Islands of small differences

In some of his writings, Sigmund Freud – as early as in 1917 but then especially in ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ in 1929-30 – argues that “the smaller the real differences between two peoples, the larger it is bound to loom in their imagination”, a phenomenon he called the ‘narcissism of small differences’.

He was developing a concept created by British anthropologist Ernest Crawley who had said “that it is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them. It would be tempting to pursue this idea and to derive from this ‘narcissism of minor differences’ the hostility which in every human relation we see fighting successfully against feelings of fellowship and overpowering the commandment that all men should love one another.”

In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud elaborated Crawley’s concept further: “…it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other – Germans and South Germans, the English and the Scotch, and so on.”

To these we can add Labourites and Nationalists living side by side on these small islands, using aggression towards each other to build internal cohesion.

Freud’s and Crawley’s concept help us understand how in our small island we tend to stress where we disagree, rather than when we agree amongst ourselves as a people. We have built parallel narratives making sure not to make them converge as if agreeing with each other is a sign of weakness, if not betrayal.

We construct these parallel narratives not only in politics but in many other areas of our public life where in every town and village we run competing band clubs, organize competing festas. Sometimes our emotions run so high and are so hostile to each other that we give the impression that we belong to different tribes and practise different religions.

The more similar we are, the more different we project ourselves to be.

Yet, in actual fact, we do agree a lot, and fundamentally, on very important issues. Take the survey ‘Maltin fid-Dinja’ we have just published as part of our public consultation process to formulate our foreign policy. Most of the Maltese agree on the important role we have to play in the Mediterranean, how crucial our neutrality is in our relationships with other countries and our active participation in the European Union and the United Nations.

Issues that started off as highly partisan and divisive, like our neutrality and joining the European Union, where the two main parties mobilised half the population against the other half… eventually became national, symbols of unity embraced by most of our people.

In the survey ‘Maltin fid-dinja’, only 6% say that neutrality is not important at all. 10 times as much, 63% say it is very important for our country. Only 7% say that Malta has no importance whatsoever in the Mediterranean while 52% say that it has a very important role to play and 28% say it has an important role to play. 13% say that Malta’s importance in the EU is nil or very insignificant while another 64% say it is very important or important.

The survey shows that most of the Maltese have a realistic assessment of Malta’s modest role in the world, its weight corresponds to its size but becomes more important because of its location. Most Maltese veer away from saying that it has no role at all or that it is the centre of the universe. There is a general agreement that we should have peaceful and good relations with as many countries as possible in every continent.

So, although we often stress where we disagree and that we confront each other on every issue, we agree more with each other than we are ready to admit.

We will continue to mature as a people not only where we manage to agree for the common good but when we develop a national narrative which is stronger than our two partisan parallel narratives and are not afraid to assert where we converge as one country.