Post-truth world not good for man’s future

The truth sets us free. So whether it’s the truth about inter-personal relations in family life, or the truth about affairs in public life and the common good we have to discern the truth in a situation of relative confusion. Newspapers, their editors and their readers are all in the boiling pot of so many issues. Thank God for revelation, and man for responding, which is what religion is after all. The difference comes about when in situations such as we experience today, it’s very difficult to know the truth.

So we are extremely lucky to have Christ as Our Lord, because His Word helps us put our consciences in order and in His name love even those who seem to hate us, or just seem out of place, such as migrants. For it’s in these circumstances that we grow through seemingly impossible love.

For me this is quite personal, not only because of the still unfinished National Bank of Malta saga, but also because of the Sette Giugno week, close on the heels of the last election. Last year the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr Anglu Farrugia dwelt on the letter by Antonio Cassar Torreggiani recounting his sad experiences at the time as a miller and ship-owner which led him to being able to make direct representations in Downing Street about self-government and the beginning of the Malta Parliament.

In my turn I was able to make representations at a seminar in the Valletta Parliament four years ago, realising there just how well the NBM issue fits into the EU banking reconstruction and resolution regulations. For indeed the euro is a currency of reconciliation, and as such promises global extension in the post truth world man finds himself sinking into.

I have also had the occasion during the last Parliament to speak to two parliamentary committees on life and death matters, namely the part Malta is called upon to play in the ending of world hunger by the UN goal of 2030, and also the respect for life in rejecting euthanasia.

The late Dom Mintoff wanted to end world hunger and built the Kortin Grain Terminal with that hope. As a miller in the 1990s I found it was a critical factor in exporting to the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency in the Middle East during the first Gulf war. Towards his last days he expected some kind of proposal from me, and I didn’t know whether it was about world hunger or the bank. In either case I have incorporated my proposals in an individual petition to the European Parliament and the EU Commission R&D directorate.

Parliaments are important, as are political leaders, but people suffer in spite of expectations so much so that it is only the comfort of the Holy Spirit that can bring them to rest in the truth. We’re a lucky people that having strayed under journalistic influence far from the truth about man’s future in God’s love, we can give up the personal antagonisms and in the name of Christ embrace one another and forgo the vanity of glory.

This election was effectively a national discernment about ethics in financial affairs. This is equally what is involved in the intimacies of human love and in political administration. The world is totally at sea on these matters and editors are largely responsible to help man pilot a way out of the choppy seas.

It’s not just a matter of faith, but equally a matter of science. Europe is placing much faith in research and development, but Malta’s contribution is yet to come to enhance global governance through having the faith to harness digital culture to the ethical aspect not only of creativity but equally of simultaneous distribution.

Peter Cassar Torreggiani

Balzan