Well said. And so "Both countries need to face the harsh truths of national decline". But given the changing nature or our society at the present time, what will the catalyst for this be? Sadly in the past it has been some sort of national or international tragedy. Just watching "WWII - From the Frontline" on Netflix. Truly chilling. Perhaps it might help if everyone was made to look back at what the world can become if harsh truths are not faced.
"what the world can become if harsh truths are not faced."
Exactly John, everything falls apart if things are ignored; ignore that leak in the roof and the flaking paint and your house eventually becomes a rotting, uninhabitable wreck.
It's entropy, the invisible force that brings disorder to the universe, doing what it does. It applies to individual lives and whole societies. Ignore it to your very great peril.
"It is nobody’s fault that life has problems. It is simply a law of probability. There are many disordered states and few ordered ones. Given the odds against us, what is remarkable is not that life has problems, but that we can solve them at all."
“Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.”
"Harsh Truths" is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the threats to New Zealand as a nation revering freedom and political equality with improved economic wellbeing for all as an achievable aspiration.
I think Chis has accurately identified absence of institutional memory of what things have been like (bad and good), as the source of today's feckless disregard for reality.
"World War II posed a tangible threat to physical freedom. Wondering why the concept of freedom is being more and more devalued, it has occurred to me that the further removed in time people are from the last time there was an existential threat to freedom from domination by a foreign power, the more they fail to realize that freedom is a precious commodity, the denial of which may start in small ways but imperceptibly extend into all facets of life in the absence of conscious efforts to sustain it."
Chris' perceptive analysis goes further than I did, especially in the two paragraphs commencing "The indelible mark left upon a whole generation of New Zealanders." The depressing conclusion may be the one posited in the following paragraph: in the absence of real-life experiences, or sufficient proximity to them ("the common memories") "the influences of class, race and gender [have recovered?] their power to separate and divide human-beings."
In some cases, it is the direct influence which separates and divides, but more often it results from the cynical exploitation of race and gender -- not so much class, these days -- to prey on the minds of those who cannot or do not wish to think. As ancestry and biological sex are beyond the possessor's control, any rational person must dismiss them as irrelevant. Yet, those seeking political and/or economic power, or who are driven by ideology, may find in them a means of obtaining what they want.
What is to be done about it? There is little that is encouraging. We are faced with establishment institutions hellbent on making matters worse, and an absence of political leadership. Bold and principled political leadership is required. Perhaps all we can do is to is to keep on drawing attention to what is happening and to hope that political leaders will eventually see that the status quo is not an option.
Chis, this thesis of fervent anti intellectualism and so called "loosening" has become the mantra for the far right neo fascist parties of Europe. Many nations "lossened" on social issues of race and gender discrimination while maintaining controls over capitalism as in most Western European nations. None aggressively embraced neoliberalism like NZ with the possible exception of the UK and Italy. The attack on social right while portraying smart minorites as the "new elite" (while undoubtedly minority are) is the methods of fascism...a distraction from neo liberalism.
Back in the day in the McCarthyist 1950's, people were accused of "communist" when fighting for African American civil rights. Social rights and the left have been intertwined for 100 years. Many were college educated (now more 50%of Americans begin tertiary education. It is the new high school...Chris, it is not a bad thing to be educated). Maori were once forced into in an arpartide environment similar to Southern States; women not much better...gays, worse...yet you audaciously support the good ole days of wholesale descrimination?
Saying, Trump like that we are in "national decline" is as incorrect as it is reprehensible in its subtect. NZ is in a period of slow economic recovering after a pandemic. Our GDP and debt percentage as compared to other nations has remained stable.
When did and how did you switch from a liberal minded leftist to a latent neo fascist?
I guess if America's decline is reflected in the incompetence of two elderly white male political candidates, then how, in New Zealand, is the ebbing of patriarchy, the consequent impact of women, and the prominence of some Maori, also evidence of decline?
I think Chris's point is that the loss of national cohesion is a contributing factor in our decline; that factionalisation tends to result in decline. Just the other day one of the Maori Party MPs was insisting that "Maori children were not New Zealanders".
Who would have thought that the "everyone gets a prize" diversity, equity and inclusivity doctrines (DEI) would lead to a decline in competance. Anyone that actually thought about, that's who.
Can hardly agree re DEI - had my career as an academic here who started in a Dept with all the senior staff being pakeha male, and retired after seeing representation in those ranks from women and from Maori and Pasifika. Do agree there's been a loss of social cohesion, but the price of surface social cohesion in the past was restriction on a lot of people's opportunities. I'm the same age as CT (born 1956), but I think being part of the group that used to be dominant a few decades ago can give you rose-tinted glasses about the past.
Thank you Joanne, I can't disagree with any of that. Who would want people arbitrarily excluded on the basis of their identity? No one really wins from that and a lot of talent is precluded from making the most of their abilities; a tragic waste for them and a loss for the general good. Unfortunately it's no real improvement when identity is prioritised over things like aptitude, competence or conscientiousness. As in the NZ greens for example?
BTW I'm a 1956 baby as well, brought up in Kaikohe; a place that has undergone a dramatic and, for me, deeply saddening transformation. It would make a great case study of decline and a warning of how and why things can really fall apart.
Sorry to hear that things have gone badly in Kaikohe, David (I don't know the area well enough to comment). Re the Greens - I think the minor parties have all ended up with more MPs than people expected, and some of the choices may have been dodgy. Of the newbies in the Greens, however, I think that at least Steve Abel and Lan Pham are genuine environmentalists.
My beef with Greens movement almost everywhere is that they have let a narrow view on climate change override the even more urgent issues of war and nuclear disarmament fade into the background. Putting aside that the US military, if it was a country, would be the 4th largest emitter in the world; and that’s just normal operations, excluding the actual destruction and fires caused by weapons fire! In other words they’ve been “infiltrated” with western imperialist values...
The Greens obsessions are fully predictable once you understand the motivations.
There's a thinly disguised hatred of The West, and humanity generally, endemic to the Green ideologists. The idea that man is a "cancer on the planet" fits nicely with that.
"Ban everything we can, eco-tax the rest: this could be the motto of the environmentalists in politics. If human CO2 is the problem, then Man must be restrained, controlled, suppressed in every one of his CO2-emitting activities: that is to say, in the totality of his actions. Researching environmentalism from the root of its anti-humanist ethic to the staggering heights of its actual demands — banning cars, aircraft, meat, nuclear energy, rural life, the market economy, modern agriculture, in short, post-Industrial-Revolution modernity — Drieu Godefridi shows that environmentalism defines a more radical ideology in its liberticidal, anti-economic and ultimately humanicidal claims than any totalitarian ideology yet seen. "Dividing humanity by a factor of ten” is the environmentalist ideal. "Godefridi says we have good reason to be alarmed. Not by climate change, but by the endless, hazardous-to-humans measures that activists propose in response. "
I'd have thought that the whole issue of climate change has become so overwhelming that the Greens are concentrating on a traditional environmental issues, more at least than other groups are. But my point in mentioning them was to say that some of them had this focus, as distinct from one on identity politics.
Rather than Bob Dylon's quote, but following the basic scenario of the loosening of ties including the hoarding, hiding and flying away of money, I prefer Vlad Vexler's image. That in those earlier times our democracy had a more sheltered 'in the bay' environment. Now we have travelled on out to the ocean which is not fatal - not even dark - but which requires new visions and different skills, to navigate. He would agree with you that the population has kept itself blind and as a result the vast majority of the politicians are completely wallowing. Because they kid themselves that this isn't so, they are hauling the country down with them unless we get our ocean-going bearings and adapt.
You have to be patient listening to Vlad Vexler. He is a political philosopher. He ponders.
I think this sentence lacked a main verb and should read:
An indelible mark was left upon a whole generation of New Zealanders by the Great Depression and World War II: an impression that not only permitted men and women of all classes and races to perceive the need to work together for the common good, but also to know – thanks to the bonding experiences arising out of existential danger – that such co-operation was possible.
Well said. And so "Both countries need to face the harsh truths of national decline". But given the changing nature or our society at the present time, what will the catalyst for this be? Sadly in the past it has been some sort of national or international tragedy. Just watching "WWII - From the Frontline" on Netflix. Truly chilling. Perhaps it might help if everyone was made to look back at what the world can become if harsh truths are not faced.
"what the world can become if harsh truths are not faced."
Exactly John, everything falls apart if things are ignored; ignore that leak in the roof and the flaking paint and your house eventually becomes a rotting, uninhabitable wreck.
It's entropy, the invisible force that brings disorder to the universe, doing what it does. It applies to individual lives and whole societies. Ignore it to your very great peril.
"It is nobody’s fault that life has problems. It is simply a law of probability. There are many disordered states and few ordered ones. Given the odds against us, what is remarkable is not that life has problems, but that we can solve them at all."
https://jamesclear.com/entropy
“Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.”
― Roger Scruton,
"Harsh Truths" is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the threats to New Zealand as a nation revering freedom and political equality with improved economic wellbeing for all as an achievable aspiration.
I think Chis has accurately identified absence of institutional memory of what things have been like (bad and good), as the source of today's feckless disregard for reality.
In July 2023, I wrote Freedom is a precious commodity, https://open.substack.com/pub/garyjuddkc/p/freedom-is-a-precious-commodity?r=1wehrs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web, which included:
"World War II posed a tangible threat to physical freedom. Wondering why the concept of freedom is being more and more devalued, it has occurred to me that the further removed in time people are from the last time there was an existential threat to freedom from domination by a foreign power, the more they fail to realize that freedom is a precious commodity, the denial of which may start in small ways but imperceptibly extend into all facets of life in the absence of conscious efforts to sustain it."
Chris' perceptive analysis goes further than I did, especially in the two paragraphs commencing "The indelible mark left upon a whole generation of New Zealanders." The depressing conclusion may be the one posited in the following paragraph: in the absence of real-life experiences, or sufficient proximity to them ("the common memories") "the influences of class, race and gender [have recovered?] their power to separate and divide human-beings."
In some cases, it is the direct influence which separates and divides, but more often it results from the cynical exploitation of race and gender -- not so much class, these days -- to prey on the minds of those who cannot or do not wish to think. As ancestry and biological sex are beyond the possessor's control, any rational person must dismiss them as irrelevant. Yet, those seeking political and/or economic power, or who are driven by ideology, may find in them a means of obtaining what they want.
What is to be done about it? There is little that is encouraging. We are faced with establishment institutions hellbent on making matters worse, and an absence of political leadership. Bold and principled political leadership is required. Perhaps all we can do is to is to keep on drawing attention to what is happening and to hope that political leaders will eventually see that the status quo is not an option.
Chis, this thesis of fervent anti intellectualism and so called "loosening" has become the mantra for the far right neo fascist parties of Europe. Many nations "lossened" on social issues of race and gender discrimination while maintaining controls over capitalism as in most Western European nations. None aggressively embraced neoliberalism like NZ with the possible exception of the UK and Italy. The attack on social right while portraying smart minorites as the "new elite" (while undoubtedly minority are) is the methods of fascism...a distraction from neo liberalism.
Back in the day in the McCarthyist 1950's, people were accused of "communist" when fighting for African American civil rights. Social rights and the left have been intertwined for 100 years. Many were college educated (now more 50%of Americans begin tertiary education. It is the new high school...Chris, it is not a bad thing to be educated). Maori were once forced into in an arpartide environment similar to Southern States; women not much better...gays, worse...yet you audaciously support the good ole days of wholesale descrimination?
Saying, Trump like that we are in "national decline" is as incorrect as it is reprehensible in its subtect. NZ is in a period of slow economic recovering after a pandemic. Our GDP and debt percentage as compared to other nations has remained stable.
When did and how did you switch from a liberal minded leftist to a latent neo fascist?
It does come down to us being too comfortable for too long. All of us. Unfortunately.
We have so many diversions available.
I guess if America's decline is reflected in the incompetence of two elderly white male political candidates, then how, in New Zealand, is the ebbing of patriarchy, the consequent impact of women, and the prominence of some Maori, also evidence of decline?
I think Chris's point is that the loss of national cohesion is a contributing factor in our decline; that factionalisation tends to result in decline. Just the other day one of the Maori Party MPs was insisting that "Maori children were not New Zealanders".
Who would have thought that the "everyone gets a prize" diversity, equity and inclusivity doctrines (DEI) would lead to a decline in competance. Anyone that actually thought about, that's who.
Can hardly agree re DEI - had my career as an academic here who started in a Dept with all the senior staff being pakeha male, and retired after seeing representation in those ranks from women and from Maori and Pasifika. Do agree there's been a loss of social cohesion, but the price of surface social cohesion in the past was restriction on a lot of people's opportunities. I'm the same age as CT (born 1956), but I think being part of the group that used to be dominant a few decades ago can give you rose-tinted glasses about the past.
Thank you Joanne, I can't disagree with any of that. Who would want people arbitrarily excluded on the basis of their identity? No one really wins from that and a lot of talent is precluded from making the most of their abilities; a tragic waste for them and a loss for the general good. Unfortunately it's no real improvement when identity is prioritised over things like aptitude, competence or conscientiousness. As in the NZ greens for example?
BTW I'm a 1956 baby as well, brought up in Kaikohe; a place that has undergone a dramatic and, for me, deeply saddening transformation. It would make a great case study of decline and a warning of how and why things can really fall apart.
Sorry to hear that things have gone badly in Kaikohe, David (I don't know the area well enough to comment). Re the Greens - I think the minor parties have all ended up with more MPs than people expected, and some of the choices may have been dodgy. Of the newbies in the Greens, however, I think that at least Steve Abel and Lan Pham are genuine environmentalists.
My beef with Greens movement almost everywhere is that they have let a narrow view on climate change override the even more urgent issues of war and nuclear disarmament fade into the background. Putting aside that the US military, if it was a country, would be the 4th largest emitter in the world; and that’s just normal operations, excluding the actual destruction and fires caused by weapons fire! In other words they’ve been “infiltrated” with western imperialist values...
The Greens obsessions are fully predictable once you understand the motivations.
There's a thinly disguised hatred of The West, and humanity generally, endemic to the Green ideologists. The idea that man is a "cancer on the planet" fits nicely with that.
"Ban everything we can, eco-tax the rest: this could be the motto of the environmentalists in politics. If human CO2 is the problem, then Man must be restrained, controlled, suppressed in every one of his CO2-emitting activities: that is to say, in the totality of his actions. Researching environmentalism from the root of its anti-humanist ethic to the staggering heights of its actual demands — banning cars, aircraft, meat, nuclear energy, rural life, the market economy, modern agriculture, in short, post-Industrial-Revolution modernity — Drieu Godefridi shows that environmentalism defines a more radical ideology in its liberticidal, anti-economic and ultimately humanicidal claims than any totalitarian ideology yet seen. "Dividing humanity by a factor of ten” is the environmentalist ideal. "Godefridi says we have good reason to be alarmed. Not by climate change, but by the endless, hazardous-to-humans measures that activists propose in response. "
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Reich-Drieu-Godefridi/dp/2930650249
I'd have thought that the whole issue of climate change has become so overwhelming that the Greens are concentrating on a traditional environmental issues, more at least than other groups are. But my point in mentioning them was to say that some of them had this focus, as distinct from one on identity politics.
Brilliant
Rather than Bob Dylon's quote, but following the basic scenario of the loosening of ties including the hoarding, hiding and flying away of money, I prefer Vlad Vexler's image. That in those earlier times our democracy had a more sheltered 'in the bay' environment. Now we have travelled on out to the ocean which is not fatal - not even dark - but which requires new visions and different skills, to navigate. He would agree with you that the population has kept itself blind and as a result the vast majority of the politicians are completely wallowing. Because they kid themselves that this isn't so, they are hauling the country down with them unless we get our ocean-going bearings and adapt.
You have to be patient listening to Vlad Vexler. He is a political philosopher. He ponders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftoevKefi5c&t=50s
I think this sentence lacked a main verb and should read:
An indelible mark was left upon a whole generation of New Zealanders by the Great Depression and World War II: an impression that not only permitted men and women of all classes and races to perceive the need to work together for the common good, but also to know – thanks to the bonding experiences arising out of existential danger – that such co-operation was possible.