What are our world, and our country, going to be like in ten years’ time?
Or, for that matter, twenty years; or for that matter, even five?
Very few of us ask this question. Our imaginations are very limited; it is impossible to imagine any future that is very different from the present. It is very easy to confuse the status quo with the natural order of things.
For those of a more conservative bent, whose instincts favour holding on to the good things of the past, this is more understandable, although still not a good idea. For those whose instincts are to change the present state of things, though, it is very important to see into the future. The Green Party, in particular, is allegedly concerned about sustainable futures. The Maori Party wants an apartheid state where they are in charge. How exactly are these things going to be arranged? And how will those arrangements fit in with everything else that is happening in the world? Surely these ‘reformers’ should be asking themselves these questions?
Around the year 2000 ~ the Millennium, of course ~ I attended quite a few meetings where intelligent speakers would all tell us about what New Zealand, as our country was then universally known, would be like at some time in the future ~ about now, probably. They all involved an environmentally conscious, caring, peace-loving country, where human rights were respected and we did our bit on the world stage and generally cared about everyone and everything, and everything was great.
I did not believe this at the time, and incurred a certain amount of controversy by saying so. I maintained that even at the best of times, history was not like a supermarket, where you wandered down the aisles with your trolley and picked everything you liked off the shelves. You cannot, for example, have the vibrant democracy of Athens in its Golden Age, and the stern public-spirited virtue of the finest days of the Roman Republic, and the chivalry and common humanity of the Middle Ages, and the cool self-appraising reason of the Age of Enlightenment, and the energy and entrepreneurship of the nineteenth century, and our own alleged sensibilities about human rights and the environment ~ we cannot choose all of these, because, all excellent in their own ways, they simply are not all compatible. Everything comes at a price. If you have energy and entrepreneurship, you do not have much concern about human rights and the environment. If you have piety and common humanity, you do not have rationality and self-interest. If you have a vibrant democracy.....well, even those come to grief sooner or later. Not very long after Athens’ Golden Age, its democracy ~ which by then had established its own empire in local seas ~ committed itself to a very foolish war against Sparta. Athens lost, and was never the same again; even before Alexander, and Rome....
This is a point I shall get back to. But leaving that to one side ~ all these people genuinely foreseeing a wonderful rosy future for all humankind ~ what were they smoking? These are most definitely not the best of times. That much was surely obvious. Even in 2000 AD, there were dark clouds clearly visible on the horizon. I suppose these speakers genuinely believed in the rosy future; the Cold War was over, and it was the unipolar moment, and we had Francis Fukuyama telling us how everything was going to be wonderful as we marched towards universal liberal free market democracy and human rights and a comfortable life for all ~ and we in particular, down here, were enjoying a ‘benign strategic environment’ ~ but after all the excuses have been made, looming problems were pretty obvious even in the year 2000. Plenty of voices were warning about resource shortages, oil and water wars, overpopulation, climate change, political tensions, nuclear weapons....I have shelves of these books.
And have not sensible and wise people been warning us from ancient times onwards that nothing lasts forever? Have we not had every opportunity to ponder the fall of so many other civilisations? Why do we think we will be any different?
Truly, the only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history!
New Zealand, perhaps, is peculiarly susceptible to this error, that we are bombproof, and nothing we ever do is going to make things go bad. She will always be right.
You will remember a great little film which we have probably all seen and loved, The World’s Fastest Indian, where Anthony Hopkins portrayed sturdy independent Burt Munro from Invercargill, who went to the United States and there set a world record, never since surpassed, on his modified Indian Scout motorcycle.
It was a lovely film, but I cannot love it unconditionally, because it continued to perpetrate our national myth ~ our national delusion. Here was innocent unworldly little Burt, who, not knowing any better, arrived in the States and immediately fell among thieves ~ whores, conmen, sundry dubious characters ~ and......they never took advantage of Burt.
Of course! The simple way to deal with criminals. Just trust them. Why oh why cannot our dreadfully outdated prison system just be a little bit more enlightened?!
We have become like our native birds; so long without predators on these remote islands that we have lost the most elementary powers of self-defence. We believe everything that every con-man tells us. We appear to believe that predators do not exist.
Apart from Cis White Males, of course.
We are such good innocent people that we even take international treaties very seriously. Other countries sign treaties about the rights of indigenous peoples, say, or climate change obligations, and do absolutely nothing thereafter. Only we believe that we have to be responsible international citizens, and set a good example to the rest of the world ~ which will of course, we imagine, be watching us closely. Look at us, everyone! A city on a hill, indeed....
Another aspect of this national delusion is our self-image as ‘the world’s social laboratory’. It was here, in this exciting fresh new country, that we first experimented with new ways of living ~ female suffrage ~ the welfare state ~ homosexual law reform, gay marriage ~ communes, feminism, nuclear-free....... the trans thing....
Yes, we were certainly among the first to introduce several of those things ~ female suffrage, most notably. But most of these wonderful experiments were in the air at the time, and many other countries followed the same policies very shortly after us. Bismarck beat us to the draw with social welfare. And now other countries are beating us to the draw on drug law reform!
It also remains to be seen, of course, what the full consequences of these policies are. It may take generations for the full implications of any social experiment to work their way through society. Chou En-Lai once famously said, when asked about the consequences of the French Revolution, ‘It is still too early to say’. He is right. The reverberations of that event still pulse around the world. Not every laboratory experiment is successful. Some fail. It may take a long time. But even the failures are instructive.
By comparison with any other period in human history, our lives here in New Zealand are ones of unparalleled peace, order and plenty. That has certainly been so since the Second World War; indeed, one could argue, our role in earlier imperial wars notwithstanding, that it has been the main story of this country since British settlement.
Whether we are as healthy, or as happy, as we used to be, is another thing, and relevant to our story. But in terms of security of life and property, respect for law and general physical comfort we would still be world leaders. The differences between us and Scandinavia are not all that statistically significant. For that matter, much of Scandinavia is not what it was.
We all have a tendency to assume that the status quo is the natural order of things. Because this is how we live, we assume that it is the way things naturally are. Things got like this without any struggle on our part. We may piously remember struggles by our ancestors, but that was a long time ago. Now things are like this they will continue like this for ever, and continue regardless of what stupid things we may now do.
Actions, however, do have consequences. And, as someone vulgarly said, the dildo of consequence is seldom lubricated.
To be continued…
David Round, a sixth generation South Islander and committed conservationist, is an author, a constitutional and Treaty expert, and a former law lecturer at the University of Canterbury.
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