Dave Witherow: What’s Next?

Once, in a sporadically rational past, evidence mattered. It might be hidden  - for a while, or forever, (how would we know?). It might be falsified, slanted, contentious, or so obviously convincing there could be no further argument. But nonetheless, and by fairly widespread consensus, the facts usually mattered.

It would be hard, I think, to make that case now. What we think, these days, no longer needs a backing of evidence. Opinions are everything, and the facts, where they conflict with our preferred point of view, may be ignored at no cost to our credibility or reputation.

There has never, of course, been a shortage of the benighted and bigoted. They occupy a permanent place in all human populations, and indeed normally perform a vital function, since without a decent reservoir of ignoramuses no society could remain stable for long. By their dumb respect for old institutions, irrespective of merit, and giving way only slowly to the advance of knowledge, these people slow things down. They may delay the implementation of good ideas, but they give us time to think twice about bad ones. They are essentially conservative.

The traditional ignoramus, in other words, has been useful. But although there seem to be as many of them as ever, they have lost the capacity to influence what’s happening. They have been neutralised by the emergence of a much more dangerous kind of bigot, now mass-produced by our institutions of learning. And these people, who perceive change as desirable, no matter how reckless or rapid, are as hostile to facts and figures as any old-style red-neck philistine.

New Zealand’s school system – the main agency responsible for our current confusions - was already in decay by 2011, when a shift to “self-directed learning” was introduced by the Ministry of Education. The old notion that teachers should teach, and pupils learn, was no longer valid, according to the Ministry’s experts. It was authoritarian, prescriptive, oppressive, and a sure-fire killer of spontaneity and imagination. Kids aren’t taught by teachers: they find out things for themselves.

Which they surely did. But not, as it turned out, the kind of things the teachers used to teach them – boring things like reading and writing, which the pupils, self-directed, now found too onerous. Many, indeed, directed themselves to skip school altogether, thus providing the Ministry geniuses with an interesting dilemma: do we force them to return, or respect their officially-encouraged self-direction?

The universities, simultaneously, were reassessing their role within society. They were out of date. They were elitist and exclusive and they favoured brain-power – a commodity shared somewhat unevenly among the plain folks of Godzone. They were, in short, bastions of privilege. And, worse than that, since the students were predominantly White or Asian, they were guilty of the most grievous offence of all.

There was no alternative, and the Profs decided to bite the bullet. No longer would they discriminate, or be constrained by the inequitable distribution of human intelligence. They would admit everyone. Only thus, they reasoned, could they remain relevant.

But relevant to what?  The universities, vastly expanded, now provide degrees for all-comers. Their standards are elastic and their student populations now comprise a perfect cross-section of society at large. Brains are optional, if not downright suspect: we have Souxie Wiles now, and Margaret Mutu, and Professors Winiata and Baker. We no longer have Ernest Rutherford.

We should have known, of course, that trouble was brewing two or three years ago, when our late Leader, the infallible Jacinda, announced she was “the sole source of truth”. Did we laugh? Did we jeer? Did the congregation of our professors fall about in mirth and claw at their clothing?

Well, no, they didn’t. They capitulated. Devoid of the gumption to challenge idiocy they knuckled under to a scientifically-illiterate political opportunist. They masked-up, closed-down, and made no demur when the entire population was forced to experiment with inadequately-tested pharmaceuticals.

Were these substances safe? No-one knew. Did they work as advertised? The evidence is in, but is not allowed out.

We are now well into fact-free territory. Why worry about evidence: feel the empathy. The truth is negotiable, laws are relative, men can be women, and democracy, naturally, is a plot devised by Mr Whitey. And if science and history make you uncomfortable, try ignorance.

Try, for example “Maori Science” - an indefinable grab-bag of erratic folk-lore which, the Profs now assure us, should be regarded as equivalent to the genuine article, and promoted at every level of our educational system. We must bow to the Stone Age. We must believe in bullshit and teach our children nonsense, because not to do so would be “racist”.

When reason is abandoned anything becomes possible. If men can be women mountains can be ancestors, acquiring personalities and demanding due reverence (no standing on the top, boys). Taniwhas can be re-discovered in our harbours, observing our activities, and invoking tempests when we don’t behave ourselves. The rivers have wairua and the swamps have aroha, and when a few brave souls objected to the elevation of this animist clap-trap they were persecuted by the higher-ups of Auckland University and threatened with expulsion from the Royal Society. (A once-reputable outfit now mired in servility and mumbo-jumbo).

History too, becomes conveniently malleable when the known record may be falsified by academic yokels and political extortionists. And when the facts disappear so does memory, and all we have left, as Neil Simon said in a different century, is “a little short span of attention” incapable of coherent resistance.

There is talk of democracy. But democracy in New Zealand died more than thirty years ago. It was too restrictive – a “one-size-fits-all” imposition that rested too heavily on those who insisted on special treatment and perpetual victimhood. It would have to be ditched, and duly was.

The new system, introduced by judicial fiat, has solved few problems. It’s beneficiaries, far from being satisfied, now bare their buttocks and threaten violence unless their demands are met: “Our people won’t stand for this”. “Our people never ceded sovereignty”. Our people will allow no discussion of the Treaty”.

But “Our People”, in total, are a minority within a minority of the people of New Zealand – a self-serving cabal of full-time parasites, indifferent to the general welfare.

Most people recognise this. They have had enough of nepotism, theft, extortion and embezzlement. Their goodwill, manifest for decades, has been finally exhausted, and in the recent election they voted for a return to Democracy.

The Luxon-led troika is unlikely to oblige them. A few gestures have been made, but a retreat to appeasement is already apparent. Old swindles prosper, and the Treaty Principles Referendum – a lethal threat to the separatist agenda - has now been vetoed. It won’t happen, says the ectoplasmic Mr Luxon, because any discussion of the Treaty might be “divisive”. Well, yes, quite so. It might reveal actual differences of opinion, and establish their respective levels of support. But if that’s forbidden why, every three years, trouble the country with a massive, expensive exercise that, by design and intent, is incurably divisive?

The Treaty of Waitangi, we are expected to believe, is a “living document” (a biological phenomenon unique to New Zealand). It mutates and evolves, providing wealth to some at the expense of others. It says different things in English and Maori, and its most recent iterations – hand-reared by its own team of highly-paid tribal curators - have so little in common as to be irreconcilable. So we now have two documents, diverging at lawyer-speed, locked in perpetual contradiction. Which means, in effect, that we no longer have a functional Treaty.

(Memo for partisan beneficiaries: a Treaty, by definition, is an agreement between parties who come together, debate their differences, and sign a mutually-acceptable document. No agreement - no treaty).

Two things are now clear. The doctored “treaty” is an obvious con-job, and the election, in raising hopes that the experiment with apartheid was coming to an end, has yielded no useful outcome. We are still legally divided. We are not one people, and the amorphous assurances of Mr Luxon are blowing away in the same old wind.

We are thus at an impasse. The election, while briefly cathartic, has left us with a schizophrenic government, incapable of tackling the one big problem which, allowed to fester, will destroy our nation. It was an interim election, resolving nothing. We need to forget it and have another one.

Over to you, Mr Seymour.

Dave Witherow, who emigrated to New Zealand from Northern Ireland in 1971, is a columnist, author, script writer, and former scientist for Fish and Game.