spent a whole day doing chores, I’ve been at work the whole day and I’ve been watching TV and playing playstation all day. At the end of the day, I inload all the memories gathered by all the “mes” into my brain and I would have experienced three days in one. And the interesting thing is that each ditto, though knowing that it’s disposable, is still an extension of me and acts in my best interest as though it were me.

I can’t wait for this technology to be available in good electronics stores near me … just imagine… I need to tell the wife something she doesn’t want to hear. I have 4 options:

a) tell it to her ditto and she only gets to hear it when she inloads the day’s memories, so it will be “taken as read” and she would have known what I wanted to tell her without me actually telling her.

b) get my ditto to tell her ditto with the result being identical to (a)

c) i or my ditto tell her ditto and observe the reaction. If the reaction is unfavourable, we just throw away the ditto – it is not morally a crime to eliminate a ditto – and start afresh until I like the reaction then let her inload that. The studied approach, I would call it.

d) get my ditto to tell her in the flesh – at least only the ditto gets the earful of invective and I can decide not to inload from that ditto on the day. Downside: I get the silent treatment without really knowing why … but hey … what’s new?

*sigh*

Writing this has given me the urge to pick up the book again … I’m no sci-fi fan, but the narrative’s gripping me, to borrow a phrase.

Toodle-oo

 

Post No. 19

I am not a fan of Maltese television productions. I have tried to sit through the odd episode every now and again. I think that the dialogue is unnatural and the intonation smacks too much of “I-learnt-this-off-by-heart-and-I-must-rush-through-it-before-I-forget-it”. My uninformed opinion is that the people pretending to be other people (I hesitate to call them actors) on television haven’t understood the person they are trying to portray. I don’t know whether this is because the script is bad or because the story is bad or there wasn’t enough time for the people involved to get their act together… Whatever the reason, despite severe shortcomings and crippling deficiencies, Maltese serials sell. Big Time. It tells me that Maltese viewers are not discerning.

The issue of discernment leads me seamlessly – some would say segues - to what I wanted to grumble about in the first place, namely yesterday’s (13 November 2008) episode of “Arani Issa”.

Let me place all my cards on the table. I do not normally watch the show, but yesterday I was feeding our son and while burping him I zapped around a bit with my free hand. As Fate would have it, when Julian started crying again I had just reached ONE(ex-Super one). And there it had to stay till the next burp. But I know what the show is about.

Joseph (Chetcuti) and I were at school together and my impression of him is that he is a bright lad. A bit flamboyant - but his heart and brain were in the right place. I don’t know what possessed him to do a show like that.

Yesterday’s “can-you-call-it-episode?” was about this young lady – very pretty she was, too – who wanted to enlarge her breasts. From what I gathered she had a bit of rough life when she was young, but the details escape me.

“It’s none of your business what an attractive young lady does to her chest,” I hear you say. True, true. My issue is not with what goes on within the confines of her blouse, but that someone should actually want to tell all and sundry what the young lady did, and how and when she did it. And why.

At one point a relative – judging by looks I’d say her mother or a parent’s sister – said that the young lady always wanted to have a bigger bust. The – in my opinion – implicit extrapolation (does that make sense?) of the statement would be “and she always hoped for something like this to come along”. Though, actually, she said that she had been saving for the operation. Anyway, the operation was over and done with, and the obligatory nipple flash thrown in. Then Julian wanted to burp again, so I switched channels and heaved a sigh of relief.

Tista’ Tkun Int, apparently, was thought up in a similar vein (or should that be haze?) but the sob stories were more elaborate and the “prizes” were bigger.

Where am I going with all this? We Maltese love a sob story. Which explains the popularity of this programme. If yesterday’s show was anything to go by it tells me three things about us. (Before I go on, when I say “us” I mean the “fat part” of a Gaussian distribution curve).

a) We believe in a universal justice that must balance our books some time during our lifetime. In the above example, the young lady had a difficult start in life so she deserves what the Americans call a break. It is the theme of such programmes. If people weren’t expecting the happy ending, they wouldn’t bother. (Just look at the lukewarm reception La Vita e’ Bella received here).

b) Closely linked is our [peculiar? – I wouldn’t know] tendency to console ourselves with the fact that somebody is worse off than we are. Example:

Generic exclamation: “I can’t afford a new car! I wish I were richer”

Stock Response: “Think of all the people whose styles are cramped just because they don’t even have an old car”

c) We will not pay attention to anything that does not contain a mild-to-strong dose of histrionics.

That ends my gripe, I guess.

Toodle-oo

 

Post No. 18

Today I’m at home, down with a feverish cold of all things. That Beecham Flu Plus works wonders, I tell you. But then again, it could just be the placebo effect.

I’m sure you couldn’t be bothered with my state of health, so I’ll skip to the juicy bits.

I’ve been reading miles of column inches of drivel (pro and con to be fair) about divorce and abortion (as unrelated as the topics are to each other!) . I will not tackle the issues per se here because

a) it is not my place

b) there are persons  far better suited than I for the job

Suffice it to say that I am (try to be, rather) a practising Catholic and I can see the logic behind the Church’s stance (as explained in the Catechism) on the issues.

What interests me here is the methods used by either side of the divide. In a nutshell, the “popular” debate (i.e. what is being written on the blogs and in the newspapers) has become a ramming match. It is easy to see why.

The pro-divorce’s (and pro-abortion’s) corner is utilitarian and, I dare say, based on poorly-disguised solipsism. Life is now, what came before is water under the bridge and what’s still to come doesn’t exist so it’s not there. No argument, however brilliant or convincing, can sway such a frame of mind.

Then there’s the other corner: the anti-divorce and anti-abortion people. These should be arguing from the premise of the sanctity of marriage and that life is a gift from God. I think that when they fling about statistics borrowed from other countries they’re doing themselves a disservice.

How can you scientifically quantify the magnitude of social ills directly caused by divorce? How sure can you be that you have managed to effectively isolate cause and effect? I remember reading once a study – scientific, mind – claiming that wine is a better stress reducer than beer. A few weeks later a party-pooper asked whether or not it could be possible that rather than the drink reducing the stress, it was a matter of life style, i.e. people with a low-stress life-style have a propensity for wine and people who plump for beer are on average more highly strung individuals. There was a bit of thumb-twiddling and “uhm-ah”-ing all round and that was that. Same goes for studies trying to show the ghastliness of divorce and abortion. The conclusions can be easily shot down with a few well-placed questions.

Sometimes you hear the argument that countries where divorce has been introduced are reviewing the situation and are looking into ways to turn back the clock. Fine. But what is their motivation for doing so? I don’t know, but probably it’s got something to do with expenditure on welfare. Can we directly relate this expenditure to the existence of divorce?

The above points of view are smashed against each other innumerable times with nobody emerging as the clear winner. Obviously.

If you’re going to argue against divorce and against abortion it’s probably because you believe in the sanctity of marriage and in life as a gift from God. You can’t support these arguments by data and statistics coming from social scientists. It’s illogical. All you can say is that God gave us clear guidelines on how to live our life and then left us free to follow them (or not). At the end of the day it’s a matter of faith. Of course this won’t wash with a non-believing crowd.

If I believed in divorce no amount of statistics would make me say “hmmm … perhaps divorce isn’t so great after all”. If I think that a woman has a right to kill her unborn child no study on earth would make me think otherwise.

On the other hand, if people who, out of religious and moral conviction militate against divorce and abortion lead exemplary lives all across the board then their behaviour might just make others sit up and listen …

Toodle-oo.

 

Post No. 17

Archbishop Paul Cremona’s contribution (in the Times of Malta) to the “divorce debate” is impressive. Let me explain. In his piece he gives some suggestions on how to strengthen the family and how the  family is perceived – outside looking in, sort of.

It is obvious that he is combatting divorce, but the beauty of the piece is that he wisely does not tackle the issue by trying to rubbish divorce. He does not even say that he’s tackling the issue, as it were. His ideas, if followed, could significantly strengthen families. And that is his strategy: strengthen marriages and families so that they will think less about looking for pastures greener. Think of it as “customer loyalty” if you wish. If we’re satisfied with a brand we don’t go round looking for something better. I think that he’s saying that the same goes for marriage. If you have a strong marriage and a fulfilling family life, you will do your utmost to keep them in the best of health.

Strangely, he doesn’t mention Christ or the Church anywhere in this piece, neither. What’s going on? How can a Catholic bishop go on about family and marriage without dropping any of the C-words? And this is precisely the impressive bit. If you go through the piece you’ll notice that it is jam-packed with practical day-to-day advice that anyone – irrespective of what they believe (or don’t) – can follow and obtain good results in so doing.

On the  other hand you cannot reasonably expect an Archbishop of the Catholic Church to say something with a whiff of godlessness. So what’s going on here?

The themes in the piece are love and education. Love is also the essence of being Catholic, but stated as such it is very easy to miss the wood for the trees. Astutely, Archbishop Cremona has built his suggestions around love without once alluding to it as the quintessential Catholic virtue. Not that he is ashamed to do so, mind you. But his strategy has shown the common-sense value of central Catholic principles.

It’s a pity that people associate the words “Catholic Church” with various unsavoury practices. It’s an illogical extrapolation, if you ask me. A bit like shooting the messenger before listening to the message. If we were to concentrate on what the Catholic Church teaches (and not allow our effort to be diverted by a few costly mistakes of some misguided members) we might all learn something.

Remember the elephant.

Toodle-oo.

 

Post no.16 (Divorced from Reality)

I bet you thought this was going to be about the Great Divorce Debate (Malta) … Actually, no.

I went to Mass last Friday (15th August, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven). During the sermon the priest said something that stuck to my mind like chewing gum to a shoe . I forgot the exact words he used, but the gist was that Mary, Our Lady, accepted to do what God asked of her without quibbling.

Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to do whatever he wants. May everything you said come true.” And then the angel disappeared. Luke 1:38

I will not go into the religious implications of the event here; it is not my place. I will point out the underpinning concept, however: blind faith.

Blind faith, these days, is considered the domain of optimists and simpletons. The identifying factor of these two groups is: Divorced from Reality.

We are living in the second enlightenment. Don’t believe what you’re told. Do what suits you. See for yourself. If it’s not measurable it probably doesn’t ( or shouldn’t ) exist. Of course that doesn’t stop us from devouring every episode of Most Haunted, but that’s beside the point.

Faith – removed from its usual religious context – is a belief that is not based on fact; trust, if you will, but a bit broader. “I’ll believe it when I see it” is the opposite of faith – and trust.

Faith, you’ll be forgiven for thinking, is the enemy of science. God forbid scientists just had blind faith in their hypotheses and left it at that, without testing them. And it’s a good thing, too. Just look at the huge difference (to the better, of course) science has made to our lives. We have mobile phones, laptops, better medicine … you name it, science has given it to us. All this without us having to resort to faith. Science doesn’t make untestable claims, does it? If it did surely someone would point it out …Well, we can’t actually confirm every claim, can we? But if science has proven dependable in some of its “utterances”, we have no reason to doubt the others we can’t test…

Our assumption is based on taking someone else’s word. We have to trust them – believe what they say, in other words. But doesn’t that constitute a leap of faith too? We have made science our new belief system. As far as we are concerned, the contents of conventional faith-based systems (i.e. religions) and science are equally verifiable – or not. We dismiss belief in “unknowable” quantities as inadequate yet we substitute that with belief in another set of unknowable quantities.

The nature of the contents differs, of course, but that would be the subject of another post

Toodle-oo