What will get New Zealanders moving

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...