Of fat cowards

“A conservative is a person who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run”, one of my wise teachers thought me, at the Jesuit school I attended to as a boy. I later learnt that he read it out of a book.

As a teenager, I was baffled, or must I say scandalized, at the bigotry and harsh resistance I encountered at every step and honest proposition made, to view any given situation in a different light.

I was fortunate enough to be brought up at a time of upheaval, great social change and real economic growth. It seemed like the coming to maturity of a generation like my parents', who, as the eldest siblings in a family of twelve, suffered untold hardship during WW2, and who by now rightfully enjoyed an unprecedented level of well-being.

The good pope John xxiii, against all expectations, inaugurated Vatican Council II to update the Roman Catholic Church; and I honestly believe we're soon up for another!!

The United Nations swelled in number, as more ex-colonized peoples gained independence, including Malta, and these rightfully took their seat as peers, along side the big boys. At the end of the day, these fledgling young nations enriched the chorus of humankind; and though much is still to be done, even in updating the Statute with the removal of the self bestowed privileges of the G6 -> G8 -> G20, a more realistic picture now emerges.

Edward deBono came out with Lateral Thinking. Which I studied inside out and found to be a natural way of doing away with bias and blinkers, hence evaluating the presented situation and exclude no avenues or lines of potential development.

In compliance with the Monroe Policy the US found it expedient to help the Bolivian dictator to round-up and murder the hero of the Cuban revolution, Ernesto CHE Guevara, who ousted the extravagant, US lackey and much hated Battista regime. The Cold war was in full swing. Paris was aflame with student unrest. The Pot was simmering also in tranquil Malta.

By way of a small but very relevant example from personal experience, just to show the snails' pace reforms take in our arch-conservative back-water, I can say, with my wife's permission, that when we planned to get married way back in 1979 at the Mdina Cathedral there was no altar-table and there was no way of improvising one, the Cathedral Chapter just wouldn't have it. This was well over ten years since the updated teachings of the church came into force!! Nonetheless, we had it our way, when our life-long and resourceful friend, Rev. Joe-Henry, got around the situation by having the altar-boys stand throughout the service holding the books, as he faced the congregation!!

The up-coming generation has much to be thankful for. Much of the hocus-pocus and old wives' tales of my infancy came to nothing with the greater diffusion of large bays of information through the mass media and particularly via the Internet. This is a heavy blow to those egoist, comfortable, fat cowards, lovers of the Status Quo, who have had, since time immemorial, a vested interest in keeping the general populace under their control by feeding them half-truths, of the general type that Labour leader Dr. Joseph Muscat turns to vampire after mid-night !! His Michelle ought to know!!

Ramon Borg-Bartolo