David Round: Thoughts for our Time - Article 14

Prediction is hard ~ especially, as Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, about the future. Harold MacMillan, when asked what politicians fear the most, replied ~ ‘Events, dear boy, events’. Who has a crystal ball? International events ~ war, the interruption of overseas trade, financial calamity ~ even something a simple as the breakdown of the internet, or the actions of Artificial Intelligence ~ could fundamentally alter everything tomorrow. We might be flooded with refugees, or we might be the only people left in the world. We might all pull together in an emergency, or we might all tear ourselves apart. There might be a new pandemic, or climate catastrophes. A decent earthquake could destroy us overnight ~ without electricity for any length of time, without vital roads and bridges and the electronic systems we all rely on all the time ~ not to mention cooked meals and electric light and hot water ~ we would be plunged back into the dark ages. They say that only nine meals, three days, stand between civilisation and violence. A serious widespread drought would take only a bit longer.

We are certainly starting to realise that we are not as prosperous as we once were, although that has not yet been translated into any political response. Our economy is based on a tiny handful of agricultural exports, which we mostly send overseas in a raw state for further processing. There are natural limits to what can be wrung out of the land, even leaving aside questions of the increasing expense and scarcity of necessary inputs, and inevitable environmental degradation. Our international mass tourism industry will not last much longer. Perhaps geography and geology have predestined us to be forever a remote farm on the edge of the world, exporting raw materials to more sophisticated nations. Perhaps we could never imitate Sydney, Singapore or Silicon Valley. Auckland tries, of course, but has not succeeded so far. Its disproportionate size in relation to the rest of the country distorts our politics; keeping Auckland voters happy is a very serious consideration for every politician. Some economists still labour under the delusion that a dollar of economic activity generated by Aucklanders serving each other’s needs for lattes, pizzas and haircuts is just as much an index of prosperity as a dollar created by producing something that overseas people might actually want.

And then there is the brain drain. John Key did not care about it; he actually approved of the way we exported our brightest and best to work anywhere but here. Such a generous international benefactor! 128,000 people left last year, I believe, and with them the best promise of our future. Even many of the newcomers who replace them use our country only as a stepping stone to Australia. It has long been notorious that many Maori left for Australia or further afield in order to avoid the draining and initiative-destroying burdens of whanau support here. Many others, now, obviously share their opinion that it is much easier to make a better living somewhere else than here.

What is the answer? We would be reluctant to accept prosperity if it came at the cost of the things we value. We might ask, though ~ do those mythical treasures still exist? Our big cities are increasingly dysfunctional, most waterways are already unswimmable; most of us are wage slaves, not free pioneers....Even the Department of Conservation, once a bright hope, is just another overweight complacent bureaucracy with a weird racist agenda. If not actually dead, the New Zealand dream is certainly not very well.

But the brilliant idea of pulling ourselves out of the mire by imposing new taxes is hardly likely to work either. And the rest of the world does not seem to be in any better state. The problem does not just lie in something in New Zealand’s water.

Some problems simply do not have solutions; certainly not simple ones. It is not impossible that New Zealand, and humankind, must endure great chaos and torment before re-emerging into some simpler and perhaps healthier mode of existence. We are still among the most blest of nations; a benign climate, a mostly rugged country, a small population; but we are in serious danger of destroying ourselves.

It does not have to be this way. Some of our problems may lie in the stars, but others lie in ourselves. Perhaps it might be said that any remedy is in a sense religious. Without vision the people perish. Perhaps our ruling caste has sensed the spiritual and ethical emptiness of modern life, and is seeking to fill it with whatever nonsensical new creeds appeal to their own deep sense of inferiority. It may be that at a certain stage of social development we just lose any awareness of reality. We are too insulated, and too entertained ~ ‘amusing ourselves to death’. Perhaps it is just a part of a great historical cycle. Perhaps, at some deep unconscious level, we are all beginning to sense that the frenetic ‘modern’ society we have been busty creating has overshot the bounds not just of the earth’s capacity but also of human capacities.

In the last resort, whether we will survive as a nation, or nations, will depend to a great extent on our own strength of character. Societies have, after all, survived and flourished on far less than we take for granted. The comforts of ancient Greece, say, were little more than those of a tramping hut. Our societies reflect what we are. Our societies are what we are. We are only able to govern ourselves as a country if we are capable of governing ourselves in our own lives. Weakness of character, whatever it may be, redounds to a country just as much as it does to any individual.

The legendary New Zealand ‘cultural cringe’ still exists. It is just that now, instead of feeling inferior to the once great civilisation of Europe, we now cringe before the noble savage and every stranger from another ‘culture’.

We are a nation of decent people, but we have, as everyone has, the defects of our virtues. We are generous and kind-hearted; we have been foolishly generous, and have accepted unquestioningly any hard luck story. We are easy-going and tolerant, and have tolerated the crazy and the power hungry. We are decent and high-minded, and so have accepted at face value demands for ‘justice’ which are for no such thing. Our love of healthy sport has become an unhealthy obsession for winning and gold medals. We have been too prosperous and too protected for our own good. We have become soft and complacent; we have forgotten our moral vigilance.

There must always be some control over our passions and appetite. If we do not control them ourselves, then external consequences ~ the consequences of our moral failings ~ will exercise them for us. Chickens always come home to roost.

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.