Pollies, Peters, puerile and petulant
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates had a stellar reputation as a wise man and there’s a line attributed to him that I’ve always liked.
It’s a more nuanced version of “think before you speak”, with Socrates understood to have advised that before we sound off about something, shoot from the lip, we should ask ourselves, ‘Is it true, is it good or kind, and is it necessary?’ ’’ It is a laudable goal, a demonstration of thoughtfulness. Nowadays, of course, some would say it is a pretty woke notion, not that Socrates would have known anything about wokeness. I think his wisdom is as fresh and pertinent in the 21st Century as it ever was, and in the past couple of weeks I’ve made a list of a few people who might have done better to follow Socrates’ suggestion.
In no particular order there is Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who doubled down on his comments earlier this month likening Te Pāti Māori statements to Nazi Germany and “the horrors of history”.
In the fall-out that followed this reference – made during his New Zealand First State of the Nation address - Peters claimed misrepresentation and, of course, he blamed his old nemesis, the media, for it.
Video of his speech is available in plain sight online and whatever way Peters cuts it, the linking of issues in this country with the atrocities and catastrophic events of Nazi Germany was ill-judged. It wouldn’t have passed the Socrates test.
Same with ACT leader David Seymour, who in the wake of Government plans to slash more than 530 public service jobs (between the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Primary Industries) reposted a oneword ACT party tweet: “Good.”
Seymour quickly clarified this, saying he thought it was good that the economy was rebalancing.
Which would not have provided much comfort to ministry staff members facing redundancy, probably with mortgages to pay and families to support. The “Good” tweet wasn’t very good at all.
The hounding of the (sadly) unwell Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, and the spurious speculation by some media, social media trolls and conspiracy theorists has been deeply unkind, unnecessary and untrue.
The candid revelation of her cancer diagnosis more than explains her absence from public life for the past few months. Hopefully there will be a more thoughtful approach to future coverage.
Last on this list is the stormy Sailgp chief executive Sir Russell Coutts, who disputed the endangered status of the Hector’s dolphins that had the temerity to swim into the marine mammal sanctuary of Lyttelton Harbour last weekend. And cause the cancellation of a day’s racing for Sailgp.
Coutts took issue with the “extreme” marine mammal management plan “forced upon” Sailgp and said New Zealand was handcuffed by bureaucracy and red tape.
He said some other unnecessary things as well, and although the cancellation was unfortunate, expensive and hugely disappointing, the protocols around protection of marine mammals had apparently been widely understood and signed off by all parties. Which kind of blows Coutts’s angry response out of the water.
This pile-on of unpleasantness has been mitigated in my neck of the woods by a few humble and heart-warming observations, so I’m passing these on as well. Just small things.
Again, in no particular order, there was a young father shepherding three kids back to his car the other day in Hamilton’s CBD. I was walking behind them, and you couldn’t miss that the youngest child, maybe a pre-schooler, was having a monumental meltdown.
Of the variety that causes disturbing flashbacks for anyone who has ever raised kids. The little boy shrieked and sobbed, plonked down on the pavement and refused to budge.
There was a text-book display of patient parenting; the father picked him up, tried to calm him, piggy-backed him for a while, stopped and tried again when the boy wriggled off, still shouting.
In the supposed “good old days”, kids were whacked in public for behaviour like this, possibly with accompanying nods of approval from some onlookers. We live in more enlightened times, and this dad was doing an excellent job in hugely trying circumstances.
To be admired. There was another kid, engaging in a different way.
A quiet, shy boy, maybe six years old, and he was selling Whittaker’s peanut slabs as a school fundraiser last Sunday morning at Hamilton Lake ($5 for two).
He was under the careful guidance of his mother, he wasn’t saying much, and it was clearly a bit of a stretch for him to approach random strangers with his Whittaker’s box.
A friend and I bought the $5 deal and we were rewarded by a beaming smile, and reminded of how the simplest of things can make a difference.
And another reminder of how communities are created, in little pockets, all over town:
I was at the Kurdish Naan bakery in Fairfield last week, inhaling the warm scent of bread in the tandoor oven, talking to owner and chief bread-maker, Kazimiya. It seemed like the world came through her shop door that morning to buy naan.
There was an imposing man with a white beard, clad in a long white garment, a woman with a European accent, bright red hair and a big personality to match, several families, and a couple collecting a
huge stack of naan, destined for a dinner for 100 people that night, at sunset, breaking the Ramadan fast. Kazimiya seemed to know them all.
I departed with my single packet of naan and some beautiful baklava and, not wanting to get too deep and meaningful here, I’m thinking that Socrates would have felt entirely at home in the friendly bakery, and perhaps with the aforementioned children and parents.
I’m not so confident about anyone else.