Plus Caption Competition, Quips & Quotes, Life in NZ and 10 Quick Questions
The perceptive cover story on the “snowflake” generation and the suppression of free speech to avoid giving offence is timely (“Culture of complaint”, January 12). If free speech has any meaning at all, it is permitting the expression of viewpoints that you disagree with, even strongly disagree with. No one has the right not to be offended.
The troubling phenomenon of labelling what you disagree with as “hate speech” has arrived in New Zealand with the de-platforming of Canadian speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern by Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and the banning of Don Brash from speaking at Massey University by vice-chancellor Jan Thomas. In both instances, the threat of heckler disruption was the lame excuse given to shut down free speech.
David Gibbs (Beach Haven, Auckland)
Yet another diatribe on the anxiety and fragility exhibited by young adults. The media delight in terrifying parents by detailing every murder, abduction and gruesome accident, then blame their readers for acting on the biased information provided.
However, given the world our kids face, perhaps anxiety and fragility are sensible reactions.
From the time they start school, kids in developed societies are assessed relentlessly, and most are found deficient in some way and threatened with dire consequences if they don’t do well: they will have no job, no security, no future.
In fact, few will get those no matter how well they do. We’re removing employment and security by automating everything we can think of; wealthy older members of society treat housing as an investment, putting it out of financial reach of most young people; and we charge huge fees for the privilege of getting the qualifications they’re told they must have, so they enter adulthood laden with debt.
Add the elephant in the room that is climate change, and the accompanying environmental degradation, and it seems like ample grounds for a bit of anxiety and fragility.
Maybe we could help fix the problem, rather than blaming the victims.
J McDonald (Fairfield, Hamilton)
It is illuminating to examine the early lives of scientists, a common feature of which is their free-range childhood. Some, such as biologist Louis Agassiz, were able to roam the countryside. Thomas Huxley, another biologist, spent time alone in museums and Charles Darwin wandered freely collecting specimens and adding to his father’s natural-history collection. The greatest scientist of last century, Kiwi Ernest Rutherford, had a free-range childhood at Brightwater and Foxhill, and DNA co-discoverer James Watson went with his father bird spotting instead of going to church.
Ranging far and wide enabled these scientists to develop their natural curiosity.
Paul Bieleski (Nelson)
LETTER OF THE WEEK
The cover story is a timely and informative survey of the odious phenomenon of the complaint culture. However, I have two questions: what evidence is there that university staff are increasingly left wing, as claimed, and why would being left wing mean academics were more likely to be disinclined than others to offer “balancing views or opposing arguments” when faced with a situation where students are acting out in the culture of complaint?
Robin Ransom (Auckland)
HIGHS AND LOWS
Congratulations are due for the incisive Editorial (January 12) on liberalising cannabis
use. May this be the first of many such articles that explore the range of possibilities that a law change may bring.
How crazy would it be to have expended so much effort and money to convince nicotine addicts that the only ones benefiting from their habit are the obscenely wealthy, manipulative tobacco corporations, only to hand another set of greedy operatives the opportunity to hold society’s most vulnerable to ransom?
Do we want to see children growing up in households with marijuana-laced foodstuffs and where they’re passively inhaling state-sanctioned marijuana smoke?
Patricia Fenton (Whangarei)
I would hope that, come the end of the draconian restrictions on marijuana use, the community would adjust its usage accordingly. Yes, there will be some negatives, as one could argue there were
after the end of prohibition, but there will be a string of positives, not least that future generations will not have their life choices restricted by an unnecessary criminal conviction.
Michael Bowman (Takapuna, Auckland)
Marijuana law reform should start by making it a Class A drug with an upper limit on its THC content, being available in cigarette form only and subject to excise. There should be a user age limit of at least 20 and licensing of growers, manufacturers and retailers in a supply chain that precludes vertical or horizontal integration.
We must avoid a repeat of the synthetic marijuana fiasco and learn from other jurisdictions about what has and hasn’t worked. Tough initial rules can be eased if those in this new industry comply.
Steve Cox (St Albans, Christchurch) Some years ago, an acquaintance, a married woman with a self-employed husband, phoned me in tears to tell me he had discovered marijuana. Every evening, apparently, he was smoking the drug until he had made himself happy.
Potheads like to laugh a lot. This young woman’s difficulty was that normal conversation and companionability had ceased. She was no longer a part of her husband’s world.
His giggling got on her nerves and she couldn’t stop it. I am no expert in these matters, but it seems to me that when the giggling goes on and on, and you can’t shake any sense out of the smoker, it reaches the stage when the giggling is no laughing matter. Not to the wife, anyway.
Roger Ridley-Smith (Khandallah, Wellington)
SLEEP TIP #11
To the 10 tips in “Sleep: From A to Zzzz” (January 5), I would add this: if you have a long-term bedfellow who snores, takes nocturnal trips to the kitchen or bathroom or leaves the light/radio/electronic devices on, you could occasionally sleep in a separate room.
Not done in anger, this should ensure one of you remains sane enough to cope with the problems the other one may eventually encounter.
During this separation, it’s useful to picture how it was when there was just you in your own little bed with a good book and there were no mortgages, rates or sick relatives and everything was cheap and it never rained.
Janet Weir (Melrose, Wellington)
The vagaries of age are important in any article about sleep. I live in a retirement village
where many of the inhabitants are up during so-called sleeping hours. This is not by choice – older people often have anxieties, aches and pains that affect their sleep.
Getting up for a cuppa and a change of position is sometimes the only thing to do. We may then miss the morning wake-up deadline and – horror – sleep in.
Alarmist articles about the heightened risk of dementia and cancer from such bad behaviour are the last thing we need to help us sleep better.
Jill Williams (Glenfield)
FASD AND MALE VIOLENCE
I agree with calling out violence in all its forms by both men and women, as Roger
Hall does with reference to the killing of Grace Millane ( Letters, January 5). However, from his dominant position in society as a white male, there is a whiff of misogyny in his challenge to women to reduce the incidence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
Perhaps, for a little gender balance, he could do some research into the forms of damage due to male alcohol consumption.
Jocelyn Poland (Christchurch)
It is great that Roger Hall is concerned about the health and well-being of babies born in New Zealand, but hasn’t it occurred to him that men are equally involved in FASD pregnancies and could take responsibility for preventing them by managing their own contraception?
Nick Eade (Nelson)
The Listener’s publication of ill-quoted and incomplete statistics such as the “40,000 cases” of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) that Roger Hall says women should address lowers the tone of discourse on the issue of sexually motivated harassment, assault and murder in New Zealand.
For the record, Statistics New Zealand recorded 59,610 live births in 2017, and the Ministry of Health suggests as many as 1800 of these children may be affected by FASD.
The Ministry of Justice, meanwhile, estimates 186,000 cases of reported sexual violence in 2013, with women nearly three times as likely to be affected than men. These data do not reflect the possible 91% of sexually motivated attacks that go unreported, and certainly do not include the routine sexual harassment and intimidation of New Zealand women by the comments, catcalls and wolf-whistles that they often encounter.
Regardless of the statistics Hall bandies about, deflection of discussion to FASD in an attempt to dilute the call for
action on sexual violence by prominent women is an excellent example of “whataboutery”. This well-recognised distraction technique does nothing to address the issue at hand.
FASD is indeed a multifaceted and significant problem that requires urgent attention, but raising it in this context is akin to demanding that the road toll be fixed before addressing child poverty.
Dr Janet Rhodes
(Waitati, Dunedin)
Roger Hall responds: Although my letter was intended to be provocative, it was not meant to be sensational. The figure I quoted of 40,000 FASD cases is more worldwide and I apologise to anyone who took me to mean it applied to New Zealand. This country’s figures are harder to find, but they remain a shameful statistic.
GONE POSTAL
Helensville residents cheered Jane Clifton’s raspberry to NZ Post in her annual prize-giving ( Politics, December 22). Postal deliveries in the town go to an amusing selection of recipients with similar street names or numbers. Most mail eventually reaches its destination. Replacing them with a squad of wombats – we like it!
Anne Martin (Helensville)
IN A SPIN
Your inclusion of more science-based news is to be encouraged ( Science and Nature Briefs, January 5). However, it would be preferable to avoid such nonsense as “seven of the ‘exoplanets’ have orbital periods of less than 24 hours, similar to Earth”. This is actually about how long our planet takes to spin once on its axis; an orbit round the sun takes roughly 365 times as long as that.
Martin Green (Whangarei)