There is no doubt that Labour thought it was onto a winner when this day was added to New Zealand's annual calendar. In perpetuity, they would be associated with this day, a bit like Winston's gold card ... who would gainsay another day off work, and another feel-good reach across the cultural divide, the ultimate virtue signal.
What should be of concern to free-thinking and reflective New Zealanders, is the growing overlap between policy and mysticism. Allusions to pantheism and ancient deities are becoming commonplace. A media palpably hostile to Christianity, and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to discredit it, is conspicuous in its enthusiasm to embrace the pagan polytheism of old.
While the media can barely contain their enthusiasm for Matariki Day, it is doubtful that the journalists in television and print media, at large, begin their day with incantations to their deity of choice, or that they have given much thought to this in the period between this Matariki Day 2023 and its predecessor in 2022. The shallowness and hypocrisy of their stance are evident for all to see.
Earlier this year the Ministry of Education rolled out a compulsory professional development programme for teachers, for completion before the commencement of the 2024 school year. This professional development commenced and finished with a karakia (incantation) to Maori gods. A translation of this prayer is below.
Ascend my manu Rise up my manu
Soar inland Fly to the oceans
Watch over the taonga of Tāne
To respond with care
To settle and restore
Showing forth the pathway
For our children to emerge
From the realm of potential Into fulfilment and growth
Hold fast, hold true
Unify, gather, resolve together
The University of Otago similarly demonstrates its commitment to polytheistic paganism below, taken from its website.
In the beginning was Te Kore (the void, the nothingness), from which came Ranginui, the sky father, and Papatūānuku, the earth mother. Ranginui and Papatūānuku held each other in an eternal embrace, which meant, for their numerous children, it was eternally dark, forever night (Te Pō).
They were surrounded by their children, namely:
oTūmatauenga – Atua of ‘man’ and war
oTawhirimatea – Atua of the elements (e.g.: wind etc)
oHaumiatiketike - Atua of uncultivated or natural foods
oRongo-mā-Tane – Atua of peace, balance and cultivated foods
oRūaumoko – Atua of the unborn child (e.g.: in the womb, underground, God of volcanoes and earthly movements)
oTangaroa - Atua of the sea and its creatures
oTāne Mahuta - Atua of man and forests, and all which inhabits the forests.
New schools are being adorned with spiritualist images and icons, at entry points to these schools, and at points of gathering. Meeting houses are now being built as places where pantheistic worship can be formalized. Ministry officials seem to have been instructed to call upon the gods at the commencement and cessation of formal events wherever possible.
The Curriculum re-set, currently nearing the mid-point in its phased roll-out, is very clear in its commitment to the Maori worldview, which has Maori spirituality at its core. Science teachers are fully justified in going public with their concerns that empirical science, and core scientific knowledge, are in the process of being displaced (at worst) or compromised (at best) by Maori spiritualism. Critical content knowledge has been omitted from the curriculum, while references to mystical forces (vitalism), supposedly inherent in all matter, are explicit.
How unfortunate (in fact tragic) that history teachers were not this courageous in opposing equally egregious incursions within their own discipline.
School Charters must now make specific reference to a school's commitment to the Maori worldview, inseparable from Maori spirituality, and teachers are required to demonstrate a similar commitment in order to be registered, or re-registered.
The game plan here is simple. Truth is hard to define, but if an ultimate referent to the mystical world can be embedded in the thinking of impressionable youth, and in the mind of society at large, no recourse to reason and rationality will prevail against the propagation of false ideas. Errors and mistruths cannot be disabled, nor the proponents of these disarmed.
The union of religion and state has been preliminary to many of the greatest atrocities in history. While the right to worship according to conscience, or to not worship at all, must be preserved, the state must ensure that no particular worldview is embedded in our institutions and our laws ... and especially in the institutions critical to the preservation and promulgation of knowledge.
Rather than gazing into the night sky and pondering the imaginary gods of a less enlightened age, we would be better to celebrate the freedoms that have been ours by right, not least the freedom to think and to object.
For most of our history, the New Zealand education system has been committed to ensuring that NZ Education is largely secular in nature. Not so now.
This is a direct incursion into our right to think freely and no good will come of it.
Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.
11 comments:
It will be interesting to see how Luxon sorts out the Min of Ed and the even worse teaching Council. Hopefully Shane will be on hand to guide or take over, assuming he not fully occupied by law and order considerations.
I belong to an older generation and recall the views of many of my father's trade work associates. Mention to them of a "maori world view" would have produced reactions not publishable anywhere today.
Where is the citizen push back to put this into a correct perspective?
Does this even exist any more in NZ?
This is quite intolerable. If spirits are invoked to inhabit situations will we have exorcisms to rid places of those we don't wish to have share our space? I don't want the atua of war near me for example. Are these entities considered real or something sort of poetic and mythical, like fairies at the bottom of the garden ? Am I gong to need to wear charms to ward them off? This is becoming more than ridiculous by the day.
NZ is leading the way back to the Dark Ages where superstition and irrationality ruled supreme, leading to a miserable time for all but a tiny few.
Our so-called elites are turning out to be a huge disappointment and worse than that, a threat to the enlightenment and advancement of human civilisation.
Unlike the past, where the vast majority were kept in poverty and ignorance, the modern day public does have the knowledge and ability to challenge this disastrous Left-wing ideology.
But will we?
Agree - the 'Maori world view' is nothing to get excited about in itself - pretty standard for all our earliest human wonderings about existence. And our silly woke are almost of the opinion that Maori invented the celebration of the turn of the year, which every society since human beings came into existence has acknowledged as they long for the return of warmer weather.
The really frightening thing about human beings is this pathetic desperate need to go with the crowd, " Oh everybody's saying this - I must say it too" Utterly pathetic. I completely despise people who can not even make a feeble attempt to think for themselves.
Yet if I were to advocate for worshipping my own pagan ancestral Gods such as Lugh (Celtic) or Odin (Norse) I would be called a dangerous white supremacist
Another Maori mafia con.
It's the old adages - "get them while they're young" or, "give me the child and I'll show you the man."
This is truly scandalous and, Caleb is absolutely right - no good will come of it.
And the Maori "World View" is what exactly? Seems to me looking at their history, it was "conquer/take, eat and/or enslave what could be conquered/taken, eaten or enslaved." A simple enough concept and a perfectly reasonable one given where they had got to in the evolution of civilisation - which based on what Maori had achieved was equivalent to the mesolithic (mid stone-age) period.
Here we are now in the 21st Century and who would, in their most bizarre of nightmares, have thought we seemingly willing would be indoctrinating our young with the thinking (and very limited understanding) of those times?
One can only wonder at the rationale, or is it perchance that policy that we were told from the 'pulpit of truth' isn't Government policy - "He Puapua" knocking at the door?
I realised that Matariki is, at its heart, a pagan celebration, when a clip was shown several times on tv about food being offered to the stars. Scary stuff.
For sure, the main media gave it pride of place and air-time over that weekend.
Laurence
In the prevailing censorious atmosphere, I understand the reluctance of academics, teachers and ancillary staff to speak out when confronted by compulsory cultural competence courses. But really, I cannot believe that there are none who disagree with the fictitious and mendacious “refreshed” curriculum. Do they have no feelings or concerns for the future of those in their charge?
A concerted, well organised, refusal to teach the new curriculum would have a salutary effect. Together with a demand to return to the status quo ante. Where is the Union? Such a move might have a positive effect in other areas under similar threat.
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