CHUCKY’S SHADE: If You Want Something To Be Forgotten, Make It Maltese
As Balluta Bay’s seven, diehard fans wave goodbye to another chunk of their beloved beach, the fact that our island isn’t a fan of permanence becomes clearer by the minute (unlike the sea at said bay, which is currently murky with run-off silt).
The debate about the permanence of objects is one that has put many Sixth Form students to sleep during Philosophy lessons, but the basic idea that we should construct things that last more than a year is one that doesn’t need to be debated. Even more so in a world so tight on natural resources (and loose on litter) people get upset over the use of an extra straw.
But how can we expect the things we make to last, when the words we say mean nothing after a couple of months?
While it may seem like a masochistic desire (or some weird, modern piece of immersive art) to destroy everything we create before anyone has had time to enjoy it, it’s not just the fruits of our labour that are going up in smoke. It’s nature’s too.
Last week, we lost over 150,000 square metres of Miżieb’s forest land to a fire that could probably have been avoided if we treated public parks like we treat our għatba. This comes less than one year after a similar fire took out a heavy chunk of Maqluba’s trees, animals and vegetation.
I’m no financial expert, but if you want to be rolling in cash by the year 2025 I’d suggest you pre–write a Maltese children’s book that explains what a tree is – they’re not gonna have any left out in the open by then.
Now some might get angry at the implication that the above fires are mentioned in an article criticizing our national pastime of “not planning for shit and seeing what happens”. They’ll comment and say the fires were accidental and have nothing to do with Malta’s aversion to adhering to necessary checks and balances in everything we do.
And you know what, these people would be right. Just four years ago, outside Ta’ Pinu, a massive tree sanctuary was planted to increase the number of woodland areas on our island and… oh, wait. Due to lack of maintenance and care, it’s been rendered completely barren? Oops, guess not.
If the government cannot keep its word about environmental issues and the Opposition cannot keep… well, up – it falls on us to work hard to achieve some form of a permanent solution to our problem with permanence.
While our knee-jerk tendency is to be flakier than a Wudy sausage roll at 2am, it’s important that the outrage we feel online is carried forward into more productive streams than dislikes and witty comments.
The hardest a Maltese person has to work at keeping consistency is when they’re faced with the same potential benefits they once bemoaned others for having. If you’re mad about incessant construction but one day become the owner of a piece of viable land, turning it into a dreaded block of flats for a quick buck like “everyone else is doing anyway” marks you squarely in the problem category.
At this point in our island’s erosion (metaphorically, but also scarily physically), if you’re not actively in the solution box, you might as well buy a non-recyclable bucket, take a chunk out of Balluta yourself and just dump it on the first child you see.