Malta: apathy at the center of the Mediterranean. An insular people. And so on. Is the call just or cynical? Well, here’s MY rant.
When it comes to service, we have health care that’s similar to a third-world-country’s regarding management. Hags of government employees yelping for coffee breaks and an aggravation at the slightest tone of misunderstanding. This, with a complete disregard for time-management.
A hospitality industry based on any other local industry’s anti-work ethic. Ignoring the fact that 30% of Malta’s GDP comes from tourism. Hospitality workers simply work for clients and not "with them’ as the rightly founded saying goes. No, instead we sneer at them with contempt for entering our restaurants at hours later than our national 6:30-9:30 rule of etiquette allows.
We have a drug policy that only convicts users and stigmatizes them, and occasionally showcases their grim lives on television in a perverse way so as to reaffirm the social consensus on the mantra ’drug abuse is a no-no’. Proceeding to think farther about the complexities of the issue, beyond that it is quite simply ’a bad thing’, is tantamount to treason.
Even when it comes to media, the theme of drug use in local TV shows is highly polarized, along side any other plot or theme ever presented by local writers really. Of course, it’s only when that changes, and the local media industry starts producing thought stimulating concepts — like for example the introduction of a heroine antidote or medical marijuana — into their shows, instead of the predictable garbage that we’ve come to expect, the masses MAY begin to THINK about it.
We have an antiquated public education system filled with the trivialities of academic tradition, rather than focusing on the students’ educative potential as is done in Finland. We hold, literally, THE most antiquated religious (and religiously introduced) laws in Europe. And when it comes to politics, we have polarized everything down to two parties, with the same hidden agenda of liberal-capitalism, and yet, with the facile competitive approach of simply having a morally superior party. The Greens sometimes intervene, but nobody is too worried about them winning any more seats in parliament. Not even the green candidness themselves. Need I go on?
Well then what are we doing wrong? And what can we do to improve it? Will we just lag behind until the EU drags us along as it usually does? Let’s look at some foreign examples.
The Dutch, which I truly think live in Utopia: are a people that are so content within their complex society, so in tune with social consensus, so free of conflict and self-destructive compulsions at the very heart of their culture. One may quite easily fall to the cliché of mentioning that it must indeed be ’something in the water’. However, I shall argue that it is something at the heart of their hidden consciousness. I sometimes wonder, entranced, about the dual focus on both modern civilized conduct and yet also; their primal roots.
Can it be true that Wilde was right in saying — through the character of Lord Henry Wotton in his novel "The picture of Dorian Gray’ — that “man just wants to be happy but society wants him to be good”? But it seems certain to me that there is indeed “no shame in pleasure”. As a liberal sense of pleasure when one’s at leisure will ultimately lead to a paralleled sense of discipline when one’s at work. That’s why everyone works better on liber countries. And in any case, live sex shows and prostitutes on display seem far less barbaric than the sight of Paceville on any average weekend, which seems to be Malta’s main answer for tourists seeking to be entertained, apart from the priceless export of culture which we offer only to the middle aged tourists and lager and Smirnoff to everybody else (the latter not even being a local product for the economy’s sake at least).
What about the French? They beat us at everything. They beat practically everybody in Europe in everything, apart from England’s civility and Germany’s productivity. Service, products, food, culture, architecture, shops — it’s all quite superior.
When I’d spent some time in Paris earlier this year, I noticed even television — which I never in my life considered would be worth sitting in front of back at home — had my complete attention. As the Home cooking of amateur chefs displayed the very best of French cuisine in modernized versions of grand and timeless recipes. A French answer for Top Chef, if you will, which dispensed of the petty and needless drama, and which actually had creativity without ridiculousness and sincere human passion towards the culinary arts. These people were relatable and I wished to be their friends more than my colleagues back home whom I despise out of their apathetic loss of morals and passion towards their work, thus rendering it into mere toil, priced cheaply by the Hotel accounting staff whom they’re exploited by on a daily basis.
But don’t get me wrong. I take absolutely no pleasure in ranting against my own country. On the contrary, let’s just all stop whining and take initiative. And instead of saying “this would have never have happened abroad”, let’s take it as an example, learn from it, and practice the right way to go about things at our own place of work, where our own duties are concerned. Instead of worrying about working for the sake of merely working. Even as consumers, if something is done wrong and you were expecting a different kind of service, complain; simply. Don’t let it slide, for that very business’ sake, your complaint is a chance for them to better their own service and you’re not even allowing it to them. Otherwise, good service is almost never guaranteed. And most important of all, as citizens, we have the duty to speak out on policies that are sounder than others. That’s as about a valid use for your Facebook accounts as it gets.