An Unsettled Country: What Does It Mean To Be A New Zealander? With Mike Grimshaw

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I think as a society we have long COVID.
I think economically we have long COVID.
I think conceptually we have long COVID.
I think politically we have longCOVID.
Educationally, we definitely have long COVID in this country
because we haven't actually recovered from that that COVID
lockdown and and response in a way that many other countries

(00:21):
have. Hello, I am Cody Allingham and
this is the Transformation of Value, a place for asking
questions about freedom, money and creativity.
My guest today is Mike Grimshaw,Associate Professor of Sociology
at the University of Canterbury,New Zealand.
Mike writes and speaks about NewZealand history, economics,
education and culture. In particular, he asks critical

(00:45):
questions about the future of the country, which faces
economic stagnancy, political malaise and perhaps most
dangerously, a complacency with our lot at the bottom of the
world. Mike, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Cody. Thank you for having me on.
I've permanently left New Zealand twice now, the first

(01:05):
time in 2013 and the second in 2023.
Both times I felt this overwhelming sense of an escape
from a gravitational black hole.I found myself building a new
life in Asian mega cities, surrounded by the lights and
carnival of the future. A sense that I was going out

(01:26):
into the real world where thingsactually happened.
But balancing that idea, of course, is the Arcadian myth of
what I left behind home, the Fenoa Tudonga.
Why? Why a place of standing?
These dreams of the hills and rivers of Hawke's Bay still
linger with me. Wherever I go, I'm reminded of

(01:47):
To Kill a Mockingbird. There was no hurry, for there
was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.
So before we undertake our stocktake of New Zealand, Mike, I
thought perhaps we could start with an introduction to your
background and what New Zealand has come to mean for you.
Please. Well, when I when I hear what
you say, Cody, I'm reminded of something.

(02:09):
A very good master's student of mine, Charlotte Steele, wrote in
her thesis about 20 odd years ago that landscape will not save
us. And she was dealing with the
questions of how. We often think that the
landscape in New Zealand is a great offering, but it doesn't
seem to offer much for people tobe able to live here and it

(02:29):
doesn't really offer much as a sense of purpose and meaning,
apart from maybe to drag tourists down here, exchange it
for tourist dollars or a sense that we're lucky to live here
despite everything else. My background I'm I'm a New
Zealander. I was born here, my father was
born here. On one side, my grandfather came

(02:51):
from England. On other sides I go back to the
1860s in Auckland, born in the North Island, spent
unfortunately most of my life inthe South Island.
I'm in a type of internal exile,I would say, but that's where
working, job and family take you.
I am now a sociologist. I used to teach religious

(03:11):
studies and before that I was a historian.
As my wife says, I'm an intellectual mongrel and she
means that positively most of the time, which which remains
that I'm I'm interested in most things.
I've done a lot of work in New Zealand history, New Zealand
culture, New Zealand society, New Zealand intellectual and
religious thought and now socialthought, cultural thought,

(03:34):
trying to make sense of what does it mean to find yourself
here, what does it mean to live here and how do others see us as
well? Well as how do we see ourselves.
What I like about being a sociologist is what the great
Sociologist board. You said that the job of a
sociologist is to ask the questions people would prefer
probably not to be asked. We're not so good at necessarily

(03:56):
giving answers, because if we gave the answers, then we'd
probably think we're more something like an economist or a
political scientist or somethinglike that.
As sociologists, what we do, we ask critical questions and we
throw them out there in many ways, not expecting everyone to
take them up, but to try doing to ask the critical questions of
how are we living, Why are we living in this way?

(04:19):
Who's missing out, who's being included, what possibilities are
there? Rather than that reduction of
thinking to the singular, which seems to be the New Zealand way
in many ways. We know what it is, it's common
sense and that's it. And if you don't like it, either
shut up or shift on out. And I don't think that's served
us very well. New Zealand's been problematic

(04:43):
economically, socially, politically in many ways.
We're over 50 years since we joined the Common Market in 73.
But the the problems were going well back before then.
And what I, what I found interesting is that there's very
little work really still done onNew Zealand by New Zealand
thinkers, New Zealand writers, New Zealand academics.

(05:06):
We tend to think, as Alan Kuno, the great New Zealand poet,
said, that overseas here is where it all is.
The real world is overseas. And I think there's a real world
here. I'm just trying to make sense of
what it is. And I'm, I'm still going.
So that's sort of a really broadbackground.
I don't know if it's really whatyou, what you're asking for,

(05:28):
Cody, but I am of this place. I can be of no other place.
I once I've included a review essay in the listener for about
20 years ago on that I am, I'm apakiha because I live in a Maori
country. And what I mean is that this is
a land first named, first encountered, first lived in, and

(05:55):
then as pakiha. I come in over the top of that.
How do we live here together, not against each other, but also
when I go overseas, I realized the extent to which I am a New
Zealander, even though I'm so much of my thinking has from
when I was very young, being framed by what also came in
across the distance, whether it came in across via books or TV

(06:19):
or music or films. And I still live in that tension
between being here and what is also happening else elsewhere in
the world. And I think it's a common New
Zealand experience. I mean, this is the other thing
that I think we we forget in NewZealand that only 3% of the
world live outside of where theywere born globally.

(06:41):
And so this New Zealand sense that we need to go, that people
come here, we're not a normal country and doesn't mean we're
problematic, but we're not as normal as we might think we are
or wish to be because that then starts raising difficult
questions for us. Yeah, that's very.

(07:01):
Long intro to a very short basicquestion.
No, no, this is, this is good. I mean, this is what we're here
for, Mike. And I think this you're sort of
responding to maybe what I said with my introduction that, you
know, I left New Zealand the, the Arcadian, the, the simple
rural life of, of Hawke's Bay, which has this profound pull on

(07:23):
people, this localism, this, this energy of home.
It's a, it's a topic that certainly for my creative
practice, I've spent many years searching for outside of home
and a lot of my photographic works on my writing.
I, I, looking back now, I think it was asking that question of,
of home and what home means. And, you know, our own stories

(07:46):
as people who have come from faraway and in a sense, the, these,
these islands, the southern islands at the bottom of the
world, what do they mean? And in particular, this, this
kind of cycle that I've gone through personally now a couple
of times is of, of nostalgia, a return, a dismay and then an

(08:06):
eventual escape again. And this, this tension that I
feel with, with, with New Zealand as a place and certainly
coming back over the COVID yearsfor about 3 years in total and
kind of being stuck there for a variety of reasons beyond my
control. It was quite a fascinating
experience to reconnect with home and to see it for what it

(08:27):
is after having left. And, and something, I mean,
talking of the New Zealanders, you know, this process of living
abroad does make us question thenation and the idea of national
identity somewhat. And I, I do sometimes see New
Zealanders visiting Japan where I live and, and I can sometimes
tell they have like the silver Fern on their hat, They've got

(08:47):
some New Zealand like T-shirt, some kind of artifact, a
statement of self that is quite interesting because, you know, I
don't do that. I don't think perhaps beyond my,
my accent, which I can't really get away from.
But who are the New Zealanders? You know, who are we as a
people? Because I I don't know if I know
the answer to that question anymore, Mike.

(09:08):
I don't think we've ever really known that answer.
I think we've been struggling with it.
There was the great move in the 1930s into the early 40s of
cultural nationalism amongst the, the, the writers, the
poets, the artists of New Zealand, the Pacquiao ones,
trying to make a sense of, well,what does it mean to find
yourself here? And then there was a really
strange move just after that where there was a sense that

(09:31):
perhaps we were pale skinned Polynesians, we were the newest
Polynesians coming down here, that they quickly disappeared
again. And then we have a sense of,
well, we know we're no longer, we're not British.
And that was confirmed for us when Britain just turned its
back on us in 73 and said actually, we're off to we're off

(09:51):
to the Common Market and we had to suddenly scramble around to
try and work out who and where we were.
At the same time, we've had an ongoing influence of America on
this country from the, from the early 1920s onwards, at least
with the the influence of especially cinema.
New Zealand had a very high cinema attending population and

(10:12):
a lot of that was was cinema, not just books or ideas, popular
culture. We are, we grow up on the
popular culture of elsewhere andsometimes we make it our own and
we do our own versions of it. And so being a New Zealander is
a, is a, is a really interestingquestion because what are the
resources that we have to draw upon now?

(10:33):
I've just, I've just taught stage one class yesterday which
finished up with the the rise ofthe Maori Renaissance and the
Tamauri exhibition. And that question about, well,
we only valued what was in it when it went overseas and
suddenly America and Germany andelsewhere.
He said it was fantastic. And we thought, oh, what if they

(10:54):
think it's good? Then we might think it's good.
And then we came back and New Zealand started to engage with
it. And then I put up Bob Rocky's
famous cartoon from the MBR in 19/4/1984, which is called
Tapakiha, the the Gods and Treasures of the Pakiha.
And what's he got there? He's got the seaside batch, he's

(11:15):
got the, the, the BMW, the microwave, nothing of really
that comes through here. And that was a really
interesting cartoon because it was published in the MBR and he
was raising that question of well, what is Takia culture?
What is, what are the, the treasures and the tongue of

(11:37):
Pacquiao society that has developed here?
And I asked my my students, I said, well, here we are 40 odd
years on, what would you say? And a great silence came across
the room and some really puzzledfaces because they thought,
well, what is it that we have? How can, what do we have to draw
upon? What do we have to locate
ourselves upon? What do we know of what it means

(12:00):
to wrestle with being here? And I think that's an ongoing
question. And I think New Zealanders don't
really like to have to wrestle with those big questions because
then they, the loss or the lack starts to come out as well.
We don't really know our own history.
We don't we don't know our artists, we don't know our
writers. And so we tend to live

(12:21):
imaginatively elsewhere. Our bodies are here, but our
minds and our hopes and our dreams are often relocated
somewhere else. And that's, that's normal.
I mean, we grow up knowing otherplaces.
I mean, first time I went to NewYork, I felt at home.
Why? Because I'd seen so many films

(12:41):
and TV series and read so many books and magazines in New York.
And I was walking down through the streets of New York for this
feels like home. And yet it's not.
Why is that? And this is, I think, a very
common experience for New Zealanders.
Yeah, something this, this idea of tension is very interesting
to me. You know, I've got Maori

(13:02):
ancestry deep, deep up the line somewhere.
And I think we have been living through maybe a couple of
decades of a of a clear attempt to delineate that from, you
know, to peel that off from fromNew Zealand and create it as an
other. And that has maybe been to serve
some political means, some political ends.

(13:23):
But I, I, I, I'm often reminded of some, some of the early
whalers or some of the early, you know, so-called park your
house settlers who very quickly integrated and whether they were
felling Cody or, you know, doingsomething out on the land, they
basically integrated into Maori culture.
And that kind of idea of the white skin Polynesian really

(13:43):
resonates with me. You know, growing up in Hawke's
Bay, I mean, you can feel it. You know, there is like a, a
vibe of, of, of the farmer, the the rural man or woman who's
effectively of the land. And you know, New Zealand is
such an integrated society. There's been so many
intermarriages and all sorts of things that you, you can't

(14:04):
really peel it off. I don't think, at least
historically for people of whosefamilies have been here for
several generations. But more recently there has been
a project to say, well, you are you Tanga to Finoa or not?
And that maybe seems to be an imported idea or perhaps, or
perhaps not, But I've I've always found that interesting
because I don't feel that same tension.
And maybe this is just me being from, from of all places, but

(14:27):
that that's always set with me that if you find these old
photos of, of, of the Caori fellas or the Curry gum diggers,
you know, there's, there's, there's an integration there
that speaks to the, the origins of the country.
Certainly the, the ethos. I would think of the treaty as
well, that, you know, we are here and we are all now, now of
the land together. Well, it depends who has the

(14:50):
land. I think that's the, that's the
real question. I mean, the, the disposition of
land from Maori is what is a label enabled the position of
land by Paki ha. And that's, that's one of those
tensions that we're still tryingto resolve.
The second thing is that New Zealand has been primarily an
urban population for well over 100 years.

(15:13):
I grew up in small towns, kid inQueenstown in the early 70s,
then small town called Geraldinein the 1980s.
We even briefly lived in Hastings, where we were then.
I've lived in Dunedin and Wellington and around and now
I'm in in Christchurch. I sit between that rural small
town and the urban and I can understand the pull of both,

(15:39):
that the notion of one people, one land or two people, one land
sociologically always comes backto but but who?
Who has access to what land and how was that land gained or lost
and what are the ongoing social,political, economic impacts of

(16:01):
that? I mean, you can feel a an
emotive connection to the land as part of her.
I don't think anyone would deny that and that they can go back
generations. But the connections to those, to
that land, it is a different oneI would suggest from the one

(16:24):
that Maury have, which is land as central component of identity
over multiple generations. And that's that's an ongoing
tension that all settler societies have.
We, we are a settler society that at the same time is
unsettled often by questions andthat's an ongoing tension I

(16:45):
think we have. How do we get around that?
I don't think we, I don't think we get around that easily.
Was that idea imported? I don't think that the
unsettling wasn't imported. It it became as part of a
recognition that there was an imbalance of resources, there

(17:07):
was an imbalance of power, therewas an imbalance of outcomes.
And what gave rise in that? I mean, there were government,
there was government legislationthat enabled the government to
take whatever Maori Lander wanted that right up into the
1960s that was that was still happening.

(17:28):
And I think this is one of the one of the issues that we need
to work out. How do we live together
recognizing that we've got a history, which is often deeply
problematic. And I think the more we can talk
about our history rather than put it over to one side, then we
can start to engage how to live now and into the future because

(17:52):
societies aren't stable. And you're right there.
There is that, There is that intermingling, There is that
intermixing that goes all the way back.
And I think often on a personal level there is intermingling and
interpersonal relationships. But when it comes to questions
of outcomes, when it comes to questions of resources, when it

(18:16):
comes to questions of politics, suddenly those interpersonal,
often within a family, within friendships, within communities,
within workplaces, those, those issues start to then get frayed.
Because if we look at the outcomes, the outcomes haven't
been probably as equitable or asbalanced or as acknowledged as

(18:43):
they should be. And I think that's one of the,
that's an ongoing tension that Ithink that I think we will have
for, for quite a long time because we, we often wish to
believe that our history is over.
But we carry our history with us.
We carry our history within us. We carry our history within our
institutions, within our governments, within our genes,

(19:05):
in that way within our society. And so society itself is not a,
is not a finished project. And I think that's what we,
that's what I find interesting about New Zealand, as if we feel
as if the past is done and that is gone, that society is there.
We've got a new society. We just now start again.
We are always trying to live in many ways and the present into

(19:28):
the future rather than actually acknowledging the ongoing
presence of the past there. I mean, we carry, you're talking
about the influence of Hawk's Bay on you.
That's the past that you carry with you wherever you go.
Now how what was the access to Hawk's Bay for your family is
one of those interesting questions.
I mean this, I mean, and the question for Pacquiao or all new

(19:53):
settlers is we come here for a better life.
We came here for better material, for a better material
life, but at the expense of home.
What have we gained in getting what Pakiha or other new
settlers say this is a better material life for us.
But what have what have? What have Maori lost in that

(20:16):
transition? And why?
You mentioned earlier this this idea of a search for identity in
the 1930s, nineteen 40s and in an article you wrote for Plain
Sight you quote the mid century New Zealand poet and cultural
critic Rex Fairburn, who wrote in 1944.
We New Zealanders are a very complacent people and we love

(20:39):
flattery. We are passive, not active.
We are acted upon. We are to some extent
instruments used for purposes not our own.
It is because we don't realize it that we are so complacent.
And even in the 1940s we were, as Fairburn suggested, about 20
years behind England and Americaand 10 to 15 years behind
Australia. I haven't been able to track

(21:02):
down a copy of his original work, but certainly saying your
your your commentary on it, it seems very fascinating that now,
many decades later, this is still highly relevant to the
situation we experience today. Yeah, and that's why I like
Fabian. I mean, Fabian's another one who
wrote from England in the 1930s.He wrote back to New Zealand

(21:24):
saying he's he's lost amongst this English landscape, English
trees he needs, he wants to comeback to New Zealand and let the
Polynesian out in him out on theRantan, he said.
So he had this notion that he was somewhere, he was not an
Englishman. He was of this, he was a type of
new Polynesian. He would say.

(21:47):
And Fabian is asking really interesting questions, which is
why I think we always need to goback to him.
His answers are not always the the ones we might necessarily
want to have today. I mean, he was quite interested
in Douglas Credit for a start. He was a sort of an early social
creditor. There are some problematic
attitudes he has, but his questions are the ones that we
keep on coming back to. What does it mean to find
yourself here? How do we make sense of it,

(22:09):
especially when we are aware that elsewhere seems to be ahead
of us? Ahead of us in its culture, its
society, its engagements, its possibilities?
I mean, you're up in Japan in 2025.
I'm down here in Christchurch in2025.
Your 2025 is probably quite different.

(22:30):
So the 2025 in New Zealand, whenyou came back to New Zealand in
those years, did it feel like 2020 or 2090 where you had left?
Yeah, well, it's interesting, you know, that experience.
I undertook A photographic project when I was back in New
Zealand and this idea of the unchanging landscape of you can

(22:52):
go back to Wellington or Hastings and you can find
artifacts from a much earlier time.
But it's not that old either. It's not like Europe where you
can find the hundreds of years old, thousands of years old
structures. It's maybe at the most 80 years,
maybe 120 years. And so there's this kind of
little bit of history and then this long dreaming as the

(23:14):
Aboriginals would talk about, you know, there's there's
ancientness. And even for the Maori, though,
it doesn't go back that far. And so we almost come back to
this kind of ultimate Spinozaianidea, this the forests and, and
the kind of the, the jungle as as primordial soup from which
these dreams emerged. And there's something quite
profound about that, I think that there wasn't anyone around

(23:37):
to witness it. And from that materiality,
there's certainly for my photograph, my photography, this
materiality of say, the Kodi tree of the total as what we
then built our houses with. And sort of that that material,
that material was certainly a focus on mine.
But this like simultaneous lack of history and then profound
history, it was quite an interesting tension for me.

(23:59):
Yeah, I think it's very true. I mean, there's a great line
from New Zealand poetry, a land with too few lovers trying to
trying to understand it and makeit a friend.
And I think it occurs. I've written about how it occurs
in different ways in the two islands.
I mean, the South Island looks inward and the North Ireland
looks outward to the key, outward to the sea.

(24:19):
So we've got these two islands. There are many ways, 2 quite
different countries in themselves.
And they operate in many ways as2 quite distinct entities, 2
quite distinct countries. And there are different,
completely different landscapes,but also completely different,
different cultures in many ways develop between the two

(24:40):
countries within the one nation itself.
And I think this is part of the tension that you don't when you
move between the the places in this country, you realize how
different they are. I mean, if you go out to
Auckland, it's the fourth most diverse city in the world.
And when you're up there, yes, it's New Zealand, but it's a

(25:01):
completely different New Zealandto the one when you move out of
that and you go down South or you go into the provinces.
Now that's a common urban experience, but the the
distinction between the areas isquite, quite intense, I think in
New Zealand. And then the question is, what
do we have to draw upon to read being here?

(25:22):
What do we have to draw upon to make sense of what it is to find
yourself here? And we tell ourselves a lot of
stories. This is the best country in the
world to to raise kids. We're except if you look at all
our child abuse statistics and our violence against them, it's,
it's the best place in the country to raise certain kids
who are lucky. It's a really good place to

(25:46):
live. But if it's that good, then why
are so many people leaving because of the cost of living,
because of the limitation of opportunities.
And so there's, we tell two stories to ourselves.
There's a utopian 1 and a dystopian one at the same time.
And we're not very good at living in somewhere between a, a
utopia and a dystopia, which is the everyday.

(26:09):
And I think that's our tension. I mean, what is everyday life in
New Zealand? Well, we tend to flip flop
between utopia and dystopia. And I mean, if you look at our
politics, our politics is alwayson one's hands.
Whoever's in saying this is the best, this is fantastic.
This is the utopia. The other side saying, oh, no,
it's horrific. You're, you're causing a

(26:31):
dystopia to occur, which is in many ways, it's an exhausting
place to be in that way, becausewe're not very good at living
where we are. We are always in a sense between
a sort of ecstasy and despair. We could almost say it's a
society that suffers an identitycrisis in that way.

(26:57):
And we go back and you look at the high rates of alcohol and
drug abuse in this country, the long history of high, very high
levels of mental health issues in this country, very high
levels of suicide in this country.
I mean, it's what Gordon McLaughlin back in the 70s was
critiquing in the passionless people that we have the story

(27:17):
about ourselves, but underneath there's something missing.
And in many ways it's what we'remissing.
I would say is the ability to live in the everyday.
That's interesting. I feel like I want to reference
Heidegger here and, and sort of this idea that we must ask the
big questions, but we only have little answers.

(27:37):
And the side of being designed, you know, the, the life being in
the world with a capital B as opposed to just existing.
And I've something I've, I've noticed as well, when it comes
to New Zealand poetry or, or these kind of cultural
artifacts, there's this great empty void that I feel when it

(27:58):
comes to that relationship with the land.
Because it is that although there are obviously poets and
artists who have responded to this, what the land means to
them, the vast majority of people live in a very functional
kind of economic relationship tothe land.
And it doesn't have this mystical, perhaps spiritual
quality that you do see in otherplaces.
And I had this experience in Thailand a couple of years ago

(28:22):
when I went over for a, a business trip with the Thai
embassy, sharing some of New Zealand's agriculture, you know,
with some of my other work, someagrotech systems with, with
what's going with the people in Thailand.
And we visited a farm that had the, the, the water Buffalo and
the guy said, you know, there's these special marks that they

(28:44):
are looking out for in the slaughterhouses that signify
that it's a, it's a special animal, a reincarnated animal.
And there's a white mark that there was one animal he showed
us who had a white mark on its head.
And he said that it got spared from the slaughterhouse because
they saw that. And I thought that was the most
profound thing, that even thoughthey have this mechanical

(29:05):
farming system, these creatures are designed to be eaten, are
farmed to be eaten. When they see that spiritual
mark, they still go and take theanimal out and put it out in a
special place. And I wonder, you know, that
kind of relationship to nature and animals is not something I
don't think exists for the everyday Kiwi, whether they're

(29:25):
working in the farms or whether they work in the city.
And that's kind of a poetry of being that is quite a profound
idea to wrestle with. And, and I think maybe we try
and bring it in from the Maori culture, but that's kind of
hemmed in. It's in these little pockets
where you might have some, some native Bush, you might have some
kind of tiny far or some kind ofmyth.

(29:47):
Whereas for the, for the vast majority of people, land is this
commodity, this kind of fetish for real estate that's kind of
very contemporary now kind of a thing, you know?
It's scenery at most, and scenery is a commodity to be
bought and sold or to be transactionally encountered
with. I mean, I totally agree.

(30:10):
I mean, this is, this is what Charles Brasch was arguing back
in the 1940s and he was writing about this need to be able to
live with the land, to find a place as Paki ha on and with the
land as meaning, as value, as, as locatedness.
I mean, and he found it for himself in Central Otago.

(30:33):
He found it in in the mountains of Central Otago.
He found it also in the Poplar, which is really interesting.
He thought the Poplar as an introduced tree in that
landscape spoke to him because his his family, the
Hallenstein's family were there in Queenstown from the 1860s.
And so he he had this connectioninto that land and that was what

(30:56):
Landfall as a journal of literature and culture was
trying to to engage with. What does it mean to find
yourself here? What does it mean to try and
make sense of it? And his first editorial, he was
asking about how what type of Pacquiao culture might evolve.
And he said, well, if we look atMaori, I mean what they were
able to accomplish mean for Pacquiao.

(31:18):
It always depends on the spiritual resources of the
people. And he's not talking in
explicitly religious terms. He's talking about an attitude
of life, an attitude of being. In this sort of Heideggerian
way. We could say, what does it mean
to be thrown? I mean in Heidegger's sense,
what does it mean to be being thrown into the world and find

(31:39):
yourself in this country? You know, the, the, the idea,
the question, Yeah, this, this idea of, of the, the chiefly
trees, the, the, the Koudi, the Tortura and the Dimu.
Imagine adding the 4th to that the, the Poplar or the English
arc. That is quite an interesting
idea. I mean alongside the great

(32:01):
messengers of the Tui and the fantail, maybe we can add the
Blackbird and this kind of integration.
I mean, certainly Christchurch, which is a city I've grown to
love more and more. It is, in a sense, this kind of
idyllic English town upon upon the plains of the South Island
of New Zealand. And it's also not English
because it's not like anything in the UK.

(32:23):
I've never even been to the UK, but my ancestor went back Once
Upon a time, took one look around and realized why, why,
why his ancestor had left. And so there's this kind of,
yeah, this hauntology. It's like an England that
doesn't exist anymore. And well.
Even in the 1930's the the poet and writer Darcy Chris Will down

(32:44):
here basically got run out of town for suggesting in the press
that New Zealand that Christchurch wasn't actually
English. It was closer to a Midwest
American city. OK.
And so there's, there's always been this tension.
I mean, what we did down here was create instant history on
the swamp. I mean, we had Neo Gothic in
architecture, which was a fake medievalism, an imagined

(33:09):
medievalism looking backwards inthe midst of industrializing
Britain. And what do we do?
We came out here and we plopped down as instant history on the
swamp. And so we had a fake medievalism
of the cathedral, of the art centre, of what is now the art
centre, but was the University of, of Christ College of the

(33:29):
Museum. And this is the interesting
thing down here after the quakes, what have we built?
Well, we've built back a city that is everywhere and nowhere
at the same time. And so, I mean, you come to
Christchurch now, the buildings don't don't say anything or
being anywhere. Most of them they're they're of

(33:50):
a non place. I mean, what we've got is this
Garden City, this notion of this, this, this garden in the
wilderness. But actually, if you look at
tree cover, Christchurch's 13% tree cover, it's actually got
the least, the least tree cover of of any city in the country.
Oh, really? Yes, it really is.
It's really interesting. And so we tell these mythologies

(34:12):
to ourselves. I mean, all countries, all, all
societies, all, all groupings have mythologies, the stories
they live within. What's interesting is what the
stories are that we tell each other.
And I think when, and this is one of the big tensions of this
country at the moment is what are the stories we're telling
each other? What are the stories we want to
live within? Who's, who's telling the

(34:33):
stories? How do we, this is the, the
question about what is our history going to be taught?
This is the question about, well, what does it mean to be a
New Zealander? What, what are our stories we
live within? And I think your, your Deridian
hauntology is a really good thing to throw in here because
we have this sort of this haunting of a past, but also

(34:55):
this haunting of a possibility. What is it that we were?
Where do we go wrong? Why did we not end up what we
thought we were going to end up being as a country, as a people?
Why, given all that we see around us, are we not doing
better? This is one of the big questions

(35:16):
I think that we've got. Why, in a country that on the
face of it has so much to offer,do so many increasingly feel it
has so little to offer for them that they feel they should
leave? Now, I can understand why people
would want to leave for economicreasons, for cultural reasons,

(35:38):
for social reasons, That's that's part of it.
But we have a disproportionate malaise, I would say, in this
country, given the distances. We have to go elsewhere.
And James K Bexter talked about the the oceanic desert that
surrounded us, and I think that is part of it.

(35:59):
We realized suddenly we are a long way from anywhere.
And so we've had to try and do it ourselves, but we haven't
really had the resources to do it properly because we've also
had to do it very quickly. Well, but again, coming back to
Heidegger, and I think he might be quoting TS Eliot when he
talks about we're not what we should be, we're not what we

(36:21):
could be. And I think this is really
interesting because maybe we could talk about education in a
little bit. But certainly it took me leaving
New Zealand to encounter a lot of the ideas that have formed my
creative practice and talking about cities, hauntology, this

(36:42):
kind of lens of understanding symbols and meanings.
I got exposed to a little bit ofthat in university, but it
really took me going out to to activate that latent seed that
had been placed. And I do really see this lack of
a poetic mode of communication within New Zealand as a major

(37:02):
challenge because it's quite hard to talk about, you know,
the, the, the city with no history upon the swamp without
someone telling you to fuck off.And that's like, certainly, I
don't know if that's been your experience, but it's kind of
like, you know, people get on with it.
There's a pragmatism and I thinkit is an honorable pragmatism
that, you know, we've got a, we've got a job to do, you know,

(37:25):
roll up your sleeves, put on thegummies and, and get to work.
But at the same time, our English tradition certainly has
that, whether it's the Scottish Enlightenment, the the Waverly,
you know, whatever the, the history of the land is, you
know, there's always been peoplecoming along and really looking
at that from a romantic kind of poetic point of view.

(37:47):
But in New Zealand, I mean, there is a history of poetry,
but it's not something most people are aware of.
And So what are your thoughts onthat role of, say, the poetic,
the cultural artifacts that helpus and the education required to
kind of even know that they're out there?
It's, it's a great loss, I think, because I think what,

(38:08):
what culture, the, what poetry, what literature, what painting
does or even music, it helps ground you.
It helps locate you. I mean, we grow up being
grounded elsewhere through our cultural acts.
What, what we access in, in terms of culture.
And then suddenly you realize there were people who were doing

(38:28):
it here and trying to do it here.
And how do we, how do we make sense of that attempt to do it
here and communicate it? I mean, what does New Zealand
sound like? I mean, that was one of the big
questions someone like Lou Byrnewas wrestling with.
What does it, what does it mean to try to do something

(38:52):
creatively down here? Well, this is what the the
cultural nationalists were doingin the Caxton crowd and that was
recognized over in Britain by people like John Lehman as they
were doing something which hadn't been done elsewhere.
They were trying to make sense of a different type of modernity
down here. But then we've we've forgotten
about that. My stage one class yesterday,

(39:14):
hardly anyone had heard of Connor McCann.
Oh. Really.
Yeah, yeah. And that's a common experience.
I mean, people don't know about Connor McCann.
I can remember 20 years ago, I had a class where I was talking
about what I called Pacquiao profits and I was talking about
Alan Kuno. And the only person in a in a

(39:35):
third year and honors class of about 15 who had heard of Kuno
was someone who had gone to private school in England
because that had been part of the English curriculum over
there. The New Zealanders had never
heard of Kuno. And I think that's one of the
challenges that we have. I mean, if I went and said fair
burn to most people, they wouldn't know what is happening

(39:55):
here. But then in a lot of areas we're
not very good at dealing with New Zealand history.
We're not very good at teaching.I mean, New Zealand history
courses tend to struggle in a lot of New Zealand universities
trying to deal with New Zealand literature, New Zealand arts,
New Zealand culture. Trying to talk just about New
Zealand society and its history is, is problematic because we

(40:17):
don't think it's real. We don't think it has an
adequate history or we could saysociologically cultural capital.
To to deem it worthy because what use is of it?
It's not going to help me if I go overseas.
And I think that's one of the big things that we always look
to overseas as to where the realis.

(40:38):
And in many ways this is the desert of the real in Jijete.
In terms, I mean, we are, this is the desert of the real down
here. The real is seen as absent in
that way. And yet we know it's not.
But it asks difficult questions of us.
So we need to to think about what is it?
What is it? Why don't we wish to engage with

(41:02):
the poets? Why don't we wish to engage with
the literature? Why don't we wish to engage with
the artists? And the answer is because unless
it's comforting, it raises too many difficult questions.
And that when we don't like to deal with those question of that

(41:22):
question of feeling, because that question of feeling means
you got to confront the self. And that means, what does it
mean to find myself here? And I think for those who are
born here to find yourself here is a different question from
those who chose to come here, because suddenly you're aware of

(41:46):
both possibility and limitation.And I think that's part of it
because we're aware of the possibility of elsewhere and we
look around and what we tend to see is limitation, not
possibility here. Yeah, it's interesting.
Again, my journey out of New Zealand has involved a lot of
self reflection. And you know, I went to

(42:07):
Queenstown actually for the first time this year in my
entire life. My grandfather has never been to
the South Island. There's this great man, I want
to say, you know, we shit on ourselves and and I'm coming
back to national character, you know, I think this is this is
part of the package. But there is this sense that

(42:28):
whatever is local is of less value.
And I've always found interesting.
I've got, you know, a lot of friends from Asia, different
parts of the world who I was, you know, those were my people
when I was back in Wellington over those three years of COVID
and that and their experience ofNew Zealand is vastly different.
You know, they can't think of anything better than going for a
road trip around the South Island, whereas I think that's

(42:50):
the most horrendous thing in theworld.
I they can't think of anything better than going to Rotorua and
going to the Hot Springs. Whereas for me that's, it's
torturous and this kind of idea that I've had to learn to see
what is actually beautiful and available and abundant around me
and see that through the haze ofthis complacency, this, I don't

(43:14):
know what we call it this, this negativity towards the South in
a sense. Because I, I think this is
something you quote another, I believe it was an American
anthropologist, I can't quite recall his name talking in the
1950s about the way the New Zealanders kind of they, they,
they, they seek to sort of destroy themselves in a way
because they're so friendly on the outside.

(43:35):
And so all this anger or kind ofenergy that would say in an
American context to be, you know, just be spoken and instead
goes inward and there's. Time on ourselves and I think
that's that's part of the SA. I've got a book just behind me
and I think that's another thingwe don't read these accounts.
I mean, that's certainly I've I've always been very interested

(43:57):
in the scenes of how the others have seen as what has happened.
That's my original historical training.
And so I've always gone to the the big book sales and gathered
up these things that are gathering dust elsewhere.
Nobody's ever gone and read them.
But I think the other thing is to think about tourism.
I mean, tourism is going to someone else's every day and
seeing there every day as if it's exotic, as if it's

(44:19):
different. I mean, what does it mean when
you live in a tourist country like New Zealand?
Well, you're almost wondering why this is just every day and
people are coming and say, wow, this is incredible, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And you're looking around going
yes, but you don't have to live here.
You visit here. And I think this is an ongoing,

(44:41):
this is one of the questions of modernity.
What is in modernity? We now have the, the everyday
person tends to have a greater possibility to go to someone
else's everyday. But how do we interpret it?
And then we come back and we're like, well, how do we make sense
of this? I mean, you talk about not
coming down here. Fearburn had gone to Britain.
He'd gone to spend some time on Norfolk Island, but he didn't

(45:04):
come down to the South Island till 1947.
And when he came, he was, it wasseen as such an event that they
did like a piss take and they, they went out and they drove out
and picked him up in the airportin this car and brought him in
and ferried him around as if he was this great visiting
potentate. Just as part of the that, that
sense that here he was, he had finally come down here.

(45:28):
But I think if for, for many people in New Zealand, I mean,
what is, what is in the South Island?
I mean, it's tourists and herebyDragons basically.
And it's like, why would you go down there?
There's nothing here. I mean, I've done lots of Rd.
trips around around New Zealand,especially when I was at
university. We'd get in a big old car and
we'd drive around and I got to learn the country in that way.

(45:53):
And I think that's the other thing.
We're not very good at actually learning the country and
learning it takes time. And you think about how we
drive. We tend to drive very fast from
A to B, to get from point A to Bwithout actually looking about
where we are. And I think it's that it's the

(46:13):
journeying around that enables you to get a sense of what this
place is. But especially now, I mean, we
tend to just want to get on a plane and fly over the top,
which is understandable because it's a long, torturous and
probably pretty dangerous and expensive way to go by land.
But we don't have that, those narratives often built into us

(46:34):
now of the travel, of going around, of travelling back and
forth through the country and making sense of it.
But also having explained to youas you go through that there is
a history here that you can access and what is happening
here as we look very much on thesurface, and I think that's what
we lack is cultural depth. What I want to reference

(46:56):
actually, I got this book from my grandfather, Steam, Steel and
Splendor about the old New Zealand Railways by David
Leitch. And this is from like the early
90s. And in the preface it talks
about this book takes a journey back in time to the 1950s and
60s, a period that many readers probably regard as the good old

(47:17):
days. Although some technologically
refined comforts of today were absent, so too was much of the
present day malaise. Times were prosperous.
Unemployment and it's connected crimes were virtually null.
Social services functioned properly, there was a general
sense that all was well and of course for rail enthusiasts,
esteem was still prominent. And this is of course the New

(47:40):
Zealand railways that were highly uneconomical.
They didn't, they didn't run on time, nothing worked.
And all of that in a sense got washed away with the neoliberal
reforms of the 1980s, this kind of great modernization of the
New Zealand economy. And so coming into the side of
economics of kind of where we were at today.

(48:00):
I'd be really interested to hearyour thoughts on that because
this was obviously before my time, but it seems as if there
was a great turning with 4th Labor with the the longer years
with Roger Douglas and in a sense that there was a
disconnect that happened there from this, this past of 1950s

(48:21):
New Zealand or not. Yeah, that past had already
gone. That past had already declined.
I mean, 73 is really the turningpoint.
OK, 73, British entry to the Common Market, the oil shocks.
And we started to have to work out who and where we were.
We were struggling all the way through the 70s into the 80s.

(48:42):
But 84 happened because in many ways it had to.
I mean, I, I lived through 84. I mean, I was, I was just too
young to vote in 84. I was 17 last year of high
school. But I lived through that transit
and the country opened up. The country opened up in an

(49:03):
incredible way. There was possibilities and
there was great destruction. At the same time, I think, I
mean, the Maori unemployment rate went up to 27% over that
time. Pacquiao when went up to 7.
And so those are the things thatwe have to remember.
But at the same time, it opened up the country and made it
different. Now I would trace a lot of that

(49:24):
change back to the impact of the81 Springbok tour where the old
New Zealand got challenged by a new emerging New Zealand who
wanted different choices, different possibilities, a
different country and I think that laid the seeds 484.
But I wouldn't want to go back and live in the New Zealand pre
1984 because I remember what it was like and I remember it's

(49:49):
great limitations and how the country was struggling.
And if you go back and read about what was then it was
economically, it was a basket case in many ways.
We've gone into neoliberalism, but we haven't really done it
properly as well. And I know that's a heretical
thing to say, but I also wonder where we, we, we are caught

(50:11):
between. And so we, we do it in a sense
on the welfare state without doing it for opening up business
in a way that is sustainable. I mean it was meant to be the
the more markets option that wasmeant to deliver this great
possibility. Well, it gave us more choice,

(50:33):
but it didn't really didn't increase our productivity, it
didn't increase our economic performance in the way that it
should. And so we are continually in a
in a long interregnum. I would say we're in an
interregnum and in between timesin which 84 is still there.

(50:56):
But I mean, every government since 84 has been neoliberal in
different ways, but they haven'treally understood neoliberalism.
And we want choice. That's that's part of the
agency. But we give some people more
choice than others. But we also haven't seen the
delivery that was promised of a more market system actually

(51:18):
opening up and giving more choice to people.
I mean, this was meant to give more choice to those without.
That was part of the argument for neoliberalism, that we that
were there were those without. We give people more choice.
We trust them to make choice. We facilitate that and they will
make be able to make choices that are in their best interests
without. But what we didn't do was remove

(51:39):
the frames that limited the choices for too many people.
So we're we're neither, we're neither nor neither all country
at the moment. And I think this is where we
are. We're stalled.
We're permanently in second gearwith the handbrake on.
Yeah, Well, you write in anotherarticle in New Zealand the way
we have it, you say one problem is that while we like to think

(52:02):
we are a first world nation, in fact, like many developing
nations, we rely heavily on agricultural commodities that
face protectionist barriers in overseas markets.
We're not very good at diversifying the economy.
You know, New Zealand is broken and and struggling to develop as
it should. And when I look at that the

(52:23):
project of neoliberalism, and there's a very good documentary,
you might know, it's called Revolution.
It talks about the, the longer years and, and, and Roger
Douglas and the reforms that happened.
I look at the the footage of like Wellington.
And there's, there's another documentary called Hometown
Boomtown, which talks about the developments of Wellington

(52:44):
around about that same period. And you've got so Bob Jones,
you've got Michael Fowler, theseguys who are like, man,
Wellington's going to be the newManhattan.
And they were building all the skyscrapers.
And yet today, all of the Wellington that I know is from
that period, nothing new has been built.
And there was this great celebration of this underground

(53:05):
arcade that they built that tookthem out five years.
And, you know, here in Japan, you know, it's a much bigger
economy, but that stuff happens every day.
And so I, I sometimes wonder if we had like this kind of good
start and then it just sort of peed it out in a classic Kiwi
fashion. And here we are today where the
pipes are broken. You know, that is the meme.
Literally the pipes outside my old office on Featherstone St.

(53:26):
leaking out onto the street, thelifeblood of of why order coming
out and, you know, spilling out onto the onto the ash felt.
And it's like somehow we're stuck between this presentism,
which I think you write about quite a lot that, you know, it's
always the issue of the day. The government can't really see
beyond the next polling period versus the long term debt of

(53:54):
having poor infrastructure. And then and and also education,
again, as you write about that, New Zealand's education system
isn't preparing people to ask these questions.
So there's a lot, there's a lot in there.
But I guess what, what is the way forward if we also recognize
that, you know, the radical sideof the New Zealand psyche is

(54:15):
also kind of there. And, and I think this, I guess
what I want to pose to you, Mike, this idea of complacency
and then the, the knee jerk reaction and the, the radical
reform that New Zealand is also able to do.
Is it, I mean, is it important that we find a middle ground
between those two or how do you see it?
Yeah, I, I think, I think it's agood way of putting it.
We, we are complacent and then we snap into action and then we

(54:38):
slip back to complacency. That's right.
We sort of wake up, have a stagger and do something.
Something must be done. Let's do it now.
Oh, that's a bit exhausting. Let's go as a sort of longies
cup of tea. Oh, let's go and have a cup of
tea now. Yeah.
And we have a few scones at the same time and then we'll have a
bit of a nap and then, oh, it's all OK, we've got to wake up
again. And it's a bit like how we're

(54:59):
talking earlier about the, the highs and the lows.
And I think in many ways New Zealand's a manic depressive
country. We have, we have big highs and
then we have these lows, but we're not very balanced in
between. And I think we, we suffer in a
lot of ways from this. I mean, you're right about
Wellington. I mean, I, I was lucky enough to
live in Wellington in the mid 90s at that time when it was the

(55:22):
last boom town, when it was a fantastic place to live, to be a
younger person. But then it went into decline.
There was a brief period when Christchurch was a was a great
place in the late 80s. It felt like something new was
taking off. And then it fell and we had, we
had periods of negative growth in Christchurch before the

(55:43):
quakes. I mean, whatever on forgets in
Christchurch was that the centreof the town was dying before the
quakes. It wasn't the the quakes.
In a sense, we're meant to provide something new.
Auckland goes through boom and bust.
We're we're not really sure whatwe need or we know what we need,
but that takes a bit of effort and takes a bit of change and it

(56:04):
means that we have to become a different type of people
perhaps, and maybe that's a challenge for us.
We have to take education seriously and education
seriously all the way back down to preschool.
We have to live in a different way as a family in a sense.
We have to care for, we have to care for each other and not just

(56:24):
a sense that we live with each other, but we live for each
other. We have to have a sense that
it's worth planning for the future.
And we have to invest in our infrastructure, not just put it
off because, well, I don't want to.
I don't want that. I want this over here at the
stage. We have to have a politics that

(56:46):
is actually talking about a nation as a project into the
future, not just the best business case for where we are
now for a certain group. And I think that's those are our
tensions where we've got a very limited horizon.

(57:10):
We believe that managers, we we don't like managerialism, but we
have a huge amount of managerialism.
We've got the sense that if we've got a problem, let's have
a committee and a committee is action.
And this was being talked out byBill Pearson back in the 1950's.

(57:30):
The freightful sleepers. I mean that the New Zealand
character. We've got a problem, let's have
a committee. The committee's decided, well,
that's it. Rather than actually saying,
well actually that's only the start of it.
How do we then ensure that something happens?
The big question for is really, do we like being a society here

(57:52):
with other people, or do we livewith and for other people as
well As for ourselves? Or do we tend to live primarily
for ourselves in a very transactional way with other
people? And that goes back to the
underlying question as well. What's the purpose?
What's the meaning of being a New Zealander?

(58:15):
Which already will then create crowds of chorus of sort of
wanker, intellectual wanker, allthose sorts of the way you're
asking those questions for, they're not important, but
they're actually the the fundamental question of being,
yeah, what's, what does it mean to be a New Zealander with
others? Well, to add to that as well, I

(58:38):
mean, a common occurrence everyone will know who's
travelled is that New Zealand doesn't even exist because as
far as everyone's concerned, we're Australian.
And it's sort of constantly, youknow, I have to remind people,
no, you know, my ancestors passed through Australia.
They were, they were the guards on the conflict ship, I'll have
you know, but they weren't Australian.

(58:58):
And this, this is an interestingplace because it means we're
sort of defining ourselves in relation to something else that
we're not. And we're also not English,
though we do have some compatibility there on a
cultural level. But coming back to this idea of
manic depressive as a nation, a national character, I find this
very interesting because what I had written down here is that,

(59:21):
you know, it may perhaps there'sa sense of schizophrenia as
well. And that this incredible
complacency is 1 personality type that is again coupled with
the ongoing radical reform, whether it was COVID lockdowns
or, you know, neoliberal reformsthat I think, I mean, you say we
didn't go far enough. I think though from what I've
studied that it was quite a massive change, especially in

(59:43):
the farming sector and IT. Was a massive change.
When I say didn't go far enough,I mean, we, we started
something, yeah. And then we stopped and we
stalled and we're not sure. And in many ways we talk about
being against neoliberalism, butwe never got out of it.
This is the this is the interesting thing that even

(01:00:04):
though there are a lot of peopleout there say, oh, we're against
neoliberalism, we haven't managed to extract ourselves
from it because our politics, welike the notion of agency.
I mean, that's one thing. We like the name.
I mean, we've got to remember too.
I mean Foucault. Liked Hakes.

(01:00:27):
Why? I'm not a conservative.
He saw that as agency, as something new.
And so on the one hand, we have this notion, I want to have
agency. But at the other time, what we
often find is that we'd like to be told what to do at the same
time, because we don't, if we'retold what to do means we don't
have to think about it. We'd like someone to say, well,

(01:00:48):
this is actually what you shoulddo.
I want agency until it's a big question.
And then you tell them, oh, you make the decision, you do what
you do. And so we're stuck between those
two things. And so we're not really sure as
to where we need to go or what we want to do.
I know what I want to do for myself.
But on a bigger question, it's your job.
You do it until we find that in the end, well, I don't like what

(01:01:11):
you do and we I'm again, Pearsonsaid.
I mean, we like the strong leader until we don't.
I mean, and this is the interesting thing with the COVID
lockdown, we were just so bloodycom compliant.
And that was the interesting thing until suddenly we weren't.
I mean, and that was the interesting thing.
We were very compliant and then we went into open rebellion in

(01:01:34):
many ways, rather than being a mature response, it was either
nothing or let's just have a huge sort of eruption of outrage
rather than being a mature country and working a way
through as to well, how might wedo this in a more sensible
fashion then either or. Well, with that as well, I mean,

(01:01:57):
coming back to this again, this kind of clinical psychology of a
nation, the COVID, yeah, example, most recent relevant
example perhaps, but certainly it got bottled up.
And it was really interesting for me as someone on the wrong
side of that, as, as a heretic in the eyes of the state that I,

(01:02:17):
I think, you know, the, the compliance was, was
overwhelmingly incredible. You know, it's, it's a country
that had never experienced totalitarianism or, or
authoritarianism and yet here they were lockstep, single
source of truth, all these memesthat have come out of that
period. And that was quite shocking for
me. And in part has pushed me

(01:02:38):
towards asking more of these questions about the, the humble
New Zealanders who I thought were my brothers and sisters.
And yet here they were actively avoiding me and, and reneging on
me. And, and I think again, as
intellectuals, perhaps not maybeyou more than me, but I mean, I
feel like, you know, asking these questions and we're
pushing things that people are not comfortable with and that

(01:02:59):
maybe belays, perhaps comes backto education.
People aren't qualified with thereading of the history of
political thought to know that what happened under the Labour
government during COVID was a totalitarian thing that they
actually pushed too far and theyimprint, you know, pushed into
people's rights. But if you don't know that and
you're scared you're going to follow the leader and.

(01:03:21):
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think it's a really interesting experience to look
back on because a couple of things are there.
I mean, it's a bit like the the rise of the question of free
speech, which is now seen as primarily a hard right thing.
But actually, I mean, the history of free speech came out
on the left. I mean, the civil liberties in

(01:03:43):
New Zealand, the Civil LibertiesUnion arose against the the
waterfront restrictions in New Zealand, which most people don't
know anything about in 1951. All the strikes, yeah, the
strikes, yeah. That's where civil liberties
really arose, because the government actions against the
strikers. They were bashing them over the
head, right? And you weren't allowed to give

(01:04:03):
support to anybody striking all these sorts of things.
And so you had the rise of the Civil Liberties Union at that
stage because civil liberties and they, they arose from the
left. What is interesting is that now
the rise of free speech is seen as a right wing thing, when
actually as I think it's a humanrights thing.
And I think this is where we're not really sure about human

(01:04:25):
right. We tend to say human rights
occurs on the left or the right rather than actually say, well,
it should be questioning limitations on the rights of
being human, whether it comes from the left or the right.
And one of the challenges of talking about what happened in
New Zealand over the COVID yearsis it's still incredibly raw and

(01:04:47):
incredibly partisan. And so it's hard to have a
proper sensible discussion aboutit because it was also part of a
mass populism. And when you talk about the
populism of Trump, but we had our own populism that was

(01:05:08):
occurring at this stage. And nobody wants to think of
Arden as a populist leader, but she was.
And that is what was actually happening over the COVID period
was a type of New Zealand populism that was occurring in
the claim that this was of the best interest for the country.

(01:05:31):
But there was very little debate.
And we, it's very difficult to go back and talk about this now
and in this country because it'sstill seen as incredibly
partisan. And the argument is, well, you
want everybody to die. No, it wasn't about people to
die. But we have to think about what
it is we did and how we responded and what did it mean

(01:05:53):
to decide to treat people in different ways and exclude.
And this is one of the interesting things that the
demand of in the public good. Yeah, We were not very good at
being able to put that forward in a way that was able to bring

(01:06:16):
people on board. It was it was very Manichaean.
I mean, we would it would becamea battle between the forces of
light and the forces of darkness.
I mean, probably too many peoplein New Zealand watched Star
Wars. I don't know, something like
that. I mean the.
Dark side, yeah. Yeah, the dark side.
And so you've got, you've got this side over here who are
wrong. And this is the side of the good
and the great and the true. And those who agree.

(01:06:40):
Now, I got, I got the COVID injection.
Yeah, I wore a mask. But I could understand why
people did not. And I think they had a right not
to. And I think the locking down is

(01:07:00):
well, it what it did is it, it broke a country that was already
fraying and we haven't recovered.
I think as a society, we have long COVID.
I think economically we haven't long COVID.
I think conceptually we have long COVID.
I think politically we have longCOVID.
Educationally, we definitely have long COVID in this country

(01:07:21):
because we haven't actually recovered from that, that COVID
lockdown and, and response in a way that many other countries
have. And I think that is telling for
us as a country. Why have we not recovered in
ways other countries have? Why have we struggled?
Why is it still such a raw topicin this country more than

(01:07:42):
others? And a lot of that is because we
went into it under prepared as acountry to be able to live with
each other. We were we were divided and
fractured and fraying before we went in.
And then suddenly we were there was a sort of a soft, soft

(01:08:05):
totalitarianism that that emerged then saying this would
put me offside with a lot of people, but it was very
totalitarian. I mean, it was it was very
Titanic. Here's the totemic leader.
Here is the pulpit of truth. Here is the roll call of the
dead. Here is the warning of the
Sinner. These are the sinners either to

(01:08:26):
say we're going to save. And these people over here,
well, they are, they are the damned.
Here's the calling out of the transgressor.
I mean, it's incredibly religious.
And that was what really fascinated me as somebody looks
at the study of religion as well.
I mean, it was, it was an incredibly religious response in

(01:08:46):
this country for a country that doesn't have religion or sees it
doesn't have religion. It was civil religion on
steroids in that way. Yeah, well, this is interesting,
the manic depressive nature of the country, this, this, this
moment, this crisis that we experienced.
I do wonder whether ideas of clinical psychology could be

(01:09:08):
invoked here. Where is there a not a kind of a
counselling or a dialogue, a great discussion to be had.
And perhaps, you know, we can think of it as a positive that
maybe from this crisis we could have that conversation.
Because certainly one of the reasons I left the second time
was because that long COVID thatyou describe of the economy of

(01:09:29):
the people, of the society that was, that was suffocating.
And I come to Japan, you know, I've just been to Hong Kong, you
know, traveling around, you know, these countries that have
got like real political issues and economic issues.
But there's still like an ear oflike trying your best moving
forward, or I hate to say it, progress perhaps.

(01:09:51):
And, and, and that's maybe an outside perspective, but
compared to the intimacy that I knew the way I intimately knew
New Zealand, it just felt suffocating.
And these these people who I think who took the, the baptism
of, of the COVID science to heart and they really ran with

(01:10:11):
that. I feel like that a lot of them
have broken people that I know, friends that sort of, you know,
their religion has proven to be false.
And I'm reminded a lot. You might be familiar with
Giorgio Gambon who wrote extensively The epidemic is
politics and how, as you say, ithad became religious and
particular in what is relativelysecular countries such as New

(01:10:33):
Zealand. We took it so seriously.
And I do want to come back to this question of God, if it's OK
Mike, because you, you, you taught religious studies, your
PhD was on theology and church history.
You're also interested in radical theology, which which
which is interesting. But I wonder what what your
thoughts are on that relationship between

(01:10:56):
Christianity, in particular the formation of New Zealand
identity, and perhaps how we have drifted from ideas of the
church potentially? Yeah, I mean, I, I even did the
the cartoon History of Religion in New Zealand, which was
looking at how how we've dealt with it.
For me, it comes back to this question of the nomos, the world

(01:11:16):
view, and that that is the religious function of a society.
I mean, as Duke, I'm see as a society and a religion, they
reflect each other. What we've got in New Zealand is
a society that was, is without anomos, without a world view to
rest itself upon. I mean, that's one thing that
Moridom has. It's got, it's got this, it's

(01:11:38):
got a world view. I mean for Paki Ha.
To Al Mowry, right? Yeah, yeah.
To Al Mowry. I mean, what's to Al Pacquiao?
I mean, this, this, that's a serious question.
I mean, because we had something, but we we, we gave up
the framework without thinking. That's what's going to be the
the societal outcome. And I mean the the opposite of

(01:12:01):
no MOS, the lack of no MOS leadsto enemy and enemy
meaninglessness, nihilism. And as Duke Umm sees, I mean,
the outcome of an on me in the end is suicide.
It's that it's that despair, that unhappiness.

(01:12:21):
Now, I don't think we can go back.
We're not going to go back to Christianity.
But what we need is some world view that some story, some
mythos, some cultural creation. I mean, the line between culture
and religion is, is where do youdraw the line where stunning
stops being religious and startsbeing cultural again?

(01:12:44):
But it's the thing, what are thestories we live within?
I mean, and that was the interesting thing about COVID
suddenly gave us a story to believe in.
It gave us a a myth and IA language, a world view to
believe in. But it set us against each other

(01:13:06):
and then it was then we lost faith.
We had we had this sort of the the the collapse of faith.
I mean, This is why I do. And if the country because
nobody could believe in her again.
I mean, and that was a trouble because we we put all our hope.
Too many people believed and aredoing as a savior figure and
politicians can never be our saviours.

(01:13:27):
I mean, we know if we believe inif we want to, we want.
This is sort of an idolatry thatwe actually have when we want to
believe that politicians will save us.
What we, what we do lack, though, is the meaning making
that religion provides, which isritual meaning making history,

(01:13:49):
tradition, community. I mean, what does religion do,
really, Gary? And really Gary?
No, really Gary, religion binds us together.
Really, Gary, It enables us to reread existence, what it is we
we leave religion behind, but we're not.
But we also don't have a culture, therefore to draw upon.

(01:14:10):
I mean, culture can provide thatreligious response.
That means what we were talking about at the start.
I mean, that was that move of cultural nationalism, that move
of the poets, the writers, the artists articulating being and
meaning and place and story. But we don't have that either.

(01:14:32):
We don't tend to engage with it.And so we're left unmoored.
I mean, there's nothing to to hold us steady.
And so in a sense, we'd lost ourcollective mind and an act of
faith over COVID, which is really interesting how we did
that. And then suddenly we crashed out
of it and we don't know what to hold on to now and we're not

(01:14:58):
sure what to draw upon. And I think that is that
religious question. And it is we don't have, we
don't have a positive civil religiosity.
We don't have that civil religion that we can
participate. And I mean, ANZAC Day is what
we're trying to do it. But ANZAC Day is about somewhere

(01:15:18):
else and it's about a blood sacrifice.
We have Waitangi Day, but Waitangi Day is always contested
and we're not the foundation of Waitangi is contested in this
country. So it's always going to be a
civil religion that is disputatious rather than holds
us together. And so then we're not really

(01:15:41):
sure what to place our, our faith in, what to place our, our
meaning and what, what, where dowe stand to ground ourselves to
interpret? I mean, what's the hermeneutic
basis of a New Zealander? That might be the sort of the
way we can think about religionsare hermeneutic.
They help us interpret self in the world.

(01:16:01):
What? What do we use to interpret
being a New Zealander, especially at Paki Haan New
Zealander? That's the big question.
You, you mentioned that you don't think Christianity will
come back from New Zealand and Iam curious, I guess of two
things. Number one, what was the
Christian origins of New Zealandin terms of the missionary work
and a lot of the early stuff in in your studies?
But secondly, why you think it isn't going to come back?

(01:16:26):
Well, two things. OK, so the, the Christian, the
Christianity that came into New Zealand was evangelical
Protestant plus also some Catholicism up in the North came
in with the missionaries. And then and what we saw was the
missionising of Maori and a lot of them, the self missionising

(01:16:47):
of Maori. I mean a lot of, a lot of the
mission work, the conversion of Maori was by other Maori.
Then you had this event, then you had this 19th century
evangelical Protestant plus someCatholicism come in.
But what we didn't want to do was import the the disputes, the

(01:17:11):
crisis of elsewhere. So the first day of the first
Parliament in New Zealand, 1954,the first debate was should we
open with prayer? And we had a variety of
different faiths and no faiths in Parliament.
The argument was in the end, OK,maybe we should, but if we are
going to, there is no, no religious group is going to have

(01:17:31):
preference over any other. So New Zealand actually doesn't
have a state religion. They went out and got the local
Methodist after saying that he can come in and open it, but
there is no there is no state religion.
New Zealand culturally might have been a Christian country,
but in a political sense there is no state religion.
We continue that and now we're diverse.
We started to lose our engagement with religion very

(01:17:54):
quickly. From the 1960s into the nineteen
1980s. It really started to collapse
because it wasn't seen as modern.
It wasn't. It was seen as constricting, but
it was also we didn't really have an intellectual tradition
or a cultural tradition to draw upon in the same way as up in

(01:18:16):
the Northern hemisphere. But Europe's undergone the same
sort of transition out from fromChristianity in that way.
Why won't it come back? Because it asks questions about
institutions and authority and questions the type of

(01:18:42):
Christianity that might come back is culturally often quite
conservative. And I think often then we look
up an American, we say we don't want to go down the American
route, we don't want to go down that way.
There is, however, a turn amongst those who are Generation
Z, and I'm picking that up even amongst university students.
And there's a turn to religion, Christianity, often as

(01:19:07):
community. That's the interesting thing.
It provides community and it provides A framework against the
lives of what they see, the appearance head.
So it might come back, but it's not going to come back across
the country, but it will come back in certain cohorts and it's
coming back in certain groups rather than others.

(01:19:28):
I mean, you never say never withreligion because religion always
will come back in different ways.
What we are in New Zealand is very, is very new age and we've
been a new age country for well over 100 years in that way.
And that's a that's a religion of the self.
I want to share some some thoughts on that if you don't
mind. So my journey leaving New

(01:19:50):
Zealand and looking back on the role of Christianity and, and
the, and the Christianity of where I came from, you know,
certainly it wasn't a thing for me growing up.
It didn't, it seemed kind of strange.
It seemed, in a sense it was this this Plymouth Brethren

(01:20:11):
simplistic. Kind of church hall, you know,
kind of hall in a small hall andyou know, somewhere in Hawke's
Bay, it, it didn't have again, this intellectual trailings,
which unfortunately, if you takethe intellectual trailings, you
also take the political trailings and tailings and, and,
and that and that again, that sort of speaks to this
problematic of bringing in something from Europe which has

(01:20:33):
all these political situations attached to it.
However, leaving New Zealand andlooking back, I realized, and I,
and I learned to my great humblement was that there is in
fact something quite profound there that I kind of missed in
my ignorance. And it took me to the age of 33
to understand that and to see that a lot of the issues that

(01:20:56):
New Zealand faces, this preoccupation with the self,
this fetish for property and forholding on to the material
things, you know, that comes from a place of, of a lack of,
of, of spiritual, of spiritual connection.
It comes from a focus on the here and now.
And I don't know, I haven't got any, you know, grand answers
here or anything. But I look back and I think,

(01:21:18):
wow, that's where I came from. I came from that place that,
that kind of deep seated anxietyof, of being preoccupied with,
with home and, and, and and and money and these kinds of things,
even though there wasn't even, there wasn't that much of it.
And it took me to come here to Japan to have a few encounters
to realize the power, you know, that that exists within the

(01:21:39):
Christian faith and, and that has transformed my life.
And just last week, I was in Hong Kong and I visited an
Anglican church for a Sunday service.
And in my in my mind and, and mynostalgia for New Zealand, I
wonder, are we not the country of the Church of England that
has this kind of middle ground, this kind of normalcy?
It's not quite all the way as Catholics and it's not quite all

(01:22:00):
the way as these American Protestants.
It's just sort of straight down the middle.
And there's something profound there that kind of brings
everyone together. And again, I'm just throwing the
stuff out there, Mike, but I feel there's something there
that perhaps out of all of this malaise of COVID, the false
religion of scientism, the falsereligion of materialism, of
humanism, that maybe there is something there that we can

(01:22:21):
rediscover. Not at the expense of other
religions, because of course there are many others in New
Zealand as a multicultural place.
But as the, you know, the great Apostle Paul did, you know,
bring everyone together, no matter you, you know, no matter
where you're from and kind of connecting that and, and
focusing on that, that idea of love and redemption.
And again, big stuff. But I I found I wonder whether

(01:22:45):
that's not the way forward. That's a big question.
We the the majority church by default in New Zealand now is
Catholicism. It's a Catholic country by
default, primarily because the others have dropped
substantially and the numbers who align with them.
What you have is small pockets of religiosity in, in different

(01:23:10):
parts of the country. I mean, what what the Anglican
Church offers people is connection.
I mean, but like Catholicism, it, it offers a tradition, it
offers ritual, it offers a history.
I come from a Presbyterian background myself, and that's
the intellectual Presbyterian background that comes through.

(01:23:31):
It's seen primarily, however, now as counterculture.
And I think that's there's an interesting part, but maybe the
church should always be counterculture.
Maybe one of the problems is when the church becomes
mainstream culture, but the church is seen as out of step
socially and politically. Whereas the the spiritual

(01:23:57):
question that a church or a religion offers is 1 of what
does it mean to exist? What does it mean to be?
And I think that's the tension that we have.
The institution of religion has become the focus rather than

(01:24:18):
what does religion offer or act as in a social and cultural
framework. I mean, this is Duke.
I mean, so societies need religion to live that there's a
social function. And the trouble for a country
like New Zealand is you leave the, you leave the religion that
provided a social function. What provides that social

(01:24:41):
function to hold a society together.
I mean, we, we see this with thewelfare state.
I mean the original welfare state was meant to be applied
Christianity. That was the argument that was
put forward for it. The welfare state today, it
doesn't have that intellectual or spiritual or religious
dimension to it. So therefore why should I care
about those who are not like me?Why should I care about those

(01:25:04):
who are different to me who seemto have not been as successful?
Well, it's just bad choice that they are responsible for it and
there I have no responsibility for them because all they want
is my money. I mean, that seems to be the New
Zealand way that we go through rather than actually thinking,
well, what does it mean to have a notion that derives from the,

(01:25:29):
the equal value of all people? Now that's this.
And since a religious question, but we don't want to think about
it in that way. And so I think what, what you're
getting to code is that questionand we go, what do we draw upon?
Again, what is, what's the, the basis that we can draw upon to
articulate a different possibility?

(01:25:50):
I mean, what religions do is sayhow we are now is not as good as
we can be. How we are, we can live in a
different way. There is more than just what we
experience here at the moment. There's also the story to live
in. It's about a past and a present
and an anticipated future. What we lack is in a sense being

(01:26:13):
able to locate ourselves in thatstory because how that story was
played out in New Zealand was seen as limiting the possibility
of being, of being modern. And that's that's a challenge
for us. How what it and So what you have

(01:26:34):
then are the ones that are oftenon the rise are those that say,
well, we can be semi modern, butwe're going to go back to the
past. There's a nostalgia.
And yet this is this is the interesting thing that religion
is not nostalgic. Religion is anticipatory, but

(01:26:57):
often the type of religion that that has grown up in New Zealand
over the last 30 years is a nostalgic religion, a time of
loss. If we can just go back to the
past and this is where we need to be.
Rather, let's anticipate a better future.
Yeah. Well, coming back to this idea
that the culture, you know, whatis a lot of this stuff comes in

(01:27:20):
from overseas, It seems far away.
I do wonder again with my own story, the you can, you can look
at the at the gospels and think,well, you know, from a New
Zealand perspective, they do certainly seem far away in time
and space. And there's kind of a pragmatism
that says maybe, you know, that's not as relevant for me,
for example. And I wonder whether that

(01:27:42):
figures into it. And I mean, certainly New
Zealand has a strong Pentecostalmovement.
There's kind of a, again, a simplicity, I think a kind of a
humble, endearing simplicity to that movement and that
tradition. But the then I would wonder
whether the nostalgia, though, of something like the Church of
England has within a kind of a connection back to the past.

(01:28:06):
You have the the artifacts and the images that go back and
connect us back. And it's a story to look with
it. Yeah.
And. That's what we like, but it's a
story that we live with and thatthen attempts to make sense of
where we are now. And I think that is often what
we've lost. Again.

(01:28:27):
I mean, if you think about the historic connection between
religion and culture, what we'vebroken that, I mean, in many
ways, this is part of the cultural question.
What does the culture draw upon to interpret where we are and
how does it articulate and what is it trying to say?
And I mean, culture is the otherside of religion that is about

(01:28:51):
meaning making and expressing those questions about what it
means to be human. And the big challenge I think
we've got in this country is really what does it mean that
you're not just a commodity, You're not just a transaction.
And how do we, how do we treat people as more than just
commodities or transactions? How do we treat ourself?

(01:29:11):
How do we articulate what it means to be?
But we're not, I mean, we're notphilosophical in this country,
as you know, as you say, you have to leave here to deal with
those questions. But we're also not very
theological and theology and philosophy go together.
But then also we're not very historical either.

(01:29:32):
We don't, we don't like dealing with the history unless it's
just a history that affirms us at a particular time.
And so then we lack. It's not just a religious
question, it's a philosophical question, it's a theological
question, It's a cultural question of lack.
And that's because we we imported, but we never ground

(01:29:55):
it. A.
Philosophy of deprivation, Yeah,Which again?
Yeah, we're deprived, Yeah. And I think that is that's where
we are because we brought stuff in, but we never grounded it.
And so when something's ungrounded, it's very easy for
it to then whether it's very easy for it to disappear, it's

(01:30:17):
very easy to be removed. We're free of that.
And then we look around and go, well, where are we?
It's it's what the religious thinker, writer Peter Berger
called the sacred canopy. Yeah, we don't have a sacred
canopy and no Moss to live within.
At the most, we might have a sacred veranda that most people

(01:30:39):
have sort of at the we sort of say, well, here's your sacred
umbrella. And he gets a bit tattered.
And we don't give people the resources to make meaning out
of. We don't give people the
resources, the framework to to draw upon in order to to fully
flourish, I would say. And I think that's, that's,

(01:31:01):
that's the New Zealand problem, that it's a lack of flourishing
and a lack of resourcing. We don't have enough to sink our
roots into to be able to have a sense of, OK, how does the tree
actually flourish? How does the plant flourish
here? Yeah, that's fascinating.
I mean, you do also quote your reference Abundance Manifesto,

(01:31:25):
which talks a little bit about an agenda for growth.
This kind of project to not because growth is an end, but
because it is the best means to achieve the ends that we care
about. More comfortable lives, the more
power to do what we want, the more time devoted to what we
love. And I do wonder sometimes
whether New Zealand has the the another problem there, which is
that it's not about comfort. You know, New Zealand, yeah,

(01:31:46):
it's not that comfortable. But you know, it's, it's not too
bad either. It's not too shabby, but it may
be something deeper that's missing.
And I'm reminded man does not live by bread alone.
And these questions, of course, of spirit, do require some
introspection and a deep look into one's soul.
And what we want is we want a comfort for ourselves, but we

(01:32:09):
sort of unbuck it. If they're they're going to get
comfort and I don't get it or comfort for them, they haven't
earned it. And I think that's the thing
we're not very good at living with and four other people.
We live for ourselves, but we'renot we talk about the language
or community, but we're not verygood at living the language of

(01:32:31):
community. We're not very good about I
mean, we're not very good at reciprocity.
We're not very good at having AImean the notion of a welfare
state. Well, as it's not very much
there's not much welfare going on.
It's it's a society that is not willing to think often beyond

(01:32:56):
itself. Because I think, I think in many
ways we're Satrian Hell is otherpeople in this country.
It's interesting, again, the rural New Zealand, my
experience, it is a brutal place.
Yeah. You know, neighbors don't trust
each other. People steal your stuff.
There's conflict, disputes over land, over all sorts of things

(01:33:22):
that I think is very interesting.
It's it's like almost barbaric and there is moments in beauty.
Yeah, I was about to say that. How did you know New Zealand
Gothic? Because it's a common trope, the
New Zealand Gothic that comes in.
The thing is that New Zealand Gothic is in our towns too.
It's in our cities, it's in our suburbs.
It's not just a rural thing. We are that sort of New Zealand

(01:33:45):
Gothic. Is it simmering violence and
tension beneath everything in this country at this stage
still? Because we're unsettled.
The violence against the self, the violence against others, the
violence against. The violence against nature.
Yeah, yeah. And that's what I mean.
My, my kind of one of my closingpoints here questions to you,

(01:34:06):
Mike, as this countering the pessimistic outlook perhaps is
that how can we look at the situation we have not with the
eyes of the settler who deems that the great Coyote forest
must be fouled in the name of progress, but instead cultivated
and nurtured. And perhaps it comes back to

(01:34:28):
what you say is there's a deeperlook into ourselves,
communication, dialogue, something New Zealand men are
not particularly good at in general.
We're not good at that at all. And I think it's talking with
each other, not at each other orpast each other.
It's also listening. It's also making the time and
space to do the conversation. The thing about the great New

(01:34:49):
Zealand Talkback, I mean the talk.
I mean, New Zealanders have thisnotion of Talkback, but it's all
about argument. It's all about it's not actually
about conversation. And I think we're not very good
at facility. We talk past each other or we're
not very good at conversation. When it gets beyond the surface,

(01:35:10):
there's a fear of going deeper in this country, because if we
go beneath the surface, then suddenly we're going to raise
those questions that we have just sort of kept hidden, and
that's the unsettledness of the country.
I wonder if there's something here we can learn from our our
Maori brothers and sisters the the concept of the wananga, the

(01:35:32):
hooey of sitting around having adeep dialogue to make sense of
the world perhaps, and taking. Time.
I mean, Pacquiao love to do things very quickly.
Get it done, man. And.
That's that's our. Trouble.
All right, Mike. Well, that's that's incredible.

(01:35:54):
Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this stuff.
Mike, I am curious, just zoomingout and getting back into this
world of the profane and the practical, What's on your radar
for this year? What are you working on?
What's next for you? What am I working on?
I do a lot of work on a guy called Arthur Pryor, the
philosopher and theologian. I've been working on him for

(01:36:15):
about 20 odd years. I've got a project for the New
Zealand History Conference whichis looking at all different
narratives about different alternative histories.
I'm looking at Ellen Kuno's poetry, CK Steed's Voices, which
came out in 1990, and Pocock together.
So three different things comingtogether in that way.
And I've got ongoing projects onNew Zealand migration.

(01:36:41):
I've got some stuff on cultural nationalism and I'm trying to
get a paper together for the sociology conference was the
theme of a sociology of beauty and joy, and so I'm trying to
think what a sociology of beautymight be when but looking at it
in social terms. I'm reading Zadie Smith and Adam
Hollinghurst on beauty in the line of beauty and trying to

(01:37:04):
work out well what would be a sociology of beauty.
Is beauty a type of social capital though?
How might we make sense of that?And then there's all the other
stuff, which is just the fun stuff which is looking.
At. Looking at still a big project,
looking at New Zealand that transitioned from 79 to 91 over
neoliberalism and thinking abouthow it was, how what was really
happening then. Most people have never gone back

(01:37:26):
and wrestled with the sources and wrestled with the what was
actually happening. It's far more complex and far
more fascinating than we actually really want to realize.
We want, we want a clear and clean story and move on rather
than say actually these things take time and we're not quite
what we thought we were and things didn't quite happen as

(01:37:47):
we're told that they were. And it's more nuanced now.
I think that's the one thing I I'm always trying to do, find
the little bits of nuance that we've passed over because they
raise problematic questions. Yes.
That's fascinating. Now I look forward to some of
that work and in particular the idea of nuance.

(01:38:08):
It sticks with me. You know, it's not, it's not a
simple story. It's not, it's not simply the
score of a rugby match. It's, it's a deep, intimate
story because we know these people.
New Zealand's a small place you can go and, you know, as an old
man, but you could probably go and ring Roger Douglas up and
have a chat and, and find out what's, what was going through
his mind. You know, there's not, it's not

(01:38:29):
this extra abstracted layer of the political.
It's, it's right there down the road.
And yet it's so, it's so powerful and, and encompasses
our lives here. And look, Mike, just finally
then where can people find you? What's the best place you want
to send them? Just University of Canterbury.

(01:38:50):
I mean, if anyone wants to contact just my e-mail, Michael
dot Grimshaw at Canterbury dot AC dot NZ.
I'm also on LinkedIn. That's how we got there.
And I'm doing that ongoing sort of project of sort of public
sociology. Yeah, all of your articles on
LinkedIn. Different things trying to get a
conversation. There's sort of like a an
informal sort of public sociology think tank.

(01:39:13):
It it seems to be going gangbusters some days, other
days if not. But some weeks I get 45,000
reads of things are posted over the time which is crazy.
But it's trying to. Have a conversation outside the
university, and I think that's the most important thing because
we get very insular in this place.
I'm paid out of the public pocket.
Why don't I try and communicate with people, have conversations

(01:39:35):
with people, raise the sorts of things that I might be raising
here out into the public realm and see what the impact is.
Ask the questions. Frame it as questions and
possibilities. Yeah, it's an intervention and I
have a lot of respect for that. I think in the New Zealand media
landscape, it's very hard to find people who are going as
deep as you are. And LinkedIn seems to be a very

(01:39:57):
accessible place. And I find it ironic that in the
most profane of business social networking apps, you're able to
posit these deep questions and kind of confront people, but not
in a confronting way. That's.
My wife had got, I was coming home and saying all these things
and she said, look, I know this stuff.
She's she's got all these education, She works in these

(01:40:20):
areas. And she said, why don't you go
on LinkedIn, see what happens. And I took the notion of
practice, artistic practice, because I do do some supervision
over into Fine Arts and that notion that my sociological
practice, my academic intellectual practice should be
like a practice. So I try to have a regular

(01:40:42):
practice of finding things, posting like I said, on the bus
in the morning and find stuff orin the evenings.
What am I interested in? Frame it as a question.
How might we think about these things?
Put it out. There is a possibility with no
expectation that people will necessarily read it or agree
with everything. I don't expect people to agree
with everything I say. It doesn't happen to my own

(01:41:03):
family on a good day. I rank about the cat, but it's
about putting it out there as possibilities because I think we
need more conversation and we need to expand the frame of how
we can use it. And I see there are other people
doing that on LinkedIn, which isa deeply subversive thing to do,
and I quite like the subversive nature of it.

(01:41:23):
And. It's good.
It's good fun. I wonder just one final thing
like this, thinking boldly here and stepping outside of the the
bounds of what it's acceptable to do as a Kiwi, but is this
something bigger here that we can do in terms of this
conversation? Is there others out there who
you've seen doing this? Is there a forum or a place

(01:41:44):
where we can bring this conversation more broadly to the
New Zealanders? I'm not sure.
Big idea, you know. Yeah, big ideas.
I mean, the, I mean, this is what Sub Stack is meant to be
doing. And it was a New Zealander who
helped set up Sub Stack, which is really interesting.
Yeah. Hamish McKenzie, you came out a
critic. Dennard Otago the collapse of

(01:42:07):
mainstream media in New Zealand is is one of the great is one of
the great problems the the failure of Radio New Zealand to
to be the type of Radio New Zealand that I remember growing
up with. And for a long time it's become
reduced the collapse of mainstream television news
debate discussion that the listener as a collapsed vehicle

(01:42:30):
for discussion. So I think we've just got to
keep on doing what we're doing as I, I think in many ways we're
into a new Middle Ages. We're into a new dark ages
actually in many ways. And I, I mean that seriously, I
think we're, we're in a retreat from what the possibility of
modernity could have been. And we've just got to hunker

(01:42:52):
down, do what we can, create communities of conversation and
interest, do what we can do. I think, I mean, it's like what
you're doing here. I mean, here we are, you're in
Japan, I'm down here in Christchurch.
We had a really, I think a really interesting conversation
And I, I've really enjoyed and appreciated it.
And you'll now throw it out intothe ether and see what happens

(01:43:13):
and give me the link. I'll post it on LinkedIn and see
how many people who got the, thestamina to, to listen through
some of it. But this is what I think we
should be doing, having the public conversations in
different ways and just seeing what happens.
Change happens, and often in themost unexpected fashion.

(01:43:33):
Yeah, I think that's incredible,Mike.
So I really appreciate your timeand thank you for joining me.
Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
It's been great fun, at least from my end anyway.
Thank you. Yeah.
So on this end as well. Thank you.
OK. Thanks, Cody.
I am Cody Allingham, and that was the transformation of value.
If you would like to support this show, please consider

(01:43:54):
making a donation either throughmy website or by directly
tipping to the show's Bitcoin wallet.
Or just pass this episode on to a friend who you think may enjoy
it. And you can always e-mail me at
hello@thetransformationofvalue.com.

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