Cross-Culture

Rodney offered a few days ago a piece of commentary that I feel compelled to refer back to, due to the fact that I found it to so skew the perceived response to the issue in question. What happened, according to the Herald article, is that on 24 November a Dutch tourist allegedly cracked a "nervous grin" during a traditional Maori welcoming ritual. Other reports suggest that he was showing an expression of disrespectful amusement towards what was going on. One performer in the welcome, Richard Minarapa Mitai-Ngatai, impulsively took the latter to be the factual case and proceeded to assault the tourist by headbutting him in the face.

The performer has been sentenced to one hundred and fifty hours' worth of community service, with the judge having agreeably stated that although he understands Mitai-Ngatai's feelings of cultural pride, an attack on a tourist would have been unacceptable no matter the circumstance; whether the tourist was silently ridiculing the ritual or not. It would appear that no conclusion has yet been reached as to whether the tourist was intending to convey the offense that was perceived. The Herald article mentions that the judge covered the idea that it is important that tourists are able to feel that they are safe when they visit New Zealand.

It would appear that Rodney made leverage of that last point with the intent of painting Maori cultural performers as some kind of public health risk. "Traditional welcomes need to include a government health warning and tourists need an education programme before arriving in New Zealand," he says. "The call follows Dutch tourist Johannes Scheffers being headbutted 'backwards with blood ejecting from his nose' following his nervous grin." Rodney refers to "the call" in such a way that could provide the impression that it's a position being taken on by the court when, amusingly, it is in fact nothing but his own dishonourable attempt to paint Maori culture as primitive and savage on the basis of one man's kneejerk reaction.

Today is my last full day in the country before I leave for Australia tomorrow morning. I'll be there for two weeks. I must say that now that the time has almost come to leave, in retrospect it somehow feels thoroughly rewarding to have sold my summer of 2004 and 2005 in order to secure a bit of money. It's all about to pay off. Having not been overseas since 1999 I am very much looking forward to the experience; I feel that it's really going to mean something to me to spend some time in a different, albeit comfortingly similar, society. During the previous times I've been to Australia, I haven't had the maturity to understand the significance of my being overseas. This time it's going to be a thoroughly interesting personal growth experience. As if the fact that I'm travelling internationally under my own financial power isn't enough, I'll have more-or-less free boarding with my cousins, which is sure to make the overall experience all the more enjoyable! I hope you all have a great two weeks and that I don't miss out on anything too major. Take care!

To Kill The Whale

It has been interesting, but at the same time shocking and eye-opening, to read Greenpeace's Ocean Defenders' blog. Among those who publish there are a tight-knit band of people who are not only providing moral, financial and intellectual support to the global anti-whaling movement -- as many everyday citizens of various countries do very willingly -- but are involved on the very front lines, confronting the Japanese whale-slaughtering armada head-on in the interests of saving the lives of some of the Earth's most intelligent, beautiful and vulnerable creatures. Their accounts tell the brutal reality of the sorts of crimes against nature that Japan's modern "scientific whaling" programme entails.

The concept that supposedly rational human beings are doing away with these beautiful creatures is hard enough to stomach. The fact that they're doing it inside the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, the one area in the world where whales are supposed to be able to find true safety from the likes of commercial interests, adds to one's disgust. But the manner in which they are killed is the cyanide icing on the profit-driven cake. People not directly involved in the events are often not aware of exactly how the whales are slaughtered. The Ocean Defenders blog provides a much-needed wake-up call by presenting unadulterated accounts of the deaths of whales and the aggression of the crew of the Japanese expedition.

Gone are the days when the only thing used to kill a whale was a simple harpoon, often driven by hand into the whale's flesh -- as if that wasn't bad enough. Modern technology has allowed increasingly violent, but seemingly not much more effective, methods of murder to be produced and utilised. The harpoons are now launched out of a cannon, weighing forty-five kilograms and tipped with a grenade. Upon impact -- more often than not with a whale -- the grenade explodes, yielding horrific effects. A whale will frequently survive this first part of the ordeal, only to find itself in no-doubt unbearable amounts of pain, already mortally wounded and with a harpoon embedded in its flesh. It is then reeled in towards the ship, via the cable attached to the harpoon, as it writhes in agony and is shot with guns by the crew onboard the vessel. Death is not a quick process. Greenpeace activists often find themselves having to put whales out of their misery. In the past I have even seen footage where a whale is electrocuted until it dies just over twelve minutes after having been initially hit with the harpoon. I am not aware that that technique has been used most recently, but the prior method of murder that I described is how the total of more than nine-hundred whales taken so far this "season" have died.

The whalers are now even showing a disregard for human life, with the highly-publicised firing of a harpoon directly over the top of a Greenpeace protest speedboat on 14 January having raised tensions markedly. The activists had positioned themselves in between the bow of a whaling vessel and its otherwise helpless prey in an attempt to protect the creature, but the harpoon operator launched his weapon at the whale regardless of the fact that there were human beings that could have been caught in its path. When the cable, caught on the console of the much smaller boat, went taut, it threw one activist into the water. This incident follows the aggressive actions of the ship's harpoon operator that morning, when he allegedly took aim at the protest speedboats with the loaded rifle used to shoot at whales. Although the activists are understandably upset by all of this carry on, the harpoon operators' actions may yet prove to be of tactical benefit to their cause -- the whalers now appear to be making no secret of their own inhumanity, and the scrutinising eyes of the world are set firmly on their behaviour.

He's Just A Dumb Animal

I at last saw Peter Jackson's King Kong yesterday, and it's probably just as well because I was probably nearing prosecution for having not seen it yet and thus being un-Kiwi. I was sceptical as to whether I personally was going to be able to last the whole three hours of the epic, especially considering that Alison, Nicola, Brendan and I ended up sitting in the the very front row -- much of the film's duration was spent in an almost limbo-like position -- but it turned out to be alright. There was not a point at which I recall being bored, and my back held out. On those grounds alone the movie has a lot going for it.

The scenes involving the creatures on the island were superbly well-imagined, with the awesome logistics of creating such a spectacle being very apparent. During these scenes there was usually an incomprehensible, but somehow appreciable, amount of things going on at any one moment. Of course, there were a lot of single moments -- three hours worth of them, in fact -- so I surmise that they had to be action-packed in order to maintain the audience's attention. I had the feeling that the action served to offset the slow pace of the decidedly long-winded narrative, making the time pass a lot faster and thus making the experience in its entirety more palletable. The introduction of new island inhabitants that were not seen in the original King Kong film of 1933 impressed me also. They were fittingly selected, and seemed just plain right; although I was vaguely disconcerted by the water-borne mutilated phallic entities, which were just plain wrong.


Let it be known, however, that as the duration of the long action scenes wear further on, they have a tendency to become more and more overblown and reach the point where they are almost comical and fun as a result. I'll admit it was some good light relief but I thought it was possibly detrimental to the overall experience. It's the only significant qualm that I have about Peter Jackson's film. To have people laughing doesn't seem particularly appropriate given the huge weight afforded to the narrative by Ann Darrow's elaborately-depicted development of empathy with Kong.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the way that said empathy was painted -- although I am certainly of the opinion that it got excessively Mighty Joe Young at many points, I recognise that the overly emotional connection between the creature and its captor, as well as the blatantly-illustrated human traits of Kong's character, added important weight to the tragic finale (which, I am pleased to say, had an audible effect on people). The conclusion of the original King Kong film made me feel a skerrick of sadness at the fate of the beast, but the sadness was prevented from becoming anything more due to the fact that Kong's underlying compassionate nature had not been explored much at all. This was improved on in the re-make, however. All of Peter Jackson's King Kong's excesses came together to powerfully portray the indescribable shame that is the refusal of the vast majority of the human species to even attempt to empathise with their animal acquaintances, and the results of such ignorance, making for a moving -- if depressing -- ending.

Thought For Thought

When I was away camping, I spent many of the frequent periods of recouperation reading David Brin's science fiction novel Earth. The author is a former consultant to NASA and graduate-level physics professor, so when it comes to science, one can be confident he knows what he's talking about. The range of themes covered in-depth by the epic also proves that Brin has a solid grasp on sociological dissection. Earth is futurist Brin's depiction of one possible future of the planet, set in 2038.

What is probably one of the most compelling, and at the same time chilling, factors about this book is that it was first published in 1990, and yet already many of Brin's predictions for the far future have come true, including -- but not limited to -- the rise of an international data network (the Internet) to intense prominence in world citizens' day-to-day lives and, most unfortunately, the drowning of New Orleans.

New Zealand holds a pivotal role in the novel to boot, with significant events taking place in the ground underneath the volcanic plateau in the central North Island, and even in the Waitomo Caves. The cavitronic operation to remove a theoretically-inspired micro black hole from the Earth's core, which provides the locus to the story, is overseen by a highly successful Maori entrepreneur named George Hutton. It's good to see someone depicting a positive, prosperous future for Maori for once, especially without neglecting to furnish the character with the appropriate cultural allegiance and pride.

Our culture's depiction in the novel is even more heartening in that Brin paints the country as a true environmental oasis in his carefully and thoughtfully constructed idea of a future world. It's one of the few places remaining on the entire globe where legally designated "quiet zones" are not needed to be established in pieces of wilderness in order to create locations where there are no intrusive influences of technology, such as the sounds of jets flying over and the like. New Zealand's rainforests are rendered as among the most healthy prosperous in the world, having not suffered the massive die-offs and climate changes evident in other countries.

I found Brin's forays into the philosophy of the mind to be of particular relevance to what I have been thinking about recently. The idea is that I apparently do not know my "self" well enough to be able to properly express who I really am, and as a result people close to me are getting the impression that I am holding back. In the novel, Doctor Jen Wolling and her young student Nelson Grayson discuss the status of "the self" in the human mind:

[Nelson said] "We talked before about how--how the cells in my body compete and cooperate to make a whole person. And I been reading some of those theories 'bout how individual people could be looked at the same way ... like, y'know, organs or cells cooperating and competing to make up societies. And how the same ... metaphor--"

"How the same metaphor's been applied to the role species play in Earth's ecosphere, yes. Those are useful comparisons, so long as we remember that's all they are. Just comparisons, similes, models of a much more complicated reality."

He nodded. "But now you're sayin' even our minds are like that?"

"And why not?" Dr. Wolling laughed. "The same processes formed complexity in nature, in our bodies, and in cultures. Why shouldn't they work in our minds as well?"

Put that way, it sounded reasonable enough. "But then, why do we think we're individuals? Why do we hide from ourselves the fact we're so many inside? What's the me that's thinkin' this, right now?"

My inclusion of this excerpt serves to introduce in reasonably-easy-to-understand terms the theoretical concept that the human mind, as opposed to consisting of a single self, is rather made up of a countless number of subselves, all competing to establish themselves as the consciousness -- that is, the limited few aspects of a person's mind that are outwardly expressed. The subselves are also cooperating in a sense whilst they engage in this competition, as it directly results in them constantly increasing in complexity and clarity for the purposes of outdoing each other. The collection of highly developed subselves or metaphorical "organisms" that results, is "the mind." Later on in Brin's narrative, Wolling goes on to consider why people feel the need to identify a singular self, or identity, that may be attributed to their mind.

Our subselves usually aren't distinct, except in multiple personality disorder. Rather, a normal person's drives and impulses merge and cleave, marry and sunder, forming temporary alliances to make us feel and act in certain ways.

So far so good. The evidence for some form of multimind model was overwhelming. But then came the rub.

If I consist of many, why do I persist in perceiving a central me at all! What is this consciousness that even now, as I think these thoughts, contemplates its own existence?

Jen remembered back when Thomas had tried to interest her in reading novels. He had promised that the best ones would prove enlightening. That their characters would "seem to come alive." But the protagonists were never realistic to Jen. Even when portrayed as confused or introspective, their thought processes seemed too straightforward. Too decisive. Only Joyce ever came close to depicting the real hurricane of internal conflict and negotiation, those vast, turbid seascapes surrounding an island of semi-calm that named itself "me."

Is that why I must imagine a unitary self? To give the storm a center? An "eye" to revolve around? An illusion of serenity, so the storm might be ignored most of the time? Or is it a way to rationalize a semblance of consistency? To present a coherent face to the outside world?

Most all of us seek to identify "a unitary self" for the reasons described here. These reasons partially explain why it has been suggested to me that I try and discover myself further; because people are not seeing much of a "coherent face" being expressed. Bearing Brin's theories in mind, however, and if they were to be true, this would essentially indicate that the effort that any of us is making is futile -- including my own. The fact that the subselves are endlessly competing and changing means that there is never a solid unitary self. So that would entail that consistency is actually impossible to achieve, and this is why such an undefined image of my mind is projected for other people to behold. In order for people to really "know" each other, the entire mass of subselves would have to be expressed at once; and of course that expression would be mindbogglingly complex to the point that nobody would be able to comprehend it anyway.

People want to be able to identify those close to them by associating them with sets of attributes that the subject outwardly expresses with the need for comprehensibility in mind. But as long as comprehensibility is regarded as of importance, only a handful of anyone's subselves are being exhibited. The true unitary self comprises the absolute entirety of the mind -- that's all of the countless subselves. In other words, ultimately, it could be argued that it's impossible to truly know one's self, let alone someone else's, because it is complex beyond the comprehension ability of the human mind. I, along with everyone else, "hold back" from partaking in overtly revealing expression for comprehensibility's sake. As an afterthought, it's interesting to consider that people with multiple personality disorders -- "insane" people -- are actually giving air to more of their subselves than "sane" individuals. That gives you an idea how confusing the world would be if everyone really knew everyone else. Everybody would seem even more incoherent. I'm extremely interested to hear your thoughts, whether about my situation, your own, or the overall theory. Do you think we should all stop trying to pin our respective unitary selves down? Is the task that I've just taken on with renewed fervour a proverbial wild goose chase? If you think you might be interested in reading David Brin's Earth, and if what you've heard about it here hasn't been enough to convince you to look into it, there is a sample in the form of the first ten chapters on the author's Web site.

The Commencement Of The 2006 Political Year

I had half expected there to have been some sort of an upsurge in local political activity during the past couple of days, in reverence of Parliament's reconvening after its Christmas break. However, as span avidly pointed out, this particular hope would not appear to have come to pass. Since Winston Peters arrived home from his first outings as foreign minister, there's been little of real, significant interest on the local political front, with the socially attentive citizenry having been left to -- if they so wished -- follow the seemingly endless David Benson-Pope tennis-ball-in-mouth excuse-for-a-debacle.

Not even Rodney Hide had anything to say about this mildly momentous time of take-off, instead offering up some interesting, albeit brief, commentary on an issue that he felt keen to highlight. I fail to perceive the injustice that Rodney has chosen to see in this situation apparently for the purpose of gaining possession of decidedly weak ammunition to use against the Waitangi Tribunal. For a start his entry is successful in making it sound as if the Waitangi Tribunal is promoting these medal reallocations on a mass scale. Anyone who makes the effort to read the article will discover that the entry is misleading; that the reallocation request only in fact applies to one case. I believe that it is a very one-sided case at that, and do not understand why it has taken so many years to have any progress achieved towards Manahi rightfully receiving the award that he deserves.

At sea, however, the political climate is distinctly more turbulent, as a long battle continues to be fought in the Southern Ocean between Japanese commercial whalers -- who claim to be taking the creatures' lives for scientific purposes -- and various protest groups, including Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The event of the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru colliding with Arctic Sunrise, a Greenpeace vessel that is involved in the protest action, has resulted in a rapid increase in the heat of the situation, virtually simultaneous to the reconvening of Parliament in New Zealand.

The Sea Shepherds appear to have responded by sideswiping the Oriental Bluebird, a Japanese-operated tanker allegedly being used to refuel whaling ships, using their leader Paul Watson's ship Farley Mowat as a weapon. Farley Mowat is equipped with a hull-mounted "heavy steel blade" that the Shepherds dub "the can opener." The Herald reports that the implement inflicted a long scratch along the side of the commercial vessel, and note is also made of the fact that since beginning their anti-whaling protest actions in 1979, the Shepherds have "sunk nine illegal whaling ships without causing injury." They are evidently a formidable organisation.
I read this piece by Greg Barns in the Herald last week with great interest. The overall idea that he is pushing, however, I find thoroughly disagreeable even though he provides a significant number of valid points. I am still staunchly of the opinion that, in the end, it is wrong to slaughter whales, as the Japanese are presently doing in breach of the Southern Ocean sanctuary, whether for scientific purposes, "sustainably," or especially commercially. It is wrong to argue that Japan has some kind of culturally-given right to commit these crimes against nature. There is no such thing as sustainable whaling. It is another situation in which humans need to put wildlife's rights ahead of those that they themselves perceive to be entitled to, particularly considering that although global whale numbers are slowly recovering, they still represent only a fraction of the original population.

Creature Comforts

In stark contrast to the reasonably well-behaved conditions that were present during our last visit to Tawharanui, this time my family and I found ourselves hunkering down for the lightning and hail storms that had been forecast. Fortunately, neither of those things eventuated, but the overall nature of the holiday in my mind was still completely different to that of the prior adventure. I found myself instilled with an alternative set of goals. Now I was not there "merely" to appreciate the natural wonders of the sanctuary, but also to begin finding myself again after the onset of a massive identity crisis, brought on indirectly by the turning of the year. It appears to be the case that, cushioned in all the bourgeois complacency that I had developed with who I had become during the course of 2005 -- as exhibited in my last post of the year -- I had forgotten that I was in fact still partaking in the venerable task of finding myself. Hence, in retrospect of the past week, I guess this shock is something of a harsh return to reality more than anything.

One of the last things that my family did before leaving Tawharanui following our earlier visit was go for a walk along the "Ecology Trail" that does a loop along the coastline and through the bush, starting and finishing at Anchor Bay (although we took a shortcut that skipped the coastline section that time, due to the fact that my mother and aunt are not capable of walking that route). It was a truly heartening experience that I will not forget for some time to come. We had been warned beforehand that part of a bees' hive had fallen onto the bush track and that people were being advised to proceed with caution. The warnings didn't actually give one an idea of exactly how many bees were present in the forest, and how many were involved in the operation of retrieving the honey from the fallen honeycomb. It had to be seen to be believed. The phenomenon, to which words will never truly do justice, no doubt, was inspirational evidence that the sanctuary concept really works -- a positively prosperous empire of innumerable wild bees spread throughout the Tawharanui rainforest. One couldn't go anywhere in the shady oasis without hearing the constant drone of tiny transparent wings beating furiously, or without seeing the bees seemingly gliding spread-legged in majestic formation over the track, commuting between rich tea trees in their neverending labour of nectar collection.

You can understand how internally distraught I was when I overheard the friendly ranger Graham explaining to my parents that there had been some further developments in the situation. Apparently, during our absence another section of the hive had fallen down from the trees, causing the bees to become even more -- allegedly -- "instrusive" onto the track. That event had, by sheer coincidence, been followed by a massive branch falling off of a nearby tree in the vicinity of the hive -- and when I say a massive branch, I mean practically a secondary trunk extending out of the side of the tree. It was massive. The naturally-occurring wound to the probably-ancient puriri had caused a gaping hole in the forest canopy to open up, bathing the usually-gloomy area in shafts of life-giving sunlight. The disintegration of the monolithic plant will be of future benefit to the rainforest, as it will allow the small plants that have until now been subjugated to growing on the forest floor to properly mature. However, it had enraged the already-techy bees and the point had been reached where they were posing an apparently unignorable threat to passing bushwalkers.

So humanity took it upon themselves to murder that entire glorious empire and destroy everything that the bees had accomplished in the form of a thriving forest-wide plant gamete transfer system and a hive over two metres long. That terrific testament to nature's ingenuity of perfection, to the prosperity and the soul of the rainforest, was not to be tolerated as long as it might possibly pose any kind of threat to humans. It would seem possible that despite the fact that Tawharanui is supposed to be a sanctuary for wildlife, people still ultimately take priority. This reinforces my confidence in my quiet ponderences as to whether the peninsula has truly been fortified from introduced mammalian pestilence primarily in the interests of the native flora and fauna, or rather more with the intention of maintaining some kind of amusement park for humans. My idea is also backed up by the irreverant attitudes towards nature shown by many of the campers -- including, I am pained to say, my own Earth-raping family, who insist on hammering harmless spiders into the ground with tent pegs; and also those utter bastards who set off fireworks near the dune systems in the middle of the night. Graham said it was unfortunate that the bees had had to be exterminated but explained that it was likely some of the workers would limp off to found a new colony somewhere. Nonetheless I strongly believe that the reasonable, ethical thing to do would have been to close the track to public traffic and let nature and the hopefully-good-natured anti-pest ranger force go about their business in the forest.

I do not for one moment deny the potential for huge emotional, psychological and spiritual enrichment to be experienced by humans as a result of being involved with a pristine natural environment. I think it's a great immaterial resource for us to have at hand. But if we are serious about creating such living, breathing multi-organism entities, then we really have to start putting other species before ourselves, for once. Perhaps the reason for the murder of those bees, along with the countless other heinous compromises that have no doubt been committed by conservation groups all over the planet, is that humanity has become too used to crafting its circumstances to suit itself. Perhaps it is time that we considered doing what all life is intended to do, and adapt in order to overcome the natural adversities that we face. At the very least, individuals apparently working to save Earth's ecosystems should at this early stage accept the inherent benefits to humanity as perks and nothing more. Otherwise, I do not believe it can be legitimately argued that they are acting in the interests of the natural world as opposed to out of self-interest.

Discrete Retreat

The tactical handing-in of my notice of resignation to the supermarket went ahead without any problems yesterday. For a while it was looking as if I was going to have to face the department manager directly in order to have the termination of my employment scheduled. Thankfully, with the help of some old friends, I was made aware when he graciously left the store to leave the lowly workers suffering under the burden of the New Year's Eve shift. I was then able to bestow the honourable task of giving me the required paperwork on Joseph, the most deservant of individuals.

My co-worker Anand had informed me earlier in the month of a method by which I could attain some extra pay towards the end of my employment, without having to put any hours of labour in. He pointed out that since the only days of the week that I was rostered to work were Monday and Sunday, and because all of the public holidays that occur around this part of the calendar cycle -- Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, and the Day After New Year's Day -- fell on those two days of the week, I would be entitled to pay whether I worked those days or not. Anand suggested that in recognition of this, I shouldn't hand my notice in until after my first camping trip, so as to gain the stay pay from those four days. His tactical intelligence is most certainly appreciated.

It would appear that something of a minor miracle has occurred -- I may well have, within the past hour, come to the almost-final decision as to which papers I will be taking at university this year, and indeed which course I will be taking towards my obtainment of a degree. Politics was always obviously the subject that was going to win out. As such, politics is guaranteed to be my choice of major. The original plan was that media studies was going to be my other major, but it turns out that there's practically not enough media papers worth taking to get me the one hundred and twenty points necessary to claim a major in it. In the context of my degree, I plan that media will now be subjugated to a minor.

The great thing about this set-up is that I can now concentrate on the selection of the interest papers that will contribute the additional required points to my academic credential arsenal that will allow me to obtain my degree. I'm spoilt for choice in that regard. One idea would be to take Anthro 200 Archaeology in the first semester. That would allow me entry into at least three archaeology-related anthropology papers in my third year, and that would be all that was required to earn me the total of three hundred and sixty points that I need to get my BA. Or, I could take the sociology paper on popular culture in the first semester. There are not many sociology papers of huge interest to me to be taken in stage three, however two of them would be attributable to a media studies major if I in the end wished that I wanted to go that way after all. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on all this. Nevermind how confusingly and intimidatingly I may have worded it.

I'm glad of the fact that I'll be off camping again tomorrow. It was very refreshing to escape last time, with the only real knowledge of what is going on in industralised society being provided by talkback radio whenever I was asked to listen to the news in order to get a weather report. Don Brash's Christmas greeting was most entertaining, with him delivering in the standard tone -- and complete with pauses -- something along the lines of "I would like to take the opportunity to wish all New Zealanders, a Merry Christmas, and a safe, and prosperous, 2006." The station reported that they didn't know what Helen would be doing for Christmas, but rather they knew what she wouldn't be doing. A sound byte was then played that involved her stating that she's terrified of melanoma and won't be showing any skin on the beach. I'll tell you what, though -- one of the best parts of going away last time was being so far removed from the constant, overwhelming distraction of the Internet. Happy New Year.