In a recent Breaking Views post, “Dealing with today's small, raucous, crazy Maori fringe,” 21 July 2024 here, Dr Michael Bassett critically commented on the Jack Tame interview of Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, in particular her “assertions about how Maori ‘korero’ and ‘kaupapa’ justified her allegations of ‘genocide’ being perpetrated by a ‘white supremacist’ government against Maori.”
I added the following Comment:
The reason why Ngarewa-Packer and other Maoris talk the way they do is because they have been conditioned to get what they want by doing so. And they have been so conditioned by a series of previous Governments of which you have been a member.
Dr Bassett was a Labour Member of Parliament from 1972 to 1975 and again from 1978 to 1990 (here). He voted in favor of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 which included the term “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” and established the Waitangi Tribunal. He was also a Minister during the time the principles became a significant part of New Zealand’s legal and political framework. That included the New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney-General case and the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986 (here).
Dr Bassett was subsequently a member of the Waitangi Tribunal from 1994 to 2004. He takes his meaning of the Treaty from the back-translation by his fellow Tribunal member Sir I. H. Kawharu (here): Article 1 means that the Chiefs ceded sovereignty to the Queen and Article 3 means there is no ‘partnership’ arrangement. However, Dr Bassett does not address Sir Hugh’s translation of taonga as ‘lands, villages and all their treasures’.
There is some discussion to be had over the meaning of the word ‘treasures’ and for that I I recommend Piers Seed’s recent Taonga and Contra Proferentem (pp. 123-4) which comprehensively shows that the construction that is now placed on taonga by the Tribunal to mean ‘Anything in the Universe’ is not supported by evidence and that it rather means ‘physical property’ in the Treaty.
It is clear that key meanings placed on the Treaty by the Waitangi Tribunal today are contrary to what Dr Bassett claims for the Tribunal two or so decades ago. In particular, the present claim that the Treaty provides for co-governance is a lie. So let’s have a look at the processes which brought that about.
Behaviourism 101
I did a behaviourism paper at Massey a couple of decades ago which included labs using pigeons. Behavioural psychology is scientific in that it reports only observable behaviour (phenomena). So, for example, we were told on our first lecture that we should not refer in our lab write-ups to a ‘hungry’ or ‘peckish’ pigeon, but to a ‘food deprived’ pigeon. We had entered the realm of Behaviourism. The universities no longer do research of that sort because all of the possibilities have been exhausted. The dense textbook was packed with graphs and tables recording that research and happily devoid of the large colourful pictures used to fill out the textbooks of other psychologies. The findings of behaviourism are narrow, but they have a higher level of certainty than, say, the speculations of Freud, Jung and Adler which purport to cover the full spectrum of the human condition.
We were taught about ‘conditioning’, a type of learning whereby a response to a stimulus becomes more frequent as a result of a reward (reinforcement). There are two types: 1) Pavlovian (also classical or respondent) conditioning refers to an instinctive response to a specific stimulus which can be transferred to another stimulus. The usual example is Pavlov’s dog which was trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, initially also with meat, but subsequently just the bell. 2) Skinnerian (also operant or instrumental) conditioning is dependent on the willful actions of the subject. It comprises reinforcement schedules, so called because a particular behaviour (response) increases, and punishment schedules, in which a specific behaviour decreases. Most learning occurs as a result of Skinnerian (operant) conditioning rather than Pavlovian (classical) conditioning.
The demonstrations used a ‘Skinner box’, which includes a light, a key and a food hopper. To demonstrate a reinforcement schedule, for example, the light comes on then goes off, if the pigeon pecks the key while the light is on a food pellet drops into the hopper; the pigeon is then more likely to peck the key when the light next comes on. By the time we got hold of them the birds were already well trained and it was more a matter of them recognizing which schedule we were using, but it was instructive for us. You can get rats and pigeons to do all sorts of crazy stuff using reinforcement and punishment schedules, like turning in circles before the food drops into the hopper or simply pecking a key really fast. You can drive them quite nuts apparently.
The Doctor, the Waitangi Tribunal and the Maori Party
Dr Bassett used the phrase ‘crazy Maori fringe’ three times. I think that is much the same thing as the pigeons. The Maori Party are having a neurotic feeding frenzy reinforced by a small proportion (3%) of disaffected voters and a Parliament which is behaving according to an election schedule.
The election cycle is a three year reinforcement schedule: if prospective MPs push the right buttons running up to the election they get reelected. After the election, it is more a matter of balancing reinforcement and punishment schedules than it is good governance. Hence, Europeans are seen as the line of least resistance, whereas the Maori Party are more likely to hand out punishers. Two-tier policing of indigenous British and Pakistani Muslims in the UK is another example.
We have seen that Dr Bassett played a part in creating the initial state of the processes that have brought about the present behaviour of the Maori Party by giving responsibility of determining constitutional principles to the Waitangi Tribunal. The Tribunal subsequently produced reports over several decades which build on each other in a frantic key pecking reinforcement schedule rewarded by Treaty settlements. The Tribunal and Parliament, including the Maori Party, have brought about co-governance and enhanced taonga to become things that are not in the Treaty.
Dr Bassett therefore shares responsibility for bringing about what he now derisively calls “today's small, raucous, crazy Maori fringe”. If the subjects were pigeons in a Skinner box, those who set it up would bear full responsibility. But humans are said to have a uniquely developed rational faculty which acts as a conscious supervisor for the remainder of the psyche. As card carrying members of the human race, the Maori Party are therefore primarily responsible for their individual behaviour.
However, Ministers of the Crown are also responsible for government of the people and facilitating or allowing inappropriate reinforcement and punisher schedules is not good government. MPs are therefore responsible in a secondary way.
Note how Skinnerian schedules are entirely backwards-looking learning cycles. It has taken fifty years for the behaviour (B) – the drafting and passing of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 – to result in the consequential stimulus (Sc) – the ‘crazy Maori fringe’ complained of by Dr Bassett. By that time, those Members of Parliament who reacted to the initial stimulus (S) – presumably complaints from Maoris – which brought about the Act (B) have gone and there will be no learning, just an avoidance of responsibility. The fact is that Parliament should never have given a sovereign element to the Waitangi Tribunal.
For good government, politicians need to look ahead and to do that we need to use our rational faculty to think logically. There are various logics, such as the four Boolean operators If X, then Y, else Z; A AND B; A OR B; and NOT A. Of the first of these, the conscious intention that if X happens we will then do Y (and if X does not happen we will instead do Z) entails a belief of X leading to distinct future events Y and Z. By using these four logical expressions in an argument we can construct a belief of the future. Only the uniquely developed human rational faculty can see into the future this way.
The Boolean expression A OR B is of particular interest in politics because it has two variations: Exclusive OR and Inclusive OR. Linguistically, you are invited to participate in the double bind of choosing a Left or a Right wing party, but not both. That is an Exclusive OR expression which tends to shift attention from considering voting for a party which picks a mix of policies from both Left or Right (Inclusive OR) or, better still, a party that ignores Left-Right politics altogether and uses all four Boolean expressions to make policy arguments, which is full rational thought. The double bind of Left-Right politics is a linguistic trick to restrict your thinking and persuade you to conform to party politics.
The election schedule does not necessarily include any rational (or evidential) thought, indeed it may intentionally exclude it, yet it is determining the direction of our country. Imagine how different New Zealand would be today if the MPs who drafted the Treaty of Waitangi Bill had included a provision equivalent to, “If the Waitangi Tribunal is not taken over by Maori radicals (X) we will do Y, if it is we will do Z.” Or did they just choose to ignore that rather obvious issue? While they are loath to constrain themselves, they have no qualms about putting constraints on us.
To produce the desired direction, Government in turn directs programs which use reinforcement and punishment schedules to condition us to do meaningless things whilst not doing others, such as sing karakia songs or recoil at being called a ‘racist’. It is like the clip from North Korea of ranks of grown men in uniforms ostensibly crying hysterically because Kim Jong-il had shuffled off. We are being treated like rats in a Skinner box. It is a source of significant cognitive dissonance and it gives us problems.
Three instances of a punisher schedule and an overall reinforcer schedule are identified under the head “More Threats. This Time From Maori Party Co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa Packer” by Julian Batchelor (Stop Co-governance, 6 November 2023 here):
First it was Tau Henare threatening revenge on Auckland councillors who voted against Maori wards.
Then it was John Tamihere who threatened violence and city wide shutdowns if David Seymour touched the Treaty.
Now it’s Te Pati Maori threatening a hikoi of all hikois (protests) [here].
John Key caved in when such threats were made when he was prime minister.
Maori have learned from this. Learned what? They have learnt that MP’s are, generally speaking, cowardly.
So what do Maori do? They play on this.
They threaten, bully, and intimidate. Lesson? John Key’s cave in actually fuelled bad Maori behaviour.
As I said, radical Maori have worked out that most MP’s don’t like conflict, and will avoid it at all costs.
Most MPs, rather than accept conflict is inevitable if you are fighting for a better world, opt out of conflict, and try and appease.
It’s a great mistake to do this. A disaster in fact.
…
Ideally, we all need to break up these cycles and instead use our rational faculty to decide what is and is not appropriate. Let’s consider that in another example.
Propaganda: The Loneliness Crisis
The Post, 22 July 2024, ran a piece “The gifts the Pasifika people can give to New Zealand, if we let them,” by Professor Leilani Tuala Warren, Professor of Law at Waikato University, and Professor Nick Agar, Professor of Ethics at Waikato University (here). The article is in support of the “Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act Bill” which aims to allow Samoans to come to New Zealand.
The article begins:
“Aotearoa’s Parliament is currently debating a law change which would restore the New Zealand citizenship rights of Samoans born in Western Samoa between May 13, 1924 and January 1, 1949, but who had those rights stripped away in 1982; and others claiming citizenship through those people by descent or marriage.” (see here)
The article is something of a word salad, incongruously lacking in logical reasoning for such privileged, promoted and presumably erudite academics, as is demonstrated in what follows:
“The grim reality of climate change suggests that many Pasifika people could soon be arriving in Aotearoa, possibly as refugees. Without bold leadership, we risk a 21st-century reinvention of the 1970s Dawn Raids, a dark period too easily forgotten by many New Zealanders but keenly remembered by the Pasifika people who were in Aotearoa at the time.
If Pasifika people arrive in increasing numbers due to rising sea levels submerging their homes, rudimentary knowledge of human nature suggests that hostility will be met in kind. Restoring citizenship gestures towards a much brighter future.”
Three points:
· First, it is moot that there will be sea level rise due to climate change (here and here); but if there is, when will that materially affect Samoa; and how does that then mean Samoans will be coming to New Zealand in the immediate future necessitating the Bill now?
· Second, the authors are relying on us to have been previously conditioned by repeated assertions and associations (e.g., their reference to “a dark period”) to accepting that the dawn raids were improper when actually they appropriately removed illegal, evasive ‘overstayers’ from our country. Securing our boarders is a primary responsibility of Government.
· Third, they then threaten us with hostile behaviour (intended as a punisher) if we oppose legal or illegal immigration. What would be the response if I were to similarly threaten academics and teachers for their ‘dark’ teachings on race and sex? Where is their Archimedean point of absolute knowledge that enables them to make that entitled threat, or is it just arrogance?
Why do Samoans want to come here, anyway? The Maoris say New Zealand is a terrible place for Polynesians: Debbie Ngarewa-Packer recently described the present Government as white supremacist and genocidal towards Maoris (here and here). The point of course is that someone is lying: New Zealand cannot be both a good place for Samoans and a bad place for Maoris.
Let’s struggle on:
“New Zealanders could look to Pasifika people for help with some of our most pressing challenges.
By celebrating their arrival, we could ask how their thinking and attitudes toward community can help us with the loneliness crisis.
Psychologist John Cacioppo tells us that “as an obligatorily gregarious species, we humans have a need not just to belong in an abstract sense but to actually get together.
Cacioppo memorably compared the harmful effects of isolation on social humans to smoking. We have legal restrictions on smoking and its harms. Perhaps we need a ban on loneliness. We will need Pasifika people to tell us how to do this.”
I’m not going to say much about that because by now you will already either be thinking it’s not a problem or, alternatively, have figured the reasons why I think it is nonsense for yourself. I will just note that Samoa's former Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi said that for Samoans, “Hell is easier to reach than New Zealand”. So the obvious solution would be for the hodophilic Samoans to go to Hell, where they can be assured of a warm reception, thereby vacating a place for the lonely New Zealanders to migrate to Samoa, where they can live in gregarious communal bliss.
I resent Samoa's former Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi comparing New Zealand to Hell and then insisting that his people should be able to come here. I suggest that if he wants something from us it would be in his interest to show some respect. If his attitude is typical of Samoans in Samoa I don’t want them here. We have quite enough disaffected Polynesians as it is. I suppose Parliament will pass the Samoa Citizenship Bill (here) no matter what is said to them. But we could consider the unhappy possibility that being dissed by a Polynesian somehow acts as a reinforcer for our Parliament; it certainly seems that way with respect of the Maoris. Note that the increase of an undesired stimulus as a reinforcer is called ‘masochism’ in behavioural psychology.
The article subsequently enquires,
Are you feeling the depressive effects of too much TikTok? Why not try a talanoa, an open and transparent form of dialogue and problem-solving that requires you to be with other people?
That sounds more like a travel advertisement than news: It really is propaganda. Obviously, linking Samoan communal practices to ‘celebrating’ new arrivals is nonsense because those of us who want to could already have been practicing telanoa with the many Samoans who are already here. The issue is not do we want Samoans in New Zealand, it is too late for that. Given our housing shortage, the question is do we want more migration to New Zealand and if so what sort of people do we want to come here? I expect that people trained in desired vocations, such as doctors and nurses, is the answer.
I bring this to your attention as an example of the propagandist tosh that is being dished up by the universities. We are inclined to scan newspapers quite quickly and so we miss the linguistic tricks, such as the presupposition of the dawn raids pointed out above. Academics, one the other hand, are familiar with these tricks because they teach linguistics. If they want to bring Samoans to New Zealand as refugees or whatever, they should simply say so and give the reason why, so we can decide for ourselves. But of course, that is the last thing they want. Here, they are attempting to prepare us for the Government to submit, yet again, and open our borders to an unspecified number of migrants. We already have half the population of Samoa here, how will more help to make New Zealand great again? Are they really not aware of the actual crisis of migrants in Europe and the UK?
If you want a good rant on UK migrants, you might like to watch the following from Alex Phillips of Talk TV who gives a ‘lived experience’ of crime in London (here) and (here). There is the recent example of the 29 July stabbing by 17-year-old UK born Axel Rudakubana, of migrant parents from Rwanda, of about a dozen people in a Southport dance school, of whom three girls have died (see the outcome here and here). There is also the relevance of UK grooming gangs to New Zealand propaganda (here).
Britain has entered this dark period because they followed a similar policy regarding illegal immigrants as New Zealand did with Samoan overstayers. You are dicing with the devil to go soft on illegal immigration and the UK Government lost control in 1997 when Yvette Cooper (the present Home Secretary) and Tony Blair ‘opened the doors’ (see Nigel Farage’s Maiden Speech at 3:10 here). And of course there was Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021, who opened the doors to Europe. Is that what you want for New Zealand?
Government and Behaviourism
A report “Abuse in Care” by a Royal Commission of Inquiry has recently been made public on the abuse and neglect of, they say, around 200,000 children, young people and adults in the care of the State and faith-based institutions in New Zealand between 1950 and 1999.
The Prime Minister will make an apology in November and there will be redress. But who is he apologizing for, surely not himself and certainly not for me. I have absolutely no responsibility at all for ‘Abuse in Care’ as given in the Report, including the perpetrators, and the victims and their families. You might say the Prime Minister is apologizing on behalf of the State, to which I respond, show me ‘the State’. It is a notional concept, like Heaven, Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. ‘The State’ did no crime and has no sorrow, the responsibility lies with the individuals who did the deed. An apology on behalf of ‘the State’ is meaningless twaddle intended to placate the masses.
And why would the victims be compensated with taxpayer money? We are not a slush fund for the authorities to use to pay for someone else’s damages; that is plundering defenseless hostages. If there were 200,000 victims who get $50,000 each, say, that’s $1 Billion of your hoot right there.
Assuming that there are subsequent convictions and jail sentences, not only may we the taxpayer be expected to pay the victims for the inappropriate behaviour of the perpetrators, but we could also pay $150,000 per person per year to keep the perpetrators in prison (here). Yet we have had no involvement in or responsibility for what has happened, none at all. We did not do the crime, yet we do the time. It’s rubbish government.
If you have been abused, remember it's not your fault.
If you haven’t been abused, remember it's not your fault either.
That is equivalent to arranging for the pigeon to randomly get either an electric shock (punisher) or a pellet of food (reinforcer) every time they peck the key. But they have to keep pecking because they must have the food. That is cruel and it drives them nuts. So also for us: We have to pay our taxes because we must have government, so they tell us. But our taxes are irresponsibly used in ways that may be reinforcers or could be punishers, and the cognitive dissonance is driving us crazy.
What would be meaningful and useful would be to reintroduce capital punishment for those responsible. That is vicarious learning, a type of conditioning according to which we learn from being exposed to and taking meaning from the outcomes of others’ behaviour. So it would help if it were done publically. Is that a bit rich for you? Fine. Just don’t complain when the problem keeps happening, which is the situation we have had for some time. However, if you do what I suggest, I guarantee you it will get sorted quickly, without the need for apologies, lengthy enquiries, and reports which will not make any difference. If that is so, then the offenders could sort their act out now if they wanted to; it is just that they do not have sufficient desire to do so. So we must regrettably provide the incentive.
Propaganda: Fragile Foundations
In a radical departure from previous practice and without a mandate from the people, the unelected judiciary has decided to incorporate Maori tribal tikanga into New Zealand law. Propaganda is being produced in an attempt to persuade the public that this is somehow justified, including Fragile Foundations: The Application of English Criminal Law to Crime Committed in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1826 and 1907 by David Collins and published in May of this year by Te Herenga Waka University Press, a known peddler of institutional propaganda.
Collins sets out to vilify British legal practices in New Zealand during the nineteenth century with numerous examples and he makes no attempt to show that those practices – which as a judge he has had some responsibility for – have subsequently been improved. He also does not consider the tens of thousands of Maoris killed in the inter-tribal wars before British law came into effect, or the genocide of the Morioris before and after the Treaty when the Maoris were subject to British law. Nor does he address the claim that the Maoris agreed to British law by the third article of the Treaty of Waitangi and he does not mention the assertion published in 1922 by Sir Apirana Ngata that, “British Law has been the greatest benefit bestowed by the Queen on the Maori people” (The Treaty of Waitangi: An Explanation, under “Article the Third”).
Among his criticisms of British legal practice, Collins claims that “For Maori, the curtailment of an individual’s liberty was abhorrent. … In traditional Maori society, some saw incarceration and separation from whanau as more egregious than being put to death” (p. 24, see also p. 36). For example, Collins says, “Wahu, a Maori chief imprisoned for theft in 1843, plead that he be executed rather than suffer the indignity of incarceration” (p. 24): “Te Wahu was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment with hard labour. On hearing this, Te Wahu ‘loudly complained of the degradation of imprisonment, and requested most earnestly to be killed with a tomahawk’ rather than suffer indignity and loss of mana through being incarcerated.” (p. 116)
I expect that the judiciary will select those tikangas which suit their agenda: They will attribute little weight to the findings of Western behavioural science and include tikangas which are without common sense, such as the Peter Ellis case. Nevertheless, given the egregious nature of the alleged Abuse in Care offences the judiciary must now consider capital punishment if only to reject it, and tell the public the reasons for their decision. What is the rationale for selecting some tikangas and not others? How can we be expected to obey the law if we don’t know what it is? The reputation of those convicted will be forever degraded and there will probably be some lengthy sentences imposed, so their treatment in prison will be harsh and it won’t be much better when they get out. So would it not be more humane to put them out of their misery now or, alternatively, will that be used as an excuse to not identify or imprison them?
Conclusion
The above is but a few current examples of our governance and our participation in it: the behaviour of the Maori Party, the status of Samoan migrants, and the ‘Abuse in Care’ case. What can be generalized from them is that the authorities and institutions comprise individuals whose responses to situations are determined at least to a significant degree by their own interests rather than the interests of those they serve. The processes which bring that about have been described from behavioural psychology as Skinnerian conditioning, mostly as reinforcement and punishment schedules, and to a lesser extent Pavlovian conditioning. In particular, politicians tend to support policy that provides them with the least grief.
Unfortunately, our Government, universities and media show no signs of recognizing these mechanisms let alone addressing and resolving them. Nevertheless, we know they exist because we read many examples of people complaining about them. The only way I can see of addressing them is to become even more critical of nonsense when we see it. Behavioural psychology provides a framework and the language to express that.
For those who already have lives, that can be an onerous task. Why should you be responsible for the behaviour of some lying MP, some deluded academic, or some woke reporter? Because the future of your country depends on it. I expect few reading this would disagree that we are in trouble and that is in large part due the nonsense we read in the media. We need to call it out in the hope that will shame if not force those responsible to stop it.
Our Government has ruined this country to place co-governance over democracy with cheating (He Puapua) and lies (‘partnership’). Freud said most people are trash and our Government, institutions, universities and media don’t know their own ‘dark’ minds. We can’t go there and I don’t want to, but we can address their behaviour.
Just stop the dystopian conditioning schedules, stop the manipulative language patterns, and stop the punitive Pavlovian propaganda. Make lying the new racism.
Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.
3 comments:
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Thank you, Barrie.
Very interesting Barrie. Took me a while to understand most of it but came to the conclusion that we get screwed every time something happens and we and the govt. ignore it.
We do tend to leave things to the govt. to sort rather than act individually, probably for all sorts of reasons.
Like, fear of the "woke", racist, anti gay labels, or worse, fear of the government itself.
Sad really.
Great stuff Barrie, and thanks enormously for your clarity and positivity. We clearly need to be more than a dispassionate observer when we see our institutions and politicians going mad on our dollar.
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