The return to infantilism

Just a few days ago parliamentary secretary for sport Clifton Grima addressed the Dean of Science Awards at the University of Malta. And it was not pleasant, particularly when he started reiterating the didactic approach of his master by bragging about Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s exploitation of the gambling and financial sectors.

A big problem I found in the Dean’s Science List is that mathematics and banking have been allowed to run roughshod over biology, chemistry, geosciences and physics.

We need to appreciate that mathematics is not chemistry, chemistry is not biology, biology is not physics, and physics is not mathematics. But they help each other. Legendary Argentine folk singer Haydee Mercedes Sosa, considered by many as the “voice of the voiceless ones” should inspire our ideals.

In one of her concerts she had said “I love to sing, I love all those who sing. Some will sing well, others sing as they can. But I love singing.”

The mission of educational institutions is to get all students ready to participate in a free society by teaching them the skills they need to learn so they can adapt their knowledge for their own needs, and instill in them the value of sharing.

I was expecting the event to be a platform from which students and staff can broadcast their wide array of interests directly. But instead of reflecting on the excitement of scientific discourse all we got were addresses and musical performances that led nowhere.

And towards the end, things got worse when some complained on the use of the Maltese language. Because whilst English and Maltese are the two official languages, the language of instruction at the University of Malta is English.

The anthropological significance of this reality has been made clear by American biologist Edward Osborne Wilson after a meeting with the American paleobotanist Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn after Wilson naively chose to argue that the department of biology ought to offer population ecologist Frederick Edward Smith joint membership, after the latter had joined the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 1969.

“When one culture sets out to erase another, the first thing its rulers banish is the official use of the native tongue,” Wilson had said.

When education starts educating us out of it, we should start to question the whole enterprise and society itself. Only a few weeks ago, Joseph Cuschieri, former chairman of the Malta Gaming Authority was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA).

The authority that is supposed to supervise, regulate and stabilise at the national-level the financial risk throughout Malta’s economic system is today being driven by someone whose most recent experience is in a business whose statistical odds are stacked against the gambler.

By extension, it becomes fair to say that the financial structures in this country will continue to be a gamble where the odds are stacked against the general population.

In addition Cuschieri was for five years the Chief Operating Officer of the Malta Communications Authority, and is also a member of the Blockchain Task Force.

Then we have Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (Chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology) and Silvio Schembri (junior minister for financial services, digital economy and innovation), who have been pushed forward by Joseph Muscat to involve themselves in promoting and overseeing Malta’s national strategy on blockchain and digital currencies (cryptographically stored exchangeable value tokens).

Austrian-British economist Friedrich von Hayek already warned us of the dangers of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning. In his book “The Road to Serfdom”, he devoted Chapter 10 to an analysis of ‘Why the Worst Get on Top”‘. He argues that groups must have common goals to hold them together, but finding a common goal among the higher educated is more difficult than among the less educated.

The members of the dominant political strands will therefore be among the lower elements of society. The members also accept the values of the movement because they do not think independently enough to form their own.

In 2014, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had pointed out that his policy is to only appoint those who believe in the direction he wants to steer this country towards.

The overall message in every case is the same: “Let us handle things”. Their frame of mind is that we are “children” who need castigating for being insufficiently appreciative of the joys of submitting to Joseph Muscat.

Because in the view of socialist politburo official Alfred Grixti “I’ll say this clearly …the LEADER has spoken. Now EVERYONE SHUT UP.” (“Nghidha bla tlaqliq … tkellem il-MEXXEJ u issa KULHADD JAGHLAQ HALQU.”)

So we are today all stuck with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Joseph Cuschieri, Jason Micallef, Tony Zarb, Deborah Schembri, Helena Dalli, Ian Borg, Glenn Bedingfield, Josef Caruana, Alfred Grixti …

In summary, the return to infantilism.