News From Nowhere: If the Greens are to have a future, then they must listen to their past.

Taking Inspiration From The Past: Clio, the Muse of History, is traditionally depicted perusing the book of humanity’s past glories. At need, however, she will put down her book and take up a sword. Never has that need been greater. Only when we remember who we are, where we have come from, and what we have achieved, will we find the strength to drive Clio’s liberating sword through neoliberalism’s black and befouling heart.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE GREENS’ corruption by neoliberalism is that they simply cannot grasp how completely they’ve been seduced. At its heart, the problem is one of generational experience and perspective. The younger generation of Greens, the ones currently in control of the organisation, simply have no experiential connection to the zeitgeist out of which their movement was born. Their entire adult lives have been lived in the shadow of the neoliberal revolutions of the 1980s and 90s. What came before the revolution has been dismissed by its architects and disciples as existing outside the realm of common sense. Those who preach the values and aspirations of those pre-revolutionary times offer news from nowhere – and no one is listening.

They could, of course, learn the origin stories of radical environmentalism by entering imaginatively into the historical circumstances out of which it was born. Historians do this all the time. Watch Mary Beard’s television series on Ancient Rome and it will soon become clear how thoroughly an intelligent and inquisitive human-being is able to not only comprehend, but also inhabit, the past. Beard talks of being captured by the history of the Roman world from the moment she read Tacitus’ chilling judgement of his own people: “They make a desert and they call it peace.”

The problem with the generations that have grown up in the 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan destroyed the post-war social-democratic settlement, is that they have been convinced the past has nothing useful to teach them.

Like the early cartographers who wrote “Here Be Monsters” in the blank spaces of their maps, the neoliberal ideologues tell frightening tales about the times before their “Year Zero”. Anxious to dissuade those contemplating their own voyages of historical discovery, they warn that only bad and mad things lie beyond the well-charted shorelines of the present. Sadly, they have been remarkably successful. The past remains one of the very few foreign countries that millennial “influencers” have no interest in visiting – not least because “they do things differently there”.

One of the principal reasons for the neoliberals’ success is that their own ideologically-inspired break with the post-war world was strengthened immeasurably by the natural inclination of young people to dismiss the world in which their elders were raised as hopelessly passé. Ordinarily, such youthful disdain is reserved for the fashions, art and music of the recent past – so lacking in the manifestly superior tastes of the present. What the Neoliberals merged so successfully was this essentially harmless generational scorn with their own deep ideological hostility towards the ideas and institutions of the entire modern era.

When Baby Boomers like Catherine Delahunty and Sue Bradford condemn the younger generations of Greens for abandoning the foundational beliefs and principles of the Green Movement, all these younger Greens hear is an ideological version of “Taylor Swift can’t hold a candle to Joni Mitchell.” Or, “Where is your generation’s “Godfather”? Where’s your “Catcher in the Rye”? Your “Sergeant Pepper”? Social-democracy, the Club of Rome, Rachel Carson, Earth Day 1971: Catherine and Sue might just as well be touting the virtues of a dusty vinyl version of “Greatest Hits of the 1960s and 70s”. 

Okay Boomer.

Lacking a firm grasp of recent history, the generations at the end of the alphabet do not understand that while their parents and grandparents might have laughed at the “RSA Generation’s” stuffy conformism, and marched against nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War and Apartheid sport, they had nothing but admiration for the extraordinary structures of social care which these earlier generations had built. Moreover, they were full of gratitude for the fact that their own lives would be fuller and more prosperous as a result. The Boomers grew up in the shadow of fascism and genocide. They knew what the generation preceding their own had beaten back – and they loved them for it.

Discouraged from accessing the past, the younger Greens will struggle to understand the extraordinary exhilaration of encountering their own movement for the first time. New Zealand was the first nation to encounter a “green” political party. Inspired by the Club of Rome’s “Limits To Growth”, the Values Party spoke, for the first time, of constructing a future guided by humility and restraint. To hear Tony Brunt and his successors talk about limiting economic growth, and expanding the time in which people could simply be themselves, was to envisage a world “beyond tomorrow”. This was news from a somewhere humankind had yet to reach.

Values Party political broadcast from the 1972 General Election.

The worst crime against History which the Neoliberals have committed, however, is to convince young people that the past was a stinking cesspit of privilege, prejudice and oppression. That their ancestors were monsters – wiping out indigenous peoples even as their axes and machines laid waste to the forests, lakes, rivers and streams which had sustained them for millennia. By painting the past as a hellscape of irredeemable horror, the tiny fraction of one percent who lord it over the rest of humanity, Paul Simon’s “loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires”, are robbing us of the means to rescue the future.

Is there horror in the past? Is it full of murder and rapine? Of course it is – but no more than the horror that daily disfigures the present. Nor are evil deeds all that the past has to show us. Amidst the horror there is heroism. Amidst the murder and rapine there is also empathy and courage, creativity and love.

Human-beings do not suffer injustice meekly, they rise against it again and again and again. Down through the centuries reformers and revolutionaries have dreamed dreams and seen visions. Slavery was abolished. Women were enfranchised. Children were removed from coalmines and cotton mills.

When the armed constabulary invaded Parihaka in 1881, not all Pakeha cheered – nowhere near all. In the end, Apartheid fell. Eventually, gay sex was decriminalised. The past is not simply a catalogue of horrors. It is also an endless source of inspiration and hope.

The Neoliberals would shut the younger generations off from that hope and inspiration. The neoliberals would have us believe that this is as good as it gets. They have – almost – convinced James Shaw and Marama Davidson that the future can only be reached with tiny steps. On a warming planet, rapidly running out of time, that is deadly advice.

Catherine and Sue, and all those who stand with them, are right: this is no time for tiny steps. Humankind has made giant leaps before – all the way to the moon. But the booster rockets that push us towards the future are fuelled by the knowledge of what human-beings have achieved in the past.

Clio, the Muse of History, is traditionally depicted perusing the book of humanity’s past glories. At need, however, she will put down her book and take up a sword.

Never has that need been greater.

Only when we remember who we are, where we have come from, and what we have achieved, will we find the strength to drive Clio’s liberating sword through neoliberalism’s black and befouling heart.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 11 January 2022.

The Not-So-Happy Prince (A Guest Posting by Dr Charles Pigden)

The Prince Who Refused To 'Get Real': People who talk of adapting to reality are in effect suggesting that we should put up with a social reality created by other people rather than trying to remake it in accordance with what we think is right. By doing so, they reinforce that very reality. And by refusing to be actors in history they become the accomplices - perhaps ultimately the victims - of the processes of which they profess to disapprove.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a Prince. The Prince was very rich and very happy and enjoyed the favor of his master the Emperor. He liked to attend court functions in his fine clothes. He loved dancing and parties and enjoyed fulfilling the not very onerous tasks demanded of a nobleman of his rank and station. He knew that the Emperor was far from perfect but he did not see fit to question his actions. After a while the old Emperor abdicated and left the realm to his son, the King of S.

The King of S did not like the Prince very much but he thought he was a fine gentleman, ideal to be sent as the ornamental ambassador to the King of F. The real business was to be left to the Prince's deputy. But the King of F did not know about this and made the mistake of discussing the real business with the ornamental ambassador. Apparently the two Kings were planning to roast thousands of people who disagreed with them on matters of religion. The Prince was upset about this as he disapproved of roasting people even when they disagreed with him on religious topics.

Soon after this the King of S left for his southern dominions leaving the realm to his half-sister the Duchess who was to act as regent. The Prince tried to persuade the Duchess not to roast people. There were many who thought he was doing the wrong thing. (Let us call them his feeble counsellors.)

'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted. You must adapt to that reality. If you don't like it perhaps you can persuade the Duchess to have people roasted in a more orderly and less cruel way.'

But the Prince thought that roasting people was wrong and he would not listen to their advice. But the Duchess (obedient to the orders of her brother the King) was not persuaded. Then the Prince got together a group of other fine gentlemen who disapproved of roasting people to help him persuade the Duchess.

Again, the Prince's feeble counsellors spoke up. 'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted.  You must adapt to that reality. You have tried once and failed. Give it up and enjoy your position at court.

But the Prince thought that roasting people was wrong and he would not listen to their advice. Nevertheless the Duchess (obedient to the orders of her brother the King) was not persuaded by the Prince and his fine gentlemen friends. Indeed, she had some of them arrested and the Prince declared an outlaw.

The Prince decided that since persuasion did not work, he would have to try force and raised a rebellion against the King of S's government. There were many who thought he was doing the wrong thing.

'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted. You must adapt to that reality. You have tried twice and failed. Give it up and if you say you are sorry, perhaps you can recover your position at court.'

But the Prince still thought that roasting people was wrong and he would not listen to their advice. Now the Prince was not a very good soldier and he was utterly defeated by the Duke of A (The King of S had replaced the Duchess as regent because he did not think she was sufficiently keen on roasting people. The Duke of A was much more fierce and could be relied on to carry on the roasting project with much more vigour.) The Prince lost his money, his estates and his eldest son, who was kidnapped and carried off to be a prisoner at the King of S's court. (The Prince never saw him again.) He was forced to flee to the castle of his brother the Count of D.

Just to show that he was serious, the Duke of A had some of the Prince's fine gentleman friends executed. Many people (the feeble counsellors) thought that the Prince would at last have learnt his lesson. 'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted.  You must adapt to that reality. You have tried three times and failed. Give it up and if you say you are very sorry, and if you lie low for a few years, perhaps the King will allow you to recover some of your estates.'

But the Prince still thought that  - reality or no reality - roasting people was wrong. And in addition he disliked the fact that his country was ruled by someone as fierce as the Duke of A. So despite the good advice, after several years of plotting, he scraped together an army and rebelled again.

Well, to cut a long story short, the Prince's second rebellion was but a partial success. He was still not a very good soldier and was only able to establish control over part of the country (where to be sure, roasting and other such cruelties were forbidden). His armies were often defeated and his brother was killed. Most of his money and his estates remained forfeit.  Instead of parties and jousts his life was devoted to planning and committees. He was tired all the time and sometimes ill. In the end, the King of S put a price on his head and had him murdered. So perhaps he would have done better to listen to his feeble counselors and respect the 'realities' after all.

BUT THEN AGAIN, perhaps not. This Prince was William the Silent, Prince of Orange, founder of the Dutch nation, which remained in the hundred years after his death, the true home of liberty and enlightenment in Europe. His actions helped to create a new and rather better 'reality' than the one that would have existed had he tamely acquiesced in the King of Spain's commands. Even today - even here - we enjoy the benefits of his courage and resolution.

Now, what is the point of this story?

What I want to suggest is this. Though physical reality is not made up by us, social reality is in part a human creation since it is the product of human actions and decisions. What is made by human actions and decisions can often be un-made by other human actions and other human decisions. People who talk of adapting to reality (like the Prince's feeble counsellors in my story) are in effect suggesting that we should put up with a social reality created by other people rather than trying to remake it in accordance with what we think is right. By doing so, they reinforce that very reality. And by refusing to be actors in history they become the accomplices - perhaps ultimately the victims - of the processes of which they profess to disapprove.

Of course, there are some fights you cannot win. But there are also a good many that can be won if people are prepared to make the necessary effort. 'Realism' is too often the excuse offered by those too cowardly or too lazy to make that effort. And when advanced by those in power it is too often a fig-leaf designed to conceal the fact that there are no good arguments for the policies suggested. I would like to say (following Dr Johnson) that 'realism' is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But that would not be accurate. Often it is his first resort.

Dr Charles Pigden is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Otago. This is his first Guest Posting on the Bowalley Road blogsite (but, hopefully, not his last).