ACT's David Seymour - i like his style.

[Panda-NZ-]

Leftism usually exists for any one person right up to the point where living standards begin to fall as a result of Leftist governments attempts to make everything ‘fair’ (which is akin to pursuing a mirage.) Many doctors and nurses leaving for Australia would have voted for Labour and ‘fairness’ at the last election. And why are they going now? Higher pay and higher living standards in a country that exploits its natural resources and is less intent on pursuing ideological clap-trap down a rabbit hole.

Ok then let's have state owned or highly taxed mining company dig up resources where the environment can still be protected.
Hmmm will ideological clap trap somehow get in the way?

Or is it better to have a tax dodging singaporean enterprse do it instead

[moka]

Moka, your comments and objections are probably reflective of many readers.

However, many others, and active posters have actually been traumatised and distressed by what 6 years of Labour government has done to NZ.

For them, to post and read what like minded posters say, is a cathartic exercise, that will lead to their healing.

I trust that perspective will help.

Thanks for your comment, Getty. I agree that releasing pent up emotions by cathartic exercise is a great idea. This can be done through physical exercise, progressive muscle relaxation, making noise, acting out on inanimate objects, and journaling.

Catharsis is a powerful emotional release that, when successful, is accompanied by cognitive insight and positive change.
The term catharsis is often used to describe the experience of looking for closure, and it can also be used to describe an emotional moment that brings forth a positive change in a person’s life.

People may even feel as if they are going to "explode" unless they find a way to release this pent-up emotion.
Rather than venting these feelings inappropriately, the individual may instead release these feelings in another way, such as through physical activity or another stress-relieving activity.

However, although catharsis might relieve tension in the short term, on these threads I see it as serving to reinforce negative behaviours and increase the risk of emotional outbursts in the future. It seems to be encouraging people to vent, and giving them permission to vent and the intensity is increasing. It does not seem to be leading to insight and positive change.

You say for them to post and read what like minded posters say is a cathartic exercise. It seems to me to be bonding over a common enemy which is not a healthy behaviour.

[moka]

Moka, your comments and objections are probably reflective of many readers.

However, many others, and active posters have actually been traumatised and distressed by what 6 years of Labour government has done to NZ.

For them, to post and read what like minded posters say, is a cathartic exercise, that will lead to their healing.

I trust that perspective will help.

Van K Tharp in his book Super Trader has a chapter on Removing Stored Charges. He says charges (stored feelings) will cause you to keep limiting beliefs because the charges give a belief energy. One method he recommends for releasing the feelings is the Sedona Method. The Sedona Method is available as a book by Hale Dwoskin and there are many videos on YouTube. I use and recommend the Sedona Method.

Tharp also suggests just welcoming the feeling, opening your arms and just welcoming the feeling when it comes up. Feelings are meant to pass through you, not be stored inside you. He personally has found this exercise to be quite helpful.

https://www.sedona.com/What-Is-The-Sedona-Method

The Sedona Method is a unique, simple, powerful, easy-to-learn and repeat technique that shows you how to uncover your natural ability to let go of any painful or unwanted feeling in the moment. The Sedona Method consists of a series of questions you ask yourself that lead your awareness to what you are feeling in the moment and gently guide you into the experience of letting go. Watch this short, 4-minute video.

[davflaws]

Your post is disgraceful. It is you who are ignorant, as you seem oblivious to the fact that Maori life expectancy has vastly improved.

Ya what? You do some reading (I am delighted - do some more) and come up with some precontact life expectancy estimates - which incidentally are arguably better than pertained for common people in Europe at the time of first contact -and use the fact that Maori figures have improved as an argument to deny the deleterious efffects of colonisation on Maori Health in the context of a discussion about the gross and disgraceful current disparities between Maori and non Maori life expectancies. You consistently conflate European contact with colonisation. That is what is stupid, ignorant, and racist.

Of course Maori statistics have improved. I doubt there is anywhere in the world where statistics haven't improved in the last two hundred and fifty years. But the fact that Western technology and forms of political organisation has generally improved people's lives is not the same thing as colonisation and it is ignorant, stupid and racist to deny the disastrous effects of indigenous people's loss of land, cultural, political and social hegemony that characterises colonisation as distinct from contact and adoption of technologies and practices on more equal terms.

It is possible to have the advantages of contact and the technologicaland social change that goes with it without the bad effects of colonisation, and in the context of a discussion about the current disparities in Maori health, it is misleading to conflate the two.

You cite some atrocious behavior. I could cite many further instances and incidents. You can deplore them, and I join you in that judgment, but they are not relevant to the issue of the effects of our history colonisation on current Maori health.

By becoming subjects of the British Crown, Maori also saw an end of their cultural practices of slavery, cannibalism, and inter-tribal warfare. The end of these practices demonstrably vastly improved the lives of those maori who stood to be eaten or enslaved if colonisation had not occurred.

Cannibalism, tribal warfare, and slavery were all on the wane by the time TOW was signed, and effectively eliminated before the wave of colonisation that swamped disenfranchised, and disposessed Maori from the 1850s to late in the century. Again, cultural and social practices change over time, faster with the adoption of new technology, but the equation you are claiming between those changes and colonisation advances a false argument in the service of racist position.

I find you posts to be deeply racist in that they do not acknowledge uncomfortable warts-and-all truths, but instead seek to perpetuate *racist* noble savage tropes while seeking to demonise people who did not come to this country with evil intent, but rather came to build a new country through hard-work and mainly peaceful cooperation with the stone-age civilisation that they found here.

You have confused my posts with someone elses. I have never claimed that European contact was bad, or that Maori were noble savages. Life in all pre industrial societies tended to be ugly, brutal and short. Read Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature", Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel", Belich's "New Zealand Wars", "Making Peoples" and "Replenishing the Earth", or dig further in the Te Ara site.

I do not demonise the settlers. My forbears on both sides came here in the 1860s as part of the wave that swamped Maori. Some of them were good people, but at least one was a very successful fraud and cheat. Some of them worked hard, but at least one was a "remittance man" sent to the "colonies" to avoid a scandal.

They did not find a "stone age civilisation" here. They came to a place where social, political, and economic conditions were changing rapidly, and some western technologies and social practices were being eagerly adopted. And they effectively disposessed and subjugated the indigenous people. They were not individually evil, wicked, mean or nasty, but the disposession had and has ongoing effects. The fact that you deny this, along with your "stone age" characterisation, is what is ignorant, stupid and racist.

[davflaws]

Thanks for your comment, Getty. I agree that releasing pent up emotions by cathartic exercise is a great idea. This can be done through physical exercise, progressive muscle relaxation, making noise, acting out on inanimate objects, and journaling.

Catharsis is a powerful emotional release that, when successful, is accompanied by cognitive insight and positive change.
The term catharsis is often used to describe the experience of looking for closure, and it can also be used to describe an emotional moment that brings forth a positive change in a person’s life.

The menz movement accepts rednecks and tree huggers, Covidvax refusers and mandaters, wifebeaters and nonviolent communicators, astrological energy healers and medical research scientists. All of us share common experiences as men irrespective of our personal histories and the belief systems that have developed from them. We don't have to remain isolated.

Catharsis and reintegration is an important part of what we do.

https://www.essentiallymen.net

[Balance]

An example of just how fed up white middle class NZers are with all the woke BS that Hipkins and Ardern with the Maori cabal have been ramping down their throats (without any electoral mandate but via their hidden & secret agenda) :

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political...maori-mentions

This is the real legacy of Ardern the useless red Queen of Woke … and we can see that Hipkins has been happily following along as long as they both not only enjoyed the office of power but are prepared to sell their souls and NZ down the drain in the pursuit of that power.

That’s what NZ has had in the last 6 years - incompetent career politicians mad for and mad with power.

[Entrep]

davflaws, how does giving back large patches of farm/forestry land help urban/the majority of Maori?

Doesn't seem to be a real solution?

[Logen Ninefingers]

Ya what? You do some reading (I am delighted - do some more) and come up with some precontact life expectancy estimates - which incidentally are arguably better than pertained for common people in Europe at the time of first contact -and use the fact that Maori figures have improved as an argument to deny the deleterious efffects of colonisation on Maori Health in the context of a discussion about the gross and disgraceful current disparities between Maori and non Maori life expectancies. You consistently conflate European contact with colonisation. That is what is stupid, ignorant, and racist.

Of course Maori statistics have improved. I doubt there is anywhere in the world where statistics haven't improved in the last two hundred and fifty years. But the fact that Western technology and forms of political organisation has generally improved people's lives is not the same thing as colonisation and it is ignorant, stupid and racist to deny the disastrous effects of indigenous people's loss of land, cultural, political and social hegemony that characterises colonisation as distinct from contact and adoption of technologies and practices on more equal terms.

It is possible to have the advantages of contact and the technologicaland social change that goes with it without the bad effects of colonisation, and in the context of a discussion about the current disparities in Maori health, it is misleading to conflate the two.

You cite some atrocious behavior. I could cite many further instances and incidents. You can deplore them, and I join you in that judgment, but they are not relevant to the issue of the effects of our history colonisation on current Maori health.



Cannibalism, tribal warfare, and slavery were all on the wane by the time TOW was signed, and effectively eliminated before the wave of colonisation that swamped disenfranchised, and disposessed Maori from the 1850s to late in the century. Again, cultural and social practices change over time, faster with the adoption of new technology, but the equation you are claiming between those changes and colonisation advances a false argument in the service of racist position.



You have confused my posts with someone elses. I have never claimed that European contact was bad, or that Maori were noble savages. Life in all pre industrial societies tended to be ugly, brutal and short. Read Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature", Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel", Belich's "New Zealand Wars", "Making Peoples" and "Replenishing the Earth", or dig further in the Te Ara site.

I do not demonise the settlers. My forbears on both sides came here in the 1860s as part of the wave that swamped Maori. Some of them were good people, but at least one was a very successful fraud and cheat. Some of them worked hard, but at least one was a "remittance man" sent to the "colonies" to avoid a scandal.

They did not find a "stone age civilisation" here. They came to a place where social, political, and economic conditions were changing rapidly, and some western technologies and social practices were being eagerly adopted. And they effectively disposessed and subjugated the indigenous people. They were not individually evil, wicked, mean or nasty, but the disposession had and has ongoing effects. The fact that you deny this, along with your "stone age" characterisation, is what is ignorant, stupid and racist.

Firstly, negative effects of ‘colonisation’ are a given and were not disputed by me. There are positive and negative effects in any area of human affairs that you would care to look at. In this instance, I merely started that pre-contact Maori had a life expectancy of 28 to 30 years old and in modern New Zealand Maori have a life expectancy of mid to late 70’s. You cannot get from here to there without colonisation, because colonisation is an historical fact. Shortly thereafter your dander was up & the ‘racist’ card was - invariably - played.

One of the most obvious positive effects of colonisation for todays mixed-race people (understanding that we are all a hodge podge of ethnic origins) is the very fact that the person doing the incessant bleating would not even exist themselves if not for all sides of their ethnic history converging to bring them into this world. It is demonstrably a fact that you, I, or anybody else would literally not exist as an individual human being if we our ancestors - whoever they may be - did not form conjugal unions that resulted in children.
So we have a half-Irish person dressed in part in 1840’s attire, with accompanying facial tattoo, educated according to modern standards and in a well paid job, railing against the British Crown and continuing to decry ‘colonisation’ - colonisation, occupation, Europeans coming here en masse, call it what you will.

I’ve denied nothing as regards history. Your highly dismissive, abusive, and offensive tone reeks of arrogance. Maori have often been dispossessed of the lands and lives; frequently this was done by other Maori. ‘Subjugation and dispossession’ was done by one Iwi to another. The effects upon those people being subjugated were brutal, often they were enslaved or their lives terminated. Sorry, I’m not going to wave this away. I’m not going to falsify history and state that Maori played by different rules than the British when it came to the struggle for land and resources: might was right. When each tribe effectively functioned as its own nation-state, conquest and enslavement and cannibalism all were part & parcel of Maori history pre-contact and post-contact:

‘In 1830 Captain John Stewart of the brig Elizabeth made an arrangement with Ngāti Toa leader Te Rauparaha to ferry a taua (war party) of 100 warriors from his base on Kāpiti Island to Banks Peninsula. Te Rauparaha wanted to surprise his Ngāi Tahu enemies and avenge the killing and eating of several Ngāti Toa chiefs at Kaiapoi in 1829. Te Pehi Kupe had suffered the ultimate insult when his bones were made into fish-hooks. Te Rauparaha was keen to reassert his mana over his southern rivals.’

With regards to your attack over the use of the term ‘Stone Age’, anthropologists would certainly categorise the civilisation that the first Europeans encountered as ‘Stone Age’; how else could it be described? Iron Age? No. Bronze Age? No. The trouble with people like you is that you see history itself as a ‘dog whistle’ or ‘racist’. Likewise, your constant harping on about ‘colonisation’ seems to read like you’ve undertaken some sort of sanitised course: the entire history of the world is one of people moving to new lands seeking land and resources. Maori got to New Zealand as part of this process, and then the people that got here battled each other for land and resources. Protein was scarce so there is a certain sense and logic in the fact that victims of these wars were eaten.

You say that cultural practices change over time. With this blithe dismissive statement you wave away any connection between what you call colonialism and the abandonment by Maori of those ‘cultural practices’. Cultural practices that can be viewed as ‘wrong’ only by applying different standards than the Maori applied to the inner-workings of their own civilisation.

Obviously Maori are keen to re-adopt unadulterated ‘cultural practices’ that were more common in the 1800’s that the 20th century, but I take it that there will be some that were part of their culture - for centuries - that they will not be readopting.

[ithaka]

International socialists are calling out the racism of the NZ left.

The Labour-Greens government has for its part supported various forms of “co-governance” to benefit the Māori tribal elite. This includes supporting the creation of reserved Māori seats in local councils and on water infrastructure governing bodies, and separate “by Māori, for Māori” healthcare services. Any criticism of this divisive and anti-democratic agenda, and of the Treaty of Waitangi itself, is denounced by Labour and its supporters as “racist.”


The Socialist Equality Group opposes all forms of nationalism and racism. We call on the working class to oppose Māori nationalism, and all forms of racial identity politics, from the left—that is, on the basis of a socialist perspective. Genuine equality can only be achieved by fighting for the unity of working people of every nationality and ethnicity, based on their shared class interests, to overthrow capitalism, end the division of the world into rival nation states, and place society’s wealth in common ownership. This is the only way to put an end to racism, xenophobia and every other toxic prejudice that is whipped up by the ruling class to divide workers and keep itself in power.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/202.../kbwu-s13.html

[Logen Ninefingers]

International socialists are calling out the racism of the NZ left.

The Labour-Greens government has for its part supported various forms of “co-governance” to benefit the Māori tribal elite. This includes supporting the creation of reserved Māori seats in local councils and on water infrastructure governing bodies, and separate “by Māori, for Māori” healthcare services. Any criticism of this divisive and anti-democratic agenda, and of the Treaty of Waitangi itself, is denounced by Labour and its supporters as “racist.”


The Socialist Equality Group opposes all forms of nationalism and racism. We call on the working class to oppose Māori nationalism, and all forms of racial identity politics, from the left—that is, on the basis of a socialist perspective. Genuine equality can only be achieved by fighting for the unity of working people of every nationality and ethnicity, based on their shared class interests, to overthrow capitalism, end the division of the world into rival nation states, and place society’s wealth in common ownership. This is the only way to put an end to racism, xenophobia and every other toxic prejudice that is whipped up by the ruling class to divide workers and keep itself in power.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/202.../kbwu-s13.html

Interesting isn’t it. Here you get a taste of the dunderheaded Marxist / Socialist world-view: any and all prejudices are ‘whipped up’ by the so-called ‘ruling class’ to divide ‘workers’ (who? Uber drivers, fruit pickers, web designers, customer service staff, the chap who delivers the mail?) It’s like history began & ended for them during the Industrial Revolution.

Various ‘ism’s’ - the fear and loathing of one group toward another - have been with us since the dawn of humanity. They certainly weren’t invented by any ‘ruling class’. The entire philosophy of the Left is built on psuedoscience and a version of history that is farcical in the extreme.

Speaking of revolution, ‘fight and overthrow’ is as ever their cry, and once everything is in ‘common ownership’ and millions have been liquidated or sent to the gulags, all our problems will be solved - apparently. So right back to the USSR or the China of Chairman Mao then, with power in the hands of a dictatorship, mass murder, & appalling living standards.

The Left and the Maori Left wing intelligentsia here is NZ will be very hurt at being decried by Socialists. I’m sure they’d like to say “pssst…we’re on your side. We’re doing by stealth exactly what it is you’re wanting. We’re selling it as ‘decolonisation’ and ‘re-indigenisation’ to promote societal fairness and more equitable outcomes.”