ONE OF THE MOST DISTURBING ASPECTS of race-based politics is the difficulty many citizens have in taking racially-driven change seriously. This is particularly the case when the manner in which racial matters have been defined and discussed changes abruptly. Assumptions upon which people have come to rely are deemed mistaken, even dangerous, and they are required to embrace a whole new set of assumptions.
Unsurprisingly, the ethnic groups targeted by these new assumptions will be profoundly affected by such dramatic shifts in moral and political judgement. If it is an ethnic minority being singled-out, then many of its members will become fearful. But, if the assumptions of the majority are being challenged, then many of its members will become extremely angry. Most citizens, however, will struggle to take such shifts seriously. Those making them will be branded extremists, and dismissed accordingly.
For many Jews living in Germany at the time of the Nazi’s seizure of power in the early months of 1933, the idea that their entire ethnic community was about to be threatened by actions infinitely more serious than the familiar antisemitic attacks of Adolf Hitler and his followers seemed preposterous. Germans were, after all, a highly civilised people, and their rulers, beginning in the Eighteenth Century, had been among the first to recognise Jews as citizens. The idea that they could be stripped of their citizenship, excluded from all aspects of social and economic life, robbed of their property and, ultimately their very lives, and all under the lawful direction of the state, was bizarre, unbelievable, obscene. They were right, of course, it was all of those things, but that didn’t make it untrue.
Whites living in the southern states of the United States found it equally preposterous that their “separate but equal” racial regime was about to be dismantled by the federal courts and the United States Congress. White supremacy, legitimated through the states’ racial segregation statutes, and enforced by the terror inspired by the Ku Klux Klan, constituted the “normal” state of affairs in the South, and most Southerners could not take seriously the idea of any other system muscling-in on the “Jim Crow” status quo. But, muscle-in it did. Not all that quickly, and not without horrific violence being visited upon the Black civil rights movement and its leaders, but in the end Southern Whites were forced to acknowledge (if not entirely accept) a new set of racial assumptions.
The role of the federal courts, the Supreme Court in particular, in defining and imposing that new set of assumptions, and of the US Congress in translating them into effective legislation, should not be underestimated. A different Supreme Court, and a differently composed Congress, could very easily have turned back the Civil Rights Movements’ legal and political challenges – as had happened many times before. A less progressive news media might have declined to stir the conscience of northern liberals by suppressing the images of Bull Connor’s fire-hoses and Alsatian dogs.
As the recent judgements of the US Supreme Court have demonstrated, the progressive assumptions that brought down Jim Crow and ushered in a host of related social freedoms, were the products of a particular historical moment. When the Supreme Court struck down school segregation in 1954, the global struggle against the fanatical racism of the Nazis was less than a decade in the past. In 2022, however, the proposition that the liberal victories of the late-Twentieth and early-Twenty-First centuries will stand unchallenged and unchanged forever has clearly been disproved. The hands of History’s clock can move backwards as well as forwards.
The evolution of racial politics in New Zealand has arrived at its own moment of radically altered assumptions. The notion that the colonial state, and the institutions it bequeathed to the nation of New Zealand, are insulated from serious challenge, both by the passage of historical time, and the shared beliefs and values of Māori and Pakeha, is itself being challenged.
An elite coalition of Māori nationalists, backed by sympathetic Pakeha intellectuals located strategically in New Zealand’s judicial, state, academic and media apparatus, has launched an ambitious attempt to “decolonise” the thinking of its Pakeha population, and “indigenise” the cultural, educational, administrative, and economic institutions of “Aotearoa”. This revolutionary constitutional reconfiguration, like the deconstruction of Jim Crow in the American South, is to be carried out with the consent of the white population, if possible; or without it, if necessary.
The key question raised by this strategy is whether or not enough New Zealanders can be convinced of the need for revolutionary constitutional change to overwhelm – either democratically or physically – the objections of those determined to preserve the status quo.
That this is the crucial determinant of New Zealand’s future will not, however, become clear until New Zealanders recognise the prospect of revolutionary change as a serious possibility. At the moment most of the New Zealand population continues to work on the assumption that Māori and Pakeha see each other as equals not adversaries. If they think about co-governance at all, they assume that it is simply a matter of giving Māori a stronger voice in matters that matter to them. Very few Pakeha appreciate that being “decolonised” and “indigenised” is something that will be done to them, in order to change them. When they finally work that out, things could get ugly.
In large measure, the final triumph of the Black Civil Rights Movement was the work of its enemies. The violence inflicted on non-violent protesters. The bombing and burning of churches. The murder of civil rights workers. These were the bloody talismans of segregation and white supremacy that allowed President Lyndon Johnson to assemble his congressional majority for the Voting Rights Act. Dr Martin Luther King understood that only by forcing white racism to reveal itself, could the moral indignation necessary to supplant it be kindled.
A race-driven revolution in New Zealand will succeed only if those promoting it are committed, and seen to be committed, to building a future in which whatyou are is of less importance that who you are. In Nazi Germany and the American South, what you were, Jew or Aryan, White or Black, was all that mattered. If New Zealand is a nation in which the assumptions of racial equality still hold sway, then any attempt to privilege the ethnic origins of its citizens over their common humanity must end in failure. If, however, a decisive majority of New Zealanders reject racial equality, then the serious consequences of the revolutionary, race-based constitution that is sure to follow will not be slow in revealing themselves.
Unfortunately we’re not the most intelligent people compared to the Germans and have endured not just what feels like a lifetime of anti-intellectualism, but a barbaric dumbing down of the education system right through to the sometimes arid wasteland of contemporary universities and worse similar institutions posing as vehicles of higher learning but possibly sometimes now enshrining very little more than the contents of grannies’ cookbooks too rooted in times past to have the flexibility and innovation crucial for adaptability to the present. The Arts Council and it’s friends’ laboured crucifixion of William Shakespeare plunged us back into a surreal Salem witch hunt mentality and is a sobering symbol of where we’re at now.
Way back when we all devoured Alvin Toffler’s “ Future Shock”, if I remember correctly, our ability to cope with change, and the pace of change, was identified as the basic skill needed for survival as civilised people. It is ironic that when issues of historic injustice to Maori are being systematically addressed, that some Maori see the way forward as setting up everything pertaining to pakeha culture, and to their own European heritage, as weapons of warfare needing to be destroyed and positioning all of today’s pakeha as the enemy. However idyllic times past may seem, harking back to them blindly is neither problem solving nor the creative and original thinking which is needed to live constructively in the present and future. We owe our children better.
Well said Snow, albeit the concept of ‘one-man-one-vote’ will remain throughout all this change. No matter how cynical you are about power structures, no matter how fixated you are on the relative merits and demerits of colonization, the concept of ‘one-man-one-vote’ has a special place in our country – a broad appeal to most common folk (as opposed to academic elites), and it now has the benefit of hindsight to show that it works far better than any alternative. All the more reason for our children to study history beyond that of New Zealand.
Soooo we are getting to the stage where if Labour loses the election it’s because everyone who didn’t vote for them are racists?
Not unlike 2016 in the US where basically if you didn’t vote Clinton you were either a mysoginist or a gender traitor.
I’m right. Nope. It could be because Jacinda is being advertised as appearing in Harry and Meghan’s New Year anti- monarchy Netflix podcast or whatever it is. Not something I’d have done, but Jacinda visited Meghan in London before she quit and apparently they email and gift each other and so on.
I would have hoped for NZ’s sake Jacinda could have seen through Meghan’s narcissistic faux-victim money-fuelled shitshow but then again not being able to do so will the true to form . .
Meghan and Ardern a both quitresimilar in many ways
both have a carefully crafted fake caring persona for starters
Just terrible that Jacinda has a personal life, how dare she!
She’ll have plenty more of mee time before the end of 2023 thats for sure!
Yep afraid so. If you vote for a Ngapuhi leader you’re racist, but if you vote for leader with no Maori heritage to speak of and allows her cabinet to make ongoing racist slurs, you’re not.
Makes perfect sense. Up is down, black is white
Ironically Labour will lose to bunch of race baiters. The same race baiters that commissioned a review of our three waters and introduced co governance measures before this current Labour crowd even came in. F’ing ridiculous.
Great post Chris! Thanks. Hopefully when sleepy kiwis wake up, they’ll just vote this abhorrence out of office en masse.
Oh, and on an historic note – both MLK and Malcolm X were shot by members of their own race.
James Earl White was white.
Sorry, James Earl Ray.
Ah, no Andrew, not quite.
While it is true to say that Malcolm X was shot by African-American members of the Nation of Islam, it is absolutely false to suggest that Martin Luther King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, was an African-American.
James Earl Ray was emphatically white. This is how Wikipedia describes his origins: “Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois, the son of Lucille Ray (née Maher) and George Ellis Ray. He had Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry and had a Catholic upbringing.”
Andrew emphatically wrong again.
Just another day at TDB.
Youre thinking of Luke Sky Walkers ‘faaaarther’ Darth Vader! James Earl Jones! Now, hes black on both counts!
Black on the inside and on the outside
Indeed he was!
I am duly corrected.
agree Andrew
How the hell do you miss these set-ip facts man LOL
Iwiocracy and the “co-governance” which seek to install this autocracy have nothing to do with race anyway.
I’m all for constitutional reform, moving forward as one nation of equals. I’m all for Māori ideas on the way we do things, cultural or otherwise, coming to the fore – as part of the competition of all ideas on the way we do things. This isn’t what’s happening – it’s “our way or else” and “we don’t want to work with whitey at all”. We’ve been slowly going a third way from your two proposed options for decades: Māori/Iwi rejected racial equality – that’s the issue that’s coming to a head.
Now you understand how Maori felt, after signing the treaty when Pakeha basically said, yeah-nah fuck-it we just do it all our way..
Even folksy old Norman Rockwell could have a bit of a hard edge at times (the painter of the artwork shown, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_We_All_Live_With). As to the decolonisation of Ao/NZ, the biggest evidence of a problem we all live with is the way that unaffordable housing and a low-road, labour-repressive economy came to be tolerated once it became clear in the 1970s that the neck that wore the blue collar was increasingly brown. Thus we shifted from a Scandinavian inclusiveness of white labour and class cooperation to what’s sometimes called a coloured-labour economy, in which labour is outside the prosperity system to a far greater extent. At the moment, a cultural struggle is, in a sense, a distraction from this more fundamental issue. Ironically, a continual focus on the allegedly rural and pre-modern essence of Māoritanga actually serves as a distraction from the real injustice, which is the pulling up of the drawbridge on urban prosperity, and even tends to undermine what has been called “the right to the city” by making it appear as though Māori and Pasifika are migrant labour or sojourners in the Pākehā city. Thus colonialism masquerades as anti-colonialism in that case and will continue to do so without a proper focus on the status of labour and the need to build an even more inclusive economy than the pre-Rogernomic one. James Connolly said something similar about the more romantic forms of Irish nationalism, that nothing much would change if the union jack were merely replaced by a green flag plus an obsessive focus on the swirling mists of Celtic mythology, while the workers of Dublin continued to live in hell.
Interesting to dwell on Chris Harris. Thanks for your perspective.
Totally agree Chris. I have been trying to say this for ages but havent able to do so, so eloquently. What is going wrong is not colonialism per se, it is neo Liberalism or whatever it is that seems to have our country’s neck in its teeth and shaking us like a ragdoll.
I dont know how we move forward from here. We have the illusion of political power but really dont seem to be able to stop our country being torn apart by those in power or those who seek power. The tribalists keep beating the drum for separatism and the Politician’s keep behaving divisively and impoverishing the working class. And neither are prepared to govern for all NZers.
The new wave academics who now include the Labour Government will fail in their attempt at institutionalising Co Government because although Māori are an intrinsic part our history they are only 17% of our population. They will fail because many of that 17% have good jobs, and are satisfied with their way of life. The government and academics will fail because they are being seen as thinking they are more intelligent than the rest of us. I say that because they haven’t been open in the way they have tried initiate co governance because they know the Pakeha population wouldn’t buy into it. They have proceeded this way because they feel they are right but pakeha may not understand why it’s right. Of course those who disagree are unintelligent or racist or both. The problem they have is the general population is smarter than they think they are. Most Pakeha and many Māori can see that the proposals will eventually give Māori an unfair proportion of governance and control. So instead of fairness being the main idea Ideology is all that counts. Transparent intelligent Government died a long time ago.
I always enjoy CT’s writing. Have a good Xmas Chris.
New+view “ They haven’t been open”. Correct. They were decidedly sneaky about Te Puapua and sneaks anywhere- school – workplace – are nearly always self-interested. Subsequent waffle about ‘aspirations’ didn’t cut it. So much for transparency.
Being it on I say. The racists will never succeed
Very good and insightful article, Chris — and for once also very good and interesting comments also! (at least so far)
There is something very symbolic in burning down all the back country huts.A bit like chopping down the flagpole. He Paupau wants all conservation and doc land returned to Māori.
“He Puapua” is the name of the report to government on how it can act on New Zealand’s signing of the UN Declaration concerning the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The term means “a break” as in from, what was done to what is done next.
But yeah amongst the recommendations is creating a Māori Senate or Upper House to considering returning conservation land to iwi/hapū.
But the PM has said no to an upper house … and so far the talk is around co-governance (National and the Waikato) rather than handing over conservation land to iwi.
National can refuse to act on any or all of the recommendations, but Maori complaint will result in findings that we are in breach.
I must say burning down the huts before replacing them is a de facto banning of trampers from that land
What are the concerns of the people? Are they aware of “the prospect of revolutionary change as a serious possibility”? Often, Chris, it pays to just listen, unprompted and non judgementally, to what people are saying, they will often surprise you.
From my observation there is deep and widespread concern at the prospect of institutionalising racial separatism – even among those that are broadly sympathetic to the cause. Perhaps the lessons from history, that this is a seriously bad idea, are known. Or perhaps people are instinctively uneasy with where this will end up. Either way let us hope for, and work towards, a reaffirmation of the principles and practices of democracy and liberty. The alternative – a sort of Lebanon of the south – is a very bad idea.
Agree. It is History that worries me and economics. But also democracy and how it is pivotal to any successful country.
David+George Agree with what you’re saying here. Institutionalising racial separatism is a terrible idea, and the reasons for it are not necessarily clear or honest. Historically, the problem with revolutions, is that post-revolution can be worse than pre, and politicians should be striving to avoid creating the discontent and circumstances which could bring one about. Preaching isn’t going to achieve this.
But NZ despite its claims to the opposite has never been equal.
That is the point.
Colonisation has left us a divided society and its divisions are increasing.
That is because the import of capitalist classes has left Maaori falling further behind in jobs, housing, health and education.
This is the continuing shameful legacy of colonisation.
That some Maaori have got educated and well paid and stand up on behalf of their Treaty rights does not make them ‘elites’.
It makes them worthy leaders of their people whatever their illusions in the Treaty that falls short of self-determination.
When white NZ realises that it’s not about racism but colonisation they need to grow up and support the Maaori struggle for self determination.
Then it will become obvious that self-determination of an oppressed minority does not imply the national oppression of the majority.
Intellectual dishonesty such as is displayed in this post only falsifies history and fuels the resentment of the privileged majority and the fear that Maaori equality must be at the expense of the pakeha majority.
Time to drop the fear mongering of Maaori separatism, iwi rule, ethnic states and other demagogy that reduces the future to a race war.
There is a much better future possible where we can end class war, race war, the war against nature and women, and all share in building an equal society much as prevailed for 100,000s of years before humanity took the fateful step to class society in the Neolithic period.
Maaori had not taken that step before colonisation and the colonisers owe them recognition and respect for what they have endured since.
Yes I agree, there is a much better way.
But with race or ethnicity or tribal or ancestor or bloodline based law?
Not sure about that,
are you?
“and all share in building an equal society much as prevailed for 100,000s of years” Never was and never going to happen – witness the opening scene in 2001. Built into our DNA which some can’t surpress – that’s the problem. And while Maori had not taken that fateful step to class society before colonisation, they did not live in an equal or classless society – there were classes, slaves and wars aplenty…..
Someone needs to be introduced to the Perato Distribution Curve.
There is not one culture in society that had ever been equal, nor the same in every natural endeavour. I can guarantee that from the tomatoes you planted this year, that each plant will yeild a completely different crop. Maori prior to European arrival was completely unequal, I’m sure the chiefs lived far better lives than their slaves.
So this, “oh capitalism and the white man created inequality” has no scientific foundation.
it’s just 19th century ‘noble savage’ bullshit…and the racist elements of the concept are in the name. bob…but comforting to the muddle class
There are more poor white people in NZ than any other ethnicity
so explain that?
“Maaori had not taken that step [to a class society] before colonisation”
Incorrect. Slavery was a key element of Maaori society https://www.theprow.org.nz/maori/slavery-in-colonial-times/#.Y6FoQn2YY2w
I know romanticization of indigenous cultures is compulsory for some lefties, but Maaori slavery is so well known there’s really no excuse for getting this wrong.
I hope CT you’re not implying that you settlers are the ‘jews’ of NZ as in Germany and how the Jews were treated are you?
What happened to ‘we’re all one’ and we all know the words and can sing together, “kumbyah and we all rowed the boat ashore with Michael?”
Seriously CT!! You need an intervention asap!
I agree with you on the free speech thing and the BoR’s ect …
But getting suckered into the ‘mowrees are coming!’ You’ve missed it completely. You’ve been “Red Herring’d!”
Like a lot of the hill billies, just because a white paper with brown stuff on it was read in cabinet doesnt make it policy.
The 3Waters hullaballoo about those fuckn mowrees again! Was another redneck reaction that was unnecessary! Its not about ownership dummy, its about the money in the contracts! Whoever controls the contracts,15yr contracts worth anywhere from $185b to $485b in todays money, owns the ‘Game!’.
I think your public hypothesising needs more ‘research’ instead of talking to and hanging out with the inbred banjos playing billies.
Comparing any of what is happening in NZ to the Jews in Nazi Germany -comparing the majority of non-Maori in NZ with the Jews in the holocaust is not just a misjudgment but is to fail to understand the harsh reality of the danger, death, slavery, etc., that peoples have faced to overcome real genocidal scapegoating in what can be a very vicious and cruel humanity.
The idea that the position of the majority in NZ bears any resemblance to this kind of barbarity, or that is heading towards it, is to not understand the human condition. Yes people can be utterly without soul, can engage in brutality against those they scapegoat. But there must be discernment about ones feelings of being discriminated against.
The relativization of our situation with 1930’s Germany or 1950’s/60’s USA is utter nonsense. It takes you numerous paragraphs to simply say labour’s divisive he puapua agenda, is a recipe for a racially motivated ‘civil war’. Of course this won’t happen, as kiwis don’t have the stomach or balls for such unpleasantry. Once upon of time they did, but the self righteous globalists liberalisation juggernaut has taken the stuffing of us.
I think Chris is merely illustrating the point that the future could get increasingly unpleasant if we dont find a way back to a more communal approach to the issues.
As for saying Kiwi’s don’t have the balls, of course you are right but as we have seen with Covid, it doesn’t take much for people to go off the reservation and become radicalised, especially if they don’t feel they have anything to lose. Put any animal in a corner and be prepared for it to come out swinging.
I think actually that the tipping point for this may be law and order. Kiwi’s dont like danger on the streets and the sad fact is that most of the offenders are ethnic. Absolutely no judgement in that but if you watch the videos of ram raiders or violent criminals in court, this is predominantly the case. The more Maori or Brown people are seen as dangerous, the more people will turn their backs on support for Maori and support for the colonisation narrative.
It will then afford a National/Act victory and the cause of material progress for poor brown people will be sidelined for another decade or two.
That sounds dangerously like the negative-Jew campaign that Nazis carried out before WW2. Getting it into people’s heads that a certain group of people, who are recognisable, are not to be trusted or respected
puts it lower than the rationality level to the instinctive one.
Yes that’s exactly why that kind of occurrence (in reality) or equally, propaganda to that effect (the appearance of reality) is so successful.
People can live with co governance, arrogant governments, fiscal disaster but it becomes visceral when they start to question whether their home is still their castle.
Fantail. Good points. The whole scenario is part of a divide and rule exercise, and unfortunately it seems to be working, aided and abetted to some extent by some useless or complicit MSM.
Law and order was a fairly predictable election issue. Given that nobody watches television nowadays, and most folk do live safely in their home, it’s hard to say how successful that’ll be. The homeless situation and barriers to procuring permanent abodes is more dire, but the ruthless axing of the Commissioner for Children should be a biggie when we are world leaders in abusing, battering and killing our littlies, and the less I say about that subhuman – IMO – Carmel Sepuloni the better.
It’s all driven by very very very few on behalf of…very very few. But what’s so clever is that it’s made to sound like it’s ‘the wish of all’! Most of the very very few wouldn’t make decent living outside of politics and academia because they know nothing else. Newsflash – most folks just want to get on with life without all that crap going on around us. But one day that vast majority of folks will snap, and then it will get ugly. Ok, off to have a beer with my Maori mate now. Not we ever talk about who or what we are, funny that. We just have beer and talk rubbish or sport.
The Kraut Went Wild. “ Never talk about who or what we are,” Ditto. I’ve had Maori whanau since I was a school girl, and we’ve all multiplied over the years, and family times and social times have been just that, without ethnicity being any particular distinguishing factor, and some workplaces are still very much the same, but this separatism being clumsily, or clandestinely, thrust upon all of us by government has created a festering sore out in the community, and the anti-pakeha fallout is their responsibility and it is close to unforgivable.
Gentle Annie
It’s all about big money…easy money at that. No sweat or hard work, or overtime. Just words and legalese and politics….bingo there’s the money. Nothing else.
The Kraut W W. There’s probably more to it than money, but speaking of money, remember that Ardern accepts free designer clothing, allegedly to showcase it. Seems to me that she’d showcase it just as well, if not better, by paying for it. It’s not a huge thing, but it makes a certain statement about her which I happen to find repugnant.
Reads like forming a Princess Diana syndrome. I think Prince Harry and partner Meghan are already heavily influenced by it. Now we have politics becoming fashionably female in a number of ways. Fairy-taleish, flitting around with the magic starstick in hand.
Can pollies roll up their sleeves showing their hairy arms and get some honest dirt on their hands working for the good of their fellow citizens and their country?? Is that possible?
and that rancid cabbage is the neo liberal/disaster capitalism americanisation of NZ
100 % Gentel Annie. YOu have nailed it.
NZ has always been complacent and anti-intellectual as far back as I can remember. Back when I was at school there was still an expectation that we’d march forward together as a nation and the petty differences of race and gender would eventually work themselves out and enlightenment ideals would prevail.
Since then I’ve grown out of my naivete but also the commercial classes have figured out how to keep even more of the pie for themselves and make the rest beholden to them, plus we have large numbers of newcomers many of whom don’t share our ideals and aren’t shy about grabbing what they can get for themselves and to hell with the rest. Saying that the issues are all about Maori / ‘pakeha’ is all very well but it’s got a lot more complicated and good luck trying to negotiate with the money industry and the new colonisers.
Exactly Daniel. And Maori have recognised for a long time that they are being out-minoritised. It’s a hard nut to crack. And decades ago there were presumptuous boffins stating that bi-cultural was going to be wiped and multi-cultural would be the ruling meme. Harder nut , with a bitter taste.
The Holocaust should have been an immense lesson about a lack in our human intellect that somehow has been obscured instead of leading to deep thinking and changes in our method of living and being. I have been wondering if World War 2 was actually the final destination marker for our species in its regular mode of thinking – drawn to rigidity, judgmentalism, authoritarianism, bullying and and revelling in self-satisfaction.
Just looking at Ayn Rand’s Anthem which seems to indicate this trend. After WW2 the dropping of nuclear bombs could be said to have provided the exclamation marks that might follow the words ‘End, Fin. Finis’. We stumble on but have been unable to revivify the idea of humans of advanced wisdom dealing peaceably, damping anger, working out solutions, and controlling desires of all types. Conflict would lessen; it sounds boring and unachievable, but a game of chess requires much cogitation, and those who understand find it stimulating. I think the musical/opera Chess touches on so many human preoccupations while ostensibly being about the game at a high political level.
I have been thinking about the Jews and what they have suffered down the centuries and asked myself why, and to understand may help explain our present predicament. I hope to read in idle moments at Christmas the 1998 book ‘The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels’ by Thomas Cahill – was a New York Times Bestseller. Cahill has been visiting scholar etc…. Jewish Theological Seminary of
America and New York’s Union Theological Seminary Columbia University…)
In his preface: Our history is replete with examples of those who have refused to see what the Jews are really about, who – through intellectual blindness, racial characteristics, xenophobia, or just plain evil – have been unable to give this oddball tribe, this raggle-taggle band, this race of wanderers who are the progenitors of the Western world, their due. Indeed, at the end of this bloodiest of centuries, we can all too easily look back on scenes of unthinkable horror perpetrated by those who would do anythung rather than give the Jews their due.
But I must ask my readers to erase from their minds not only the horrors of history – modern, medieval, and ancient – but (so far as one can), the very notion of history itself. More especially, we must erase from our minds all the suppositions on which our world is built – the whole intricate edifice of actions and ideas that are our intellectual and emotional patrimony. We must reimagine ourselves in the form of humanity that lived and moved on this planet before the first word of the Bible was written down, before it was spoken, before it was even dreamed.
We are at that place now – can we apply our minds to our own minds and then feed ideas to each other to reach some workable and positive outcome?
Bit of Jewish from The Jews Brothers – Hobos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNrFBTaCAz4
Getting into ‘The Gifts of the Jews’ book – came across this list if things that the Sumerians held against the ‘lesse’r Amorites. The Sumerians started off most things (from the fertile Crescent along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers) we now take for granted, bit of hyperbole there, but can’t be totally refuted. This happening in the Third Millenium BC. ()There is another age system BCE – Before the Common Era, but he has stuck with the well-known count.
The settled Sumerians decided that the nomadic Amorite person was –
A tent-dweller buffeted by wind and rain, he knows not prayers.
With the weapon he makes the mountain his habitation.
Contentious to excess, he turns against the land, knows not to bend the knee.
Eats uncooked meat.
Has no house in his lifetime.
Is not brought to burial when he dies.
We are on our way back I think, will we meet Jesus again along the way, and how will we greet him in this post-modernist time when we critique everything? Put him through a mock trial to test him from our superior religious judgment? He’d be a restraint of trade, that sacred vocation for one.
ayn rand who ponced off her disciples her entire life and was happy to claim the communistical health benfits in her dotage….just one more rightard gobshite.
Hmm. There is another way. Any sentence that starts with “most people” is to be ignored. We truly ARE uniquely- each and everyone of us. Unique lived experiences (or lack of). Unique skills and natural talents. Unique hopes and dreams. Etc. Each of us, alive today, is a truly unique dot on the human race spectrum. If a kiwi race war is brewing, well I don’t want to encourage that. I might end up dead or worse (worse being having regrets). I trust that in the decision-making split second before I intentionally kill someone, well, I hope it won’t be because I didn’t have time/skills/empathy to consider alternative actions. Because there are always alternative actions in this labyrinthine-life. I wonder, are protagonists necessary? Is there a better way? Well, all I know is that the actions I take today will affect many for longer than my finite lifetime. I know that (historically speaking) humanity learns best (shifts paradigms) through massive pain (eg wars etc). This is not the only way, however. Paradigms can also shift when we apply (action) compassion and empathy. We each learn at our individual capacity and collectively that eventually adds up. To steer humanity forward now, we need to individually challenge and diminish our ego-centric “natures”. That, and only that, will propel us all collectively forward to better times. It starts with me caring out you…
… and me working on my own issues so it affects you less…
SPOILER ALERT
We all die at the end anyway. I hope I have no regrets. The enemy is our own ego, not each other. We need to tame and balance our egos. We’re human but we’re also divine spiritual beings too imo. Worth contemplating this Xmas I reckon.
Its interesting reading all the comments and how folks all seem to feel threatened by a few Mowrees. And how it all seems to a step too far ffs.
‘Co’ or ‘C’ seems to be a trigger for all none brown folks these days. I just dont get the hostility.
Sure they sneak a ‘paper’ into cabinet and everybody has assumed its now policy with a ‘P’.
i hear and se every other day in my line of work and dont even bother with it or about it all. And you know who’re the ones who get most offended? The pakeha! Because I dont do the mowree stuff!
I’m happy to speak english, my taay rayo is terrible but my Tikanga is tika! The Mowree Nazis do kinda question my Mowreeness and I usually respond by saying to them my whakapapa doesnt need to be advertised as sometimes it gets stolen and used by others. That usually does the trick. Other try the big one and again knowing tikanga i can usual cut them down with a reference to Tangata Whenua, not manawhenua. End of.
So I guess what I am saying is, dont be threatened by it, just understand it and how it works. Youre not losing anything at all. Thats just simpleton colonial thunking.
Respect for your many insights ahead of the picture. Eg recently, Labour initiating big projects all over the place rather than concentrating on the main things. But Labour’s god is the next election via focus groups. Short term, our death knell. Not this devilish project you assert.
Climate change, demo-cracy and the poor are my priorities. Sanders’s and Reich’s cod innocence is better than you and Martyn’s squirrelling away into issues that don’t help this WW ll fight times a million. You both lean Brand. So silly sozzleage.
Stop being so desperate. You, in your main old points, both are right after all. The pig-farmer was wrong. Why divert? I understand ‘how’.
‘Both are right’ was a bad expression for you and Martyn. Also blame our ridiculous loss of the plural ‘you’.
Comments are closed.