Ele Ludemann: Stopping debate won’t stop division

Reasons both for and against the Bill to define the Treaty principles vary in their worth.

One of the worst against it is that it will cause division.

Bryce Edwards: New Zealand’s social cohesion is being torn apart

New Zealand is becoming a less socially cohesive country. And the driver of this division is worsening inequality. That’s the view of most New Zealanders according to a survey conducted for the New Zealand Herald. It shows that inequalities of wealth and housing access are tearing the country apart.

The survey of 1000 people run by research company Dynata in late November showed that 64 per cent of the public thought that New Zealand society is becoming more divided. Only 16 per cent thought NZ has become more united in the last few years.

This survey backs up an earlier one carried out in January by Curia Research in which a large majority of 72 per cent said that we are more divided, with only 10 per cent believing we are less divided.

Ani O'Brien: Manifesting the racial divide

The Secret, a self-help manifesto about essentially wishing things into reality [simplified] was published back in 2006 and quickly became somewhat of a cult classic. All over the world people focused their minds on ‘telling the universe’ exactly what they wanted from life with the expectation that it would be made manifest.

I am sceptical by nature and at the time I was deeply cynical about the book and the ideas it promoted. However, I was considering the practice from the point of view of individuals attempting to wish success, love, and wealth into their lives. In 2022, we are seeing a very different process of loud, collective, and negative manifestation and I now hold genuine fears that this more pernicious enactment of The Secret’s techniques might actually be successful.