What will get New
Zealanders moving toward real social and political change?
Can they be
mobilised?
What will get
them to step up and seek out a realistic acceptable social sense of justice and
fairness?
Are the present
political and community / social conditions ripe for a physical mass explosion
of community activeness? Or are they so deeply embedded in self-centred and
inward looking perspectives that community and social good has been lost to the
new values of personal power and greed [a business perspective some would
suggest since the birth of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson etc.
Could unlocking
this possible mass of human energy lead to a more inclusive society that
actually demonstrates care about those members of our society that are at
present at the bottom of the heap.
There are of
course and quiet rightly so a huge variety of individual thoughts and
possibilities relating to much needed improvements to our present day society.
I believe
that; improvements that could lead to a fairer and equal society, one in which you
can actually survive, in a dignified manner, one that is more befitting human
beings, rather than animals.
The key word
for me is ‘Action’…So it could be said that the difference between simply
accepting things as they are, or as they are being sold to us by those in power,
or with the power, such as the various forms of media that control our opinion
development processes. It is normal for these extremely powerful forces to lead
us down a path of their choosing.
The word
action for most of us, means something that we actually DO to assist us achieve our goals or objectives. You need
the ability to dream, and you need the ability to recognise reality, and to
understand what is required to get from reality to your dreams, and that is the
action part, or as some would say the
doing…and that dear reader is the hardest part to master.
In a
political sense, action could mean doing what some political party you support
seeks you to do, to achieve political party success…the problem with that
approach may well be, that your political party may well be working against the
social and community goals you want and long for as being required to achieve
the social change you desire. You see political parties and political leaders
lie constantly so as to achieve their unstated objectives and goals. It’s not
their stated so-called polices that are all that important, but it is their
secret objectives that do the most damage. For example the PM may state that he
doesn’t support, for example Cameron Slater but his behaviour [by texting him
and chatting with him and using SIS/GCSB info to help him] proves otherwise.
Put bluntly his behaviour is hypocritical so it could be said that he is an
hypocrite, could it not?
Now the
commencement of meaningful change takes place when the physical behaviour of
doing something rather than just talking [although talking and planning may be
a part of it], but actually involves actually getting off ones backside and
starting an action change programme of some sort. I call these programmes ‘action
behavioural loops’ ABL’s, my definition of a loop consist of three ACTION steps:
1. What you
are going to do.
2. Doing it
and
3. Evaluating
its success or otherwise
If enough of
these loops are started individually but better still collectively via some
sort of ‘movement’ change can happen rapidly and effectively. The driving force
is keeping your goals or objectives in view as you proceed toward achieving
your dream [s].
Now oldies
like me have plenty of past models to use as guides by which to set our dreams
against. For example my University education was free; we never finished up
owing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars before we even had a
job.
I met a young
woman the other day who had just completed a year’s course to learn the skills
of panel beating…she ended up with a student loan that had to be paid back…but
she hasn’t even got a job…what sort of a society do we live in where we do that
to someone just wanting to get started. The government steals from students
before they even start work…while at the same time lowers the tax for those in
the top tax rate margin.
This is
right-wing voodoo economics in action, where even schools and educational
outfits like universities are run like profit making businesses and thousands
of people are so selfish that they support this behaviour so long as they don’t
have to pay. It matches the beliefs of those who feel that unemployment or
being on a benefit is a self-selected life style choice.
There are
some who would suggest that we should not point out the negative behaviour of
our political leaders and should only offer positive solutions. That of course
is actually impossible, do you think that you could convince the PM to raise
the minimum wage and make it a liveable wage? Of course he can’t do that, Oh he
will tell you that sometime in the far distant future it may be possible, but
in the meantime we simply have to rely on the trickle-down theory which we all
know is a load of crap. In fact in the last three years they have actually
lowered the wages for young people, we’ve upped the tax on those kids who used
to deliver our daily newspapers, in fact very few youth actually deliver
newspapers these days. That job has become just another low paid job for
adults.
It really is
a weird world at times, here in NZ we have people [usually fundamentalists
nutters] who decry everything Obama does, they call him a Muslim and they suggest
he is anti-American…which makes it hard to believe that he was elected President of the US. Yet
these same weird people just adore our PM John Key and appear to be great National
/ Act supporters now this is strange because Key will do nothing without Obama’s
approval or consent. Key broke the law to appease the US Obama and Obama’s
Hollywood backers in his attack on Kim Dotcom, his family and his business and
I might add he got the NZ police, and our so-called independent GCSB and SIS to
assist him.
 |
| Award winning author Eleanor Catton. |
So based on
that behavioral evidence you can see that changing our political system back into
something like it used to be will not be an easy task. The people who will
oppose your efforts are all around you. Sean
Plunket is a typical example, a so-called talk-back radio host claimed
that our famous overseas honoured author Eleanor
Catton was a ‘ungrateful hua’ and ‘traitor’ because she stated that “our
leadership was neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, shallow and money-hungry
politicians and did not care about culture”. Sean Plunket is a good example of
a media made bulls**t character invented to maintain listener-ship to a dying
breed or mode of broadcasting.
Eleanor Catton is all the things that Sean
Plunket would like to be, young, bright and intelligent, academically successful,
a world recognised figure and not afraid to speak out.
So to wind up
this short blog, I’m asking you to set yourself a ‘Action Loop’ or two, write
it down and share it with your friends…ask for their help and offer to help
them with their ‘Action Loop’
And let me
know if I can help you achieve your dream…remember please nothing will change
unless you take the first step…and you don’t have to hurt anyone…and let me
assure you that when success comes as it will, you will feel really good. You
may even decide to stand on the street, or in your sitting room, or in your
class room, or on the bus or anywhere else that takes your fancy and shout…I
BLOODY DID IT…I STARTED THE CHANGE...
