Dr Bob's Blog

It seems that National is riding a public opinion high wave at this time. Labour on the other hand is currently at a low point in the polls. The impression I get from the media is the claim that the electorate is fed up with Labour’s perceived arrogance and dictatorial style of Helen Clarke. Much of the criticism of Labour seems to be fuelled by a perception that people feel that they have had their initiative stifled and their freedoms have been suppressed. There also seems to be a back lash from some, who are upset by what they call political correctness and the “nanny state”. Labour is most strongly associated with this label.

National has sought to exploit this disaffection with its vehement attack on the Electoral Finance Act, and the release of John Key’s DVD where he says he is ambitious for New Zealand and wants New Zealanders to become ambitious for themselves.

I want to examine the John Key DVD and look at what it says about John Key’s political awareness and its likely impact on the New Zealand political landscape in the run up to the elections later this year. This is a very well produced DVD and many people will be highly impressed with it.

Political awareness is about the mindset or world view that informs the views, beliefs and ways of acting. Our mindset or world view pre-programmes us to act in ways consistent with our mindset. As human beings, we go through different stages in the way these mindsets are structured and they affect the way we define our needs, the way we think and the things we value. These aspects of our mental life evolve and change throughout life. It is the way we define our needs, the way we think and the things we value that pre-programmes us to act the way we do.
In the political arena this relates to the depth and breadth of how we define our needs and the political needs of the country, the way we think in relation to who has priority on the individual people spectrum, and thirdly what values are most important often ranging on a spectrum from individual advancement to social cohesion. 

In John Key’s case this is not difficult, the emphasis that he places on ambition and achievement suggests that he places these qualities and values above all else. He also falls very far to the individualistic side of the individualist/collectivist spectrum that I talked about in a previous article dealing with the Electoral Finance Act. It means that individual achievement and advancement are powerful guiding forces in the way he lives his life and his political philosophy. It is these themes that he emphasizes in the “Ambition for New Zealand” DVD.

John Key’s emphasis upon ambition and achievement is an essential element of the wave of human development that emerged out of the Enlightenment. In this level of awareness the human spirit “escapes” from the herd mentality of the mythic order that enforced a code of conduct based on absolute and unvarying principles of “right” and “wrong”. (There are still many people at this stage of development, many of whom are part of fundamentalist religious groups.)

In this new emerging level of awareness that I am calling ambition/achievement, truth and meaning are sought in individualistic terms. In this era science, politics and art separated from the Church, with science becoming almost the new religion. The world is understood as a well oiled machine with natural laws that can be learned, mastered and manipulated for one’s own purposes. The world is a chess board on which games are played and winners gain pre-eminence and perks over losers.  

This level of political awareness has achieved a great many benefits for modern industrial societies and it is a very widespread level of awareness. This level of awareness is the target level of modern industrial societies, although many people do not reach this level, but at the same time many have advanced beyond this level.

John Key is obviously a talented person who has excelled in the business realm and accumulated a great deal of wealth and he is to be admired for his achievements. He is like many self-made people who spring from humble beginnings. They tend to think that if you have the “right’ dreams and motivation you can achieve anything. There is some truth in this, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I don’t want to emphasize so much the partial nature of John Key’s focus on ambition and achievement, but on the limitations of this level of political awareness in general at this time in our history. I want to make the case that this level of political awareness, while it holds many truths and has a place in any political party’s platform, it has many dangers when it exists in what I would call a strong form. John Key represents the strong version of this level of awareness and probably many of his National Party colleagues share this position, as well as the ACT party.

While I have acknowledged that the ambitious/achievement level of awareness has achieved a great deal in modern industrial societies, it has also spurned many of the major problems that we currently face. Einstein claimed that we cannot solve the problems created by one level of awareness with that same level. My argument is that we cannot solve the problems created by the ambition/achievement level of awareness with this same level of awareness. 

What other levels of awareness are available to us within the political landscape of New Zealand? Many people feel repelled by the strong version of the ambition/achievement level of awareness and have developed a communitarian level of awareness which I call the social inclusiveness model. This represents both an advance and a downside, but it too is partial in the solutions it offers. This level’s focus is community values and in its strong form tends to discourage ambition and achievement. The strong version of ambition and achievement need to be softened but not extinguished.

The social inclusiveness level of awareness accords equal value and respect to all points of view and to diverse people including those of different ethnic background and sexual orientation to mention just two issues. This is one reason why it attracts the ire of people with pre-ambition/achievement level of awareness, such as fundamental religious positions represented by the Exclusive Brethren and the Destiny Church   

This level of awareness tends to the collectivist side of the individual/collective spectrum. People who display this level of awareness tend to be labeled as socialists, but their version of socialism has little, if anything, to do with the socialism of old. They locate the cause of social misery in the social structures – social misery arises out of the inequalities in our society. This is the predominant view of the Labour party and some of its coalition partners.

I am not saying that the National aligned parties are black and white ambition/achievement oriented and that Labour and its allies are black and white social inclusionist. (There is probably a great deal of ambition among the Labour party politicians for the spoils of office.)  These different levels of awareness help us to understand the way people are likely to react when they face some really important challenges. I’ll mention these briefly shortly.

My argument is that each of the two positions is partial and on its own quite incapable of meeting the challenges in the future. We need leaders who can transcend both of these partial views but include them in a more comprehensive level of awareness that I call an integral awareness. People capable of this type of mindset or world view within the political landscape seem pretty thin on the ground at this time. 

We saw with the Electoral Finance Act that when the chips were down the dominant level of political awareness takes over and the politicians are instruments of the level of awareness that they represent. The social inclusionist level is an advance on the ambition/achievement level, but it’s a level of awareness incapable of providing us with the wisdom to deal adequately with the serious challenges we face with technological changes associated with robotics, genetics, information technology, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, with the challenges faced by the environment, (not just global warming), globalization, world poverty and terrorism. I hope to deal with how we will face these challenges in the future and the level of awareness we will need to develop to successfully tackle these challenges.